Chapter 15

Imogen stood at the edge of a hastily made camp with a tree comfortingly at her back and tried not to shake.

She didn’t like to be in situations where she had no control over the events swirling around her. Too many unpleasant hours spent at the mercy of her siblings, no doubt. This was exponentially worse. She was out in the wilds of England, completely at the mercy of people she had only met a couple of days earlier, and her only reasonable method of transportation was a horse she wasn’t at all sure wouldn’t bite her for being a lousy rider.

Well, that, and she was eight hundred years away from where she was supposed to be.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to look on the bright side. She was cold, but she had a decent coat. She was hungry, but it looked like someone was taking care of that over there by the fire. She was tired, but maybe we’ll stay here tonight spoken in the local vernacular really meant a chance to close her eyes for a while. Her hair was full of mud and muck and she had never wanted a bath more in her entire life, but at least they were out in the open where she couldn’t smell herself quite so accurately.

Camping was not her favorite activity, but she had to admit it was preferable to remaining behind in a castle that definitely didn’t contain anything resembling a tea shop. There had been no way in hell she’d been willing to stay there by herself.

Not that Phillip would have left without her, she supposed. He had carefully rounded her up with his family and his men and herded them out the gates, all before noon. She had to admit, she’d never been happier to see the last of a place than she had been of Haemesburgh, even though seeing it from the back of a horse she hadn’t known how to ride had been one of the more sobering moments of her life.

She was in trouble.

At least she was in trouble standing on her own two feet for the moment, though that wasn’t doing much to help her tamp down the terror she was feeling. She was accustomed to practical jokes that weren’t funny, jokes perpetrated by her brothers and sisters. She was used to parental craziness that she could see coming and avoid. She was even very familiar with looking at her bank account and angsting over how she was going to keep herself afloat long enough to make it big in the film industry.

She was not at all accustomed to facing the fact that, still, she was in the wrong place at definitely the wrong time.

She realized at that moment that although she had toyed with the idea of it, she had never fully bought into the idea of time traveling until earlier that day. Looking back on the castle from the perspective of a departing horse had helped her realize just how rustic the environs were. Having no choice but to be on a horse had helped her realize that there were no cute little cabs with the steering wheels on the wrong side waiting around to take her where she wanted to go. All she’d had was a company of men who seemed extremely familiar with traveling as a group of soldiers and looking to Phillip de Piaget for their marching—or, rather, their riding—orders.

Looking at him at the moment seemed like a good idea, so she did so. He was standing just outside the firelight, just as she was, but he wasn’t by himself. He was talking to someone named Cederic who seemed to be in a position of some authority over the men at least. Behind Phillip were his two shadows, guys she wouldn’t have wanted to meet after she’d inadvertently threatened him in any way. She’d been watching those two for most of the afternoon, not so much for their good looks but their general dangerousness. If they’d had antennae, they would have been constantly using them. She had absolutely no doubt that they knew where Phillip was at all times and were prepared to keep him safe at all costs.

Then there was the man himself. She’d spent the afternoon in the middle of the group with Rose, who seemed to find that somewhat annoying, because Phillip had insisted that they ride where he could keep them safe. Imogen hadn’t cared because it had given her a bird’s-eye view of a guy who just couldn’t possibly be related to the current crop of de Piagets inhabiting Artane.

Surely.

To call him gorgeous just didn’t do him justice. If she’d been creating costumes for him, she would have dressed him like a prince. If she’d been hiring leads for a big-budget shoot, she would have paid him whatever he wanted to star in her show. If she’d been looking for someone to cast in her own personal role of unattainable boyfriend, he would have been her first and only choice. He was stunning without being pretty, muscled without being obnoxious, in charge without being overbearing, and walking her way without her having noticed.

She really, really had to get home before she lost her mind.

“Mistress Imogen,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her. “Supper will be ready soon.”

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked. She supposed her teeth might have chattered as she said it. She knew she looked like the sort of dinner guest an upper-crust British family would have invited to clean up scraps in the kitchen with the downstairs maids. Again, she needed to get home before she made a complete fool of herself.

He looked faintly startled. “Nay, my cook will see to it.”

Of course he would. She nodded, trying to look as if she hadn’t expected anything else.

He gestured toward a fallen log. “Would you care to sit?”

She would, actually, and took him up on the invitation before she realized that maybe she shouldn’t have. He looked like a man with things on his mind. She would have bolted right then, but she had nowhere to go. She was in the wilds of England—she supposed—with all that stood between her and those wilds being guys dressed up as soldiers who were obviously beholden to the dangerous man sitting next to her.

Though he didn’t seem all that dangerous at the moment. He looked tired in a way that almost left her patting his shoulder before she thought better of it.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

He looked genuinely startled. “Why would you aid me?”

“Because I’m a nice person?”

He smiled. She almost fell backward off her perch into an indeterminate pile of what she could only hope might be leaves. It was just a small smile, but it left her wondering why it was he didn’t have a hundred gals lined up just to see that. Maybe he did and he’d left them back wherever he’d come from. Maybe he ignored them all in favor of Heather of Haemesburgh who Imogen was definitely going to have a little chat with as soon as possible if for nothing more than the chance to ask her what in the world she’d been thinking to pass up a gorgeous guy like Phillip de Piaget.

Phillip looked at his hands, rubbing them together for a moment or two, then glanced at her. “Things at Haemesburgh were not what I expected them to be.”

“It was the same for me.” She supposed that was the understatement of the year, but maybe he wasn’t quite ready for the sort of elaboration she could provide. After all, how did one go about telling a medieval knight that he was talking to a modern woman? For all she knew, he would decide she was a witch and burn her at the stake. Worse still, they were out in the boonies and she didn’t want to get ditched there. She already knew how that felt.

He shifted to face her. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said slowly, “how did you come to be at Haemesburgh? I didn’t see a guard that belonged to you.”

“I left, um, them in Edinburgh,” Imogen said, figuring that was as close to the truth as she dared get.

“And you traveled to the keep by yourself?”

She scrambled for something believable to say. It wasn’t as if she could tell him about the enjoyable train ride she’d had, or that cab driver who’d warned her she was heading into Paranormalville, or that his erstwhile fiancée really knew how to rock a pair of high heels. She supposed the simpler the dodge, the better, so she forced herself to shrug casually.

“I had help getting there,” she said, “but then I found myself on my own.” She smiled. “It’s hard to get good help these days, isn’t it?”

He looked as shocked as she’d expected him to. “Your guardsmen should be dismissed immediately, at the very least.”

“I agree. I’ll make sure that happens right after I get home. Absolutely.” She rubbed her hands together purposefully. “What about you? I see you have a good supply of guardsmen.”

He smiled. “So it would seem.”

“Do you always take that many with you wherever you go?”

“Not usually,” he said, “but my errand was perhaps a bit more perilous than the usual sort of jaunt to a neighboring keep. And my father, may he live only as long as he needs to, likes to watch after his children until we all want to scream for him to cease.”

There were two things that struck her quite suddenly. First, she was sitting in medieval England talking to what could potentially be the most amazing source for period details that anyone could have wished for; and, second, Phillip de Piaget was without a doubt the most charming man she had ever met. She decided that maybe she needed to add a third thing and that was that maybe the weirdest thing about the whole situation was that she was sitting on a log with a drop-dead gorgeous guy and she wasn’t nervous. Her siblings would have been speechless, though she suspected Barbara the shrink would have been making some serious mental notes for examination later.

Imogen left her family back in the future where they belonged and smiled at her new friend. “You’re a daddy’s boy, then?”

It took him a moment to apparently translate that in his head, then he smiled. “Perhaps less that than my father prefers me as his heir over my younger brother, Kendrick. I imagine he fears for the inner workings of his defenses.”

“Heir?” she repeated.

To his credit, he didn’t look down his nose at her. “To Artane. Do you know it?”

“That gigangic castle on the coast?”

Bless his heart, the man wasn’t afraid to translate on the fly. “The very same.”

She would have laughed or made him a curtsey or trotted off to fetch him his tea and slippers, but all she could do was sit there and wonder what Tilly would say when she found out Imogen had been rescued by the guy who was no doubt Stephen de Piaget’s grandfather. Great-great-great a few times grandfather, actually.

“You seem so normal,” she said, before she thought better of it.

“Daft, rather,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “I’m the one who endured having things flung at me over Haemesburgh’s walls for all these years, after all.” He looked at her with an expression of mild curiosity. “Do you know the lady Heather?”

“I’ve met her a time or two,” Imogen said honestly. “But I don’t know her very well.” Well enough to recognize her in a crowd and know she was strangling the right person, but maybe it was better not to mention that. “Do you?”

“Not at all,” he said frankly, “which likely contributes to my difficulties.”

“But Rose said you are engaged to Heather.”

“So the tale goes,” he said with a sigh, “though at the moment I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined the entire affair. At the very least, I’m beginning to accept that she’s not interested in facing me before a priest.”

Imogen would have reassured him that Heather was nuts and maybe if Phillip asked her nicely she might reconsider, but the woman seemed to be having a fairly decent time in twenty-first-century Scotland, so maybe it was just best to leave her there where Imogen could find her.

“Why did you want it?” she asked. “Haemesburgh, I mean. And I guess you still want it, don’t you?”

“Fool that I am, aye,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face, then smiling at her. “It rests along the border, as I’m sure you already know, which makes it of great advantage to whomever possesses it. A foothold in Scotland strikes me as a sensible thing to have.”

She couldn’t say she knew all that much about the history between Scotland and England over the years, but she had the feeling he was going to have less a foothold than a continual battle, but maybe Artane was just too darned boring and he was looking for some excitement.

“And you were willing to marry Heather to get her keep?”

“Aye, though when you put it that way, it sounds rather on the mercenary side, doesn’t it? But who marries for love? Well, save my sire and all his siblings.” He paused. “The rest of my family as well, I suppose. I appear to be the only one desperate enough for land to wed a gel for a pile of stones.” He sighed deeply. “I’m not sure what that says about me.”

“You’re a good businessman?”

He looked baffled, which she supposed he couldn’t help. Her French was radically improved, but not perfect by any means. He seemed to file that away for future examination, then shrugged.

“There is a fair bit of mystery surrounding the lord of the keep and his daughter,” he continued, “a mystery I must solve very soon or I will lose that keep.” He looked at her seriously. “I am planning to see to you to Edinburgh, but I must make a slight detour to my uncle’s keep. I have questions that I believe only he can answer.”

“About Heather?” she asked.

He opened his mouth, then shut it. “Ah,” he said, shifting uncomfortably, “aye. Other things as well.”

Well, he wasn’t a good liar, she could say that much for him. It was definitely a point in his favor. Her siblings were masters at the art of prevarication—they called it putting little sprinkles on the truth—so she always appreciated someone who wasn’t.

The material point was he was willing to take her north eventually, so she wasn’t going to argue about how long it took them to get there. And if she actually managed to get to a spot where she thought she could get back to her proper time, she would tell him what she really knew about Heather. She wasn’t sure how that could possibly help him, but maybe he would figure out a way to have what he wanted without Heather needing to be involved.

One of his bodyguards stepped suddenly out of the shadows, almost sending her backward off the log. Phillip caught her by the arm, smiled briefly, then looked up.

“Aye, Sir Myles?”

“A word, my lord, if you will.”

Phillip exchanged a look with the man and Imogen suddenly found herself with someone intimidating looking standing five feet away from her, watching her. Watching over her, rather.

Medieval times were unsettling, that was for sure.

Phillip put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He smiled at her. “’Tis no doubt something dire about supper. Not to worry.”

Well, that was putting more than a few little nonpareils on the truth. She looked at the guy watching over her but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at their surroundings, bad-guy antenna fully operational.

She decided abruptly that she wouldn’t give heading off to Edinburgh on her own another thought.

It also occurred to her that maybe if someone had decided that she was trouble they might want to be rid of sooner rather than later, but there didn’t seem to be any discussions going on about the proper height of a fire in relation to her own self. That was somewhat comforting until she realized that their camp was not settling down for a spiffy dinner before bedtime, it was breaking up for a quick exit offstage. One of the little twins came over and stood in front of her.

“My lady, there are undesirables in the area.”

“Undesirables?” she squeaked.

“Aye,” he said, his eyes bright with what could only be called excitement. “With any luck at all we’ll have a goodly skirmish.” He paused. “I daresay luck will not be with us with Phillip in command, which is disappointing, but perhaps ruffians will catch us up before we reach Ravensthorpe.”

She was absolutely positive she didn’t share his enthusiasm for that possibility, but there was no point in raining on his parade. Her trip to the Middle Ages had been fairly uneventful as far as fearing for her life was concerned, but maybe that would be changing soon. Regardless of what was really out there in the dark, Phillip and his crew seemed to believe something was out there, and that was good enough for her. She had driven all night on road trips, so there was no reason not to try to ride all night as well.

She made haste with the rest of them and hoped, rather belatedly, that leaving Haemesburgh and her only verifiable doorway into the past hadn’t been a mistake.

···

By the time the sun had risen and was starting to set again, she realized what she was seeing in the distance wasn’t a mirage, it was the sea. It felt so much like her first day in the UK, she wasn’t quite sure she wasn’t still on that train, looking out toward the coast and wondering what that amazing castle was.

There was a castle in front of her, true, but it wasn’t the one she’d gaped at from the train. Well, she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t also seen this one from the train, but she would be the first to admit that whole trip had seemed like a dream. Better a dream than the nightmare she was currently in, no matter how kind the people peopling it were. Riding all night was, from the reactions of those around her, not ideal. Riding all night when one was profoundly unskilled at staying in the saddle was a misery she wasn’t sure words could adequately describe. If she ever managed to walk again, it would be a miracle.

She had to get back to her normal life. She just wasn’t cut out for the features provided by the Merry Medieval Mayhem theme park. She needed coffee and cell service and a functioning Internet search engine. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take of saddle sores, her finger as a toothbrush, and no nicely scented shampoo. She didn’t have shampoo, much less anything scented nicely.

She had to get to Edinburgh. She wasn’t sure why, but she was fairly sure if answers were to be found, they would be found there. It was a peculiar sort of place, saturated with paranormal vibes. For all she knew, she would find Heather haunting the same shop she’d obviously been haunting eight hundred years into the future. With any luck, she would find Heather holding on to Phillip’s sword.

Which she would promptly take away and use to direct Heather into some sort of useful wagon, then further point at her all along the speediest trip possible south and a bit west toward that castle where there was obviously a certain patch of floor that was quite a bit more than just a patch of floor.

She suppressed yet another yawn. Civilization loomed and that was perhaps all she could hope for at the moment. She would hopefully be given even a clean scrap of floor to call her own. She might even manage to sleep off her time-travel lag.

Then she would get down to the business of getting herself back home.