Chapter 27

Imogen walked through the darkened streets of Edinburgh, trailing after her family at a distance that hopefully said she was as embarrassed by their behavior as everyone else had to be, and wondered if ghost walks ever yielded any fresh members. At the moment, she was sorely tempted to add a few to the ranks.

Her mother had buttonholed some poor tourist and was currently criticizing everything from the guide’s accent to his lack of knowledge about historical happenings in Edinburgh, never mind that she was hardly any expert on Scottish history. Her father was attempting to likewise monopolize the tour guide, which had the bonus of leaving the man less able than he might have been otherwise to toss out a few more facts for her mother to dispute. She wasn’t sure how much the poor man was appreciating her father’s prying into his finances and business model, but what could she do about it? Her father was an unstoppable force of entrepreneurial know-how. When he had sniffed out a victim, there was no keeping him from distilling his vast wisdom upon him.

Then there was her sister Prissy, who looked as if her fondest wish was to shove Imogen somewhere where she could be walled up until she starved to death. Her brother Howard was watching her as well, but he was obviously making furious mental notes about her physical condition. She had the feeling he would have happily run any number of medical experiments on her if she’d let him.

She had consoled herself—although it was small consolation—many times that day that at least her sister the shrink and her brother the lawyer were still stateside, leaving them unable to psychoanalyze her to find out why she wasn’t trying to sue someone. Things could have been worse.

She’d spent dinnertime satisfying the local police that she had traveled south, wandered off the beaten path, and gotten involved with a crazy cult that she was just sure wasn’t there anymore. No harm, no foul, no need to investigate further. The officers had seemed happy to put the thing to bed and she’d been happy to let them go.

Another bright spot in the gloom was she had yet to see Marcus. He’d been busy getting a mani-pedi or soaking his vocal chords in gold-infused water or something else she couldn’t afford and didn’t understand. All she knew was it meant he wasn’t following her to make sure she wasn’t wandering off unsupervised and for that she was very grateful.

She walked along a particularly spooky bit of subterranean floor behind her family, falling farther back with each footstep until she could no longer hear either her mother or her father yakking or Prissy contemplating sisterly mayhem not quite under her breath. It was peaceful down there in places where whole families had lived in the cold and dark, too poor to live anywhere else. She was starting to think that even with all Haemesburgh’s flaws, its medieval incarnation was definitely a step up from what she was looking at.

She yawned. If jet lag was bad, time-travel lag was worse. She knew she really had no reason to be so wiped out, but in her defense, it had been an unusual couple of weeks. At least she’d had a decent night’s sleep the night before. She had gone with her parents to their hotel because it was easier than fighting them, happily indulged in an endless shower, then tried to squeeze herself into the clothes Prissy had found for her. Even her mother had remarked that Prissy had done a terrible job judging Imogen’s size.

Imogen had known Prissy had done a perfect job judging her size, then made a point of buying things a size too small. She’d promised herself a pair of new jeans in the morning.

She’d eaten, then gone to bed on a random sofa, happy to have managed to avoid any serious conversation about her escape from the reenactment cult. If she tried hard enough, she could presently bring to mind how many times someone had woken her up that morning to make sure she wasn’t dead. Her miraculous rise from her bed and subsequent trip to get new clothes she couldn’t afford but had afforded thanks to the cash her brother the doctor had slipped her with a rare, conspiratorial wink had left her where she was at present: fed, clothed, but wishing she could go back to bed and try to process what she’d been through.

She wondered where Phillip was. Well, she suspected she could say with a fair bit of certainty where she supposed he’d been for the past seven hundred and fifty years, but she wondered, if time carried on in some kind of parallel manner, what he was doing at the moment back in good old 1254. Probably being very glad he didn’t have to deal with her. She tried to find some sort of stiff-upper-lip attitude to go with that dose of probability, but all she could do was wish she’d met him under different circumstances.

Say, at a ghost walk.

She knew she was leaning against a four-hundred-year-old doorway where the stone was cold under her fingers. She knew she was in the twenty-first century. She knew her family was in the cave to her right, listening—or not, as the case might have been—to a poor Scot who was just trying to make a living bringing history to life. Yet with all that, she was having a hard time believing she wasn’t dreaming.

Phillip de Piaget was standing ten feet away from her.

It occurred to her with a rush of horror that he was—

No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t a ghost.

She felt relief begin at her toes and crawl all the way to the top of her head. She looked at him again, hardly able to believe her eyes. He was wearing medieval clothes, which didn’t surprise her, but he was standing in the current day, which did. She stumbled toward him, then realized that maybe that was presuming things she perhaps shouldn’t presume. So she stopped a couple of feet away from him and looked up at him.

She almost asked him what he was doing there, but she imagined she could answer her own question easily enough. He’d come for his sword of course. She nodded, because she honestly couldn’t have expected anything else. After all, wasn’t she on the hunt for the same thing? It wasn’t as if he would have come for her. She was a nobody, still that timid brown bunny who was forever scampering out of the way to avoid conflict and sisterly ire. Then again, when Pristine Maxwell was at the tiller, even sharks got out of her way.

Phillip looked at her for a moment or two, then reached out and took her hand. “Imogen.”

She couldn’t even respond. All she could do was look at him breathlessly and suppress the urge to wonder if she’d somehow fallen through a different portal back to the Middle Ages. The only thing that kept her grounded was his fingers laced with hers.

“Playing the part of a modern bloke?” she managed.

“Corporeal ghost, if you can fathom that,” he said with a shiver. “I believe the leader of our company mistook me for someone else, but it seemed as good a chance as any to learn Future ways, so I accepted his offer of a job. I decided I would engage in method acting to pass the time. Heather told me all about that on the way here.”

She started to tell him he’d already broken character more than a purist might allow, but what he’d said sank in before she could. “Heather brought you here?” she asked incredulously. “Heather of Haemesburgh?”

“’Tis a bit of a tale,” he admitted, “and I’ll tell it to you in full the first chance we have.” He smiled. “’Tis good to see you, Imogen.”

“You, too,” she managed, though that seemed like a bit of an understatement.

He looked over her head briefly, then smiled at her. “I must be about my labors, for my new liege calls. A fine man, though a bit of a crankypants.”

She smiled, because his Norman French mixed with modern English with an accent she couldn’t quite lay her finger on was maybe one of the most charming things she’d ever heard.

“He bought me a coffee to remove the drunkenness from me,” he said. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t wine that had baffled me so but Heather shoving me out of her automobile onto the street.”

“Awful,” Imogen managed.

“The coffee?” he asked thoughtfully. “Aye, profoundly vile upon my first encountering the brew, but after another sip or two—” He looked at the tour guide, then at her. “I must see to my task. You’ll be here for the duration, won’t you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she managed.

He smiled.

She should have been immune, really she should have. She’d seen him smile before, several times. She had him take her hand a time or two as well. There was no reason why either of those two things coming her way at the moment should have been anything noteworthy.

Except he was in her time and for some reason that made all the difference.

He squeezed her hand. “I’ll return when my duty is done,” he said quietly. He paused, then smiled again. “I’m happy to see you.”

She could only stare at him, mute. He didn’t seem to take that personally. He simply smiled again, then went to see what his boss wanted from him. Imogen put her hand into her pocket to keep it safe. If she’d been a little less jaded, she might have made a solemn promise right then and there never to wash it.

“And who is that?” a voice purred from beside her.

“Never saw him before in my life,” Imogen said without hesitation. She looked at Prissy and blinked innocently. “Decent looking, though, isn’t he?”

Prissy patted her tousled locks, adjusted her assets, then hiked her skirt up another pair of inches. Never a good sign, that sort of thing. She couldn’t have looked more on the prowl if she’d been a lioness preparing to stalk... something. Dinner. A good-looking lion. A tasty-looking tourist. Imogen felt a little sick, but she didn’t show it. Prissy was a master at noticing any hint of weakness and then she would indeed pounce, claws unsheathed.

Imogen supposed all she could do was sit back and watch the show. Phillip was an adult. If he wanted to keep Prissy at bay, he could do it on his own. For all she knew, he would find her sister the most interesting thing he’d ever encountered and want to date her, if that’s what medieval guys did.

Damn it, but she hated it when her inner brown bunny came out to play.

The tour continued on through more tunnels and caves. Maybe she should have been creeped out by the ghosts who were supposedly in attendance, but she was having a hard enough time just managing her sister who she could see very well. Ghosts were nothing compared to that one.

Phillip’s job seemed to entail bringing up the rear of the company and helping old ladies when they looked like they might swoon. Imogen watched several white-haired mavens assess Phillip, then suddenly show signs of impending faints.

She understood.

The night wore on. Imogen wore out right along with it. She wasn’t sure how Phillip was managing to keep going, but maybe he was used to less sleep and more stress than she was. His chivalry was getting quite a workout, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was kind and solicitous and uncomplaining. She wasn’t sure if watching him be just himself, even eight centuries out of his time as he was, was a good thing or not. After she’d toyed not once but three times with the idea of pretending to sprain her ankle, she decided that she needed to get a grip on herself. He wasn’t there for her, he was there for his sword. It was the only thing that made sense.

Unfortunately.

The tour ended basically where it had begun but only after visits from a handful of ghosts who left several of the older ladies clinging to Phillip for support. She didn’t begrudge them that. Prissy pretending to swoon was another thing entirely. Unfortunately, she was too used to simply letting her sister have her way to do anything to stop her. All she could do was stand helplessly to one side as Prissy elbowed several senior citizens out of the way and threw herself into Phillip’s arms.

“Oooh,” she said. “Scary.”

Well, that was a word that could have been applied to more things than just ghosts, but Imogen decided it was probably better to keep her mouth shut. She did, however, have a good look at Phillip while he was in middle of being swooned on. He caught Prissy because she would have landed on her shapely derriere otherwise, then set her back on her feet because he was a nice guy, but that was the extent of his interest.

“Careful on those cobblestones,” he said with a French twinge to his speech that sent the women standing close to him into another dimension of admiration entirely.

Imogen understood. As she had noted before, the guy would have had casting directors crawling over one another to have him sign on to any sort of film. If there was perfection embodied physically, it was standing right there in the person of Phillip de Piaget.

And then he did the unthinkable.

He made the ladies a bow, collected his pay from the tour guide, who wanted his cell phone number—Phillip promised it in a few minutes—then turned and walked away.

Toward her.

He stopped in front of her and smiled. “Terrified?”

“Of what my sister will do to me when she gets me alone?” Imogen asked breathlessly. “Damn skippy I am.”

“Was that your sister?”

“Unfortunately—and here come my parents.” If she hadn’t been so overcome by the fact that he had ditched his groupies to come inquire about her state of post-ghost-walkish... well, her state in general, she might have been able to quickly give him a warning about what sort of storm was blowing his way. As it was, she could only stand there and watch disaster unfolding. Her father didn’t waste any time.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “And why are you talking to my daughter?

“Another refugee from the cult,” Imogen lied without hesitation. Donald Maxwell had never in his life been that concerned about her conversational partners. She honestly had no idea what to make of it, but she knew it couldn’t be good. “Be gentle. He’s had a hard time.”

Her mother eyed Phillip critically. “I’m not overly impressed with his costume. Not exactly authentic, is it?”

Imogen felt herself beginning to wilt. The only thing that saved the moment was that the tour guide distracted the parental units by exchanging numbers and cards with them. Another business conquest made and on foreign soil no less. Her father would be so proud.

At least the thought that Phillip was another reenactment victim had seemed to throw Prissy off her game, however temporarily. Imogen didn’t hold out any hope that her sister would let that stand in the way of future conquesting, but stranger things had happened.

“Business is done,” Donald announced. “Irene, call the driver and tell him we’re ready.”

Imogen was torn between trooping along after her father and dawdling so she could have a bit more conversation with Phillip. Just to find out if he needed help, of course. No other reason.

He watched her family for a moment, then looked at her. “Powerful souls, those.”

“That’s one way to describe them,” she agreed. She took a deep breath, then plunged ahead while she had the guts to. “What’s your plan?”

“Food, sleep, then wresting you away from your family on the morrow,” he said seriously. He pulled a phone out of the purse hanging at his belt. “Heather gave this to me. Damn me if I have any idea how to use it, but perhaps you can show me tomorrow.” He looked at her. “She also secured a chamber for me at a hotel I haven’t seen yet.” He glanced at her parents, then leaned closer. “How shall I find you?”

She ignored the tingle that went down her spine. “You could call me. I’ll program in my cell phone number, then show you—” She stopped speaking, realizing she had begun to attract the attention of her sister the thwarted jaguar. She quickly put herself in as his second contact, then handed it back to him. “Did Heather show you at least how to plug it in?”

“Plug?”

In his defense, she wouldn’t have known what to do with a sword. “Do you know where your hotel is?”

“She said it was the Fool’s Errand, or something akin to that. ’Tis by the castle, I believe.”

“It is,” she agreed. “I have a room there as well.”

He looked at her in surprise. “You do?”

“Yes, not that I can use it.” She shifted. “My parents are making me stay with them.”

He studied her family for another moment in silence, then looked at her. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll use the phone to find you.”

It was amazing how she could get through an entire paranormal experience without a single chill, but have a random guy say a simple thing to her and suddenly she felt as if she had just come down with a raging fever.

“Sleep well, Imogen.”

She nodded, then followed her family to the car, because she had no choice. She didn’t dare look back over her shoulder on the off chance that Prissy would take that as a sign of interest. All she could do was continue to breathe normally, yawn a bit, and look as if she didn’t give a damn that a medieval knight had her number loaded into his cell phone and he intended to use it.

“Nice guy.”

She looked up at her brother, Howard. “I don’t think you know him well enough to judge.”

He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “I wasn’t being critical, Imo. He seems like a nice guy.” He reached in a jacket pocket and held out a woman’s wallet. “Here. You might need this.”

“What is it?”

“A long overdue makeup call,” he said.

She opened it surreptitiously. She did lots of things surreptitiously. It alerted fewer siblings to her activities that way.

The wallet was stuffed with cash that was keeping company with a credit card.

“Unlimited balance, of course,” he said quietly. “You could buy a Lamborghini with that, but please don’t. I’m still paying off my student loans.”

“Liar,” she said faintly, feeling stunned. She didn’t bother to count the cash. It would have taken her too long. She looked up at him again. “Why now?”

“I was worried when we couldn’t find you,” he said. He paused, glanced over his shoulder at Phillip, then shrugged. “I’m not sure I want the details. I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“He kept me safe.”

“Like I said, nice guy.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure why he’s here.”

Howard smiled. “Aren’t you?”

She decided it probably wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with anyone at the moment, least of all her brother. She thanked him for the funds, then took a chance and looked back to find Phillip standing on the sidewalk, listening to his employer but watching her. She waved, surreptitiously.

“Imogen, get in the car,” her mother said sternly.

Imogen looked at her mother and decided that at the very least, it was time to get out of the familial nest. She had, after all, gotten herself to England all on her own, gotten herself to Edinburgh mostly on her own, and gotten herself to and from medieval Scotland without the help of anyone in her family. She suspected her mother, bless her heart, wouldn’t have lasted five minutes at Haemesburgh without someone deciding the only way to avoid having to listen to her sharp tongue would be to toss her in the dungeon.

She would manage it the next day on the pretext of needing to go to work. Not even her parents could argue with the sensible nature of that.

And then she would find out why Phillip de Piaget had really come to the future.