Chapter 31

Imogen wasn’t sure she could be more on edge than she had been for the past, oh, twenty-six years, but she found there was even more of that edge out there for her to perch on. She had just met Phillip’s medieval brother and now she was about to assault a major landmark with a guy who she suspected wasn’t going to want to buy a ticket to get in.

“Do they know you’re coming?” she asked.

Phillip, good driver that he was, didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Kendrick said it would do the current lord good to have a past lord simply appear at the doorway to inspect the place. I think I should be relieved to learn that I was—or will be, rather—a lord of that pile of stones. I was fairly sure my father would live forever.”

And she was fairly sure he wasn’t serious about that. Her siblings might have been eyeing the familial assets with jaundiced eyes on a regular basis, but she suspected Phillip wasn’t that sort of guy. He did look like the sort of guy, though, who looked like he needed either a nap or a stiff drink.

She couldn’t blame him. Once she’d gotten a good look at Artane, she thought she might want something bracing as well.

“You grew up here?” she asked. Well, it was more of a squeak than anything else, but maybe he would ignore that. He seemed to be having his own troubles with clearing his throat.

“I did,” he said quietly. “I can hardly believe ’tis still standing.”

“Your family must have loved it very much over the years.”

“I imagine they did.” He tapped his fingers on the wheel. “We’ll stop at the gates. I can’t imagine we’ll be able to go farther except on foot.” He was silent as he drove up a rather steep road to where there looked to be a place where he could stash Heather’s car, then he smiled briefly. “Easier with a horse.”

She imagined so. She watched a rather seasoned old fellow come out of a little booth to investigate their arrival. He took one look at Phillip, blinked, then sighed.

“Don’t suppose you’re going to pay, are you?”

“I will, if you like.”

“I’ll charge you ten pounds,” the man said without hesitation.

“My phone says the fee is five.”

“You gave me a start. That’ll cost you an extra five quid.”

Phillip sighed, pulled out the required funds, then handed them over. The man took them, then winked at him.

“I would have let you park for free. You look like Lord Stephen.”

“Distant relative.”

“Aye, we get those often here. Off you go, lad. Park wherever you like.”

Phillip laughed a little, then pulled the car as far away from the rest of the cars parked there as possible. Imogen waited for him to come get her door because he told her it would damage his chivalry if she didn’t. She couldn’t let that happen, so she waited, let him help her out of the car, then took a deep breath of the sea air.

“Spectacular.”

“The shore hasn’t changed,” he said, sounding rather pleased by that. He locked the car, then looked at her. “Shall we?”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“That depends on what’s left of the inside. We should have looked up the current lord on your phone to see what he’s done to the place.”

“I imagine his bio will be in the guide book. We can buy one when we get our tickets.”

He blew out his breath. “I cannot believe I’m paying to gain access to my own home.”

“Life’s weird.”

“Damn skippy, ’tis.”

She laughed, because there was nothing like modern mixed with really, really vintage. If she’d been interested in starting a new career, she would have made a business out of that.

They made it to the outer gates before Phillip simply came to a stop. Imogen watched him and realized he was looking at the castle as if he’d never seen it before. She stopped with him and waited to see what he would do. It had to have been disconcerting to be looking at his home in a time period so far removed from his own. It was almost more than she could wrap her mind around merely to think she was looking at the place with someone who’d lived in it eight hundred years earlier.

He reached for her hand absently, as if he’d done it so many times in the past, he didn’t think about it any longer.

“Thank you for coming with me,” he said quietly.

“I’m hoping for the tour,” she said, trying to inject a little lightness into things.

“We’ll see if they’ll let us in,” he said. He squeezed her hand gently, then tucked it under his arm. “Paying to enter my own home,” he said, shaking his head. “What next?”

She didn’t want to speculate. She simply walked with him, ignoring a great deal of muttering that she assumed included medieval curses she didn’t understand.

She stopped by the ticket window and looked at the woman inside. She was old, she was knitting, and she was looking at Phillip with the jaded expression of one who had just seen too much.

“Lord Stephen is in residence,” she said briskly. “He’ll be happy to see you, I’m sure.”

“Do you know me?” Phillip asked in surprise.

“Cousin?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m not surprised.” She slid a guidebook toward him. “Ten pound fifty a piece or twenty-five for the two of you.” She smiled. “You’ll want to support the castle preservation efforts, of course.”

“Of course,” Phillip said, pulling money out of his wallet. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She paused, looked both ways, then leaned forward. “Which one are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Phillip.”

The woman looked at him, gave the quintessential, delicate, elderly woman snort. “Lord Robin’s eldest?”

“I might be.”

“I’m Mrs. Gladstone.”

“Enchanté,”Phillip said, taking her hand and making a small bow over it.

Mrs. Gladstone smiled, looking very pleased. “Lovely manners you de Piaget lads have, to be sure. Enjoy the keep.”

Imogen thought Phillip might have said something to the effect that he hoped he would, but she was too busy taking the brochure from him and scanning it for details about the current lord. She smiled at Mrs. Gladstone, then left the little guard tower.

“It says,” she said, when they were clear of eager ears, “that the current lord, Stephen, was a full professor at Cambridge before he took over his duties as Earl of Artane. I’m guessing that means he must either be very smart or they’re humoring him.” She looked further and smiled. “He taught medieval studies.”

Phillip snorted. “Unsurprising.”

She showed him Stephen’s picture. “Uncanny.”

“Unoriginal. We’ll see if he has any swordplay before I put any more labels on him. How long has he been warming my father’s chair, does it say?”

“Only a few months.”

“Good,” Phillip said. “I can still intimidate him. Let’s go get right to that.”

Imogen nodded and walked up a cobblestone road with him. She tried not to be rude about gaping as she did so, but she could hardly believe her eyes. So she’d seen Artane from the train and thought it was enormous. She’d seen it from the village and realized it was bigger than she’d thought. It was another thing entirely to see it up close and in person.

Well, and with the man who would be lord over it someday.

He was walking next to her, that medieval lord dressed in jeans, jacket, and boots, with his hands clasped behind his back, simply looking at his surroundings. She could hardly believe it hadn’t occurred to her at some point who she was actually dealing with. He wasn’t just some random guy wandering around with a sword and an attitude, he was a nobleman from a powerful medieval family and he would be—had been, rather—the owner of the cobblestones she was walking over.

He glanced at her, then stopped. “What is it?”

She waved her hand around her helplessly. “This is yours.”

“Not anymore.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, surprised by the wave of something that washed over her. Frustration that she hadn’t made more of her life. Irritation that he hadn’t made his own position in the world clearer before she started to care for him.

He blinked. “You’re angry.”

“This is yours,” she accused. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“I was being humble.”

She glared at him. He looked genuinely surprised, but he was a man, so perhaps that shouldn’t have come as a shock.

“Does it matter?” he asked, looking far less baffled than perhaps he should have.

“Well, yes, it does matter,” she said shortly. “You’re not just a random medieval guy, you’re... you’re this.”

“And you are your father’s daughter, which means, according to something I read on the Internets yesterday, that you stand to inherit an obscene amount of your father’s soul-sucking profits.” He lifted an eyebrow. “How are we any different?”

“Where did you get that posh British accent?” she demanded.

“I learnt it from watching the Beeb,” he said. “Which isn’t the point. You’re related to a man so rich, he could likely buy my keep even today. I’m related to the man who built my keep eight hundred years ago. What does either matter?”

“I think it matters,” she muttered, “though I’m finding it difficult to decide how at the moment. I think I’m mad that I wish I’d known.”

“And if you had known?”

“I would have been more deferential.”

“The saints preserve us both if you tried,” he said with a half laugh. “And if you want to look at the essence of it, our place in the world is something of an accident of birth. In that respect, we’re no different, are we?”

“Powerful fathers?”

“Rich, powerful fathers who continually add to their empires?” he asked with a smile. “Aye.”

She sighed. “I don’t consider my father an asset.”

“Well, in that we might differ, but our situations aren’t dissimilar. You’re on the cusp of domination of moviemaking, and I’m marching off to secure a strategic holding for my future.” He shrugged. “We’re the same.”

“I don’t have a house.”

“And neither, at the moment, do I.”

She had to concede that point. She didn’t want to, but the truth was, they were both just trying to make their mark in the world. It was a little odd that Phillip had already done so centuries ago and she still had no idea if she would succeed or not, but at the moment, the future was still the future for both of them.

“Let’s go torture my grandson,” he suggested, “however far removed he is from me. My sire will approve. It might help him forget that I ignored women who have no doubt spent the past month eating through his larder.”

She smiled. “Was that how it was?”

“Unfortunately,” he agreed. “The last time I saw my home, I was escaping a keep full of the most eligible ladies the realm could produce, all come to examine my purse and see if it was heavy enough for them. I can guarantee not a damned one looked farther north than that.”

“And yet you have such a nice face.”

He seemed to be trying not to laugh. “Thank you.”

“I’ll admit,” she said, “now that we’re admitting a few things, that the first time I saw you, I thought you were a movie star.”

“Did you?” he said, looking pleased.

“You have stunning cheekbones.”

“Did you get no farther than my stunning cheekbones?”

“They’re pretty arresting,” she said. “I might have noticed your eyes as well. Maybe other things, but I’ll never admit it.”

“But you didn’t notice my purse.”

“I didn’t know you had a purse.”

He jammed his hands into his pockets. She wondered how he would possibly survive in the past when he didn’t have pockets anymore. “This is all rubbish,” he said nodding toward the castle. “It makes me eye-wateringly wealthy, of course, but gold does not make a man less of an arse.”

She smiled. “How eye-wateringly wealthy?”

“Henry eyes my purse; he covets my father’s. Imagine both combined and there you have what I have to look forward to.”

She had the feeling he was perfectly serious. “And yet you’re such a nice guy.”

He looked at her for a moment or two, then pulled one of his hands out of his pockets and held it out. “What if you could give me a day or two to demonstrate how nice I can be?”

She looked at his hand, then quickly at his face. “Why?”

He took a deep breath. “The usual reasons, I suppose.”

She had to think about that for a moment. “Do you want to date me?” she asked slowly. “Do disgustingly wealthy medieval lords in fancy sports cars date, do you think?”

He smiled. “I’ve no idea. Perhaps we can try it and see how it goes.”

“But I’m the brown bunny,” she protested. “You know, in a family of white bunnies. Why would you want to date me?”

He continued to hold out his hand. “I don’t think, Imogen, that you have begun to realize your worth. And I can see how that might be possible given your, er, ah...” He seemed to be groping for the right word.

The man was a born diplomat.

“My family?” she supplied. “My parents are terrifying and my siblings brutal. I’m surprised one of them hasn’t smothered me in my sleep long before now.”

He smiled. “’Tis difficult to discover what one can be when he can never see the sun or stars for the shade of the mighty trees around him.”

She considered what that meant, then understood things she hadn’t understood before. “I see.” She nodded. “Haemesburgh.”

“I tell myself ’tis for its location, but—” He shrugged. “Aye.”

“Is your father really that big?”

“Enormous. He gives the king pause.” He continued to hold out his hand. “What if we walk this path together for a bit and see what the sun feels like. Who knows, we might even manage to see a few stars.”

She put her hand in his. He smiled, then tilted his head toward the top of the road.

“Let’s go see who might be manning the front door.”

“All right.”

He was silent as they walked. She was wheezing and some of that definitely came from the incline. The rest of it came from having Phillip de Piaget rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. It wasn’t that she hadn’t dated, as she had to keep reminding herself, or that she hadn’t been in the occasional relationship. There was just something about the man walking next to her that left her feeling breathless. He seemed to be less breathless than overcome. He shook his head a lot.

It was profoundly weird to walk up a cobblestone street in present-day England with a guy who was lord of those cobblestones eight centuries in the past.

“I think you must have been a good ruler,” she offered. “You know, in the past.”

“Future.”

“That,” she agreed.

“What is that word you keep using?”

“Weird.”

“That’s the one,” he said. He shook his head. “Weird.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“I’ll show you.”

She supposed if anyone was qualified to do that, it was the man walking next to her, still holding her hand. She walked with him across the courtyard, thinking that perhaps it was best to ignore his muttering and the occasional flinch, then paused with him at the top of the steps leading up to the hall door. She looked at him.

“Are you okay?”

He smiled faintly. “If I take any more deep breaths, I will become senseless, I fear.” He shook his head instead. “This is profoundly weird.”

“I can’t imagine.”

He looked at the door for quite some time, reached out and touched it at one point, then sighed and knocked. The door opened almost instantly and someone who looked remarkably like Phillip stood there, phone in hand. He put that in his pocket, then smiled.

“You must be it.”

Phillip looked at him. “What?”

“The surprise Kendrick rang and told me to expect.”

“My brother is an obnoxious arse.”

The man laughed and held out his hand. “Stephen de Piaget. And you are either Jason or Phillip, though I somehow have the feeling you’re Phillip.”

“Why do you think that?”

“There’s a portrait of you in the upstairs hall.”

Imogen caught Phillip as he swayed. He put his arm around her and looked at his grandson however many generations it had to have been.

“Interesting.”

“Let me get you a drink before you look at it,” Stephen suggested. He looked at Imogen and smiled. “I’m Stephen.”

“I’m Imogen.”

“Welcome to Artane. Is this your first visit, or have you seen it another time?” He smiled. “No pun intended.”

“No, first time,” she assured him.

“I hope you’ll find it acceptable,” he said. He looked at Phillip. “Come along, Granddaddy, and let’s see you settled with something strengthening.”

Phillip cursed him. “You’ve obviously spent too much time with my brother.”

“As well as your uncle John and a pair of your cousins—oh, steady on your feet, lad. Miss Imogen, here, let me take his other side. One never knows what to say in these situations and one fears to say too much.”

“One might refrain from announcing shocking tidings until one’s guests are seated,” Phillip wheezed. “No need to thank me for the advice. My uncle John?”

“Earl of Segrave and the husband of the current countess of Sedgwick—oh, I say, my lord Phillip, you are excitable, aren’t you?”

Imogen looked at Stephen de Piaget and realized he was enjoying himself too thoroughly. She shot him a warning look, but he only winked at her.

“Let’s find him somewhere comfortable to sit,” Stephen said, still smiling. “The lord’s solar. I’ll fetch wine. Trust me, the cellar is exceptional.”

“You likely have bottles my father hoarded,” Phillip said darkly.

“That, my lord, is entirely possible,” Stephen said. “Can you walk or must I carry you?”

“I’ll lean on Imogen.” He took a deep breath. “All part of my master plan.”

Imogen couldn’t believe that was anything more than just polite conversation, though she had to admit that there was something very nice about Phillip’s arm around her and his holding her hand that he’d pulled around his back. He seemed quite a bit more steady than he claimed to be, but maybe that was part of his master plan as well. She would have loved to have known what that plan was, but if there was one thing she could say for herself it was that she never read the last five pages of a book until she got there.

She would wait.