Knight in Blue Jeans (5 page)

L
ong explanations later, Smith still felt lost. Trace would arrive soon with the alarm supplies, probably with Mitch driving. And Smith didn’t want that extra complication just yet.

“Wait, wait,” he protested as Greta drew breath for yet another recitation. “How about I tell it, and you just see if I’ve got it right?”

The older woman sat neatly back in her kitchen chair, clasped her frail hands and waited. The sword lay on the table between them, the odd, not-quite-glowing patina of its blade tempting him to touch it.

It tempted him enough to make him seriously wary of it, of anything he could want that badly.

“This warrior, Aeneas. He’s the guy from the Roman epic I slogged through in World Lit.”

“Virgil’s
Aeneid,
” she clarified, as if he hadn’t actually passed the class.

“You’re saying this guy was real.”

She smiled, looking not at all insane. “Yes.”

“Wasn’t his mother a goddess?”

“Much of his story was probably mythologized.”

“You don’t say.” Okay, so that was rude. But Greta
was
apparently crazy. Fair trade.

“Historical details in the story also confuse the timing. Aeneas couldn’t have left Troy after its walls fell and still founded Lavinium—Rome—within the same generation. And while Dido of Carthage did exist—”

The dog Dido scampered to her feet, sure they meant her.

“The queen that Aeneas dumped,” Smith clarified. “The one who killed herself.”

“Yes, the true Dido was a Phoenician exile. However, had she met Aeneas before he founded Rome, he would have been centuries old.”

“That’s some age difference.” Smith took a deep breath. “So, not really from Troy. Not really Dido’s lover. And this sword probably wasn’t forged by the blacksmith god Vulcan—”

“Greek name Hephaestus.”

“—for the invincible warrior Achilles.”

Greta smiled a small, mysterious smile, kind of like the one Smith used to see on Arden. He hated—well, loved—no,
hated
that wise, womanly smile. “I like to think it could somehow be true,” she said, “but external logic would imply not.”

“But this
is
his sword.” Ancient. Precious.

Amazingly powerful.

He fisted his hand, resisting the urge to slide a finger down its fuller, the groove that divided the flat of the blade.
Don’t touch it. If you do, you’ll be lost….

“So says my family legend.”

Smith’s own family hadn’t been that big on legends. Sure, they traced back to investors of the Peters Colony, some of the earliest white settlers of central Texas. Before that, they went all the way to Jamestown.

But
Troy?
Not so much.

“Your family the Hapsburgs. Of the Holy Roman Empire Hapsburgs. Aren’t some of them still running around, heading the family in Austria?”

Dido flopped back onto her tummy, watching them through spaniel eyes.

“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of the royal families of Europe experienced schisms, even complete exile, as did the Stuarts of England. The Stuarts who even now head the Comitatus, yes?”

Yes. Last time Smith had checked, two different cousins were vying for the leadership of the society he’d left. Both were named Stuart. “The Comitatus who exiled your father.”

“And you,” Greta said.

Smith lifted his eyebrows, not about to confirm that. He might resent the society enough to plot their downfall, but he’d also given his vow, at age fifteen, not to share secrets with outsiders.

Something about that age—fifteen—brushed and then vanished from his thoughts. That part didn’t matter. What mattered was that keeping those vows was more about
him
than about
them.
It had to be. Even if Greta did have Comitatus blood, she was also a woman.

Hey,
he
hadn’t made the rules. And few fifteen-year-old boys see the downside of a guys-only society.

Still, Greta stayed true to her word. She didn’t force him to confirm her spot-on suspicions. “The society began to lose its way centuries ago, sometime after the American Revolution. With the loss of monarchies came the loss of noblesse oblige, the understanding that privilege requires responsibility. My father, to judge by his ramblings, left the Comitatus to protest putting Americans into detainment camps. The Japanese weren’t the only ones to be detained, you know. Italians and some German-Americans experienced similar atrocities.”

She’d said something like that before.

“German-Americans like your father,” guessed Smith.

“Papa was not arrested. A Kaiser, descended from the Hapsburgs? Never. But he insisted on defending those without the voice to defend themselves. To hear him speak of it, the Comitatus was once a society of honor. A society formed by heroes like Aeneas. When they began to lose their way, Papa felt they no longer deserved the sword of a hero, and he hid this away.

“Do you think, Smith Donnell, that you may have use of it?”

Smith had been studying the sword through much of this, half convinced that the damned thing was humming to him. His palm ached to grasp the jeweled hilt. How much would it weigh? Could its leaf-shaped blade still hold an edge after all these years?

What was he thinking? “This can’t be two-thousand years old and change,” he protested, about both the sword and the corrupt society he, too, had escaped. “It would have shattered by now. Wouldn’t it?”

“Not if it really was forged by Hephaestus for Achilles.”

Smith grinned. “Didn’t you say the mythic parts were…mythologized?”

“I said they may have been.” Again, her knowing smile reminded him way too much of Arden. Why did the thought of Arden suddenly worry him? “The sword, from wherever it came, is clearly a real weapon.”

It was that. Solid. True. But not two-or three-thousand years old, and not
his.
Not before, and certainly not now. Not when—

“Jeff.” That’s when he remembered, stood.
Hell.

Greta raised a curious eyebrow.

“Arden’s little brother, Jeff. How old is he?” Fifteen, right? Or coming on fifteen? The point of no return?

This clearly wasn’t what she’d expected from her presentation of the priceless relic. “Smith, this sword is a legacy. I have no children. My father had no male heirs. I offer you—”

“Yeah, you offer me the Sword of Aeneas. Which is really generous. And, considering that you’ve known me for an hour since I broke into your house, more than a little disturbing. I’m sorry, Miz Greta. I can’t accept it.”

She settled back, seemingly more intrigued than disappointed. Dido the dog looked from her to him and back, her silky ears perked.

If he’d had more time, Smith wouldn’t have rushed this part. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. I’m not Comitatus—” for more than a year, he hadn’t been “—so if you think this sword’s going to somehow redeem their honor, it’s not for me. I doubt it’s really as old as you think. I seriously doubt it belonged to Aeneas, Achilles or Hephaestus. But if it did, I’m definitely not the man for it. I don’t
want
it. And—”

A familiar pounding on the front door made Greta jump, but not Smith. He’d learned long ago that Trace couldn’t help the power he put behind the most mundane activities.

“If you don’t want to advertise this, I suggest you put it back before I introduce you to my friend and business associate,” Smith finished over the frantic barking of Dido as she scampered toward the sound of the intruder.

“Then you won’t tell anyone that I have it?” Greta watched him very closely, for someone who couldn’t see.

More pounding at the door. The dog’s barks grew hysterical.

Smith bit back a bitter laugh. “I’m good with secrets.”

As he strode toward the front of the house to greet Trace and maybe Mitch, he thought he heard Greta murmur something that didn’t really make sense, especially over the noise.

She said, “That’s once.”

Stepping out of her Italian marble bathroom, back into her bedroom suite, Arden took a grateful draw of cool air. She’d enjoyed their family dinner at the Nasher Sculpture Gardens, especially watching Jeff interact with his favorite oversized
pieces in the carefully designed landscape. She’d picked up some literature and numbers, hoping to arrange a field trip for her girls from the rec center someday soon. But the heat of August had come close to disproving the old saying that horses sweat, men perspire, yet women only glow.

When even a lukewarm shower felt cloying and humid, Arden preferred dressing in her room, where billows of steam vanished to nothingness against the powerful air-conditioning. Tucking a fluffy white towel more tightly around her, she padded across the thick carpet to her walk-in closet.

The full-length mirror on the door that she swung open revealed someone sprawled comfortably beneath the arched iron canopy of her filigree bed, arms folded, eyes smoldering sleepily.

She spun with a gasp, only belatedly recognizing Smith.

He yawned. “Hey, Arden. You’re back.”

“What—?” But her temper tightened her throat beyond the ability to form words. Instead, she reached into her closet, pulled a dress shoe off the shelf and hurled it at him.

It felt good.

He dodged—so much for his comfy sprawl—and even had the nerve to look wounded. “Hey!”

Encouraged by how good that had felt, Arden sent the shoe’s mate soaring in his direction, then grabbed another pair.

“Wait!” Smith rolled off the bed, taking partial shelter behind her damask duvet cover. “This isn’t how a lady—”

Arden was grabbing shoes with her left hand, throwing them with her right. “A
lady?
”

Was
that
why he’d wanted to hurt her? Because she’d waited before they’d gotten intimate? Because she’d made him prove himself to her? Didn’t he realize how agonizing
she’d
found the wait?

“You’re not denying it
now,
are—” A calfskin boot bounced off his shoulder. “Ow!”

“A lady wouldn’t put up with being dishonored the way
you’ve been dishonoring me.” She hurled a pink-and-white running shoe at him, disappointed by how harmlessly it bounced off her coverlet.

“Dishonored?” He tried to circle around the bed, but ducked back behind an iron post to deflect more missiles. “How many shoes do you have?”

“I’m a Dallas socialite, I’ve got
plenty!
” She turned to the high heels.

“When have I dishonored you?”

“Breaking into my bedroom, for one! Not telling me you were here. A minute longer, and I might have—” She saw his intense interest in the very idea that she would have dropped the towel in front of him. She rewarded it with a three-inch-heeled strappy number.

“I said hello!”

“And following me to Greta’s.”

“Hey, Greta
loved
me.”

“And showing up last night at my party, a serious function for an important cause the likes of which you would never understand. And asking me to lie to Daddy for you!”

“Did I thank you for that?” His words came from beyond the bed, where he’d crouched pretty low to avoid the worst of her shoes.

The
you’re welcome
that crowded into Arden’s throat, a social training she could hardly deny even in the midst of her fury, made her laugh bitterly. Then, dropping the shoes she held, she heard her laugh twist into something more like a sob. Oh…
sugar.

Smith reappeared beyond the bed. “Ard?”

She hid her face in her hands. “Don’t call me that.”

“Is it safe to come out?”

She nodded, keeping an eye on him through her fingers. But then, as he rose to his full height—so concerned, so lean, so Smith—she reconsidered and moved her hands.
“You dumped me!”

To her surprise, he didn’t duck again. He just stood there, exposed to whatever she wanted to throw at him, and stared at her with something that could almost be…regret.

“Yeah,” he admitted, finally. “I did.”

Don’t make me ask you. Please don’t make me ask you.
She tried to express the plea with her eyes, unwilling to lower herself further. No matter what they’d been—and
almost
been—to each other, he didn’t deserve her time, much less her deference.

Maybe he understood, at that. “I wish I could explain why.” His expression, steady and solemn, actually matched his words. “God, you can’t know how much I’ve wanted to.”

“So,
do.
” True, she wore only a towel—two towels, if you counted the one wrapping her newly washed hair. But she could still bring on the poise if she had to. She could still bring on the air of entitlement.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I made a promise. I—” Reading something in her expression, he interrupted himself and her reaction. “Here’s what I
can
tell you. Will you let me do that much?”

The moment stretched between them. Then, bolstered by the promise of finally knowing something, anything—and maybe, unhealthily, by the promise of a little more time in Smith’s long-lost presence—Arden nodded. “Wait here while I get dressed.”

“Do you have to?”

She threw another shoe at him—a halfhearted toss that he easily dodged—before stepping into her spacious closet and closing the door behind her. The temptation to dress for him, to put on a nice frock or, worse, a slinky nightgown, sped her pulse. She resisted it. Instead, she slipped into a sleeveless T-shirt and some pink boxer shorts before toweling her hair off one last time and heading back out.

Hair uncombed. No makeup. No jewelry. How better to send the message that she wanted no more to do with him after their talk.

Other than calling for Daddy to throw him out, anyway.

So why, turning back from her cold fireplace, did he stare at her as if she’d dressed for a date? Even now, a year after his betrayal, her stomach shivered at the brush of Smith’s gaze, at her power to momentarily silence him.

“Please, have a seat.” She sank into one of two bergère armchairs arranged in front of the fireplace, as polite as seemed wise, considering. “I would offer you refreshments, but…”