The Art of Stealing Time: A Time Thief Novel (16 page)

“It wasn’t a complaint—” she started to say, but he would brook no objection.

“Slur, then. It was a slur upon my manhood.”

She lifted the sheet and looked under it. “Goddess! I didn’t realize you were that large. Even all tuckered out you’re . . . wow. Gregory, I can say in all honesty that I have no slur to make against your manhood. The only thing that would make me happier is if you’d feed me. I’m exhausted with all the aftershocks, and so hungry I could eat Bottom. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean.”

“Please imagine that I am even now making a risqué play on words concerning your bottom,” he said, mollified enough that he offered her a plate of food.

“Done. Oooh, is that a crab quiche?”

“Apparently so. And this appears to be some sort of rolls stuffed with various meats. Grapes?”

They dined happily, although Gwen insisted that they put on clothing just in case someone strolled past them.

“How are you going to steal the things that Aaron wants you to steal?” Gwen asked him some time later as they lay snuggled together, watching the stars overhead emerge from the velvety darkness to twinkle down on them.

Gregory had never been one to see the romance of the night sky—so far as he was concerned, it was simply a moon and light reflected from astral bodies too far away for him to easily understand. And yet at that moment, with Gwen warm in his arms, the softness of her body pressed against his, he could have sworn that the arrangement of stars and moon was created just for them.

“Gregory?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you thinking about sex?”

He blinked at the stars, then looked down at the top of her head where it lay on his chest. One of her hands rested on his breastbone, not stroking him, just lying there. It felt right. “I wasn’t until you asked that, but now I am.”

She laughed, pressing a kiss into his chest. “Then what were you thinking about that was so consuming you couldn’t answer my perfectly reasonable question?”

“I was considering whether or not I should attempt to write a poem to just how beautiful you are lying naked under the stars. Now I shall have to change that to an ode on making love to you.”

“I don’t think my heart could stand it,” she said lightly.

He froze, wondering if she had, unbeknownst to him, abilities to read his thoughts. Did she sense the warm feelings that had been growing with each hour of her acquaintance? He’d been careful to not acknowledge them, even to himself, lest he hurt either or both of them. He hadn’t ever been one to give his heart easily, and he knew with the knowledge born of man that in Gwen he’d found a woman who could destroy him should she so desire.

No, it was far better to keep things unemotional. Lust was fine. Sexual appreciation was appropriate. Desire was welcomed. But anything else . . . no. It was better this way.

She lifted her head and grinned at him, at the same time tweaking his nipple. “You’re not the only one who almost croaked because the sex was so good. So, how are you going to steal the stuff?”

He relaxed. She wasn’t making a declaration of his emotions after all. “I don’t know. I’ve never stolen anything before. I guess I’ll check out the camp and locate the items first, then make a plan.”

“My moms are there. I’ll have a chat with them and see if they can help. I’m sure they would. I think they’ll like you.” He felt inordinately pleased until she added, “They always cotton to the most inappropriate people. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve had to separate them from bad influences.”

He pinched her ass. “That is no way to talk about a master thief, madam. Go to sleep. You’re going to need your strength.”

She sighed heavily into his chest and snuggled closer. “Yes, I know. I have that stupid armor to wear, and when we get to the camp Doug will probably make me fight right away.”

“I was referring to the method by which I am intending to awaken you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. He’d never felt so happy in all his life. He had Gwen, and that was all he wanted.

On the heels of that thought came another one, much more disquieting. . . . How on earth was he going to keep her?

“W
ho the hell are you?”

“Good gravy, it’s a naked man!”

“Penny, where’s the camera? I must get a picture of him. Here, you take a picture of me standing next to him. It’ll make quite the blog post, won’t it?”

“Hey, little boy. Daddy wants some of that sugar.”

“I don’t know who you people are, or why you’ve intruded upon my privacy, but I do not intend to allow you either to photograph me or to engage in acts of sugar. Go away, all of you, before I take my woman’s sword and—”

“Now then, now then, let’s be ’avin’ none of that.”

It was the voices that woke me, and not, unfortunately, Gregory with amorous thoughts on his mind.

“Dammit, there
is
a woman there. She’s wadded up in the blankets. Crap.”

I sat up, blinking and shoving my hair out of my eyes with one hand while clutching the sheet to my naked breasts with the other. The sight that met me was less than thrilling.

Gregory was also naked, his hands on his hips as he stood facing a semicircle of four people—two women and two men, one of whom bore a familiar face.

“Hello, Al,” I said, holding the sheet tighter to myself. “Don’t tell me—this is another tour group?”

“Early-mornin’ Ramblers Tour,” he said with a nod and a grin. “For those mortals what like to keep fit and see the sights normal tourists don’t see.”

“Go away,” Gregory repeated. “We are not a sight.”

“I don’t know,” said one of the women, a slight, mousy-looking girl in a dowdy gray skirt and sweater. She held a camera in her hands and snapped a quick shot of him. “You look pretty good to me.”

“Penny!” the woman next to her shrieked and punched her in the arm. She had bright red hair, a sharp little nose, and was dressed all in pink. “I’m the ballsy one! You can’t say things like that—it’s my shtick. You’re the good cop, I’m the bad cop, remember?”

“Sorry,” Penny apologized, and took another picture of Gregory. “I won’t do it again.”

“See that you don’t. Now, I’m going to stand next to him, and I want you to get several shots so that I can have some mugs and book bags and things made up. I think my blog readers will love that, don’t you?”

“Oh, for the love of . . . Here.” I tossed Gregory his pants, which I was gratified to see he pulled on immediately. Penny looked disappointed.

“Hey!” her pink friend said. “Here, you, take those pants off again. No one is going to want to buy my merchandise if you’re not full-frontal.”

“Yes,” the other man in the group said in a low, slow voice. The word came out almost as a hiss. His eyes were avid with enjoyment as his gaze crawled over Gregory. “Such a fine, fine specimen. Daddy likes.”

Gregory scowled at him. “Daddy can just shove it up his—”

“I suspect,” I interrupted quickly, “that there’s no way you can end that sentence that isn’t going to be more to someone’s taste than an actual insult.”

“I saw him first,” the pink woman said, rounding on the oily man.

“Yes, we saw him first.” Penny took another picture, as if to prove her ownership.

“That doesn’t matter,” the man said, barely glancing at them. “You are only women. You cannot give him what I can give him. Daddy is always the best.”

“I don’t give a damn who was here first,” Gregory said in his coldest, most formal voice. “I have one word for all of you: scram.”

“Now, now,” Al said, sliding a sidelong glance toward me. “We’re perfectly within our rights to be where we are. Ain’t no one but ’is lordship who owns this ’ere land, and ’e’s said that all are welcome to walk on it.”

While they were speaking, I had grabbed my own clothing and clumsily donned it under the cover of the sheet. Once decent, I stood up and grabbed my sword that Gregory had alluded to. I wasn’t normally one for a show of violence, but I really had had enough of tours.

“You heard him,” I said, moving over to stand next to Gregory. I held the sword easily in my hand and tried to look as mean as possible. “Scram.”

Al eyed the sword thoughtfully, then turned to his group and made shooing gestures. “All right, now, we’ve seen the south side of the lake. We’ll be goin’ round to the north side, where ’is lordship has provided ye all with a pancake breakfast.”

“Will there be a naked man serving the pancakes? I’m quite disappointed that this one is so surly and unwilling to cooperate with the simplest of requests. Not to mention the woman and that sword. Is it a real sword? If it is, there could be a serious health and welfare violation in progress. Penny, get a picture of the sword-bearing woman just in case.”

“Daddy does not like pancakes,” the man said as Al hustled them off. “Daddy likes waffles. With a side of nubile young man.”

We watched them leave. When Gregory turned to look at me, his expression was as dark as the sky to the north. “I take it that since you are dressed, you are not going to let me make love to you as I intended to do?”

“We kind of lost the moment,” I said, with a wry little twist of my mouth. I gestured toward the retreating tourists with my sword. “I don’t think I could really enjoy myself knowing that Daddy and the Pink could happen upon us at any time.”

He sighed, pulled me into an embrace, and kissed the dickens out of me. “I will consider myself in debt to you.”

“Because I rescued you from their clutches with my spiffy sword?” I asked, giving it a little twirl as he moved over to release the horses from their hobbles.

“Because I owe you ground-shaking, aftershocking lovemaking at the nearest opportunity. If you will fill up our water supply, I will see to the horses.”

We didn’t encounter anyone else, tourists or otherwise, until midafternoon, although we did see signs of habitation some distance off to the west. Gregory was all for investigating what looked to be a small village, but I was anxious to check on my mothers’ welfare.

“I think we should have a game plan,” I said when we were almost within yelling distance of Aaron’s camp. People bustled to and fro just as they had the first time I’d been there. In the distance, I could make out the battle mound itself, and two silhouetted figures who danced around, the light glinting off their weapons and armor.

The sky above us was now as disturbing as it had been the first time I’d seen it, the red, roiling clouds blotted out here and there with drifting wisps of gray smoke, and the occasional rumble of thunder. The hairs on my arms stood on end as lightning flashed above. “Did you do that?” I asked Gregory.

“Do what? Oh, no, that wasn’t me.” He looked upward, examining the sky. “Why is it red?”

“I think it has something to do with the nature of the battle. Maybe it reflects the blood spilled or something?”

“You said that the battle was only single combat. That can hardly qualify for enough blood spilled to be reflected in dramatic environmental effects.”

“‘Stranger things . . . ,’” I half quoted. “About this game plan: I was thinking—”

Gregory held up his hand to stop me and pulled his horse to a stop, quickly dismounting, then standing very still and frowning in concentration.

“What is it?” I asked, reining in Bottom when he took exception to halting (he took exception to everything, but I was getting used to his ways). “Is something wrong?”

“No. Wait for it.”

“Wait for what?”

Gregory held up a finger, then grinned and reached up to snatch something out of the air. I’d caught just the glimmer of lightning as it started to stretch out across the sky, but Gregory had caught it before it could go anywhere and redirected it down his body. He was lit up in blue and white light that sparked and snapped off him for a few seconds before dissipating.

“Show-off,” I said, impressed nonetheless.

His grin was cheeky in the extreme. “What’s the good in having a talent if you can’t use it to impress your woman?”

“She’d be more impressed if you could do something useful with it, like zap some sense into these people and make them stop throwing her in cells.”

He picked up Mabel’s reins and led her forward. At the camp, someone had clearly seen us and had set off to the largest tent at a fast trot. “I suspect using lightning on a person who isn’t a Traveller—or one who can participate in
porraimos
—would be a direct violation of the Watch code of behavior.”

“I suppose so. OK, quickie game plan time: I’m going to check in and let Doug set me up with whatever it is I need to do, and then I’m going over to Ethan’s camp to make sure my moms haven’t gotten into any trouble. I’ll introduce you to them then, all right? They might be able to help you find the stuff that Ethan stole from Aaron, although I suspect that at least the dog is going to be an issue because there’s like a hundred of them there. That’s assuming the dog is still alive, and there’s no guarantee it’s immortal.”

“Halt!” called a high, reedy voice. Gregory kept walking toward the two men who were approaching us. One was a tall, thin figure in armor; the other, larger and bulkier, strode up behind the first. “Stand and be recognized.”

“Really?” Gregory said as we continued onward.

The larger man passed the first, cuffing him on the back of his head as he walked by. “Ignore him. He spends too much time watching Errol Flynn movies. I see that Lord Aaron has sent you back to me.”

“He has.” Gregory stopped when Doug, now stylishly garbed in black leggings and a black tunic with a gold outline of a stag, halted. Doug and Gregory considered each other for a minute. I couldn’t tell if they were having a silent manly weighing-up of the enemy, or some form of male bonding, but I didn’t at that moment care overly much.

“Hi, Doug. Don’t get too close—this horse bites.” I added the last sentence quickly when Doug, evidently finished having a stare-down with Gregory, moved over to help me off my horse.

“He knows better than to bite me,” Doug said with a look at Bottom. To my astonishment, the horse looked the other way, and if he could have whistled innocently, I swear he would have.

“Wow,” I said as I swung a leg over Bottom’s neck, allowing Doug to help me dismount. “I didn’t think it was possible to intimidate him, but you did.”

“I could have intimidated him if I’d wanted to,” Gregory said loudly, then looked horrified that the comment had come out of his mouth.

Both Doug and I looked at him. Bottom bared his teeth until he saw Doug glance his way.

“Please forget I said that,” Gregory said with an embarrassed cough. “And Gwen, cease looking as if you were pleased that I was jealous of a man who is able to frighten that hellish nightmare of a horse. I am not jealous of the fluffy bunny, although I do find it amusing that he insists on holding on to you despite the fact that you are fully capable of standing on your own. Ha ha. I laugh at such a notion.”

I stared at Gregory, growing delight welling up inside of me. Not jealous, my shiny pink butt! He was practically green with it. He marched over and plucked my hand from where Doug had been holding it, giving both Doug and me matching glares.

“Ah,” Doug said, glancing down at where now Gregory held my hand, then up at me. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Yes, it is, and I’ll thank you to stop ogling my woman.”

“Hey,” I said mildly, giving him a mail-clad elbow to the ribs. “I’m standing right here. If I don’t want to be ogled, I can speak up. Not that he was ogling me. Were you, Doug?”

“I might have been, just a little bit, but that’s only because the sight of a woman in mail is a turn-on.” A little frown creased his forehead as he shifted his attention to Gregory. “I assume Lord Aaron sent you both back to fight, although you appear to have lost your armor.”

“Unfortunately, it’s worse than that,” Gregory answered with a grimace.

“Is it? I’d better hear about this in my tent, then.” He gestured to the tall, skinny young man, who had remained several paces behind him. “Have their horses seen to. This way.”

We followed Doug to the biggest tent and took adjacent canvas stools that sat in front of a long wooden table littered with papers. Doug settled behind the table and nodded at Gregory.

“There isn’t a great deal to tell,” Gregory said, and proceeded to give a succinct accounting of our last meeting with Aaron.

“A thief,” Doug said slowly when he finished. “How very novel. It hadn’t occurred to me to engage the services of a thief to end the war, but I can see the value in Lord Aaron’s thinking. Very well. Lady Gwen will take the place of one of my warriors who wishes to return to his home for a short period. His wife is due to birth their first child any day. You may have Sir Dedham’s tent. Your shift begins at vespers.”

“Um . . .”

“About six in the evening,” Gregory told me, giving my fingers a supportive squeeze.

“How on earth do you know that? You’re only sixty-four years old,” I pointed out.

“I read a lot. Where is my tent?” he asked, addressing Doug. “I’ll wish to get a few things together before I start my career of crime.”

Doug shuffled through his papers, apparently deeply engrossed in them. “Accommodations are only for those members of Lord Aaron’s household who are fighting or are present in a support role to ensure the comfort of the warriors. You are neither; therefore I am not obligated to provide you with food or shelter.” He looked up and gave Gregory a wicked smile. “Technically, the rules of war forbid me to acknowledge the existence of rogues, thieves, and highwaymen. You can’t even be classed as a spy who has obvious uses to the campaign. I’m afraid I must henceforth institute a policy of neither seeing nor hearing you. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding a place to sleep amongst the other camp followers.”

“That seems unnecessarily harsh,” I protested. “Gregory is here because Aaron asked him to do a job. And a successful completion of said job will end the battle, so you should be kissing his butt rather than engaging in this medieval-esque pissing contest.”

Doug’s eyebrows rose. Gregory, who had been looking irritated, gave me a warm look that had his eye crinkles standing out. He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “It warms my heart that you defend me,
dulcea mea
.”

“Well, it’s not fair! And I, for one, am not going to—”