The More I See You (16 page)

Not that the affair was entirely his fault, he reminded himself quickly. Jessica had babbled on far past the time when she should have fallen silent. He would speak to her about that.

Once she was speaking to him willingly again, of course.

He entered the chamber as darkness fell and set the platter of food he bore down by the hearth. He saw again to the rebuilding of the fire, then sat down and waited.

Jessica was in the alcove, staring out over the sea. Richard envied her even that brief view, for ’twas his only pleasure. His envying didn’t last long, for she quickly shut the window and came to sit down across from him at the table. Her eyes widened in surprise.

“What happened?” she asked, pointing at his arm.

Richard looked down, then remembered. “A mishap
training,” he said. He vaguely remembered John seeing to the wound. He’d suffered worse. “A scratch.”

She didn’t look all that convinced, but perhaps men in the future didn’t fight as they did at present. The future. He could scarce give credence to the thought and he certainly had no intention of voicing the word, but he supposed he could chew on the idea silently for a time until he had come to a final decision on Jessica’s sanity. And even though he wasn’t certain he believed her tale entirely, he was willing to give it time and see if her words bore themselves out.

Dinner was a less-than-pleasant event for him. Every time he moved his arm he felt pain shoot up into his neck. Perhaps he should have had it tended. It hadn’t seemed a very severe wound at the time, merely an annoyance.

“Don’t you have anything you can take for that?”

Richard looked up to find Jessica studying him intently. “Take?” he echoed.

“For the pain,” she said.

Ah, that he could. He shook his head. “’Tis nothing.”

“It looks like it hurts. Do you have any wine?”

Now that was an opening he hadn’t expected. He certainly had no intention—well, at least not much of one—of apologizing, for ’twas a certainty that he hadn’t pushed her into his spurs. Besides, she had brought his anger on herself with her incessant harping upon his supposed faults.

Then again, he was indirectly responsible for that discoloration on the side of her face.

He scowled fiercely. Damned annoying chivalry. What else would it demand of his sorry self before it was finished with him?

“Wine?” Jessica prompted.

“Ah, wine,” he said, sitting back slowly. He couldn’t look her in the face, so he turned and looked into the fire. “I never drink it,” he said quietly.

She was, blessedly, silent.

And Richard found himself wishing that she would just
fill up the emptiness of the room with some of her future chatter.

Well, none seemed to be forthcoming, so he pressed on.

“My father, however, never stopped,” he said. He took another deep breath and prayed he could say everything he needed to. What he wanted to do was clamp his lips together and retreat into the comfort of silence. Instead, he cleared his throat and mustered up as many words as he could.

“I don’t remember a day when he hadn’t slipped completely into his cups.” He took another deep, steadying breath. “I vowed I would never be like him.”

He stole a look at her. She was saying “oh,” but no sound was issuing forth. Perhaps he had cleared up a mystery for her.

“I was not at my best that day. Yesterday,” he added, to remind her which day it had been.

She nodded. He suspected she didn’t need any help in remembering.

“Horse is lame and ’tis my doing,” he continued. “The well water was-fouled, my men are freezing with no hall to sleep in, and that fool of a carpenter I hired hasn’t the slightest notion of how to work with stone. Damn me, but I paid him for a month’s work already!”

He watched a hint of a smile cross her features.

“And then I saw—well, the details are unimportant. Suffice it to say, I drank more than I should have.”

“It must have been bad,” she murmured.

“It was,” he said.

She paused. “You don’t want to talk about it?”

“Nay.”

“All right.”

He girded up his loins. Here came the words he didn’t want to utter, but his bloody spurs were fair drawing blood in their enthusiasm to propel him into an apology.

“I don’t know what came over me,” he blurted out with as much haste as possible. “I vow I don’t.”

She was silent for so long, he began to wonder if she never intended to answer him. Then finally she spoke.

“It had better not ever come over you again,” she said. “If you ever hit me, I’ll be out that door so fast, your head will spin.”

Her words were, as usual, full of future babbling he didn’t understand, but he caught most of her meaning. Should he ever strike her in truth, she would leave.

He was very surprised by how much that thought disturbed him.

He cleared his throat and prayed the motion would clear his head as well.

“I understand,” he said gruffly.

“Good.”

Well, that seemed to be all there was to that. He prepared to heave himself out of his chair and make his final rounds of the walls when he was interrupted by a faint smile that kept him immobile.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For the apology.”

He scowled. “Was that what that was?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“The saints would weep if I ever uttered such a thing in truth.”

“You’re spoiling the moment, Richard.”

At least she was still wearing something of a smile. If she wanted to believe he had apologized, he wasn’t going to disabuse her of the notion. After all, the like had been his intent from the start, unwilling though he might have been to do it.

And while he was about such baring of his soul, he decided he would be well served to unravel a few more mysteries for her. Whatever the reason—because she wasn’t from his time, or, and this he truly didn’t believe even though he would have liked to, she had lost her wits—she seemed to know nothing of how his keep was run.

“My peasants aren’t paying for my hall,” he announced.

She blinked. “They aren’t?”

“I’m a very wealthy man, not that you’d be able to tell from where we live at present.” He didn’t want to sound boastful, or perhaps he did, but ’twas the truth. “I’m seeing the hall built with gold I earned warring and tourneying.”

“That’s good to know.”

“’Tis my land they till, Jessica. I give them land in return for their labor on it.”

“But here we are warm and comfortable, yet not two hundred yards from your walls they’re cold and starving.” She shook her head. “It’s just such a hard life.”

“And if a war comes, they come inside my gates and I protect them. Then the harshness becomes mine. I cannot apologize for my birth. My life hasn’t been soft and easy either.”

“I know—”

“Nay, you do not.” And he wasn’t about to tell her the extent of the pitiless treatment he had endured. Not a single soul knew how deep his hurt ran and he had no intention of amending that.

He turned his mind from those memories and concentrated on proving his point. “We live frugally here,” he said, hoping to draw her attention to something else. “You would see as much should we travel elsewhere. At one feast at court I counted a score of oxen, twice as much venison, a hundred fowl, and more fishes than I could number. We don’t eat in half a year what the king wastes in one night. I do for my people what I can, but I cannot do everything. We each have our lot in life and we must live it as best we can.”

“It just doesn’t seem fair,” she murmured.

“Life isn’t fair. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

“I don’t think it’s something I want to learn.”

Ah, for such naïveté! “You’ll certainly not learn the fullness of it from me,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’ve no mind to teach it to you.”

“I think I’m beginning to figure it out.” She took a deep breath. “Then I think I owe you an apology as well. I don’t understand all the ins and outs of your world.”

Richard grunted. The woman could not begin to understand the truth of what she’d just said.

“I accept,” he said, feeling very gracious. She had apologized. He was quite certain ’twas the first time in memory anyone had done the like. It was a feeling he thought he might accustom himself to very well.

Jessica yawned—apparently the effort of admitting her fault was exhausting—and Richard took the opportunity to wave magnanimously toward the bed.

“Off with you,” he said. “Sleep will heal your wounds.”

She paused. “Does this mean we’re going to be amicable now?”

“Call it a temporary truce. Now go to bed.”

“Is that a command?”

He had the feeling the correct response was “nay.” That was not the answer he cared to give, however, so he merely pointed toward the bed and glared at her.

“You know, I could help you with your man/woman relationship skills,” she said. “You could stand to become familiar with a woman’s perspective.”

“Spew none of your womanly nonsense at me, lady, nor,” he said, sitting up and frowning, “nor any of that future foolishness, for I believe it not.”

She sighed and put herself to bed. Richard resigned himself to another miserable night on the floor with only his noble ideals to keep him warm. A woman’s perspective? What rot was that? As if he had any interest in what a woman thought!

He made his bed eventually on the floor. Unfortunately his mind was full enough of Jessica’s words that sleep did not come easily to him. Finally, when he could bear it no more, he stated forcefully: “Of course the world isn’t flat,” he said. “Everyone knows ’tis curved and
then
it falls away into nothingness.”

And then he pulled his blanket over his head to block out whatever she might have said.

It seemed the wisest thing to do.

Hugh de Galtres pulled his cloak more closely around him and shuffled farther back into the shadows. He didn’t like the forest, for he knew what sorts of creatures lurked within it, but he had no choice but to seek out and use its concealing powers. It had been what had saved his life but a day or two earlier. He said a charm under his breath, then took a great pull from the wineskin he’d filched from the ruffians he’d robbed. He leaned over and with great care spat it out between his legs. That should appease whatever beastie might be lurking nearby with evil designs upon his person.

Hugh recapped the wineskin, took a firmer grip on the goods he’d lifted from the unconscious men, then turned and started off in what he hoped was the proper direction. He was doing the right thing.

He was doing the only thing he could.

As he stumbled along, clutching his possessions to his chest, he gave thought to the omens and portents of his current journey. Of course, the journey would have been swifter had he not misplaced his horse. Bloody thing had likely wandered off while he was asleep. Hugh just wasn’t sure when he’d lost his mount; the beginning of his journey
was shrouded in something of a haze. He’d started from Merceham with nothing to sustain him and his head had begun to pain him fiercely after just a short time. He’d had no money to buy refreshment, so he’d been forced to travel on with naught but the fond memory of the keep’s last bottle of claret as company.

It had not been a favorable beginning.

It seemed as if he had walked endlessly. Days and nights had passed and all he could think about was reaching his brother’s keep. He didn’t want to ask his brother for anything, but he was desperate. The coffers in his keep were empty, his larder bare, and his peasants surly. He had feared for his life. He’d fled the keep without a backward glance, slipping away in the middle of the day when the unruly masses were greatest and most unruly.

After so many endless days of traveling, though, he’d begun to wonder if he’d made a mistake.

And then he’d seen
her.
The faery. Richard’s faery.

Or was she a witch?

Hugh had watched from the shadows of the forest as she had come down the road. Paralyzed by indecision about her true identity, he could only watch as she had been set upon by the ruffians.

And then a miracle had occurred, a miracle that had convinced Hugh beyond doubt that he had chosen the right course.

His brother had come swooping down upon the brigands with the fierceness of an avenging angel and dispatched them with a few choicely dealt blows. The woman had been rendered senseless by one of the men before Richard had knocked him senseless as well.

Hugh had considered that for quite a while. Had the faery/witch received her due recompense by having her head half bashed in, or by being rescued by Richard?

It was a bit of a puzzle.

Hugh pushed aside thoughts of the woman he could not comprehend and concentrated on the timely arrival of his brother. It had to be a sign. Hugh suspected it meant that Richard could indeed rescue whom he chose. And if that
were the case, Hugh was certainly heading toward the right place.

Assuming, of course, he could convince his brother that he was worthy of being rescued.

He hadn’t meant to allow Merceham to fall into such a state. Indeed, he couldn’t quite remember when it had begun its decline. His sister’s husband had seen to things for so long. Hugh had been sent along as part of his sister’s dowry—though he still wasn’t certain why that had happened. His father couldn’t have wished to send him away simply to be rid of him.

Could he?

No matter. The simple truth of it was, his sister’s husband had always seen to the running of Merceham, and once he’d died, Hugh’s father had taken on the task. Of Hugh there had been nothing more required than to stay as drunk as possible.

He suspected he was more pleasant that way.

Unfortunately, on one of his rare ventures out of his cups, he had noticed that his supply of claret was dangerously low.

As was everything else edible.

That had led to an investigation of the coffers and that had convinced him that perhaps he had best leave the keep while there was something left of him to travel with. Burwyck-on-the-Sea had been his goal. Richard could help him. He would beg, grovel, plead. Hopefully he would have ingested enough of whatever there was available so that the begging, groveling, and pleading wouldn’t be so painful.