LADY EVER AFTER: A Medieval Time Travel Romance (Beyond Time Book 2) Read online

He had fooled her! Worse, he knew of the secret passages. Or did he only guess they were the means by which she had escaped the guard posted outside her chamber?

  “Which one?”

  She shook her head.

  “Bless it!”

  It was an expression she had not heard, but it sounded like a curse.

  “Unless you want Montagu to know of your little escapade,” he whispered, “you won’t make a sound. Understood?”

  Why did he not raise the alarm? What did he intend? Could it be any worse than Montagu’s wrath? Worse than exposing the existence of hidden passages to Edward’s dog?

  “Lady Catherine?” His breath in her ear caused a disturbing sensation to sweep up her spine. Telling herself it was only fear, she nodded.

  Slowly, he removed his hand, then pushed aside the mantle she had donned over men’s clothing, gripped her arm, and turned her.

  She could barely pick out his features amid the shadows, but as he looked beyond her, she sensed his searching gaze.

  The hall was rich in tapestry, and though the wall hangings kept the great room free of drafts, the concealment of passages was the primary purpose of three.

  And a moment later, she was certain Gilchrist knew of one when he pulled her toward the tapestry to the left of the lord’s high table. Now she understood how he had moved undetected through the keep last eve before reaching her bedchamber. What she did not know was who had revealed the passage to him. Even so, he had chosen ill. That one led to the lord’s solar where Montagu slept.

  “Nay,” she gasped, “not that one.”

  He halted. “Then show me the right one.”

  If she did not, would he drag her to Montagu? “Behind the garden tapestry,” she begrudged. “To the right of the hearth.”

  Collier looked to where he had risen from the chair to intercept her. Though it made sense she would not have passed as near him had she not needed to, he had decided on the only passage of which he was aware. Not that he knew where it led, for when Strivling’s twenty-first century owners had shown it to him, a phone call had interrupted the tour.

  Retaining his hold on Aryn, he started back toward the hearth and, shortly, they slipped behind the tapestry.

  “Open it,” he said.

  She tugged at her arm. “You will have to release me.”

  He didn’t trust her, but his injury prevented him from keeping hold of her while searching for the hidden door.

  When he released her, she whispered, “I do not require your escort. I can make my way to my chamber alone.”

  He knew that, but it was an opportunity to speak with her that might not come his way again. “Open it.”

  Her resentment seethed between them, but it was no place to argue, and he heard the whisper of her hands as she ran them down the paneling, then a soft click followed by a cool draft of air.

  As she stepped into the unlit passageway, she brushed against him, and he hurriedly followed her up the stairs, certain she would lock him out.

  Moments later, the door above was thrust open and light flickered down the stairs to reveal Aryn’s figure as she entered her chamber.

  Collier took the last of the steps in a bound. Had she risked alerting her captors to the existence of the passage by slamming the door, she would have escaped, but her caution allowed him to jam a foot inside the room. When she resisted, he put his uninjured arm to the door and used his greater strength against hers.

  “Curse you!” she hissed and darted out from behind the tapestry.

  He followed and halted as she straightened from beside the bed. Gripping the dagger she had wielded against him the night before, eyes flashing amid the light of a candle on the bedside table, she said, “Get out.”

  Remembering she believed he had tried to violate her, realizing she must think he intended to try again, he said, “I mean you no harm,” and nearly named her Aryn. “I only wish to talk to you, Catherine.”

  She swept the dagger before her, causing her mantle to flap open and reveal she wore men’s clothes. He had guessed her destination lay outside the keep’s walls, and now he was certain. Had she hoped to escape Strivling? Or had she secret business in the garden? Or the bailey?

  “Leave now,” she said, “else I shall scream.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I shall!”

  He raised his eyebrows. “How would you explain how I came to be in your room?”

  She glanced at the door behind which Montagu had surely stationed a man, then with a hint of pleading, said, “I wish you to leave.”

  As much as she hated, and as much as she dared where few men would, she also feared. “Have you ever trusted anyone, Catherine?”

  She scowled. “Never a man.”

  “I know you believe I’m a Yorkist—”

  “Are you not?”

  For certain, he was no Lancastrian. The weak King Henry was not a man he would ever support. “I suppose, but not as you believe.”

  “A Yorkist is a Yorkist. Every one a traitor to the crown!”

  Fascinated with this period of English history, Collier could have argued medieval politics with her, but this was not the time. “I am not your enemy. Were I, would I have placed myself between Walther and you? Taken the blade meant for him?”

  He heard her swallow. “I did not require your aid.”

  “No? He would have killed you.”

  “You do not know that.”

  “I do. And I believe you know it as well.”

  Her eyes widened, and the dagger lowered so slowly he did not think she realized it. “Who are you?”

  It was the same Edmund had asked of him, and he wondered if she had eavesdropped on their conversation. Regardless, just as he had denied his ancestor the truth, he didn’t dare reveal it to one whose medieval superstitions would cause her to accuse him of sorcery. Dream or not, he had no desire to be burned at the stake.

  Peripherally tracking the dagger whose point was now angled toward the floor, he unhurriedly stepped toward her. Blessedly, like a deer caught in the headlights, she remained unmoving.

  When less than two feet separated them, his height forcing her to drop her head back to hold his gaze, he gripped her dagger-wielding wrist.

  She jumped back and came up against the bed.

  Certain her next breath would be spent on a scream, he retained hold of her but allowed her the space and rasped, “Never would I harm you. Not last night. Not this night.”

  Though her face reflected the same distrust and vulnerability he had seen there the day she walked out on him, Aryn held her breath.

  “I give you my word,” he said. And released her.

  He had not thought her eyes could grow larger, but they did, and when she expelled her breath, she did so on a single word. “Oh.”

  He smiled, and her lashes fluttered and gaze lowered to his mouth.

  Though her seeming fascination with it made him long to fit it to hers, he resisted. Not yet, he silently counseled. Not until she trusts me enough that she draws near.

  Her eyes returned to his, and she asked again, “Who are you?”

  “A man who has come a very long way to…find you.”

  She frowned. “What is it you want from me?”

  “Your trust.”

  Her laugh was curt but plaintive. “Impossible. You are my—”

  “No. Regardless of whom I support, I am not your enemy.”

  “Then what are you?”

  He was tempted to declare his love for her, but it would be no better received than had he spoken it the day she walked out on him. “One who wishes you a good, long life.”

  Her eyes brightened, and he realized it was not due to a shift of the candle’s flame. “Why?”

  Not until she draws near, he reminded himself, only to breach the space between them and cup her cheek. “I care about you.”

  “But why?”

  Though he had rejected his own counsel to allow her to be the one to come to him, he did no
t dare answer that. Instead, he slid his thumb along her lower lip.

  “Gilchrist?” the breath of the surname he had taken warming his skin, he wondered if she felt what he felt. If she wanted his arms around her as much as he wanted them around her.

  He slid his hand to the back of her neck.

  You trespass, he silently warned. And he might have heeded his counsel had she not swayed toward him.

  With her breasts pressed against his arm in the sling between them, he lowered his head, set his mouth on hers, and tasted what was too long denied him.

  And still denied him, he realized. Though hers was a sweet mouth, it was too sweet, as if it had never known such intimacy. It did not give back, and even when he deepened the kiss in search of the familiar and she began to respond, it was a painfully hesitant effort.

  Effort. As if she was determined to want what she did not want. Or what she feared.

  Though he preferred the latter explanation, for which he had known he should first gain her trust, a thought crept in. Perhaps this wasn’t a dream of Aryn. Perhaps he had made a leap through time.

  Something hit the floor, its clatter returning him to the kiss he no longer pursued. Bringing Aryn’s—or was it Catherine’s?—face into focus, he realized she had dropped the dagger. Now with a whimper, she slid her hands up his chest and around his neck.

  “Collier,” she spoke his name with desperation that reminded him of when he had succeeded in seducing Aryn. Though in setting out to do so, he had thought her just another conquest, before attaining his goal he had realized she was more. And in this moment, with this woman’s arms around him, his name on her lips, and her mouth desperate to learn his, she had to be the one he loved.

  He slid his hand inside her mantle to the small of her back and dragged her as close as his injured arm allowed.

  Aryn gasped but held on, allowing him to explore her mouth. But when he moved his hand to the rise of her buttocks, he became distantly aware of her stiffening, and when he spoke her name into her, she made him intimately aware he defiled hallowed ground.

  She wrenched out of his arms, righted herself with a hand to the mattress, and slapped him. “Cur!”

  Knowing he deserved worse than a smarting cheek, regretting the loss of her soft vulnerability, he stared at the anger, hatred, and bitterness of Catherine Algernon.

  “Trust is not all you want of me! And how dare you call me by another woman’s name when ’tis my body—mine!—you hold. Why, you are more loathsome than Montagu.”

  “You are right.” He nodded. “I apologize.” As he turned to leave, his booted foot sent the dagger skittering across the floor, and he heard her breath catch and saw her move toward it, but he reached it first.

  Wariness evidencing she still believed him capable of atrocities, she stared at the dagger.

  Collier followed her gaze. It was a beautiful weapon—and familiar. When he angled it to better catch the light, the pommel’s jewels forming the cross of crucifixion glowed.

  The design was unique, though only because its forging was exclusive to the family renowned during the middle ages for training boys into men. Since every young man knighted by the Wulfriths had been awarded such a dagger, many had outlasted the centuries and were now displayed by collectors who paid well to acquire them.

  The greatest collection was at Wulfen Castle, which the Wulfrith descendants opened to the public once a year. Only then might one view the dagger that had belonged to the most renowned of all trainers. And were a visitor fortunate enough to be present when one of the daughters acted as docent, they could enjoy the tale of romance and intrigue begun when that dagger had fallen into the hands of a woman seeking revenge against the mighty Garr Wulfrith. Quite the story, even if much exaggerated.

  Collier looked to the woman into whose hands another Wulfrith dagger had fallen. And like the infamous Lady Annyn Bretanne, she also donned the clothes of a man to gain an advantage denied women during this age. “A Wulfrith dagger,” he said.

  “So ’tis,” she murmured.

  “Someone in your family received knighthood training at Wulfen Castle?”

  “Nay, it belonged to Hildegard’s father.” She glanced at it. “Now ’tis mine.”

  He took a step toward her.

  She took a step back.

  He sighed, turned the dagger’s handle toward her, and extended it. “Should you require it.”

  Her tongue darted out and moistened her lips, then she reached and, unable to avoid the brush of his fingers, took it.

  “Sleep well, Lady Catherine.” As he stepped behind the tapestry and into the passageway, he thought how easy it had been to name her that. And wished it had been as easy when she finally responded to his kisses.

  As the click of the door and scrape of a key secured her room against him, he descended the steps in darkness. Shortly, he reseated the secret panel and slipped out from behind the tapestry.

  Though this past half hour he had mostly forgotten his injury, as he crossed to the hearth, pain hit him—more than happy to make up for lost time, more than willing to remind him of the relief to be found in a vial.

  Dreading that, regardless of how many hours remained of the night, he would feel every minute, he settled in the chair and sought to move his thoughts elsewhere. Considering what had happened minutes earlier, the search for a distraction was no search at all.

  Just as this seemed less and less a dream, Catherine seemed less and less Aryn.

  So not a dream? For certain, he’d never had one so long, vivid, and lucid. At least, none he remembered.

  Perhaps this was no different from other dreams, but because of the nature of travel within the margins of one’s mind—how quickly dreams melted away when one awakened—they only seemed fleeting. And if this particular dream was exceptional, it could be the result of sleep deprivation that disposed him toward hallucinations and, when he finally found relief, a full day of sleep.

  A dream. That was what sensible Collier wanted to believe, especially since the only alternative was time travel. But there was evidence for the unbelievable as well.

  Though he continued to search the faces of all he encountered, only four he recognized from the twenty-first century—Catherine, Edmund, Montagu, and the woman called Tilly. The differences between Catherine and Aryn could be explained as being a hallucination, that the portrait had not been restored and his dreaming mind had given Aryn the violet eyes of Catherine Algernon and made her gaunt to fit the storyline. But Edmund and Montagu were both distinctly different from the portraits in which they appeared more youthful and handsome. As for Tilly, he hadn’t paid enough attention to the woman filling in for his housekeeper to note much beyond that odd lock of dark hair.

  Were this only a dream, he should recognize more of the players as he did in other dreams, and he couldn’t recall ever taking such license with the appearance of those he did know.

  Time travel. That was what he found himself wanting to believe, though it was more a reach than accepting it was a dream unlike any he’d had, especially since Aryn’s marked resemblance to Catherine would mean reincarnation, which he thought preposterous.

  He frowned. No, not reincarnation. Doubles in the same age abounded, most notably those of celebrities. In fact, he had been told he was the very image of an Australian actor who had recently come on the scene. And he did look like him, only taller.

  So a dream? Or time travel? He went back and forth until he thought he would go mad trying to wrap his head around something that refused to be penned in. But there was good it, the pain having receded and sleep beckoning.

  As he began to drift, a memory he would have thought long lost returned him to the last church service he had attended before Winton Morrow decided his sons were more in need of his teachings than those of their mother’s shallow faith.

  That which has been is now, the priest had intoned. That which is to be has already been. He swept his gaze over the congregation, including James and Collier
at the back. And God requires that which is past.

  Afterward, Collier had found the passage in Ecclesiastes, a book of the Bible attributed to King Solomon. It had fascinated him enough to seek its meaning, which was that there was a connection between past, present, and future, all of which God—not man—controls as He wills it.

  Collier opened his eyes and peered into the fire whose every pulse of warmth he felt. Had God willed this? That he travel five hundred years into the past to right a wrong?

  If so, why? Redemption? But then why not redemption with Aryn, who was only months in the past, not centuries? Because he had felt for Catherine long before he felt for and wronged Aryn?

  A chill went through him like that when he had sat on the end of his bed and realized what he thought was only the brush of a moth’s wings was paint swirling down around him.

  “All right, then,” he murmured. When he awakened, if he was still here, he would accept this time and place as the past—albeit a past he had changed in saving Catherine.

  Telling herself she would be shamed to her end days for allowing Collier Gilchrist to tempt her to intimacy, Catherine pushed aside memories of his touch—more, her touch. But as she pressed her face into the pillow, she was besieged by other memories.

  He would have killed you, he had said with the certainty of one who had himself witnessed those other dreams in which Rudd Walther murdered her. Surely it was that which had so unsettled her she had permitted Gilchrist’s trespass.

  Catherine groaned at the realization her thoughts had circled back to her sins, and try though she did to once more set them aside, she saw and felt them.

  Flipping onto her back, she pressed fingers to her lips. Though she was not ignorant of the breathless dance between men and women, having happened upon the kisses and caresses of castle folk, Gilchrist’s was the only kiss she had known. But for as knowledgeable as she believed herself to be, she had been unprepared for what was required to partner in that dance, so much she had been unable to move as he had sought a response she could only guess at.

  But then her body had stepped forward and, taking her by the heart, had shown her where to place feet, hands, and lips, such that one wondrous sensation after another sang through her until she wanted—