Knights (29 page)

Janet sighed. “I feel so wicked—here I am, having a good time, absolutely
saturated
with sunshine, while all my friends and relations are stuck in that endless drizzle.” She paused, very briefly, to take a breath. “Well,” she went on, in a philosophical tone, “it’s not as if you can’t get out if you want. There are still coaches—you Americans call them ’buses,’ don’t you—not to mention trains and taxis.”

Gloriana agreed hastily, searching her memory for buses, trains, and taxis. She had just located the correct images when Janet wished her a good night and rang off.

No more than five minutes after she’d hung up the shop telephone, as if directed by the hand of Providence, a bus splashed to a stop outside, emitting a
flock of passengers huddled into coats, their umbrellas unfurling in brisk bursts of color as they stepped down onto the sidewalk.

Gloriana was possessed of a sudden and irresistible yearning to ride a bus and dashed upstairs for her money, a jacket, and one of three shabby umbrellas Janet kept in a big urn next to the door. Then she stood peering out of the shopwindow until the big vehicle appeared again, almost an hour later. Quickly, before she could lose her courage, Gloriana locked up the store and sped across the flooded sidewalk to get on board.

The driver took the pound coin she offered and made change, while two women squeezed past to make their way down the steps to the street. Gloriana took an empty seat and gazed out the window, wondering where the great, lumbering coach would take her. They stopped often, with a great screeching sound, to take on new passengers and let off old ones, and Gloriana listened to the conversations around her with interest, though she pretended not to hear.

The bus traveled from one village to another, and the late afternoon gave way to twilight and then to evening. Only when Kenbrook Hall loomed up ahead did Gloriana realize how far she had traveled and that she had intended to go there all along.

“Place is closed for the day, love,” the driver said when Gloriana came down the aisle and stood waiting for the doors to open with the now-familiar whooshing sound, as she had seen a dozen other people do. He shivered, squinting through the broad windscreen at the front of the bus. “Nothing but a gloomy pile of rocks, if you ask me. Even on a sunny day.”

Gloriana refrained from pointing out that she had
not
asked him and simply waited on the lowest step.

With a muttered imprecation, the driver pulled on a lever, and the doors folded back, letting in the wet, icy wind.

“The last coach leaves Hadleigh in an hour, from just there, in front of the chemist’s shop,” the man warned, as Gloriana stood on the road, gazing resolutely toward the ruins of her home and her most cherished dreams, “Mind you don’t miss it, or you might be in for a cold night.”

Gloriana raised a hand to indicate that she’d heard, but then launched herself toward the ancient keep, and her steps didn’t slow as she wended her way between puddles. A metal fence surrounded the property now, for the stone walls had long since fallen of course, and the gate was locked.

Gloriana was undaunted. Clad in blue jeans, one of the twentieth century’s better inventions, by her standards, Gloriana climbed over the barrier and landed on both feet in the old graveyard.

There were lights on in the tower itself, and one burned in the tiny gatehouse too. Gloriana paid no attention whatsoever to either place, but instead moved between the ancient markers like a ghost, heedless of the cold and the incessant, misty rain. Perhaps if she simply sat down in the exact place where she’d been when the transition occurred, she would be taken back.

The mist turned to a downpour, by degrees, but Gloriana barely noticed. At the foot of Aurelia St. Gregory’s crumbling crypt, she sank into the wet grass, her legs crossed, and raised the collar of her jacket against the cold. She had only to wait, that was all. Just wait.

The air turned colder and the night darker, and Gloriana retreated further and further into her own
thoughts. After a long time, she heard voices around her, but none of them were Dane’s, so she shut them out.

Gradually, the cold turned in upon itself and became warmth, soothing at first, but then oppressive and smothering. The texture of the darkness changed too, exploding in bright crimson flashes that hurt her eyes, and there were more voices and hands touching her.

“Leave her alone.” That was Lyn speaking. Even in her distraught state, Gloriana recognized his firm, kindly tones.

How had he found her?

He scooped her up into his arms, and she felt a jostling motion as he carried her through the night. There were people around, but they were only shapes in the hot, blood-colored light, and Gloriana turned her face into Lyn’s shoulder.

“You’re safe now,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

Gloriana might have wept, but the fever burning within her had dried up all her tears. She did not wish to be saved, wanted only the refuge of her dreams, where Dane still lived and laughed.

She drifted in and out of consciousness after that, finding herself in Lyn’s car, then in a building of some sort. The dazzle of the place blinded her, and she shrank from the glare. There was pain in her chest; her clothes were removed, and needles pricked her flesh. She was too cold and then too warm, and through it all, she heard Lyn’s voice, comforting, cajoling, pleading, commanding.

Nightmares rose up around Gloriana, like the mud of a stagnant marsh, and sucked her under. She did not find Dane in that terrible darkness, though she searched and struggled and flailed.

When she awakened, she found herself in a plain room, and the shades were partially drawn against the watery light of a rainy day. Lyn was with her, his face beard-stubbled and etched with worry.

“There you are, back again,” he said, his fingers clasped tightly around hers, as though to hold her here, in his world.

A needle, connected to a tube, pierced the back of Gloriana’s other hand, but oddly there was no pain. “You should have left me there,” she told him. Her voice sounded raspy, and her throat was raw and dry.

Lyn shook his head, and his eyes, for a moment, were overly bright. He lifted her hand to his face, and she felt the roughness of his beard against her flesh. “All I want is to take care of you,” he said. “Won’t you let me do that?”

Gloriana turned her face aside, letting his question pass, countering with one of her own. “How did you find me?” she asked, closing her eyes. She knew now that Lyn loved her, and she didn’t want him to care, didn’t want him to be hurt.

“The caretaker remembered you from before,” Lyn answered after a long time. “He recalled that I’d taken you away then, and rang me up at the cottage.”

“Please, Lyn,” she whispered. “Leave me alone, for your sake, as well as mine.”

Lyn made no promises. Nor did he release Gloriana’s hand.

W
hen she’d gathered her wits about her again, later that same day, Gloriana was filled with chagrin. She had been surpassing foolish, going to the ruins of Kenbrook Hall in the rain, letting her emotions run away with her, subjecting herself and her unborn child to danger. In the future, she must be far more prudent and consider her actions thoroughly before plunging ahead. An impulsive nature had ever been her plague.

Gloriana had just decided, quite sensibly in her opinion, to put the mistake behind her and proceed accordingly, when Lyn appeared in the doorway of her hospital room. He looked tired, rumpled, not at all his usual clean-shaven and chipper self.

“You’re pregnant,” he remarked, holding her medical chart in one hand. Lyn was not Gloriana’s attending physician, but he was a member of the hospital staff and thus had access to any record he might wish to see. She had learned much about the workings of medical institutions by watching Marge and Mrs. Bond’s melodramatic “programs” on the television set, before moving to Janet’s flat.

Gloriana shifted restlessly against her bank of pillows.
She ached in every bone and fiber of her being, and she’d caught a dreadful cold, but she wasn’t sick unto death or anything near it. She had been admitted to this bustling, sterile place for observation, according to Marge, who had appointed herself as Gloriana’s private nurse.

The diagnosis was simple exhaustion.

She replied to Lyn’s statement, at length, with a quiet, “Yes.” While Gloriana had not told anyone except Dane that she was carrying a child, it certainly wasn’t a shameful secret. She was duly married to the infant’s sire, after all—even if the man
had
been dead for some seven hundred years.

“How long have you known?” Lyn remained in the doorway. His manner, while not unfriendly, was cool and a bit distant, injured, somehow.

“From the first,” Gloriana replied forthrightly, smoothing her covers. This was no exaggeration, as far as she was concerned. She and Dane had conceived the babe in the Roman baths beneath Kenbrook Hall; in some strange wise, she had felt the beginning of that new life.

“Well, you should have told me,” came the crisp reply. Her friend entered the room then and drew up a chair to sit beside her bed. “Great Scot, Gloriana, a pregnant woman needs quiet surroundings and plenty of rest. And vitamins.”

Gloriana had no idea what “vitamins” were and didn’t ask, for fear Lyn would explain, in detail and at length.

Lyn gazed at her in silence then continued. “The father—?”

“Dane St. Gregory, fifth baron of Kenbrook, and none other,” Gloriana answered in a soft but unwavering voice. Her chin might have protruded, just a little way, and her arms were folded.

“Of course,” Lyn said, after a deep sigh. “But he’s nowhere about to look after you, our Dane St. Gregory, fifth baron of Kenbrook, now is he?”

Dane’s absence was a central fact of Gloriana’s present life, and her very spirit thrummed with the hopeless pain of being separated from him. Perhaps that was why she grasped so desperately at the last illusory shreds of her independence. “I am neither idiot nor invalid, Lyn,” she snapped. “I can look after myself!”

Lyn’s expression was one of infinite weariness. He sagged back in his chair and sighed again. “I did not set out to insult you,” he said, in a tone of grim and hard-won patience. “I am merely concerned—”

“Well,
stop
being concerned!” Gloriana broke in.

“They’re discharging me from the hospital this afternoon, and I’m going back to the bookshop. Provided Janet hasn’t given me the sack by now.”

“You know she hasn’t. Gloriana,
will
you listen to reason? You are not in fit condition to engage in commerce—even in an establishment as casually managed as Janet’s. You need to rest, and eat well, and live in a peaceful environment—”

“God’s blood,” Gloriana erupted, “you make me sound like a sparrow hatched without its wings!”

“I give up!” Lyn growled in return, bounding out of his chair to turn away.

“It’s about time,” commented Marge from the doorway.

Lyn started to say something, stopped himself, and stormed out.

“It’s just because he cares, you know,” Marge confided, bustling about in her usual efficient manner. She’d brought along a small satchel, and from it she took a beige cable-knit “jumper,” which Gloriana recalled from her earliest life in America as a “sweater,”
a pair of corduroy slacks, stockings, underwear, and shoes. The clothes Gloriana had been wearing on her fateful bus-and-graveyard odyssey were no doubt in the laundry, if not entirely ruined.

“Well, Lyn ought to
quit
caring,” Gloriana muttered, folding her arms and closing her eyes tightly for a moment, in an effort to hold back tears of sheer frustration. “He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve to have his heart broken.”

“But it’s his heart to worry over, though, isn’t it?” Marge said. “You can’t protect people from their feelings, Gloriana. Mustn’t even try, for it’s bad for all concerned. Come along, now—we’ll get you dressed, and I’ll drive you back to Janet’s shop.” She patted the pocket of her medical smock, worn over a pair of matching white slacks. “I’ve a script here, to fill at the chemist’s on the way. Vitamins, and some medicine to make sure that cold of yours doesn’t turn into something worse.”

Gloriana gave herself up to Marge’s bustling charge, and soon she was dressed and being wheeled out of the hospital in a special chair. Her legs were a bit on the shaky side, but she
could
have walked under her own power and been the happier for it. All this fuss and ceremony was very wearing indeed.

After a brief stop at the chemist’s shop—Gloriana waited in the car while Marge dashed inside—they arrived at Janet’s establishment. Gloriana was relieved; if she couldn’t be at Kenbrook Hall, with Dane and their household of servants and soldiers, this place would do quite well. Here, at least, she could imagine that she was taking care of herself.

She thanked Marge profusely for her help and was more than grateful when, after tucking Gloriana into an overstaffed chair, building a fire in the grate and
brewing a pot of strong, savory tea, the kindly woman took her leave.

Gloriana swallowed her medicine, the foul-tasting vitamin capsules as well as the antibiotics, and nodded off into a restorative, dreamless sleep. When she awakened, Lyn was crouching by the fire, adding sticks of wood. The scent of something delicious filled the air, and Kirkwood looked so forlorn and so vulnerable that Gloriana forgot her earlier annoyance and greeted him in a cordial tone.

“Do you always come into people’s homes without announcing yourself first?”

He looked back at her over one shoulder and smiled his sad, solemn smile. “Not unless I’ve rung the bell a hundred times already and gotten no answer. How do you feel, Gloriana?”

“Tired, but a bit better. And you?”

He gave a throaty, rueful chuckle. “I feel, as the Yanks say, like I’ve been dragged backwards through a knothole.”

Gloriana couldn’t help laughing at the mental picture his remark produced. Watching Lyn, though, and seeing the pain he was trying so hard to hide, she grew somber again. “You’ve been kind,” she said, very carefully and very softly. “And I am more grateful than you will ever know. But for your own sake, Lyn, you must stop spending your time looking after me. I’m not your responsibility.”