Authors: Dee Brice
“Since this is the first hand,” he said, “I recommend we
keep it friendly and not wager.”
Adrian and Jason nodded, their attention flickering between
their hole cards and those common to them all. Diane sat in silence for a long
moment, too stunned to say a word. Recovering her voice, she said, “And after
this first hand? When the game becomes less friendly, what shall we wager
then?”
After lighting his cheroot, Jason blew a smoke ring at the
ceiling and met her unwavering gaze. “Why then, little lady,” he drawled in a
heavy Texas accent, “we’ll play Texas Hold ‘Em
strip poker
.”
Walker and Adrian surged to their feet, heaving chairs aside
as if clearing for war. Jason stood more slowly, his expression blank. His body
seemed equally relaxed. A barrage of vile swearing bombarded Diane’s ears, the
clearest of which sounded like “Christ on a crutch!”
The others curses were coarser and un-spellable until Adrian
shouted, “Damn it all to hell and back! He’s one of us!”
Chapter Fourteen
When the vortex failed to sweep her away, she faced the men.
Failing to travel either back to a previous life or home forced her to confront
herself. Something she wasn’t sure she wanted to do. Implacable, blank faces
stared back at her.
Okay.
She’d caught the men in lies. Or rather Jason
had caught Walker and Adrian in lies she could no longer ignore. She might
continue to play the coward and not ask questions, but Jason’s spilling the
beans demanded she face the truth—no matter how devastating she might find it.
“Do you—” She looked at Adrian and Walker in turn. “Do you
remember living in medieval times? Did we share a life then? Does either of you
know why we—why
I
traveled there?”
Walker gestured to her, Adrian and himself. “We had issues
we all needed to resolve.”
“Such as?” she challenged, sounding snarky and not caring.
“That very attitude,” Adrian said, his voice echoing his
disapproving expression. “Above us all. Disapproving of everyone and
everything.”
Walker added his two cents, making Diane feel worse.
“Unforgiving of—”
“My husband having six mistresses and even more bastards?”
That old resentment raised its head again. She didn’t remember feeling that
about a man she had never met, but her counterpart must have for Diane to feel
that way now. So, she still hadn’t forgiven long-dead Arnaud or Adrian either.
Did she blame him for not forcing his brother to behave more like a gentleman—a
nobleman?
Walker opened his mouth but said nothing. He slanted a
pointed look at Adrian. That exchange of glances suggested they had suddenly
remembered their pasts. Assuming, of course, they hadn’t faked amnesia. Seeing
their expressions harden, she doubted they would admit anything.
Sighing, the earl resumed the story. “We—Walker and
I—conspired to take you down a peg or two. At least that is what we intended to
do.”
Bitter resentment twisted her lips. “How would cuckolding
Arnaud bring me down? Humiliation might have achieved your goals and not
required me to betray my marriage vows. Did you think of other ways? Ways that
might not have led Arnaud to kill me for betraying him?”
Dear God, now I’m behaving like that was my own life!
The men’s expressions told her they hadn’t thought beyond
their own desires and needs. That her life didn’t matter to either of them. She
studied each man in turn, something in their faces leading her to ask, “What
changed your minds? Did Arnaud’s death change me?”
Adrian thinned his lips, again as if zipping them closed and
throwing away the key. Like a knight going on a crusade after locking his wife
in a chastity belt.
Her gaze shifted to Walker. His scowl warned her away even
as her stare compelled him to speak. “You seemed very different than either of
us expected.”
“More
compassionate
about the Days’ situation,”
Adrian said, a tentative smile hovering in his eyes. “Something we talked about
later, when we returned to our own time.” He looked as if he wanted to say more
but didn’t.
“Almost—” His Adam’s apple bobbed as if Walker might choke
on his own words. “Almost as if you used hauteur to cloak your fear.”
“I wasn’t—” Jason’s hand over hers corralled the lie before
it left her mouth. “She was—
I was
afraid. My uncle’s people despised me
from the moment I came to foster with him and my aunt.” More and more memories
of her past lives rose to devil her. Shoving them away, she sat, her lips
pressed together against revealing more.
Jason spoke into the lengthening silence. “They viewed you
as a threat to their ill mistress, your aunt. Some believed you poisoned her so
you might take her place. Not—” He raised a cautionary finger. “Not that you
did anything to harm her. She was the only true friend you had there and you
loved her.”
Unable to speak around the huge lump in her throat, Diane
nodded, hoping her gratitude shone in her eyes. That someone had cared for her,
whom she had cared for deeply. She’d think about how the young man knew all
that later.
She tried to absorb everything they’d shared thus far and
discovered she disliked being thought a murderess as well as an
adulteress—especially since she’d done nothing to deserve being branded as
such. Not that she could remember at any rate. Were she guilty of either sin,
surely she’d remember. Wouldn’t she?
Silence greeted the question she asked the woman who shared
her body and thoughts on occasion. No one answered.
Needing to press on before the men refused to answer other
questions, she said, “What about King Henry—the Eighth,” she clarified,
anticipating someone asking which Henry. “What purpose did our traveling to the
Tudor era serve? Or to the here and now?”
All three men shrugged. Even her hardest, most intimidating
stare failed to force answers. She suspected Jason knew—she also suspected
nothing short of being drawn and quartered would compel him to say more. Okay.
Well, not okay but typical of men who treated knowledge as power. She expected
that from Walker but not from Adrian. As for Jason…he remained a mystery she’d
explore some other time—when the other men were elsewhere.
The ensuing silence deafened her. Cupping her hands over her
ears, she pretended not to have heard anything beyond
one of us
.
Instead, she waited for the room to change or disappear. Or time to shift yet
again, dumping her in some long-forgotten past or some yet-to-be-discovered
future. She truly didn’t care so long as she got away from the men.
Stupid? Hell yes. She’d wanted answers but now… This time,
this place—even these men—seemed so dear to her, she didn’t want to leave.
Nothing happened for what felt like an eternity. The
crackling fire and the ticking clock on the fireplace mantel made the only
sounds. Someone must have thrown a cone of silence over the rest of the room,
for she could hear nothing else—not even her own breathing or her own
heartbeat.
This must be how soldiers felt when returning home from a
war zone. As if their world were wrapped in cotton batting so thick no sound
could penetrate. As if people moved in such slow motion they seemed not to move
at all.
She saw her hands as if looking through the wrong end of a
telescope—her fingers lifting a cheroot from its crystal box, then striking a
match to light it. She couldn’t hear the match against the strike plate,
couldn’t smell or taste the cherry-soaked tobacco. More from habit than need,
she blinked away the hazy smoke in front of her eyes and watched the men come
back to the table, sit, then look at their hole cards as if they had never
attacked each other. As if those fateful words had never been spoken.
Good.
If they could pretend, so could she. After all,
nothing had changed. They remained in the same sprawling house. Drank and
smoked the same brandy and cigars. Her numbness seemed to ease a little,
allowing her to reexamine her hole cards and evaluate whether to bet or fold.
A sound—half gurgle, half laugh—escaped her control. The men
once again sprang to their feet, their lips forming words she couldn’t hear.
Hysterical laughter vibrated up from her diaphragm to her chest, then to her
vocal cords. It gushed out of her mouth, so loud and unexpected, the men
flinched and stepped away.
Her hands shaking, she flipped over her hole cards. Two
hearts to match the three Walker had dealt face up. A heart flush and she
hadn’t had to bet at all.
Beyond too exhausted to think, she willed herself to stand.
“I want more answers—especially from Jason—but I’m too tired to listen.
Tomorrow…” The lyrics to a Broadway song floated through her mind without
lingering. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
* * * * *
She awakened to a series of loud snorts interspersed by what
sounded like lip smacking. Uncertain about where and when she was, she opened
one eye to assess the situation. Ah. Her own room, her own canopied bed with
its semi-familiar down-stuffed comforters, satin sheets and plump pillows.
Familiar yet strange at the same time, imprisoned by something heavy at her
sides and feet that kept her from moving.
Blinking, she opened both eyes, then shut them again. She
had no recollection of going to bed, let alone why she would awaken with Walker
peering down at her. She reopened her eyes. Concern shone from his drowsy eyes,
a soft smile curved his chiseled lips.
“Good morning,” he whispered, drawing her hand from under
the blankets then planting a kiss in her palm.
“Mmm,” she said, pulling away her hand, then tugging on the
covers in a futile attempt to free herself from them. “What in blue blazes—”
Adrian grunted as he rolled over to face her. Swiping his
hand down his face, he made those lip-smacking sounds that had disturbed her
sleep. At her feet, a couple of sharp snorts startled Jason, so he jerked
upright and scanned the room as though expecting armed intruders. Sighing, apparently
realizing his own snores had awakened him, he relaxed enough to send her a
bone-melting smile.
“In my very first erotic romance novel, I wrote a scene
similar to this,” she confessed before she thought. If she described that scene
these men might expect her to act it out. While she might have sex with each of
them—one at a time—no way would she allow a
ménage à quatre
.
Why not? You’ve already done a ménage à trois.
Not in this life.
Not yet, anyway!
Walker cleared his throat, effectively silencing the warring
voices in her head. “You have intruded on my time with Diane long enough. Be
gone.” One sun-bronzed muscular arm swept over her like a broom cleaning a
floor, earning glares from Adrian and Jason.
“We have yet to cut the cards to determine who goes first,”
Jason protested, nonetheless rolling off the foot of the bed.
Wordless, Adrian rolled to his feet, sketched a bow, then
gathered his clothes from the floor. With a smart salute, he opened her hallway
door, his scowl hurrying a naked Jason to exit. Now.
Last night’s events crashed into her mind. She kicked them
out, more than willing to continue as if nothing had happened.
Walker tugged the bedside bell rope and scant seconds later
Margaret appeared with a food-laden tray in her hands. “I’d help you,” he said
to her maid, his shrug making Diane aware of his wide, naked shoulders above
the blankets and his muscular, equally naked body beneath them. His heat warmed
her bare body from breasts to toes. She hadn’t expected modesty from him. So
maybe he was protecting hers. As if she had any to protect after being found
with a naked man in her bed!
With a broad smile and a deep blush, Margaret deposited the
tray on the foot of the bed, then scurried out.
“You seem to have lost your clothes,” Diane said, disentangling
herself from the bedding, then scooting off the bed. Not waiting to hear his
response, she hurried to the water closet then locked the door against Walker’s
possible intrusion. If he had to relieve himself…tough. Her rooms, her toilet.
“I’ve planned a quiet day for us,” he said, loud enough for
her to hear him through the solid oak door.
“Uh-huh.” If he stayed undressed his day would be quiet
indeed. She’d take herself elsewhere. Anywhere but the memory-filled billiard
room, which struck her as extreme cowardice on her part. Too bad. She liked
that room a lot, but wouldn’t set foot in it again. Not in the foreseeable
future at any rate. She just wished her future were as foreseeable as her here
and now, plus however long it took to eat breakfast.
Rummaging in her clothing press, she found a sacklike muslin
gown with four-leaf clovers embroidered around the low-cut neckline and pulled
it over her head. Struggling to tie the matching green satin sash, she could
only tie it in front, then wiggle it to the back. She stared at her reflection,
twisting and turning to see herself from all sides, but couldn’t decide if
anyone—especially Walker—could see through the lightweight material.
“Your chocolate’s getting cold.” Without so much as a
by
your leave
, Walker opened the door to hand her both cup and saucer. He shut
the door behind him, leaving her alone.
She sputtered, forcing herself not to demand to know how
he’d unlocked the door. Once she got rid of him, she’d figure it out for
herself.
Staring again at her reflection, she picked up her brush to
deal with her hair. If she dawdled long enough, Walker would get bored with
waiting and go elsewhere for amusement. With her hair tied back, she squared
her shoulders, then opened the door, expecting to find the bedroom empty.
Walker looked up from the book on his lap, the warmth in his
gaze stealing her breath and even more of her heart. Although he didn’t touch
her, his outstretched hand tugged her forward like a puppy on a leash. She
willed herself to resist his power over her, but couldn’t. He looked too
tempting for her peace of mind. Despite herself she readily went to him,
snuggling against his side where he lay on her wide chaise longue. He’d
dressed, sort of, in the same breeches and shirt he’d worn last night. No
shoes, but he had donned his hose and garters. She missed having his flesh
against hers.
“What kind of quiet day have you planned?” she asked,
comforted by the steady thump of his heartbeat against her ear.
“I thought we could read to each other. If we become bored
with the sound of each other’s voices…”
As if!
She loved his voice. The way it caressed her
like a zephyr-borne melody. The way his laughter rumbled over her skin like a
distant train en route to paradise. The pleasure growls that rose from his
throat and filled her mouth and soul with music. And need and lust, as well.
“We can play chess or cribbage,” he finished, kissing her
cheek, his smile curving against it. She tried to see his face, but his hand
held her head firmly to his chest. “Later, I thought we might get around to our
aborted game of strip poker.”