She was beautiful enough to be otherworldly. Her glossy, sable hair fell in loose waves around her face and hung a little past her shoulders. Her nose was small and her lips, full and shapely. But her eyes had hypnotized him. They were large deep-set, vivid blue mixed with green, terrified eyes. She had secrets. She wasn’t from around here. He would have remembered her if he’d seen her before.
She was beginning to wake up.
What had he done? What was she doing bouncing up and down in his arms while he rode home as if she were a prize? Why had he fought to save…her lush, black lashes were separating, revealing pools as fathomless as the deepest oceans.
“What…?” she choked out.
Her eyes, opening wider, mesmerized him.
“Where am I?” she shrieked, pushing off him, breaking the spell. “What’s happening?”
He put aside her beauty and hardened his gaze. “You are in England. Why do you not know that?” He wanted to study her further, but she jerked way and almost fell. The terror in her eyes and in her trembling lips appeared authentic. She was a madwoman then. That’s why she wore such odd attire.
But how had she come out of the air?
“Are you…are you real?”
Poor woman. Pity really. “Aye,” he answered.
“This can’t be happening.” She lifted her cautious, shaking hand to the small slice beneath his eye.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered on threads of disbelief and shock. “You can’t be real. That battle—”
He pulled back as if she had slapped him. “I will not have you poking at me.”
She drew her hand to her mouth. He watched it. She wore rings on six of her ten fingers and her fingernails were colored light pink!
“I don’t live in England.”
He guessed as much since she spoke with a tone and inflection he’d never heard before. It wasn’t French or Spanish, or Scottish or Middle Eastern. “Where do you live?”
“New York.”
“New York?”
“Please, you have to help me.”
“What is new about it?” he demanded. “And what is wrong with the York we have now?” His voice sliced sharper than any sword, but it had no effect on her.
“What…what year is it?” she asked as if her thoughts were a thousand leagues away.
His expression darkened. He didn’t like being made to look a fool. “It’s the year of our Lord, fourteen hundred and eighty-five. Who are you?” he demanded. “Where did you come from?”
“Stop the horse!”
She had grown quite hysterical. Her hands were shaking when she brought them her mouth.
Nicholas brought his mount to a halt. He didn’t need this bother in his life. He had battles to fight to keep the York name alive. When he wasn’t fighting, he had all the issues at home to deal with. Namely, his cousin Reg, Reg’s wife, Adele, Adele’s maid, Margaret, and Reg and Adele’s four children William, Eddie, Charlotte, and Andrew. They were enough to make Nicholas swear off having children if he ever married.
“Let me get off!” she shouted again. “I have to get back!”
“Back to where?” he put to her, for she looked as if she knew.
“Home.” Her eyes filled with water and appeared like the color between heaven and the sea. “I have to find a way home.”
“Where?” Why was he asking? He had duties to see to at his own home. Mayhap after that—but no! He wouldn’t keep her with him for so long. Not another person in his castle. He should have realized it on the battlefield, before he took her, but he was covered in blood and exhausted. He hadn’t been thinking straight.
“Not where,” she muttered. “When.”
He arched a brow. Should he help her dismount? “When?”
“Twenty-nineteen.”
He gave her a hard stare. “What does that mean?”
“The year of our Lord,” she corrected, wide-eyed, “Two thousand and nineteen.”
He wanted to laugh, but someone else’s affliction was no laughing matter. He groaned instead. He hadn’t meant to do so as loud as he had. But what the hell was he supposed to think?
He frightened her. She pulled away and tried to slide from the saddle. He didn’t want her to fall so he hooked his arm under hers and lowered her down. He shouldn’t leave her. He should take her.
He didn’t want to coddle a madwoman—and he certainly didn’t want to bring one home.
“Farewell then,” he said and nodded to her.
She said nothing but looked around. She appeared faint. He closed his eyes.
“I don’t belong here,” she sobbed.
He opened his eyes and set them on her. “But here is where you are.”
“No! No. I don’t want to be here because, you see, I know how crappy medieval times were. There’s…there’s no Advil. No antibiotics. My phone—” She looked at him with a whole new horror in her eyes. “My father, my friends.” She began to walk.
He kept his horse at a slow pace beside her. “Are you certain you were not hit over the head, Miss? Your family might not be gone. They might be close by.”
“Look—”
He did, expecting that she might be about to show him how she had done it. How she’d come from the air.
“I know this is difficult to believe. I can’t believe it and it’s happening to me. But I…I got some letter in the mail this morning from a law firm telling me to go to their office in midtown. I got there and it was all very sketchy, but, you know, I went in…”
What in the name of all that was holy was she saying? It couldn’t be a different language. Some words were familiar to him. Some were not. Mail? Office? Sketchy? What did it all mean?
“…and it changed and looked brand new all of a sudden. The air seemed to sparkle and then I was here…on the battlefield.”
Sparkle? What was she saying?
She started up crying again. What was he to do with her? He couldn’t leave her.
