“Come on, then, Miss,” he grumbled. He held his hand down to her. She refused it. Very well then. He flicked his reins and rode away.
He was glad she didn’t want to go with him. He’d saved her life on the battlefield. He’d done enough for her.
Still, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from returning to her while he rode. The smell of her, her fear, her sweat, and…a hint of floral. The sight of her sprawled across his lap shook him to his knees. Nothing ever had before. He was glad he was sitting. She was long limbed but weighed little in his arms. Her skin was pale against his tanned fingers. Her hair was dark brown with traces of red. It fell loose around her face, cascading over her shoulders. She wore no adornments or knots and braids. He liked it. He thought of touching it. Her lashes left shadows on her cheeks. Her hose were thick blue fabric with some kind of metal button and a line of tiny silver connecting pieces from her groin to beneath her belly. Curious.
Where had she come from? How was what he saw possible? He didn’t catch her from a side view. He hadn’t blinked. He happened to be looking straight ahead—in her direction when the air changed, and she appeared. He saw her come to being.
He shook his head. Time travel? It was impossible. Laughable. She was mad.
And what were Advil and antibiotics anyway? What did her words mean?
He rode on for another ten minutes. While he went, he told himself that she had to have come from over the hill and he’d missed her. But why would she walk straight onto a battlefield and then become so terrified?
She said she came from the future. Two thousand and nineteen to be exact. He slowed his horse. It was over five hundred years from now. Is that how women clothed themselves in the twenty-first century?
He cursed under his breath for even considering the idea that she was telling the truth.
He spotted a group of men riding toward the direction he’d left her. His blood went cold. What if they came upon her? Mad or not, she’d been through much today. She likely wouldn’t do well fighting off six men.
Muttering an oath, he turned his horse around. He’d saved her once today, and for what? So she could die a short while later?
After half an hour, he realized he couldn’t find her. There was no sign of her.
“Woman!” he called out. He didn’t know her name. Where had she gone? Had another group of men already come upon her? “Woman!” Damn him! What was he doing? Why did he care? He wasn’t the caring type. Perhaps because he saw her come alive in the shimmering speckled air. He didn’t know the reason. He only knew that she’d been through enough today.
“What in blazes is your name?” he said in a lower tone and turned his horse around yet again.
When he saw her stepping forward from his right, he almost let out a sigh of relief, but he held it in.
“My name is Kestrel L—”
“What is this?” another mounted rider asked. It was one of the men he’d seen earlier. Nicholas was thankful he’d come back for her.
Five more men rode forward, brandishing swords. They all pointed them at Nicholas.
“What strange attire you wear,” the leader remarked on a snarl as he approached her. “But it will not matter when I strip you out of it.”
“I’d rather be dead,” she said, sounding as if she were close to it. “And if I’m stuck here, that’s certainly the better alternative.”
“Back away from her before I kill you all,” Nicholas warned them on a deadly growl.
“Are you her husband?” one of them called out.
“If I say no, will you think you have a claim on her?” Nicholas asked, watching them closely. He was weary, but he was always ready to kill some Reds, if that was what they were.
“I’m taking her whether you are her husband or not,” the leader promised with a lusty smile.
Nicholas’ breathing changed the slightest bit. His eyes burned into the leader. “And I’m going to kill you whether you surrender or not if you continue to put me in a foul mood.”
“Surrender to you?” The man tossed back his head and laughed. “Who are you but shyte on the bottom of my shoes?” He looked at the shield hanging from the back of Nicholas’ saddle. “You’re a White!”
Nicholas pulled his sword free and prepared himself to fight. “Not just any White,” he told them, slowly moving closer on his horse. “I am Sir Nicholas de Marre, Earl of Scarborough. Defender of York. I just left the battlefield, where my men and I left over a hundred Reds dead.” He held up his stained sword and snarled at them. “I would not mind killing six more.”
The leader paled. Nicholas thought he might. “I—we have no quarrel with you, Lord Scarborough.”
“Then what are you still doing here?” Nicholas asked.
He wasn’t always so merciful, but the woman…Kestrel—an odd name, just like the rest of her—had seen enough death for one day. He did nothing when the six of them took off running.
Alone with her, he held out his hand. “You cannot remain alone.”
She stared at him. “Your name struck fear into them. Are you famous?”
He shrugged and waved his hand at her. Elia was going to kill him for bringing the waif home.
“You said you were a White and a defender of York? You…you were killing Reds?”
“That is correct, Miss.” He put his hand into his lap. “I can only hope that the blood draining from your face is the result of fear and the belief that you have traveled over five hundred years into the past, and not because
