Love's Labyrinth (10 page)

“What’s wrong?” she began, hurrying to catch up. She nearly walked into Alison’s back, and realized immediately why Alison stood stock-still, her shoulders slumped in dejection.

Smoking torches still burned against the night sky, and the odors of roasting meat and raw sewage blew past them on the wind. Beneath a tree, slumped against the trunk, Geoffrey Talcott snored in happy oblivion.

“Oh, no,” murmured Olivia, as the full implication hit her.

“‘Oh, no, is right,” said Alison, her voice heavy with despair. “I knew it. I just knew it. We’re stuck here, and I don’t think we’re ever going back.”

OLIVIA LOOKED UP. In the dark sky, millions of stars—more stars than she thought she’d ever seen in one place—twinkled like crystals strewn across black velvet. It’s still the same sky, she thought… or was it? Hadn’t the constellations changed at some point? Momentarily she wracked her brain for the answer, and then dismissed such inconsequential thoughts. You’re behaving like Dad, she scolded herself. This isn’t an exercise in academic inquiry.

“What are we going to do?” Alison moaned. There was more than a catch in her friend’s throat. Olivia looked up and saw a tear sparkle on her friend’s cheek in the dim light. Alison sniffed and wiped it away, even as Olivia reached for her hand.

“I don’t know, Allie. We’ll think of something. Don’t worry. We have to try and stay calm.”

With a deep breath. Alison visibly forced herself to relax. “Okay.” She sniffed again. “Okay, I’m calm. Now what?”

Olivia looked around then shrugged. “Well, it looks as if we’re both spending the night. So I suppose we wake up Master Geoffrey over there, and make him find us something to sleep in. If I never see this blasted costume again, it will be too soon.”

At that Alison giggled. She sounded just a little hysterical, but Olivia was glad she could laugh at any part of the situation at all.

“I was thinking the very same thing.” She strode over to Geoffrey, leaned down, and shook his shoulder. “Hey!”

“Hm?” Geoffrey muttered and smiled in his sleep.

“Hey, Master Geoffrey, wake up!” Alison shook him again, harder this time, but Geoffrey only smiled and snored.

“He’s as hard to wake up as you are, Allie,” Olivia said. She bent down on the other side and spoke loudly.

“Geoffrey Talcott! Wake up!” She gave his shoulder a shake that was practically a blow.

“Hm?” With a start, Geoffrey bolted awake, hitting his head against the trunk of the tree. “Oh!”

“Sorry,” Olivia murmured.

“Hi,” Alison said.

“Who—?” Momentarily Geoffrey looked confused, and then memory dawned. “Mis—but what—why didn’t you, I thought you went through the maze.”

“We did go through the maze,” Alison said. “It didn’t work this time.”

“Oh.” Slowly Geoffrey straightened. “Oh, dear.” He sighed and got to his feet. “I was afraid of that.”

Alison threw an exasperated look at Olivia. “Why didn’t you warn us?”

Geoffrey gave each of them an apologetic look in turn. “Well…”

“I think he was afraid to, Alison.” Olivia sighed. “Look, it’s too late to do anything about it now. We’ll go back to the house and get some sleep. Surely tomorrow, when everyone’s rested, would be a better time to try again. Okay?”

Alison drew a deep breath. “I guess that’s the only plan that makes sense right now. How about it, Sir Galahad?”

Geoffrey scratched his head. “Of—of course. Nicholas will—”

“I don’t want to hear about Nicholas,” Alison snapped.

“He can just deal with it.”

“We’re both tired,” Olivia added, almost apologetically.

Trying as the situation was—unbelievable as the situation was, she corrected herself—she felt sorry for Geoffrey. He’d clearly stumbled into something he barely understood. Was it really any different from some of the things twentieth-century scientists had been known to do?

“Come with me, mistresses.” Geoffrey led the way, his shoulders slumped with dejection. He brought them back into the house where a few candles burned in sconces set high in the walls, but otherwise all was still. He paused at the base of the steps, took one of the candles from a sconce, and used it to light their way up the darkened staircase. At the door of the bedchamber where they’d been before, he paused. “I’ll send a maid to attend you, mistresses.” He handed Alison the candle. For a moment, he looked as though he wanted to stay something more, hesitated, then turned on his heel and fled down the steps, leaving the women alone in the dark and quiet house.

A fitful flicker beneath the closed door of Nicholas’s study told him that his brother was still awake. Geoffrey paused before the thick oak door, squared his shoulders, and knocked.

“Enter!” Nicholas barely glanced up from the thick ledger book spread open on his desk. “All in all, a fine revel, I’d say, wouldn’t you?” He smiled a little and went on scratching numbers.

“Very fine,” Geoffrey said, feeling for all the world as he used to when he was very small and was forced to answer to their father for whatever most recent scrape he’d found himself in.

“Those two women are gone?”

“Well…”

At that, Nicholas looked up and set down the quill. “Well, what?”

“It, uh, it—the maze—it didn’t do what I hoped it would do this time, Nicholas. I—I couldn’t send them back. They’re upstairs and I sent old Janet to wait on them.”

Nicholas gasped softly, as though he’d been punched. “What?”

“I—I don’t quite know how it happened in the first place, Nicholas—you know I’ve been working day and night—”

“Damn it, Geoffrey!” Nicholas slapped the surface of the desk with his open palm, and the whole massive piece of furniture shuddered. “What will it take to make you give up these daft dabblings? I’ve spent the whole of my adult life trying to restore our family’s fortunes, and you’ve spent the whole of yours endangering what’s left. Are you truly mad? Or simply blind?” He ran his hand through his hair, pushed his chair away from the desk, and stalked to the window. A full moon shone down on the August night and, outside, the land lay quiet under the stars.

“W—well, Nicholas, I fully intend to send them back as soon as I—”

“Figure out how?” Nicholas turned back to glare at his brother. “In God’s good world, Geoffrey, I do not understand the way you think. Father should’ve made you join the priesthood—sent you to France when he’d had the chance. Now see what you’ve brought upon us.” He turned back to the window, shaking his head.

“I—I don’t think it will take forever—” Geoffrey began again, but Nicholas cut him off with an impatient wave.

“You don’t think at all. If you spent two minutes thinking about the reality of our situation, you’d realize that all the time you spend dreaming such nonsense is more dangerous than if you took a dagger and threatened the Queen herself. Sweet Christ, if you did that, you’d be the only one who’d pay for your madness. You wouldn’t bring ruin down about both of us.”

“I haven’t exactly ruined anything, Nicholas. Be fair.”

“Fair? Do you think when they come to burn you as a warlock, the court that convicts you will be fair? Do you think the Queen’s Grace will be fair when she divvies up Talcott Forest? Geoffrey, you—you—” Shaking his head in frustration, Nicholas pressed his lips together in a thin line.

“I’ll work on the problem as soon as—”

“As soon as you leave this room, do you hear me? I want them gone—gone by the time I return from Calais.”

“Calais? You’re going to Calais?”

“Aye. At least one of us had better keep an eye to the direction the wind blows. I’ve been approached by one Master Christopher Warren—an agent in Walsingham’s network.”

Geoffrey frowned. “Nicholas, are you sure you ought to do this?”

“You of all people think to question my judgment?”

“Well…”Geoffrey hesitated. He frowned, thinking furiously. The name Warren was ringing a very unpleasant bell in his mind. He scratched his chin. “Who is this Master Warren?”

“He’s one of Walsingham’s men. I know what you’re thinking, Geoffrey,” Nicholas said, dismissing the troubled look on his brother’s face with a wave. “Walsingham’s been no friend to Catholics—or to former Catholics. But I think I’ve proved myself to be a loyal subject of Her Majesty—”

“No one could doubt that. So why involve yourself in one of his schemes?”

“What makes you think it’s a scheme? An agent of the King of Spain has been arrested in London—they’ve asked me to go to Calais and keep the appointment this man would’ve made.” Nicholas looked over his shoulder at the window, as though someone might be listening. “It involves the plans of an invasion of England.”

“An invasion?” Geoffrey shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of this, Nicholas—perhaps we should talk about this tomorrow, when we both aren’t so tired—”

“You’re the last person to concern yourself with such matters.” Nicholas cut him off. “You have your own tangled coil to sort out. And by Her Royal Majesty’s grace, you damned well better sort it out, and then that damnable maze is coming down if I have to tear it out with my own hands. If you want to dabble in such unnatural arts, you’ll have to find another place to do it. I won’t have you risking everything I’ve worked for, do you understand?”

Geoffrey drew a deep breath. A wave of exhaustion washed over him, and his shoulders slumped. “I understand, Nicholas.”

“Good.” Nicholas pulled out his chair and sank down at his desk once more. He picked up the quill and looked up at Geoffrey expectantly. “Is there anything else?’”

“No, Nicholas.”

“Good night, Geoffrey.” He dipped the quill in his inkpot and began to write, the tip scratching over the thick parchment the only sound in the quiet room.

Geoffrey hesitated. There was so much he wanted to say to his brother, so much he wanted to try to explain. He understood why Nicholas was so angry, but couldn’t his brother understand what an amazing thing he’d accomplished? And wasn’t Nicholas the least bit curious? How could he not seize the opportunity to talk to people from a time even their great-great-grandchildren would never live to see? He looked at Nicholas’s dark head bent over his ledger. His brother’s back was straight, but he leaned against his left hand as he wrote. Nicholas was as worn out as he.

Geoffrey took another deep breath. He walked quietly to the door, pulled it open, and glanced back. Nicholas was rubbing his eyes; the quill drooped in his hand. “Good night, Nicholas,” he said softly as he gently closed the door.

Beneath the midnight moon, a dark shape emerged from the shadow of the oak trees that lined the long drive, as the clatter of hooves announced the arrival of Sir John Makepeace. “Well, Master Warren?”

“Thank you for meeting me like this, Sir John.” The other man’s voice was soft in the night air.

“I like this not, Master Warren—this sneaking about betweentimes. Honest men are long abed, and so should we be.”

“No one agrees with you more, Sir John, but Her Majesty intends to leave for Hampton Court early on the morrow, and I must be away to London at dawn. I had no other time.”

“As you say, Master Warren. What’s your news?”

“It was as I suspected. He intends to leave for Calais within the week. I trust your plans are made?”

“Aye, I’ve passage booked from Dover three days from now. He mentioned my daughter’s hand once more—I intend to meet with him on the morrow and address it.”

“The question of your daughter’s hand…” In the dark, Warren leaned closer in his own saddle, despite the fact that in the dark night, Sir John’s face was nothing but a pale smudge against a black backdrop.

“Have no fear. I’ll not say yea or nay until this business is concluded. It’s not one to my liking, Master Warren. The more I think on’t—”

“Her Majesty will be most grateful for your service,” interrupted Warren smoothly. “And will reward that service in a manner most fitting, I assure you.”

“And there’s the question of those two doxies he’s suddenly related to—seems most suspicious to me, the whole business does.”

Suddenly Warren had an idea that would damn Nicholas in Sir John’s eyes for all time. He smiled to himself. The plan merely required a bit of tweaking. “Well, what do you expect from one who serves neither God nor the Queen?”