Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (16 page)

That meant she’d just stomped out on the one man who could give her what she’d always wanted—a past, a certain knowledge of who she was. It wasn’t that she didn’t think of Dad and Mom as her parents. They were her true parents, because they had loved her and raised her and put up with the silence and the nightmares and all of that stuff before she’d settled into being theirs. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to know who she’d been before she was theirs.

And she was going to have to abase herself to get what she wanted.

She jerked her head up from where she’d been standing, frozen like Lot’s wife, in the middle of Gawain’s spare bedroom in her bra and jeans and stocking feet. She took a deep breath and went to retrieve her sweater from where she’d flung it to the floor.

She pulled it over her head and jerked at the hem to smooth it. Okay. Abasement time.

She stalked back out to the living room. Gawain was still sitting where she’d left him, only now his elbow was up on the arm of the couch and his head was propped in his hand. His Scotch was more than half-full. He sure didn’t drink to excess.

At her entrance he looked up, wary. Who wouldn’t be, after her tirade? She felt like an abuser, terrorizing all
around her because she was liable to go off the handle at any time.
Wow.
That felt awful. Abasement it was, and well deserved.

“I’m
so
sorry,” she said. “I have a terrible temper. I know you’d never guess it because mostly I’m shy, but . . . but I do. It . . . it isn’t your fault that women find you attractive.”

“But
you
don’t. In fact, you find me despicable.” She caught the hurt in his eyes before he glanced away. And after all he’d tried to do for her.

She cleared her throat. “I . . . I didn’t say that. You were trying to find me, and you did what you could to make that happen. Trying to find me was very . . .”
What would resonate with him?
“Very honorable.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. At last he settled on, “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s not you who needs to explain yourself.” She sat as far away from him as she could get on the other corner of the couch.

“You don’t have to explain your temper to me. I’ve known you forever.”

She closed her eyes. It was as she had hoped. He knew her. “Tell me,” she breathed. “Please tell me what you know about me.”

Gawain filled her glass again, watching her eyes light with each story he told her.

“You were a troublesome child,” he said with a smile. “A girl! Can you imagine being stuck guarding a girl? I couldn’t believe my father took me away from the raids on Saxon strongholds just to guard a gawky twelve-year-old. But I discovered that you were a bold little thing. If I didn’t watch you like a hawk, you’d take my charger out bareback. And if you broke your neck, who’d get blamed?”

“I’m not sure I was ever bold. But I
can
just hear you scolding me.” Her eyes crinkled.

“It was mostly the other way round. That temper!”

“Sounds like I was pretty ungrateful. Did I ever get in real trouble?”

He looked away. He didn’t want her to see his horror that it had happened on his watch. “Once. I’d taken you fishing. You loved fishing.”

Gawain slung his string of brown trout over his shoulder. There must be a score. Four were hers. They’d had a good morning. He looked over at Dilly. He called her Dilly for the circlet of daffodils she wove for her hair each spring. She was standing on some rocks, casting her line in just the way he’d shown her. She looked so purposeful. She was nothing if not competitive, and this was a competition with the fish. But he knew she would shriek with delight when she felt her line bob. His lips wouldn’t stay still. He shook his head. These days she could almost always make him smile, no matter how resentful he’d been about his assignment.

He threaded an earthworm onto his hook and slung out his line into the deep green of the pool. The morning was cool, but the promise of summer warmth hung in the air. Best they be getting back soon. . . .

Her delighted shriek made him look up. “I’ve got one, Gawain. That’s five!” She was standing with her feet in the rocks that lined the bank. She heaved her pole to flip the trout. The effort made her lose her balance. She flailed. Her feet! Her feet were caught in the rocks. They both realized her danger at once. He surged forward. She pulled one leg up. The pole dropped to her side. She couldn’t get her balance. He lunged through the willows, watching her topple.

“No!” he yelled. “Dilly!”

He could practically hear the bone snap. She collapsed in a heap, shrieking not in delight but in pain.
Gods,
he prayed,
let it be a clean break.
All the times he’d seen broken bones flashed through his mind. Gangrene, twisted cripples, long months of pain. Not for his Dilly!

She was crying and moaning by the time he knelt beside her. There was no question that her leg was broken. “Shush, now. I’ve got you.” He gripped her hand while he surveyed the situation. Her ankle was trapped between two boulders, each about the size of a big soup cauldron. He scrambled around, glad for the strength that separated him from other young bucks his age. “Dilly, this might hurt, but I’ve got to free you.”

She nodded tearfully and bit her lip. Her wreath of daffodils lay crushed on the rocks. He got a good grip on the upper stone. Of course it was the larger of the two. He wouldn’t think about how he was going to hurt her. He heaved the stone up and off her foot. It clattered over the rocks and splashed into the pool. Dilly moaned.

He had to get her back to the encampment. His father could heal her. But he had departed yesterday to Cerdic’s court at Sarum to testify against Raedwald in the matter of a burned village. Who knew when he would return? Dilly would have to do with conventional healing. Would she walk again? He looked around. He couldn’t even carry her without bracing the leg somehow. He drew his knife and cut three stout sticks from a young poplar. He ripped off his shirt and tore it into strips. Making shushing sounds, he knelt beside her once again.

“This is going to hurt, child,” he whispered. “But I have to straighten your leg.”

“I know,” she said, and her gray-green eyes were huge. She nodded at him.

Very well. He could stand it if she could. He laid out the sticks, and before he could think about it he pulled
her leg just enough to straighten it. Her scream tore more than the morning air. He couldn’t get his breath as he bound her leg into the makeshift splint.

By the time he picked her up she was half-conscious. Just as well. He looked around, fear circling in his belly. They had wandered far that day. It was a long way to help.

He took a breath. “I got you back to the cave we were living in at the time. They set the leg. When my father got back a month later he used his magic salves on you, but it was a little late, and you were still laid up for three months.” He managed a smile. “You made it through without killing anybody.”

Diana’s eyes crinkled in return. “How did you manage that?”

“Vervain kept you drugged for the first week. Then I taught you to play the lute.”

Recognition flickered in her eyes. Her face softened. “No wonder I like the mandolin. My parents thought I was a prodigy for a while. But I just already knew how to play.” She looked up at him. “I like knowing. Thank you. Thank you for teaching me. I’m sure it saved my sanity. And yours.” She took a breath. “I certainly sound like an irritating child.”

“Did I give that impression? I was irritated that I was taken from raiding and battles to guard you, but I found you intelligent and curious and courageous. In short, the same things you are today. Unlikely as it seems, we were friends.” And what were they now? Now that she wasn’t a gawky girl of thirteen but a beautiful woman?

“I’m not courageous. . . .” She ran her finger round the edge of the glass and made it sing. She was thinking. That was dangerous. “So, who were my real parents?”

Oh yeah. Danger plus.
“My father raised you.”

Her face began to glow. Who wouldn’t want to have
Merlin as a father? It wasn’t a picnic, but she wouldn’t know that. He saw her realize that he might be her brother. A complicated set of expressions raced across her face. Then it fell as she realized he’d said “raised.”

“I guess I was a foundling twice then.”

“He took you in. Your mother died. Your father . . . too.” Nothing more he could say without lying. Another sin of omission. His specialty. He took another tack. “My father loved you just as your adopted parents in this century did. You are a fortunate woman.”

“To be abandoned twice . . .”

How he wished he could erase the look on her face. “You weren’t abandoned twice. Your parents died. In this time you were lost. I never abandoned you.”

She seemed to consider. . . . “Did Merlin send me forward in time to get rid of me, and you just don’t want to tell me that?”

“With his son sent along to protect you?” Did his father regret losing him? Probably not. But she didn’t have to know that. “He wasn’t getting rid of you. You don’t know what it cost him to work that magic.” It might have killed him. In any case, Gawain would never see his wonderful, difficult, bigger-than-life father again. He would never know what happened. “You were precious to him and important even beyond being someone he cared for.”

“But he didn’t say
why
I was important?” She looked so puzzled, so frustrated.

How he hated to disappoint her. “No. I asked him. But all he would say was that I would know what to do when the time came.”

“Great.” She sighed. But she was thinking again. “Why can you remember what happened before you came forward and I have amnesia?”

He heard the pouting note in her voice. He remembered that one, too. But she had a right to pout over something
this big. She wanted so much to remember. “My father’s magic was a lot more harrowing mode of travel than Leonardo’s machine. I was disoriented for days. And I didn’t get the head injury you had. You must have landed pretty hard.” He saw her look of shock. “Police report and social worker’s notes in the adoption file. That’s how I knew.”

He glanced at the clock on the faux mantel of the gas fireplace. “It’s after midnight. You’d better get to bed.”

“
We’d
better get to bed,” she corrected. Then she blushed.

Oh, she shouldn’t have said that. He could feel his reaction even now.

“I mean . . . we have to get started finding Mordred in the morning.” She threw up her hands. “Like we know how to do that. And if we do you’ll just kill him. And should anybody be killed without a trial?”

She had to understand. “He should. Believe me.” But would she believe if she knew the truth? “We’ll need to get the morning paper.”

“You think . . . ?”

“It won’t take him long to make an impact. He’s probably working on it even now.”

Mordred sat in the dark watching the frenzy as what he wrote on the screen was instantly transmitted and retransmitted, causing comment and excitement each time his words were repeated. He was making quite a splash. He had been quoted on a hundred blogs. Each reader found in his language their own validation. He played on their fears, then showed them they could master the forces that massed around them by following him. He could touch thousands and thousands with this lovely new toy, and each of them could touch thousands of others, more than he had ever imagined. And once he touched them
with his thoughts and the force of his personality, they were his.

Now to hook the fishes.

I hear you all. I know your hearts. And yet feelings in your hearts are not enough. In this time when the worst of you lack all conviction while the best are filled with passionate intensity, where are the actions that confirm your commitment? Do you not know that the waters swirl around us? Have you not seen those who despise the very values that support this great nation, the values instilled in us by God, glorified? Why should the despisers prevail? How can you, the brotherhood of the True Believers, allow this, and yet call yourselves righteous? In order to walk in the true path, you must take first the step.

An obstreperous chorus of replies cascaded onto his screen. He waited for the right one.

What would you have us do?

Yes!

Words no longer suffice. Prove yourselves. Take the head of an unbeliever and put it on a pike for all to see, as they did in times when hearts were pure and knights fought for their God and the True Way. Then can you serve the powers that are in you and beyond you and carry you into the new world while others are washed away in the flood. Do this, for my sake, and I will make myself known unto you and lead you into the Promised Land.

And what came back was . . . silence. No messages scrolled across his screen.

They were speechless. He had them. He smiled. The first step was almost too easy. Soon he would have his army. And then this nation, and soon the world, would be his.

Time to order a pizza, and think about how to get to the girl and Merlin’s son.

Diana went to the spare bedroom with all sorts of confusing thoughts running around inside her head, and feelings lower down, too.

She’d been an orphan in two worlds. Merlin probably took her in more out of pity than anything else. It was lovely of Gawain to tell her how much his father had loved her.
He
was lovely. And not just physically. But that was just the problem. From what he said, he’d been like an older brother to her, only kinder, she suspected. But she wasn’t thinking of him like an older brother now. Not at all. Even now she tingled in remembering the strong column of his neck tonight, the black hair curling out of his open-collared shirt, the forearms . . . she was a sucker for muscled forearms. Who knew they could be so . . . erotic? Yes, he was lovely.

Right. He was Gawain, the parfait knight. What was not lovely, except perhaps that he was too perfect?

That was just it, though. He wasn’t. He was entirely human, and that meant flawed. He’d given into lust with the Green Knight’s lady. He’d tried to keep the magic girdle. He had scars. He felt he’d failed his father by getting thrown in prison.