Wings of the Storm (28 page)

"Yes?" He took a step forward. She raised the dagger a fraction of an inch. He said. "I won't hurt you." He was speaking English to her now.

"Ap Bleddyn. Bleddyn." Stephan called him Wolf. Wolf. Wolfe. David Wolfe? No. It wasn't possible.

David Wolfe was twenty years old. This was a man in his mid-thirties. David Wolfe was a shaved-head, scrawny, pale geek who wouldn't know how to handle himself outside the confines of his safe and sterile laboratory.

She asked anyway. "Does Bleddyn mean wolf in Welsh?"

"Yes," he answered again. "Jehane."

"You're David Wolfe?"

He nodded. His eyes were searching her face, dis-belief warring with surprise and she couldn't tell what else. He reached for her, but she backed away quickly. "Jehane," he said. "How do you—Jehane? Je—

FitzRose? FitzRose. Rose. Flower. Florian." He let out a whoop. "Jane Florian! Thank God!" His smile was like a burst of light. It was pure joy and delight. He spread his arms as if he wanted to embrace her.

"I've been looking for you for fifteen years!"

It was him. It was really him.

"I'm going to kill you, you son of a bitch," she said, and lunged at him with the dagger.

27

"Never," David Wolfe instructedsternly after Jane was sitting splay-legged on the floor and he held her dagger in his hand, "never warn someone of an attack. You're likely to get killed." He stuck the dagger in his belt and crossed his arms. "Or disarmed. Didn't your mother teach you anything?"

"What's my mother got to do with this?" she snapped angrily.

"Quite a lot, actually." He strode forward, offered her a hand up.

She ignored it and got to her feet on her own, sur-reptitiously rubbing her aching behind. She'd fallen hard. It had almost knocked the wind out of her. It had certainly knocked the killing rage out of her. She was still angry. Angrier than she'd ever been in her life. Angrier than when she'd discovered he was from her own time but didn't know who he was.

That wasn't anger, she knew now. It wasn't hate. It wasn't contempt or disappointment or betrayal.

What she'd felt before had been nothing compared to the

furious, contemptuous loathing she was experiencing now. She was trembling so hard with fury, she had to sit down on a nearby storage chest to keep from falling.

Wolfe walked past her, into the sleeping alcove. He came back with a small linen-wrapped square. He sat down cross-legged beside her and put the bundle in her lap. "Have something to eat," he suggested.

His eyes caught hers. Impossible to look away from those eyes as he added, "Give me time to explain."

"Time? Time? Time!" she snarled at him. "I've been doing time, Wolfe. Hard time." Her fingers curled into claws, but she kept from launching her-self at him this time.

"So have I, Jehane. Jane." He reached out to touch her cheek but wisely drew back. She was sorry she didn't get the chance to bite him. "Jehane's prettier."

"Why have you let me stay here?" she questioned. "You were here the first day I arrived. You saw me.

Why didn't you tell me who you were? What kind of experiment are you running, Wolfe?"

"What do you mean, the first day?" he demanded in return, ignoring the rest of her questions.

"When you came to tell Stephan about Hugh try-ing to kidnap Sibelle," she reminded him. How long ago had it been? Three months? More? It seemed like a lifetime.

"You'd just arrived?" He sounded incredulous. "That was your first day? When I'd been hunting Kent for six months? Not to mention all the time I spent in Anjou and Brittany and Aquitaine and the Ile de France. I've visited as many abbeys and con-vents and priories on the energy grid as I could locate. Only you weren't in any of them. So I started hunting out on the very fringe. It was habit to keep hunting," he went on, sounding more as though he were talking to himself than to her. "I didn't have any hope. There's only genetic tracings this far out. And they're so faint. . ."

"What are you talking about?"

"Time travel," he answered. "It's more complicat-ed than I thought. So many factors to coordinate."

"Gibberish. Sheer gibberish. You make no sense. You've never made any sense. I used to sit in staff meetings thinking, This boy makes no sense. Why isn't he in a nice strict military school instead of run-ning a multizillion-dollar research project."

"Because I got a Ph.D. from Stanford at fourteen, and was in line for the Nobel Prize for physics with that project," he answered tartly. "Credentials help, my dear. And intelligence."

"If you're so intelligent, why didn't you recognize me? And what happened to you, anyway? Time machine blow up in your face?"

"You could say that. And why should I recognize you?" Suddenly he blushed, his fair skin going deep scarlet. She could feel the heat from where she sat. He got up and paced the length of the room. From by the door he said, "Perhaps I would have recognized you if I had gotten a clear look at you that first day.

But I didn't. The next time I saw you your face was bruised. I remember being angry because I'd thought the lad must have taken his fist to you for some rea-son. There're some things about this place I don't like," he added quietly. After a loud sigh he went on. "By the time your face healed, you were Jehane to

me, with your own history and place. You were the lovely Norman widow I was attracted to. I couldn't let

myself become involved with anyone from this centu-ry, so I tried not to think about you. But I kept com-ing back to you. Perhaps some part of me guessed. But I wasn't thinking with that part."

"You didn't remember what I looked like?" "I was looking for an older woman," he explained hurriedly.

"Someone about fifteen years older."

"Fifteen years?"

"That's how long I've been looking for you, Jane," he said. His expression was sad, eyes full of regret.

"What I did to you was unspeakable."

"You could say that again."

"Anything for my lady." He tilted his head and repeated with the faintest of smiles, "It was unspeak-able."

"I am not your lady." Tears stung her eyes. She looked for something to throw. The aromas of honey and nuts and flaky pastry were coming from the linen bundle. She lobbed it at Wolfe's head. He ducked, and it hit the door with a heavy splat. "You had no right doing what you did!"

"I know. Believe me, Jane, I know. It was unspeak-able. I never meant to do it. Wouldn't have done it if I hadn't had a few glasses of champagne in me. What I had planned," he explained, "was to ask you to vol-unteer after I sent a few more test animals through and got them back. I knew it was too risky to try with humans yet. You wouldn't have gone alone. Or for long. I do remember thinking you'd be so eager to get involved that I had some supplies and costumes made for you."

"None of which you recognized."

"I never saw them. I ordered them and the sup-plies. They were delivered, and I used them the same day. I don't even know what-all was in those bags. I said, trade goods. Carlyle got me trade goods."

"Well, why didn't you ask Carlyle?"

"I couldn't. He got killed in the earthquake."

"Earthquake? What earthquake? The one that dev-astated Chicago and northern Illinois in the spring of 2002," she said, answering her own question. She looked at him in shock. "I just remembered. It's one of the things I saw when I got a look at the future. I'd forgotten all about that. I saw so much so fast. And you wouldn't listen to any of it."

He nodded. "I know. If I had, maybe some of the disaster could have been prevented. I certainly wouldn't have spent my life the way I have." He spread his hands before him. "To think I owe every-thing I am to you."

His sarcasm galled her. "Right," she snapped. "All my doing." Her hands landed on her hips. She didn't remember getting to her feet. "Don't you go dissing me, home boy!"

He blinked. "I wouldn't dream of it," he answered in his bland, twenty-first-century voice. It sounded very odd coming from a man dressed in chain mail.

"I'm not showing you disrespect, Jane," he went on. "I did come looking for you. It was the least I could do. I never thought I'd find you, but I didn't stop looking," he went on earnestly. "Then when I did find you, I didn't recognize you, I fell in love with you."

Love was the last word she wanted to hear out of David Wolfe's mouth. The word would have been sweet coming from Daffyd. From Wolfe it sounded like the worst kind of mockery. How could she believe anything the man said? Trust anything he did?

She had to armor herself against him.

"Such a noble quest," she mocked him. "Such a perfect knight. Such a champion devoted to my cause.

Ha. People don't go on Crusade where we come from. Or go on quests for the Grail."

He looked stung, stunned. There was hurt deep in his eyes. His voice was rough, less self-satisfied when he spoke. "It's what I did, Jane. People can still have consciences in our time. Try to right wrongs. I came looking. With very little to go on," he continued. "Records were lost. Your town house in De Kalb was destroyed. All the photographs I was able to come up with were of a younger you. I didn't know what you looked like."

"You knew
me!"
she reminded him. Loudly.

"Vaguely. My memory wasn't precise or objec-tive." He gave a dry, humorless laugh. "I was twen-ty, Jane. You seemed ancient to me, at least six or seven years older. A dry, dusty woman in glasses, with long brown hair, who never took important research or me seriously."

"Dry and dusty!" she flared indignantly. "I was never dry and dusty. Even when I wore glasses!" She tossed her veiled head. "Hmmph."

He tried not to smirk but didn't succeed. "Yes, well. I was a bit immature for my age. My mind on my work. I'm afraid in my youth I was a bit of a—"

"Geek," she supplied with a nasty smile.

"Yes. Afraid so."

"You've changed." She eyed him closely. "How? What happened to you?"

He looked as if he didn't think she'd believe him. She probably wouldn't. He went on. "Fifteen years happened to me. Months for you, years for me. Time travel is a bit complicated, as I've said." His laugh was soft and hollow. "How does the line from the old movie go? 'It's not the years, it's the mileage'?"

He was being charming. She hated it when he was charming. And contrite. She didn't want to believe a word of it, even though the changes in him were so obvious. It was hard to believe a man like Wolfe—the Wolfe she remembered—could have such a guilty conscience. She might actually believe it of Daffyd. Daffyd her protector. Daffyd her savior. Her lover. Daffyd was strong and responsible. He had humor and wit; he understood duty. How could she reconcile Daffyd with David?

But maybe it was all a line. An excuse. Maybe he'd been arrogant enough to think his machine was per-fect, and he'd stepped through for a little look him-self. Stepped through and been unable to return.

Maybe he'd been looking for her because he thought she held some kind of key for his own return to

their time. Or he didn't have anything better to do.

"I arrived here three months ago," she said slowly, trying to piece together the differences in their arrivals and experiences. "But you arrived at—"

"Fontrevault Abbey in Anjou. In the west of France. I vaguely remember saying something in my drunken ramblings about Fontrevault being in the south. If I'd been a bit more precise in my geography, perhaps . . ." He trailed off with a shrug. "I've trav-eled a long way, in heart and mind as well as miles, my dear."

A shrug. He shrugged all the time. She should have noticed it about him. But it seemed such a natural gesture to her. It was so uncommon for this more for-mal era. She'd tried to be careful of her own body language. Of her speech. Of her behavior. Why hadn't she noticed the anomalies in him? His body language was wrong. And he didn't have any scars. He was a warrior. He posed as a warrior. Why hadn't she noticed something so obvious as his perfectly smooth, unmarked, gorgeous skin? And he didn't speak the language of the land he said he was from. "Why Wales?"

"What? Why did I choose to say I'm Welsh? My mother's family was from Cardiff. Will be. Tenses get to be a problem."

"Tell me about it. How old are you?"

"I told you, it's been fifteen years. I'm thirty-five."

Fifteen years. He'd been back here that long? How had he survived? "How'd you end up working for King John?"

"I've worked for King Richard as well. Interesting man, Richard. He asked me for a date, once. Wasn't particularly upset when I politely declined." He gave her a casual shrug. "Being in the king's service gave me the mobility and authority I needed to conduct my search. Being a fighter was the quickest route to the information I needed to access."

"Not to mention fortune and glory," she added.

"It's better to be a noble than a peasant, yes," he agreed. "As you seem to understand."

"I was lucky." She crossed her arms as goose bumps prickled up her skin. Some of the possibili-ties of what could have befallen her flashed across her mind. "If Stephan hadn't found me, I don't know what would have become of me. I ended up chatelaine of a castle by accident. You chose your career."

As she spoke the words, the dreadful implica-tions of what the man had done hit her. "Oh, my God!

Wolfe, how could you? You flung me back here to stop me from changing the future. Of all the stupid—"

"Rather a stupid idea, wasn't it?" he concurred.

"But what you've done is worse. Much worse."

"What are you talking about?"

"You deliberately took service with the kings of England. You move in the circles of power. You come into contact with the men who shape policy," she lec-tured him. She stalked the length of the room to look the man deeply in the eye. "You were so afraid I was going to change the future. You think nothing of using the very means that could change everything we know for your own purposes." Yes, this was the Wolfe she knew all right. "You hypocrite. What have you done that could change history? What inadver-tent words or actions of yours have affected the course of history?"

He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her eyes with his. He said with conviction and sincerity, "I've been careful. Very, very careful. I haven't changed a thing. I assure you, sweet Jehane. I've done nothing to affect the energy flow we call history. And now that I've found you, I no longer need the use of kings and soldiers or any of the other tools I used to find you." He gave a deep, regretful sigh, his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly. "Perhaps now I can start to live my own life. If time allows."