“I know what the correct grammar is, you ignoramus! It’s a saying. It means you can shove your outdated, woman-stifling, chauvinistic ideas up your butt.”
His eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch. “I do not at all enjoy that sort of thing, either. And if you do, I regret to inform you—”
“No!” Thor, Imogen’s horse, tossed his head around at my shriek. I lowered my voice and gritted my teeth. “I don’t like that, either, not that I’ve tried it, but it’s not something I intend to experiment with, so let’s move past that, shall we?”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” he pointed out.
“I didn’t mean to literally stick something up your—” I took a deep breath, struggling to get a good, solid grip on my temper, which was not an easy task when Nikola seemed determined to drive me bonkers. “I don’t even remember how we got onto the subject of your ridiculous ideas about women and sex.”
“You accused me of making you my love slave, which is lamentably incorrect, because if you were my love slave, you would even now be impaled on my penis.”
The image of that so filled my mind, I had to take a minute or two to get past it. “Er…while we were on the horse?” I eventually managed to ask, unable to keep myself from glancing at his lap.
His eyebrows rose again. “If you desire. I’ve heard it can be stimulating, assuming both persons have good seats.”
That thought kept us both quiet for a short bit. After realizing that I was considering just where my arms and legs would go with regards to his saddle, I gave myself another mental scold, and returned to the matter at hand. “I was simply pointing out that someone is responsible for my state of mind. How else do you explain the fact that I’ve jumped you three times now?”
He glanced at me with those wickedly gorgeous pale blue eyes, a little smile dancing on his lips. “Perhaps you simply desire me as much as I desire you.”
“We just met, and I’m the sort of a woman who likes men for their minds, not their bodies. It’s a well-known fact among my friends that I have to know a man for some time before I get sexually interested. Gretl says I’m too picky that way, but it’s just the way I am. So clearly, this whole situation with me wanting to do things to you is your fault, and not mine.”
“Indeed.” That was all he said, but when he did so, he brushed a bug off his chest. Instantly, my gaze went to his bare chest, my hands tingling with the desire to stroke the lovely muscles that made up some really spectacular viewing.
Oh, dear lord, I was doing it again! Honestly, I wasn’t such a ninny that I couldn’t be near the man without wanting him to do all sorts of erotic things to me.
But I want to do those erotic things. Especially that one where you spread oil on us both and slither around on top of me.
“And you can stop egging on my poor, deluded brain! Besides, that’s eavesdropping pure and simple, and I’m not going to stand for it. Now, what we need here is to get organized.”
“I am completely organized,” Nikola said blandly. “Every aspect of my life is orderly and well-thought-out. I run my house with a firm hand. My children and servants know that should they disorder that to which I have brought order, they will suffer the most grievous of penalties. Dedicated study to the unknown, order, and a calm clarity of mind are all my bywords. In short, madame, I am the personification of the word organized.”
I murmured a word to myself that was not at all polite, and gave some thought to the situation. “It’s clear that somehow that swirly thing in the woods was responsible for me being zapped back here. Therefore, I need to find it again, and let it send me back where I belong.”
“You have not fully explained this swirly thing, as you call it. What, exactly, is it?”
“It’s kind of hard to describe.” I spent a few seconds summoning my memories, and explained to Nikola the happenings in the woods.
“I do not understand this photograph that you keep referring to,” he said after a long pause. He had pulled out his notebook from a pocket in his breeches, and made a brief note or two. “Nor why a cloud of smoke had the ability to alter time.”
“The swirly thing wasn’t really smoke—it just kind of looked smoky. It was more like—I don’t know—light, I guess. Swirls of light twisting around on itself. And a photograph is like a painting, only more realistic. It’s a two-dimensional representation of an object or scene.”
“Indeed.” He made a few more notes. I smiled to myself. I’d never thought that I was an overly curious person, but the fact that Nikola’s interest in the world around him was clearly far more developed than mine tickled me.
It also made me feel profoundly stupid about those things that people in my time took for granted.
“And why were you in the woods to begin with?”
“Hmm? Oh, I was looking for a setting to take some pictures of Imogen, but she—” The words stopped as a memory of Imogen’s face rose with horrible clarity in my mind.
Imogen refused to go to the woods because she said that’s where her uncles had killed her father. Slowly, I turned to look at Nikola. He rode beside me, one hand holding the reins against his thigh while the other hand flipped through the pages of his notebook.
I was confused pure and simple—Imogen said her father was killed in the woods one fateful night, while her brother had claimed he was alive and well and living in South America, enjoying the scantily clad women that abounded there.
My eyes narrowed at Nikola. I had no difficulty imagining him being in seventh heaven in such a surrounding.
But which of the siblings was right? Had Benedikt lied to me about his father being alive? Or had Imogen? And if Imogen was telling the truth—a cold wave swept over me despite the warmth of Nikola’s coat. “The anniversary of his death is in a couple of days,” I said softly, repeating the words Imogen had spoken to me.
“Whose death?” Nikola asked, looking up from his notebook.
“Er…no one’s.”
A chill swept over me. It was clear now that Imogen had been speaking the truth. No doubt she had told her younger brother a lie to keep him from being traumatized by the true events of that dreadful day.
None of that altered the horrible realization that Nikola could be in deadly peril. Possibly we were a few hours away from the day when, in some unknown year, Nikola would die.
What if it was this year?
That thought held me in its terrible grip the remainder of the trip back to Nikola’s castle. By the time we got there, I’d come to two conclusions—one, that I needed to waste no time finding the swirly light thing, and returning to my own reality, and two, if it was at all possible to warn Nikola about his brothers’ murderous intent without messing up the time-space continuum, or whatever it is that the people in Star Trek were always worried about whenever they time traveled, then I would do so.
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” I told the empty room into which Nikola deposited me once we arrived at his castle on the mountaintop. “But Imogen is Gretl’s friend—will be Gretl’s friend—and for that reason, and because you were nice enough to let me wear your shirt, not to mention the fact that your chest holds an unholy fascination for me, because of all that, I will warn you about the evil plot your brothers are hatching. But that’s it. Nothing more. No sex, no more nooky, nothing.”
The fire crackling in the fireplace across from the bed was the only response to my bold statement. I sighed and sat down on the bed, wondering how on earth I was going to manage to keep myself from jumping Nikola the next time I saw him.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I said three minutes later when the door opened and Nikola strolled in, clad once again in a white shirt, long waistcoat of blue and gold, and midnight blue coat that reached almost to his knees.
“Yes, I am. I frequently have a purpose when I enter a room. I find that if I don’t, I just wander around the castle bumping into things. Why aren’t you in bed?”
I gasped and clutched a beautifully embroidered pillow to my chest. “I knew it! You just want to get into my pants! Well, I meant what I said, Buster Brown, so you can just put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Nikola frowned. “I do not smoke a pipe. Tobacco bothers my daughter. You are supposed to be in bed. I instructed you to retire since you have fallen off a horse four times—”
“That last time was totally your fault! I told you to catch me and you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t aware you were going to dismount on the incorrect side. If you had done it properly—”
“Oh, I like that! I’m the newbie at riding, so you should have made your dismounting instructions more comprehensive. And as for your instructions—”
“In addition to which you ran headlong into Heinrich with such force as to make yourself insensible—”
“That was probably also your fault, too,” I said darkly. Although most of my memory had returned, I didn’t remember running into Nikola’s carriage, as he said I had.
“And finally, the exertion of attempting to seduce me on three separate occasions must all have taken its toll on your constitution, and thus you need rest.” He finished with a little bow to me, hands making an elegant gesture that was heightened by the pretty lace at his wrists. Oddly enough, the lace didn’t make him look effeminate—quite the opposite, it enhanced the raw masculinity that he seemed to exude.
I was about to point out to him that I was a big girl, and perfectly able to determine when I needed sleep, but the truth was, I felt as if I were two inches away from shattering into a billion pieces of exhaustion.
The door opened before I could inform Nikola of my intention to get some rest. Imogen bustled into the room with her arms full of white linen.
“Papa?” she asked, giving him a curious look before sliding it toward me. “What are you doing here?”