“Go” was easier said than done, and Michael trudged toward the house with black shutters with the bishop, who had begun to murmur. If he had to carry the guy much longer, he wouldn’t have to pretend he had a limp.
Before he slipped into the alley behind the house, he stole a glance over his shoulder—well, over the bishop’s head—at Undine. The man who’d called out to her wore a blue brocade frock coat with gold rope at the sleeve and finely polished boots. She didn’t look especially pleased to be talking to him. On the other hand, in Michael’s experience—which admittedly was limited to the last two hours—she hadn’t yet looked especially pleased to be talking to anyone. He’d decided it was part of her unusual charm.
The bishop lifted his head, and Michael froze. If the man woke up, how would he explain the fact of him being bound, naked, strapped to a stranger’s back, and on his way to a whorehouse? The only thing worse that could happen would be someone spotting this limping beast with two heads.
The bishop laid his head back down and sighed. Michael relaxed. The man’s hot breath gathered like summer humidity on Michael’s neck. His back hurt; his sandals pinched; he had a man’s balls pressed against his back. A friar in the eighteenth century was not stacking up to be the role of his dreams.
Michael reached the passageway behind the building, which couldn’t be called a proper alley, as it was barely wide enough to accommodate a man on horseback, let alone a cart or carriage, and gazed at the building’s dirty daub exterior.
The place didn’t look like a whorehouse—not that Michael had a clear idea of what a whorehouse should look like, other than the petticoat-filled bordellos above whiskey bars in the American Westerns his great-aunt Morag used to watch. It looked more like a tea shop, he thought, and then an odd frisson ran down his spine. He turned his gaze to the river, visible down the street, and back to the building.
Jesus, it is a tea shop! Or at least it will be in a few hundred years. This was the shop Auntie Morag had taken him to on that miserable visit to Coldstream so many years ago. They’d driven down from Peebles, boring enough in its own right, in her ancient Morris to visit the Coldstream Historical Museum. He’d sat in the front window of this very building; he remembered the view of the water clearly. They’d eaten blackberry jam biscuits and lukewarm tea with no sugar (“Bad for your teeth, Mikey. Might as well floss with licorice whips.”), while he’d squirmed on the uncomfortable chair listening to her describe the afternoon of “fun” they’d be having at Coldstream’s biggest attraction.
Christ, he could hardly be still now thinking about the place. Bloody boring bits of pottery and faded pictures of farmers with plows that had seemed to him from the Pleistocene Epoch. He’d actually looked for James IV in the photos, hoping to catch sight of his bloody, fifteenth-century battlefield death at nearby Flodden Field, the only thing that would have made the interminable visit worthwhile.
Well, he thought with some amusement, wouldn’t Auntie Morag have been surprised to find out they’d been sitting in what had probably been the parlor at Coldstream’s favorite whorehouse.
Ha.
“The door’s open, you ken,” said a plump, middle-aged woman with graying hair standing behind him in the alley. She held a large basket of green and purple cabbages. “Ye need no’ be shy.”
“Are you, er—”
“Aye. Come in, come in.”
She gave his habit a quick up-and-down and shook her head. “I guess nothing should surprise me anymore,” she said, and put the basket on a table in what was clearly the kitchen. A variety of pots hung by the unlit hearth, and the scent of cheap, flowery perfume hung in the air. A bright-red handbell stood on a shelf.
“Do you have a preference, Father?” she said. “Fat? Thin? Gold hair? Brown? We even have a girl with six fingers, but she’s extra.”
“Oh God, no,” Michael said, horrified.
The woman shrugged. “The men like her because she can—”
“Thank you, no,” he said firmly. Why wasn’t Undine here to navigate this medieval house of horrors? “I’m waiting for someone. A woman,” he added helpfully.
She turned and crossed her arms. “Father, I ken ye must be new to this, but ye canna bring your own woman here. You must use one of ours.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. I know this is confusing, but I’m here”—he lowered his voice—“with a delivery. The delivery.”
She offered no sign of recognition.
He jabbed a thumb toward his hump. “Rothwell. He needs a room.”
“He has a name?” She moved her hand closer to the bell.
“Of course he has a name. What do you mean?”
“What do you mean?”
The bishop farted, and the woman glared at Michael.
“It wasn’t me!”
A younger woman in a close-fitting leather coat stepped in and looked at Michael. “Are you Kent?”
Before he could answer, the sounds of an argument came in from the street. Michael stepped to a window. The man who had stopped Undine had a hand on her sleeve, and even at this distance, Michael could see Undine was irritated. Michael jerked the ropes under his cloak loose, and Rothwell toppled to the floor.
“I hope you can—”
“Go,” the woman in leather said. “We’ll take care of him.”
Michael sprinted down the street before remembering his former “afflictions.” He slowed to the pace of a speed walker—a speed walker with a limp.
The look in Undine’s eyes warned him away, and he stopped, but he wasn’t willing to leave entirely so remained at a slight distance.
“You’re the one who told me she’d abandoned me,” the man said loudly. “It’s your duty to tell me how to win her back.”
The man was drunk. Michael could see that now. And a few of the inhabitants of Coldstream were slowing to watch. The man’s grip on Undine’s arm was tightening into a lock hold. Michael looked for a sign from Undine.
“Give me a potion,” the man begged. “Tell me what she’s thinking.”
Undine had remained silent until this point, though the unexpurgated disdain in her eyes would have cut Michael’s ego to shreds had it been aimed at him.
“You want to know what she’s thinking, do you?”
Though he’d known Undine only a short time, Michael knew the answer to that question should be a resounding no.
“Aye, I do,” the man said, “ye white-fanged witch.”
Her gaze traveled to the man’s hand on her arm. The onlookers fell silent. Two beats, three beats, four. The man loosened his grip and released her.
“She thinks of you often,” Undine said, brushing the remains of his touch from her person.
“Does she?”
“Oh, aye. You gave her a bracelet. Emeralds, perhaps?”
The man nodded.
“She rarely removes it. Her husband can’t quite place it. He thinks he might have given it to her before their marriage.”
A buzz ran through the crowd. “An adulterer,” someone whispered. The man licked his lips, mildly unnerved to have his secrets aired on the streets of Coldstream, but the onlookers were his inferiors and thus invisible to him. He stood straighter.
“She wears it even in bed,” Undine said.
An older man in the crowd grabbed his wife and hurried away.
“’Tis there she thinks of you most.”
The man stood rapt. His breath quickened. If Undine had been paid to tell the man the story he most wanted to hear, Michael thought, she couldn’t have picked a better one.
“What does she think?” he said in a choked whisper. “Tell me.”
“If I were you, I would take what I’ve told you and treasure it till the end of your days. She won’t leave her husband for you. That you already know, and I told you as much the first time you came to me.”
“Tell me,” the man demanded. “Who are you to decide what I should and shouldn’t hear?”
“I’m the person who makes it possible for you to know anything, sir.”
“Tell me, you bloody witch.”
Undine grew stock-still. “She thinks if you’d been half the lover her husband is, she’d have stayed with you long enough to allow you to drape her neck and ears in emeralds as well.”
The women in the crowd tittered. Cold fury filled the man’s face.
Michael stepped into his line of sight. He hoped the presence of a man of God, or at least of one who appeared to be of God, would cool the man’s temper.
“You lying bitch.”
No luck. The man reared back, but Michael moved faster. He caught the man’s arm before it delivered its slap and swung him off his feet.
“Seriously?” Michael said, dropping a knee into the man’s solar plexus. “Did your mother not teach you manners?”
The man’s eyes bulged. “What happened to your hump?”
“Would you like to try an apology?”
“What sort of a cleric are you? Who is your bishop?”
Michael felt the touch of Undine’s finger on his shoulder, but when he turned, she had faded into the crowd, watching the melee as if she were one of the onlookers. He hopped to his feet, brushed off his habit, and offered his hand to the man on his back, who shook his head.
“I will not.”
Michael shrugged and slipped through the gaping crowd, remembering to bend and limp only after he was halfway across the road.
“I’ll find you, you poxed blackguard!” the man shouted.
“Nicely done,” Undine said as she hurried ahead of him down a side street. “You’ve assaulted Berwickshire’s highest-ranking judge and now half of Coldstream can identify you.”
“Oh, you think I caused this? You’re the one who dressed me in a hump! And I was most certainly not the person casting aspersions on the man’s bedroom prowess.”
“Like all men, he places far too much importance on the mechanics and not nearly enough on the moments leading up to them.”
“All men? Your certainty extends that far? Not a single rice farmer in China? A bureaucrat in some Moscow bank? A reindeer herder in Nordic Jutland?”
“There are, perhaps, a handful of men in Great Britain who could be called tender lovers.”
“Oh, a handful! Well, I suppose we should be grateful there are any of us at all”—he heard her snort at his use of “us”—“and such a delightful concentration right here in the British Isles! You Englishwomen must be celebrating your luck.”
“I’m not an Englishwoman.”
“Right. Nor a Scot. Tell me, how are the lovers in Fairyland?”
She gave him a devastating sidelong look. “English prig.”
“Is that what I am? What if I told you I wasn’t English?”
She stutter-stepped.
That’s right. Maybe you don’t have everything down pat.
“I’d say you were probably lying.”
Probably. The promotion from flat-out liar buoyed him.
Somehow, they’d arrived at another door in another dreary Coldstream passageway. The whole town couldn’t have held more than fifteen buildings, and yet Undine’s twists and turns had made it seem like they were traversing half of London. She knocked twice, paused, knocked again and opened the door.
The woman in the leather coat stood at a counter, her back to them, in a heavily curtained room that smelled of strong perfume and burned oatmeal, and Michael realized that even though they’d entered through a different door, they were in the same whorehouse/tea shop he’d been in before.
The woman waved them on without turning, and Undine slipped through a hidden door, pulling Michael behind her. They descended a set of thickly carpeted stairs and a moment later the other woman joined them.
“Is he…one of yours?” the woman asked. She was a Scot with dark hair and an imperious gaze—even more imperious than Undine’s.
“One of her what?” Michael said.
“Colleagues. We use this place as a base. My friend is helping,” Undine said, adding to the woman, “Aye, unfortunately. He’s been recognized.”
“In that?” She tilted her head toward the habit. “I’m not surprised.”
“I didn’t dress him.”
“Dressed myself,” Michael said, holding up his hands proudly. “Have been doing it since I was a lad.”
“Has the bishop been secured?” Undine said.
“Aye. Snoring like a polecat.”
“Bridgewater is making arrangements for a confidential delivery. We don’t know what it is or who it’s for. Someone from his solicitor’s office will serve as the go-between. He’s arriving from London tomorrow.”
“Not if he’s going through Wooler,” the brunette said. “The river’s overrun the banks there, and the ferry’s out. He’ll have to wait there or travel west all the way around to Jedburgh. Either way, it’ll take him at least two more days.”
“Bridgewater will not be pleased,” Undine said with a grim smile.
“Aye. ’Tis a shame.”
“In case anyone cares,” said Michael, who was growing tired of them talking around him, “I was the one who made the discovery regarding the confidential delivery.”
The brunette pursed her lips and gave him a once-over. “He’s a bit older than your usual.”
“An unfortunate necessity,” Undine said. “He’s entirely untested. I make no claims regarding his abilities.”
“Actually,” Michael said affably, “I’m quite well tested. In fact—”
“He needs a disguise, though,” Undine said. “He caused us some trouble in the street.”
“I caused trouble?”
The brunette snagged a shirt hanging on a peg and handed it to Undine. “Will a sark and plaid do?”
“Can you contrive a Scots accent?” Undine asked, finally addressing him directly.
Michael quoted from Robert Burns in his best burr, “‘A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquise, duke, an’ a’ that; But an honest man’s abon his might, Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!’”
Undine looked horrified. “Silence, then. And no, no plaid.”
“I’ll have you know my accent is extremely good.”
The brunette grabbed the knot at his waist and began to loosen the rope, and Undine reached for his wrist. He knew what it was like to have backstage dressers yanking and pulling on his clothes, but not a woman he’d barely met. And definitely not a woman he’d barely met alongside a woman who felt it within her right to pass judgment on the sexual abilities of the entire male world. God knows what she’d make of his—
“Too short,” Undine said definitively, looking at the sark. She lifted Michael’s arm and stretched it across her chest. “We need something longer in the arm and broader in the shoulders.”
His elbow rested in the soft valley between her breasts. He could feel the warmth of her skin. Any words of protest he might have mustered died on his lips.
“Odd,” Undine said, peering into his eyes. “You don’t look that tall.”
He wanted to say he didn’t look that tall because Friar Laurence—his Friar Laurence, at least—was a plump man built close to the ground, and the way he’d walked and stood and gestured were meant subtly to communicate that, but only another actor would understand.
“Stand up straight,” she commanded. “Full height.”
He shook off the role and allowed his body to expand into its usual space.
Her eyes widened, and as they did, her grip slackened. The elegant hand still holding his fell, pulling his arm unconsciously—and torturously—across the plump flesh and rigid nipples. Propriety demanded he separate his arm from her, which he did, but no force on earth would have been able to convince him to release her hand.
“You are quite tall,” she said shocked. The grayish green in her eyes was like fog rolling off a Scottish hill. She could say she wasn’t a Scot all she wanted, but he could see the fiery independence there, that I’ll-have-you-or-not-as-I-choose that resided in the eyes of all Scotswomen. It was nothing like the cool appraisal of an Englishwoman.
“Take off your habit,” she said. “Quickly.”
Reluctantly, he released her hand. She touched the burlap, and he stripped it off, remembering too late he’d left his shirt backstage.
He’d spent most of the summer rebuilding an ancient stone wall on his property, and the ropiness of his arms and brown of his skin showed it.
She seemed to realize she’d been staring and busied herself with the habit, which she’d been clutching.
“You seem to have forgotten your hair shirt, sir,” she said with a mocking smile.
The hair he wished to feel brushing his chest was not from a shirt but twisted tightly in a blond knot at her nape.
“Undine,” the brunette said, trying to catch her friend’s attention.
“I thought even Bankside clerics could afford a sark.”
“Undine.”
That broke the spell. Undine cast her gaze in the direction the brunette was looking, and so did he.
His trousers.
Not breeks. Not trewes. Not even Elizabethan cannions. He was wearing bespoke trousers from a tailor in Savile Row. He’d never had a woman, let alone two, more entranced by the real estate below his belt. It would have been less uncomfortable if he’d been naked.
The brunette shook her head. “Oh, Undine…”
Speechless, Undine looked at the habit and back at his trousers.
“He’s not…from here,” the brunette said in a tone laden with a meaning Michael couldn’t quite unpack.
“I can see that.”
“He’s from—”
“Aye. I can see that too, Abby.”
“How does this keep happening?”
Undine’s eyes cut to his. “You told me you were from Bankside.” The fiery independence had turned into flat-out fire.
“I am from Bankside,” he said.
“You’re a liar.”
Gah. Downgraded. “I didn’t lie. I am from Bankside. You presumed I was from Bankside in your time. Your presumptions are not my responsibility. Your presumptions are—”
“Be quiet,” she said. “I need to think.”
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and a man called down softly, “Mo chridhe, there’s a man up here looking for a priest.”
“He’s here,” Undine said, adding to Michael, “Take off your breeks.”
The man on the stairs said, “I beg your pardon. Did you just say, ‘Take off your breeks’? To whom are you speaking? Should I be coming down?”
“Try to send our visitor away,” Undine called.
Michael strained for a view of the man, who closed the door, grumbling. “Mo chridhe” meant “my heart,” and Michael wondered who would be calling Undine that. He kicked off his sandals and unbuttoned his trousers. “Was that…your brother?” he asked.
The brunette chuckled and Undine silenced her with a look.
“Find him shoes, breeks, and a bigger sark, would you?” Undine said, and Abby scampered off.
“You need to leave here as soon as possible,” Undine said. “The judge is an acquaintance of Bridgewater’s. Go to the Leaping Stag,” she said. “There’ll be a couple there—brown hair and red, deeply in love—it’s quite stomach turning, believe me—and tell them you’re my colleague. They’ll hide you until I can gather the herbs you’ll need to leave and get them to Abby in Coldstream, probably tomorrow.”
Michael extracted himself from his trousers reluctantly. He understood the need to get into a different disguise, but he would have preferred if one of the steps in the transition hadn’t included him standing in front of the naiad in his bright-red Arsenal trunks.
She frowned, a mixture of shock and fascination on her face. “Is that a cannon?”
“Yes. It’s their symbol—the team’s, I mean. Arsenal. They’re a football team.” He found it hard to clarify his thoughts while she examined the design with such intensity.
“Foot…ball?”
“It’s not… It doesn’t have to do with those balls. It’s a sport. The players use a leather ball filled with air. You kick it, you know, with your foot.” He demonstrated a slow-motion kick, but her attention remained undiverted.
“It’s quite large, isn’t it? And red?”
It felt very, very small from Michael’s perspective.
“Tell me,” she said, “do all the men in your time wear drawings of weapons on, er, the coverings for their cocks?”
“No, and we call them trunks.”
“You call your cocks ‘trunks’?” she said, dubious. “Like an elephant’s?”
“No. We call the coverings trunks.”
“Ah. Well, that makes more sense.”
He shifted, trying without success to remove his cannon from the heat of the spotlight. “Maybe I’ve been reading the wrong books, but aren’t women of the eighteenth century supposed to be a little more, well, demure when it comes to cocks—you know, heart pitter-pattering, smelling salts, that sort of thing?”
Undine snorted. “Cocks are like snakes,” she said. “If you don’t learn how to spot the bad ones and immobilize them, you’re not going to last very long in the borderlands.”
“You immobilize snakes, do you?”
“I avoid them entirely.” She gave him an unapologetic look. “Best strategy.”
Abby, returning with an armload of clothes and boots, skidded to a halt when she saw Michael. “Verra eye-catching.”
He tugged the trousers from the articles in her hands and thrust his foot into a leg. The fabric was roughly woven, not nearly as nice as the trousers he’d given up. “It’s a symbol,” he said primly.
“It certainly is.” She turned to Undine. “Remind me to find out more from Duncan.”
“Who’s Duncan?” Michael asked curtly. “Or you, for that matter?”
The brunette’s head rose, and her shoulders went back like the wings of Winged Victory. The room seemed to shrink to half its size.
Undine cleared her throat. “Lady Kerr, please allow me to offer you the acquaintance of Father Kent of Bankside. Father Kent, this is Lady Kerr, chieftess of Clan Kerr.”
His eyes nearly popped out of his head. A clan chieftess? Hell, a clan anything. Clan chiefs had people forsworn to them. They were like gods on earth. Queen Elizabeth in her pink coat and purse had nothing on a Scottish clan chief. He tried to process the different layers of his shock and was still working on a suitable response when he realized Lady Kerr was waiting expectantly.
Sheepishly, he dropped into another bow and immediately realized half of his trousers were still hanging from his hand. Nonetheless, he managed a very courtly flourish.
“Verra bonny, Father. Would you mind telling me how you happened to make Undine’s acquaintance?”
He hopped into the rest of the trousers. “Certainly. It seems she needed a priest to—”
“Try to get Bridgewater to confess,” Undine finished, and gave Michael an iron look.
“Indeed?” said the chieftess. “And were you successful?”
“Yes. No. Well, partly,” Michael said, returning Undine’s look. “There’s a lot more to uncover. A lot more.” Undine didn’t want her friend to know about the wedding. Interesting.
Lady Kerr studied Undine closely, clearly not believing she’d been given the whole story.
“You appear to be a man of action,” Lady Kerr said to Michael. “I would be most appreciative if you were to keep a close eye on my friend. Her fiancé isn’t to be trusted, and she has made the unfortunate decision to take up residence in his home, despite the strenuous objections of her dearest friends.”
Michael felt the tension between the women, but it was the discomfort on Undine’s face that struck him most. “I doubt she wishes to disappoint those who care for her,” he said. “But she has an obligation to do what she thinks she must. I feel certain you, as a clan chieftess, would have some sympathy for that.”
“You’ve been made privy to her plan?” Lady Kerr looked surprised.
“I have not. Well, not all of it.”
“Yet you’re willing to defend it?”
“Let’s just say I know enough of Undine in my short time with her to be sure that while one might question her means, one could never question her objective.”
Lady Kerr looked at Undine. “Well, you certainly have him bamboozled.”
Michael’s face must have shown his surprise because the chieftess grinned.
“You like ‘bamboozled,’ do you?” she said. “Duncan—the man on the stairs—taught me that. I’m glad to have someone to use it on.”
“Duncan, is it?” Michael straightened. “And he’s your…?”
Lady Kerr’s eyes twinkled. “Fiancé. Aye, he is mine. No one else’s.”
Michael held up his hands. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, of course you didn’t. And I can count on you to watch Undine?”
“Absolutely.”
“Though I long desperately to fulfill everyone’s wishes regarding my safety,” Undine said, “I’m sorry to report Father Kent will not be returning to the house with me.”
“Why?” asked Lady Kerr, and he wondered the same.
“First, because he has been identified as a man with a hump. Second, because he has been identified by the same gentleman as a man without a hump. Third, because the gentleman who now knows Kent in both his humped and humpless forms also happens to be the gentleman Kent punched as well as an ally of Bridgewater’s. Fourth—”
“I didn’t punch him,” Michael said, pulling the threadbare sark over his head. “I guided him to the ground with my arm and put my knee on his chest.” He stuffed his feet into the muddy boots Lady Kerr had brought.
“Ooh,” said the chieftess, impressed.
Undine handed him a handkerchief.
The linen had a U embroidered on it as well as a several colorful fish. “What’s this for?”
“Your cheek to begin with. You’ve got mud on your hands from the boot and now it’s on your face. Fourth,” she said, returning to her list, “because he has made his desire to leave clear.”
“Bridgewater?” Lady Kerr asked, with hope writ large.
“No,” Undine said dryly. “Kent.”
“Oh dear. Is that true, Father?”
“Well, yes,” he said, wiping his face. “I mean eventually. But I think I can be of further service to Undine here.”
“I’m afraid your usefulness has been exhausted,” Undine said to Michael, “and I…” Her voice trailed off.
“What?” Michael said.
“And I can’t guarantee your safety,” she said with a touch of honest sadness. “You have to see that. You don’t know Bridgewater as I do, but if word of our doings today reaches him…”
“You will be equally at risk then,” Michael said. “And I can guarantee my own safety.”
“I believe that,” she said, and Lady Kerr made an impressed Hmm. “However, putting outsiders at risk is not in the code I follow.” She extended her hand.
She was cutting him out of whatever this was, and while he had every reason to want to return to the comforts of the twenty-first century, he found himself wanting to do it only after he’d ensured Undine’s safety. He had one piece of leverage.
“Perhaps if your friends knew more about your intentions with Bridgewater, I’d feel better about leaving…”
Whoa! Wrong tack. The regret in Undine’s eyes was replaced by fury, and she withdrew her hand. “Father,” Undine said, “you are—”
“Quite mistaken,” Michael said instantly. He cursed himself for his cravenness, but her hand was so close, and he couldn’t bring himself to give up the chance to hold it, just once.
The fury left as quickly as it had arrived, and Undine extended her hand again.
Michael took it. Her skin was warm and alive. Then he remembered. “I thought you said naiads don’t shake hands.”
“I am only half naiad, sir, and besides, you do, and I am not so set in my ways to pass up the opportunity to meet a friend halfway.”
At this, Lady Kerr snorted aloud, but Michael didn’t care. He had received a naiadan honor and would treasure it always. He lifted Undine’s hand and brushed his lips over her delicate, long fingers. She made a graceful curtsy and met his eyes.
He searched for an appropriate parting sentiment for the woman who had brought him out of his unremarkable life in the twenty-first century and thrust him into intrigues of the borderlands but found nothing suitable in his vocabulary.
“Good-bye, my friend,” he said at last. “Good luck.”
An instant later, Lady Kerr was rushing him down a dark hall, through a low door, and out into the light of the afternoon. The clouds seemed pregnant with rain, but none had fallen yet. He imagined a naiad would enjoy a rain shower. “How will Undine get back to the house?” he asked. “What if Bridgewater still insists on—” He caught himself before he said “marrying her.”
“Insists on what?” Lady Kerr said, eyes narrowed.
“Seeing the priest.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Undine is verra resourceful. If I were you, I’d spend my worrying on looking out for myself. This world can be a treacherous place for a man not used to it.”
“Thank you. I’ll try.”
He turned toward the door, then turned back. “Lady Kerr?”
She’d started for the door. “Aye?”
“I think I should stay. For her safety, you see.”
“Of course,” Lady Kerr said. “Well, I certainly canna suggest you defy Undine’s orders. What sort of friend would I be?” She’d said it with conviction, though the look of amusement in her eyes didn’t seem to gibe with her tone.
“Is she in danger, do you think?” Michael wished he could tell her about the marriage Bridgewater was trying to engineer, but he felt he’d made an unspoken promise to Undine to remain silent and wouldn’t break his vow.
“She is certainly in danger,” Lady Kerr said, “and while I don’t think it’s of being attacked by Bridgewater, she may find it to be something equally startling.”
The amusement on her face grew, and Michael was even more confused.
“’Tis very kind of Undine to offer to return with the herbs tomorrow to ensure you can get home. I have seen others wait considerably longer for their release,” she added. “However, twenty-four hours is a long time to spend with nothing to do. I trust you’ll find a way to fill the time.”
There was no more to be said. Michael bowed and she nodded her good-bye.
He considered his choices. The nerve endings in his palm still vibrated with the memory of Undine’s touch and his lips with the sweetness of her fingers. He lifted his hand to his nose and searched for traces of her clean scent.
“Father Kent?”
He started, having thought Lady Kerr gone.
“The Leaping Stag, aye?” she said. “A couple, brown-haired and red, deeply in love?”
“I remember,” he said. “I remember it all.”
“I’m certain you do.”