His Lover from Long Ago: A Time Travel Romance Page 6

  “Yours, sir? But the marriage offer to Lady Vivien was posted in Bristol. You can’t change that now.”

  Lady Vivien. The woman he’d spent three years pirating for.

  He’d forgotten her again.

  “I’m well aware of that,” he lied. “But as captain, I’m responsible for anyone I pull out of the sea.”

  “Right, sir. She’s your ward. When I’m asked, I’ll be sure to explain that the Lady Kayna is the captain’s ward.”

  “How very politic of you. Ward is the term I should use when we put into port, is it?” Griffin let go of the bandage to slap Terrence on the shoulder, feeling brotherly toward the brother of his former captain. “I have not been on deck this morning. What’s our position?”

  “We’re rounding Tintagel, sir.”

  “Tintagel. Port Quin is coming up, or Port Isaac. I’ll ask the bosun which has the most taverns.”

  “Tintagel.” Kayna repeated, coming out the chair abruptly. Gone was that sad expression. She pointed to the window. “Tintagel?”

  “Yes. We’re passing Tintagel now.”

  “Kayna et Tintagel.” She pointed at her chest. “Kayna et Tintagel.”

  It couldn’t be. The exotic language, the strange blue tunic she wore—she couldn’t be from somewhere as mundane as Tintagel. But it made sense geographically, given where they’d found her. She might have been in a small boat that got caught in a current which dragged her deep into the Bristol Channel.

  Griffin went to the wall that held the speaking tube that ran directly up to the wheel above. “Ahoy!” He gave orders to slow the ship, then held out his hand to get his coat back from Terrence. Kayna was already dressed, such as it was. Her long white shift was covered by something like a floor-length blue apron, fastened at one shoulder by a brooch of some Celtic style. It was odd as dresses went, but at least she would not be on deck in a red satin robe that would blow open in the wind.

  When he held out his arm to escort her, she only frowned at his elbow and walked briskly around him to the door.

  “Tintagel.” She said the word as a demand, her color high, her bearing as regal and demanding as it had been when she’d faced down the lecherous crew.

  Griffin decided he far preferred this Kayna over the pale and shocked one. He picked up her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm.

  “Let us go and see your home, Lady Kayna. I will return you, safe and sound.”

  Successfully returning a woman lost at sea should feel like a victory. The hollow feeling of loss settled in his chest instead.

  Chapter Six

  Kayna’s heart pounded as she climbed the steep and shallow steps to the highest deck of the ship. Her gaze was greedily fixed on the land. They stood near a large wooden wheel with spindled handles, but even that inexplicable object could not hold her attention for more than a moment. There, in the near distance, was a familiar outcropping of land, and there the cliff that they’d once ridden to for a royal picnic. Home. Now that it was almost here, she ached for it.

  She would have to report that she’d failed in her quest. The tale of her adventure would begin with the news of Arthur’s death. Travel by sea was so much faster than land that no messenger could have beaten her from Avalon to Tintagel overnight. Kayna would be the one to tell the queen that her husband was dead.

  She swallowed. It would be the hardest duty, but a fitting penance for raising the queen’s hopes in the first place. She would be punished as well for losing the ruby, the last of Merlin’s magic.

  Even that sober realization could not dampen Kayna’s spirits entirely. She longed for the familiar faces of the court. Soon—she’d be home soon—but the ship had slowed greatly now, and the men on the main deck were readying the anchor to stop her completely. A longboat was being hoisted with ropes and pulleys. Kayna would be rowed to shore in a longboat of a sleek design that would interest everyone greatly.

  She would come ashore escorted by the wealthiest of warriors, a gryphon who commanded a hundred men, an entire army, on a single ship. Such pride was a sin—Kayna felt her cheeks redden—but as she returned with her powerful, handsome escort, all of Camelot would turn out to stare in wonder.

  Not wonder. Terror.

  They would be right to be afraid, for the gryphon had pistols that could cause great damage. Kayna did not know what other unimagined weapons were on board, but she had no doubt the commanding man at her side could use them at will.

  Kayna did not fear him. He kept her hand tucked in his arm, and turned to block the worst of the wind from buffeting her. He would not attack her home.

  The people of Camelot would not know this. They’d been invaded so many times, and this ship was unlike any they’d ever seen. It was not Saxon or Pict or Gallic, but none would wait to find out who it was. They would fire upon the longboat with flaming arrows. Kayna was bringing Captain into danger.

  She clutched his arm tightly, and tried to come up with the words to warn him, but he pointed to the land and said, “Arthur’s castle.”

  Arthur?

  Captain was pointing at the top of a cliff where stones were set in the clear shape of a building, many times the height of a man. Much of it had fallen or been destroyed, but it didn’t look like a Roman building. It looked like the kind of fortress a Briton would build, but one made of stone instead of timber. Or rather, it looked like it had once been a fortress. It had crumbled into disrepair. She’d never seen it before.

  “Not Tintagel,” she said, and she held onto the gryphon’s sleeve with both hands, suddenly sick to her stomach, as if Merlin were playing one of his games.

  “Yes, that’s Tintagel. Kayna, what’s wrong?”

  This wasn’t Tintagel, but the ship was nearing the familiar cove, and the cliffs were recognizable. The slate was the right shade of gray and the grass was its usual green, but there were no thatched roofs, no smoke plumes from the cooking fires, no people at all. Camelot’s fortress at Tintagel was gone.

  Captain spoke to her, but she didn’t catch a single word. He handed her a device of yet more metal, a tube that expanded with a series of clicks into one long tube. He wanted her to hold it to her eye.

  She jolted away from it, turning her face and squeezing her eyes shut. Her ears were still ringing from the last explosion.

  “It’s not a pistol,” he said, and he held it up to his own eye. Then he handed it to her once more. She looked through it. Unprepared for the magic, she dropped it as if it burned.

  Captain caught the metal tube before it hit the deck. This time, he kept a hand on it as she raised it to her eye. The land was suddenly so close she could touch it. She took her eye away and blinked at the distant cliff, then looked through the tube once more.

  The stone building was so close, she could clearly see it was old. This was no Roman building from her grandparents’ days, pilfered for its stone in recent years. This was a truly ancient ruin, one that had to be hundreds of years old.

  One that hadn’t existed three days ago.

  Her throat began to close. Men could not destroy a fortress, build a new one out of stone, then have that one crumble away. Not in three days.

  She turned her face away from the metal magic and put her hand to her throat. She could not breathe.

  “Kayna,” the gryphon said.

  Kayna of Tintagel, she wanted to shout, but there was no Tintagel. Uther Pendragon’s tall log tower, the one she’d scaled as a child, no longer existed. The great hall, so large that a wall inside had divided Guinevere’s chamber from the general space, was gone without a trace. So was Guinevere.

  “Guinevere,” she cried, grabbing the rail of the ship, screaming her aunt’s name across the ocean to the empty cliff. “Arthur! Merlin!”

  But there was no answer, there would never be an answer, because they were all gone, everyone in the world was gone, and her throat was closing and she could not breathe.

  “Is she awake yet, sir?”

  Does she look awake? Griffin w
anted to snarl at Terrence, but he kept his anger leashed. He would not turn on a boy who’d recently lost his brother just as Kayna had lost her...Guinevere. And Arthur. And Merlin.

  It was not possible that she grieved for the legendary characters of Camelot. Still, her cry at the sight of the old castle had been the cry of a person who’d lost her entire family in one stroke. Every man on the ship had recognized her wail as one of loss. Their hostility had turned to pity at her keening.

  Poor mite. Lost her family at sea, she did. We came upon her just after their ship sank, hit by that lightning, most like. The men who’d feared a mermaid, then lusted after a maiden, then drawn pistols on a woman who’d shot their captain, now wanted to adopt the poor orphan they’d netted out of the ocean.

  They’d doffed their hats as he’d carried Kayna into the cabin and laid her once more on his bed. Shutting himself in with her, he’d unfastened the brooch and pulled the blue tunic down her body, much more gently than she’d kicked it off herself that first night. She slept now in her white shift, looking as serene as an angel among the sensual furs.

  Terrence set a goblet on the desk. “The cook warmed some wine for her. He says it’s good for the blood when you’re in distress.”

  Griffin grunted an acknowledgment. The crew were still sympathetic, then. Griffin hoped this current attitude stuck for a while.

  “And the cook sent a mug of wine up for you, too, sir.”

  Griffin shot him a dark look. “You drink it. Your distress is far more recent than mine.”

  But there had been a time when Griffin’s loss had been new. There’d been such a time for everyone on the ship. Men didn’t become pirates after a cozy life of familial prosperity; they risked their lives only when they had nothing left to lose. All of them had, at some point, lost everything dear to them. When Kayna had cried in grief, they’d remembered their own pain.

  So had Griffin. Kayna’s grief made his fresh once more. Raw.

  Griffin’s loss had come by letter. He’d been a sailing master’s mate in the British navy, not yet disgusted by the fact that he was doing his master’s job while the master drank his way across the Atlantic. He’d still had hope, because a man could still make his fortune in the navy, although it wasn’t as easy as it had been during the last war. With money, he could marry into the right family. He could even be knighted, and his whole family would prosper when he became Sir Dennehay.

  But after a month docked in Boston, a letter had caught up with his ship. All the Dennehays were dead, felled within ten days of each other by a putrid fever. Griffin was the last of his family. He’d been the last for two months, only he hadn’t known it before receiving the letter.

  Kayna slept. He would not wake her. She would only remember that whatever she’d expected to find at Tintagel had not been there. Griffin stood and grabbed the warm mug of wine, handed Terrence the goblet. After one hearty swig, he set the mug on the brazier. “The rest is for her. Finish yours, then go and tell the cook the lady still sleeps, but the captain thanks him. Go.”

  Once the door shut, Griffin paced the cabin, the quarters more spacious than he’d had a right to ever expect to occupy, for his money had ceased to exist along with his family. After grieving his way back to England on his frigate, he’d been informed on the first day in Portsmouth that a nobleman’s second son desired his position. Unless Dennehay’s family could come up with more money to match the nobleman’s, Griffin would be demoted to a lesser ship.

  He had nothing—no family, no money. His mother had spent everything to launch his quest for a great life. She’d paid for an education that was perhaps above him, outfitted him as a gentleman, and mortgaged their home to purchase his commission on the frigate. She’d had such faith in a future Sir Dennehay.

  He’d been a desperate man during the admiral’s welcome-home ball that evening. The Lady Vivien had arranged an introduction for herself, intrigued by Griffin’s anger at the world. Her interest meant Griffin still had something, after all: he had himself. His person could still be enough to attract a titled woman. Although he no longer had a family who would benefit from it, the last Dennehay could still become Sir Dennehay.

  When the demotion to the smaller ship was made official, he’d vowed to Lady Vivien that he would earn his knighthood through brave deeds at sea. He would ask her father for her hand once he had a title.

  I already have a title, she’d said, as he’d retied the laces of her gown. Knighthoods are cheap, but a lady can never be too rich. A Mr. Dennehay who can shower me with jewels is ever so much more marriageable than a Sir Dennehay who cannot.

  And so, Griffin had joined the crew of the Redemption. Jonas Black had accepted his pledge, one made on a mirror and pistol in this very cabin, the cabin that now appeared to be the only home for a woman from the sea.

  Griffin touched Kayna’s hand. Her fingers closed around his in her restless sleep, an unconscious trust that pierced his heart.

  Griffin would wait at her bedside. She would not wake alone, in sadness, to an empty cabin. When people were hit by grief, they could do stupid things.

  He’d done a very stupid thing in his grief. He’d pursued Lady Vivien single-mindedly, thinking marriage to her would replace everything he’d lost: his family, his money, his career. When his grief had abated, he’d never stopped to test the tides and adjust course. Only days ago, he’d hired a messenger in Bristol to deliver his third marriage offer. In it, he’d announced his captaincy as a privateer for the Crown. He’d listed the jewels his wife would be showered with. The document was binding. He had no doubt Vivien would accept him.

  The messenger had left Bristol, and then the Redemption had plucked a woman out of the sea. It did not matter if Kayna fascinated him. It did not matter if he admired her courage or quick thinking or naked beauty. He would be stuck with Lady Vivien for the rest of his life.

  He felt a new kind of grief, not for the family he’d lost, but for the future he could not have with the woman from the sea.

  The city was hideous.

  Captain pointed and called it Port Isaac. Kayna called it terrifying. The buildings were perilously tall, three and four levels high. Each one would dwarf the log lookout tower Uther Pendragon had built before Arthur had been born, the one that Kayna had scaled as a child, the one that no longer existed.

  Kayna stood on the deck of the ship and tried to make her mind accept that what she was seeing really existed. It had to be real; she never could have imagined this. These new buildings stood side by side without a blade of grass between them, the unbroken row of them winding from the harbor to wrap around the hill beyond.

  The ship was at anchor in the harbor, one of many ships of different sizes. Scores of longboats carried people and cargo to the shore, swarming from ship to shore to ship like ants busy at a mound. There were so many people, as if all the people at each one of Camelot’s fortresses had been pushed together in this one place.

  As Kayna gripped the railing, Captain left the ship with most of his men. Although he wore sword and pistol at his waist, no fighting commenced when the longboat reached the quay. People just kept walking this way and that, although it seemed as if the men on shore gave Captain space as he walked. He looked a little more dangerous than they did, more physical, although his kingly clothes were not much different than theirs.

  Every man wore a hat, either broad-brimmed or three-cornered. Every man’s trousers ended at the knee, with tight, white leg coverings below, and their tunics ended at the knee as well. Like Captain’s, the tunics were fitted tightly in the sleeves and chest, but they ended in a display of extravagant material, pleated and tucked, which swirled when they turned around. Coats, that was the word. Long coats, decorated with columns of round buttons that wasted precious metal.

  Coat was such a useless vocabulary word when what she needed to learn were the words for time: day, season, year. Century. Millennium. How much time had passed while she’d floated in the ocean, gazing at the lightning?
It had felt like ten minutes. She feared it had been ten centuries.

  The lightning, the ruby, the sorceress—which one had been responsible for such a powerful magic? Perhaps it had taken all three. She would never again experience all three together. She would never return to her time.

  “I am lost.” She said the words softly to herself in her own language. She needed to hear the language of King Arthur, the one that no one now spoke. “I am lost forever in the future.”

  She clung to the railing tightly. What was a notha to do in this future? There were not many women on the shore, but they were easy to spot in their bizarre clothing. From the waist down, their gowns were inexplicably huge. The women looked as if their hips were three times as wide as their shoulders.

  Kayna looked down at her blue tunic. Even if it hadn’t been stretched out of shape and faded by saltwater, its warm wool would have looked like no more than a horse’s blanket next to the cloth that made these gowns, with their patterns of flowers and birds in every color one might find in a rainbow. Guinevere’s finest clothing, with its embroidery and fur trim, could not equal these garments. Guinevere would look like a pauper here.

  No, she wouldn’t. Guinevere carried herself with authority and dignity and grace. She could have walked down the road past all the tall buildings. People would still have gotten out of her way, deferring to her regal presence.

  Guinevere would not have cowered on the ship as Kayna was doing.

  Dear Lord, I cannot cry any more today.

  Kayna sniffed back her tears as the sun began to set. The queen had taught her to stand as if the crown of her head were being pulled toward Heaven by a silver thread. Kayna practiced now, standing as still as a statue, never flinching as her unkempt hair whipped her face painfully in the ocean breeze. Time passed and the sky turned black. She kept her chin up as she watched the busy anthill on the shore, the people clad in impractical garments bustling from north to south or south to north, as if it mattered into which building they escaped for the night. As if it mattered, when their town, too, would one day be erased by time.