by Cready, Gwyn
Steve paused with the chip halfway to his mouth. “Okay, there’s a question I don’t get asked very often.”
“I’m sorry. I’m kind of distracted by this thing at the library.”
His brows went up. “Involving a gun from the seventeen hundreds?”
“It’s just . . .” She realized the worry wasn’t going to stop, nor was the guilt. Had he been shot? And who else would suffer without her intervention? “Steve, I’m really sorry, but I think I need to go back to the library.”
“ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT me to take you home?” Steve turned the wheel and eased the car onto Main. “I’m not a creep. I swear, I’ll just let you off and say good night.”
“I’m sorry,” Panna repeated. “I know all I’ve done since I met you tonight is apologize, but you really are a nice guy.”
“Look, it’s not easy losing a spouse. I know. My sister’s a widow. Life stuck a pretty crappy fortune in your fortune cookie. You should have all the time you need to come to a place where you’re comfortable with dating, you know what I mean?”
She watched the gilded domes of the St. Peter and St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church glide by. “I’m going to be honest. I didn’t want to go out with you. I cried tonight at the library. But that’s not what this is about. You’re a lot nicer than I expected.”
“I’m thinking about that for my epitaph.”
She laughed. “I know I’m not saying this very well. What I mean is, this isn’t about you. It’s about a friend who’s in trouble. I—I—might be able to help him is all.”
He turned on Broadway at PaPa J’s restaurant and started up the long rise of Beechwood to the library. “That’s a good instinct, Panna. There’s one thing I’ve learned as a cop—you gotta follow your instincts.” He pulled up to the columned entrance and opened his door.
“No, no. You don’t need to let me out.” She extended her hand. “I know it’s been a crappy evening, but I really appreciate you understanding.”
He held her hand for a moment. “Don’t cry about me, okay, Panna? No one should have to cry. I’ll call you again. If you don’t want to go out, just tell me. No harm, no foul.”
It had been a long time since a man had made her feel this at ease, and her eyes filled. “Thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek and popped out, not daring to look back until she heard the car pull away and she was safely inside.
Jesus, you’re a mess.
She swiped at her eyes and walked in a wide arc to keep her distance from the triangular door beneath the stairs, as if an arm from the past might shoot out, catch her by the foot, and drag her back. She flipped on the lights and felt her heart warm as the high ceiling, grand oval desk, and soaring hearth came into view. To Panna, there was something eternally comforting about this space. She did her best thinking here and had often come here in the late evenings during Charlie’s last months, after he’d fallen asleep, to find the strength to carry on.
She dropped her purse on the desk and walked to the front of the statue. In the still marble she looked for a reflection of the man and found it in the wide shoulders, the proud bearing, the aquiline nose. Only the eyes, with their dead stare, seemed unfamiliar to her.
“John Bridgewater, Viscount Adderly. Hero of the Battle of Ramillies.”
She was embarrassed to say she didn’t know the exact year of the Battle of Ramillies. She had looked it up once, to memorize the details of the man’s exploits, but had failed to file that key fact away, more intent on Queen Anne’s description of him as a “handsome man in the fullness of life.”
That he was.
She sat down at the computer and pulled up Wikipedia. She had been in 1706, probably late summer. There was a chance she’d discover the Battle of Ramillies had been in 1708 or 1709 or 1718 or some year that would prove he hadn’t been hurt or killed by that shot and that no harm had come to him because of the note that she hadn’t delivered.
“The Battle of Ramillies, part of the War of Spanish Succession, was fought in Ramillies, present day Waloon-Brabant, Belgium, on May 23, 1706,” she read, dejected. Scanning further, she found, “Decorated officers included Captain John Hay, Colonel Peter Brinfield (killed in action), and Colonel John Bridgewater.”
There was nothing more on Bridgewater in the article, so she Googled “Colonel John Bridgewater” and came up with three references, the same three she had found the first time she looked him up years ago. One was simply of a list of English officers under the Duke of Marlborough during the twenty years he’d masterminded England’s military fortunes in Europe. There were three Bridgewaters, but only one with the asterisk indicating he had been decorated. One was a short account of Bridgewater’s heroism in battle. He had made three separate runs through a line of French musket and cannon fire to bring back wounded soldiers from his company. The French had nicknamed him le Fantôme Rouge—the Red Ghost.
The last was an excerpt from a note Queen Anne had written at the time to one of her ladies-in-waiting. The note talked of a whole range of things, and the historian who had excerpted it had described it as “effusive girl talk,” which brought a scowl to Panna’s face, but the part that had made Panna first fall in love with Bridgewater—
Warmth rushed across her cheeks. It was one thing to say you’d fallen in love with a statue or an amorphous war hero from the pages of Google. It was quite another to say it about a living, breathing man you had met. She needed to watch herself.
Nonetheless, her fingers tingled as she read what Queen Anne had written to her correspondent so long ago.
I can understand why you couldn’t stop smiling during our dinner last night, my dear. Viscount Adderly is a handsome man in the fullness of life. I do believe he has the finest calves I have ever seen displayed under my table. He is, of course, the heir of the Bridgewater title, and with that would come a good deal of gold as well as a good deal of responsibility—the lords Bridgewater have anchored the defense of the borderlands for several centuries. Could you live so far away from me, my dear, and forgo our friendship? Perhaps he is, as a wicked friend of ours might say, a better candidate for a more short-term “London marriage.”
Panna wasn’t exactly sure what a London marriage was, but she thought she had a pretty good idea.
Then it struck her that Viscount Adderly was not a real nobleman’s title—at least, not for him. Queen Anne’s mention of the Bridgewater title had reminded Panna that the oldest son of a noblemen used one of his father’s other titles as a courtesy title until his father passed away and the official title came into his hands. Panna had read enough Regency-era literature to know Viscount Adderly was a courtesy title. The Earl of Bridgewater was the real title— his father’s title.
She looked at the statue. “John Bridgewater, Viscount Adderly. Hero of the Battle of Ramillies.” She rested her chin on her palm, trying to fight off the feeling of unease that was coming over her. The Bridgewater descendant had commissioned this statue at the turn of the twentieth century, long after John Bridgewater had died. He would certainly have listed John Bridgewater’s final title, wouldn’t he?
Panna’s heart began to pound. The only reason that could explain why the Bridgewater descendent would list his forebear under a courtesy title rather than the official one was that John Bridgewater had died before his father had a chance to pass the title of earl on to him.
Panna took the note from her pocket. How many people were depending on him and, therefore, her?
The morally right path was clear. There was no way to avoid it. She had to get the note to Clare.
Damn it, why did a kiss have to lead to such complications? Why did the rest of the eighteenth-century world have to intrude?
She felt no call to heroism, no knowledge of spy craft or warfare except for that she had read in the novels of John le Carré or books like Catch-22, The Red Badge of Courage, and Cold Mountain. Bridgewater couldn’t have chosen a less able coconspirator. Hell, any Nintendo-playing teenager wo
uld have made a better ally.
Should she bring a gun? She didn’t own one, and there certainly wasn’t one at the library. She didn’t have time to find one in any case. What could she bring? Was there anything here that would give her some advantage? She looked around at the carrels and bookshelves and scanners and jars of pens and pencils. Not a lot here that would scare off an angry English soldier, although she had once broken up a fight in which one teenage girl plunged a sharpened pencil right into the hand of another.
She reached for the knot in her hair, to confirm that the pencils were properly sharpened, and was surprised to discover instead the ponytail Bridgewater had tied into place with a ribbon. She thought of the look on his face after he’d loosened her hair, and a frisson of pleasure went up her spine. Unwilling to undo this remnant of their time together, Panna grabbed a sharpened pencil and slipped it into her pocket instead.
Was that it? Was that the only weapon she would take on her mission?
Opening the desk drawer, she found a box cutter, which she put beside the pencil, and was just reaching for a small pair of scissors when the jangle of her cell phone made her jump.
She fished it out of her purse and looked at the display. It was Marie. She hit ANSWER.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Fine. I’m so sorry I spoiled the evening.”
“My fault,” Marie said. “I shouldn’t have rushed you into something with Steve. He’s—”
“Actually, he’s great.”
“Really?” she said, her voice filled with such joy, one would have thought Panna had told her they were sharing a winning lottery ticket. Panna was touched by how invested in her happiness Marie was.
“Really,” Panna said. “A keeper. I just, um, have this other thing on my mind.”
“Charlie?” The happiness receded.
“Actually, no, believe it or not.” Panna realized she had hardly thought of Charlie at all that night. She suspected Charlie would have found that a very good thing. “It has to do with another friend of mine who’s in trouble.”
“Oh. Something serious?”
“I think. Say, if you were going to fight in a war in the borderlands of Scotland in the eighteenth century, what’s the most important weapon you’d take with you?”
“Are you doing Second Life now?”
“No, this is something else. Sort of a what-if game? If you were going to travel through time to fight in a war in the borderlands of Scotland in 1706, what’s one thing would you take with you?”
“Well, that’s simple. A book on Scottish military history.”
Panna blinked. Of course! Nothing would be more valuable! “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Truth, justice, and the American way.”
Panna laughed. “Thank you for understanding, Marie.”
“Good luck with your friend.”
Panna hung up and dove onto the keyboard. She hated to use Wikipedia, but she didn’t have time to find and read every related book. She scanned the sections on Scottish military history and the reign of Queen Anne. What she came away with was a clear sense that Scotland was doomed to be swallowed whole by England and a superficial understanding of the key battles that followed Ramillies—not to mention an affirmation that George I followed Anne in the English line of monarchs. She dared not print any of it out for fear it would fall into the wrong hands.
So there it was, she thought, laying out the items on the desktop. Her arsenal. A box cutter, a sharpened pencil, and about a dozen paragraphs from Wikipedia filed into her brain. Her version of a bell, book, and candle. Would the magic they evoked be as powerful?
She was just about to get up when a sentimental tug brought her fingers back to the keyboard to type “Big Dipper.” The stars Bridgewater had pointed out, evidently called Mizar and Alcor, had been the first binary, or two-star, system ever discovered. But Bridgewater was wrong. The stars do not circle one another, slowly falling into one another’s path. They are nearly six trillion miles apart and never get any closer.
The notion made her sad. Bridgewater had been so pleased by the idea of a paired star. And she had, too— especially since part of his pleasure seemed to have come from the association he was making between the stars and them. But there was nothing to be done about it, just as there was nothing to be done about the fact that no matter what her feelings for Bridgewater were, there would always be three centuries standing between them.
She tucked her purse out of sight under the desk, picked up Bridgewater’s note for Clare, grabbed her weapons, and headed toward the triangular door.
TEN
The Ruins Outside Castle MacIver, 1706
Panna had been prepared to escape down Bridgewater’s secret stairway and across the rubble that, she assumed, was all that remained of that part of the castle after the fire Bridgewater had mentioned. What she hadn’t been prepared for when she’d emerged in the chapel and poked her head into the hall was finding Bridgewater’s library abandoned and wrecked. Several bookcases had been smashed, and books lay in heaps on the floor. The desk drawers had been opened, their contents scattered across the rug.
She had no idea where Bridgewater was, but she hoped he was safe. A lot had happened in the hour since she’d left him.
He’d said to follow the river for a mile after the inn to a house in the shadow of two oaks. She could see the water ahead of her, its blue-black surface spangled with the light of the moon. But, of course, the river stretched in two directions. Panna assumed the inn was in the little town to the west and set out in that direction.
The townspeople who were out seemed to pay her little mind. The town ended as quickly as it had begun, and at the inn, a heavy-browed building at the edge of town called the Bowness Arms, Panna began to pace out a mile.
Halfway there, she noticed a man behind her walking the same path. She considered running, but where? She thought she saw Clare’s house ahead, but she was still a good five minutes away.
The man increased his pace, and Panna’s pulse began to quicken. Surreptitiously, she moved the note from her pocket to the inside of her bodice. The next time she looked over her shoulder, the man had halved the distance between them.
Her heart beat harder. Had he followed her from the castle? The inn? Did he know her connection to Bridgewater? And where was Bridgewater? Had he been captured? Killed? Would the delivery of the note make any difference now?
The man was nearly on her heels. Panna was a decent runner—every year she ran in Carnegie’s 5K race in honor of fallen police and firemen—but she was also a woman who didn’t like to be intimidated.
She dug her heels in—literally—pulled the box cutter from her pocket, and slid the blade into place.
The man, barrel-chested and sporting a full black beard, did not alter his pace. He approached her like a slow-moving freight train, moving in a direct line for her. A jolt of electricity tore through her chest.
“Put the knife away, lassie,” he said as he passed her. “I’m Clare. If you have come from my master, you are safe with me.”
She exhaled, relieved, and ran to catch up with him. “You’re Clare. I thought—” The look on the man’s face stopped her.
“You thought what?”
She shifted. “Where I come from, Clare is often”—always, she wanted to say—“a woman’s name.”
“There have been men who’ve said that to me.” He gave her a grim smile. “But usually no more than once.”
He started down the road again and she ran to catch up. “You mentioned your master. Where is he? Is he safe?”
Clare stopped again and eyed her. “The man’s a cat. He’ll land safely. Which is not to say he doesn’t lose a bit of tail now and then.” Walking again, he said, “You’re a new one.”
“A new . . .”
“Whore.”
“I—” Oh, what was the point? And how many whores had Bridgewater aligned with, anyway?
“I’m Clare Jenkins. Who are you?”
“Wait. We’re almost at the house.”
A small stone structure with a thatched roof, trim shutters, and a stoop lay just off the path. A horse stood saddled under one of the oaks, and candlelight in the windows suggested inhabitants in addition to Clare. A black-and-white dog trotted out to say hello.
Clare rubbed the dog’s ears and knocked on the door— three taps followed by a pause and another tap. “You’re not from around here, then?”
Before Panna had a chance to answer, a curvy redhead of thirty or so, wearing a dressing gown and little else, opened the door. She looked at her guests and, without uttering a word, poked her head out to scan the path. Satisfied that no one was following, she invited them in with a jerk of her head.
The main room was small, and three doors led off of it. The space had been furnished with a table and chairs, a couple of benches next to the hearth, and an impressive collection of pistols and long guns bolted to the wall. The dog sighed and stretched out in front of the unlit fire.
“This is Miss Kennedy,” Clare said to the redhead. Almost immediately, one of the doors opened, and Panna found herself the object of interest of a blonde and a brunette, each as attractive as the redhead and similarly clad.
She was pretty sure she had figured out what sort of house this was.
“I’m Aphrodite,” the redhead said. “And this is Athena and Artemis,” she added, pointing first to her dark-haired companion and then the light-haired one.
Interesting theme, though I suppose it beats Scary, Posh, and Ginger, Panna thought, shaking hands with each.
Clare nodded at Aphrodite, who placed a jug and two cups on the table. “Would you care to sit?” he said to Panna.
She took a chair as Clare filled the mugs. She sipped tentatively and was grateful to discover it was a crisp, woodsy ale. She felt the note with her fingertips but wanted some answers first. “I am most concerned about your master. Are you aware he’s being held?”
