by Tamara Gill
But as William hung up the phone, and the clock in his study struck eight-thirty, he wasn’t sure he did understand. Luce wasn’t known for her strict adherence to schedules but even she had never been this late.
Promptness was an oft-underrated thing he must remember to speak with her about. For he’d always found his days running much more smoothly when not in an endless rush to catch up with late appointments.
In the meantime, William returned to wondering where she could be. Was she merely unavoidably detained? Or could something more indeed be afoot?
She’d seemed odd the night before. Standoffish. Distracted beyond what he’d have expected a tiff with the headmaster to have caused. There’d been that first odd call from Ruth alerting him to the fact that Lucy had been seen driving through town with a naked man in her Mini—the very idea of which he’d had a good laugh over. But now Ruth was calling again, supposedly with only his best interests at heart, to inform him his future fiancée just spent a considerable amount of money she did not have on an extensive men’s large-sized wardrobe she claimed had been for a student who couldn’t possibly be much over five feet tall.
Leaving the shield of his desk, the desk that had served his ancestors since the very dawn of England, William, no longer in the capacity of being a noble but in that of a mere man—a highly confused man—stood beside the dark window staring across the grounds, wishing he could see all the way to Rose Cottage.
Would he find Lucy there? In the arms of another man?
Or had Ruth finally succumbed to the certain madness so many about town claimed her to already possess?
Sighing, he reached back to his desk and picked up the phone. What was mad was the way he’d allowed the woman’s ravings to consume him. Understandably, Lucy had been upset with Grumsworth. Tonight, due to the absentminded charm he adored in her, she’d no doubt lost track of time.
Normally, he would have trotted down to her cottage, but after last night’s curious behavior he chose to instead grant her privacy—at least for the moment.
After punching her number, by the second ring he’d convinced himself that maybe even her power could have gone out and she wasn’t aware of the time. In a matter of minutes, they’d both laugh about not only her tardiness but this matter with Ruth.
When she hadn’t answered by the fourth ring and then, on the sixth, her jaunty voice mail message claimed her to not be home, he said upon hearing the beep, “Yes, ah, hallo, Luce. William, here. Cook needs to know whether to keep holding dinner, but I’ll tell her to go ahead and serve.” Voice softer, he finished with, “Ring me when you get home, Luce. I’m worried.”
***
“Turn that down!” Lucy said to the prince on her way from the kitchen to the living room.
After escaping Ruth, she’d stopped by the grocer for bean dip, chips, apples, poo-sham and dark beer. She’d also downloaded a few medieval film classics she thought Wolfe might enjoy. Excalibur blaring, she’d thought she heard the phone but figured it must’ve just been some knight’s pealing scream.
The prince leaned forward from where he’d perched on the sofa’s edge, resting his elbows on his knees. The classic King Arthur tale had him all but hypnotized—with the exception of the occasional historical inaccuracy he felt honor bound to point out.
Sipping her light beer, feeling warm and lazy beside the crackling fire, it occurred to Lucy that she was having far more fun watching Wolfe’s reaction to the movie than actually watching it. Not to mention the fact that, as she’d imagined, he looked amazing in just the black silk bottoms of his new pajamas.
“Mmmph—most agreeable,” he said while chewing his latest bite of the bean dip she’d doctored with sour cream, cheddar cheese and salsa before popping it in the microwave.
“Glad you like it,” she said, surprised to find she actually was. She should be upstairs working on her World Biological Conference report but, for the moment anyway, this was much more fun.
He blasted her with a slow, sexy grin that stole her next breath, making the moment no longer just fun but erotic, when on TV she noticed Uther and Egrain getting busy.
“See that?” Wolfe pointed toward the writhing onscreen couple.
Lucy searched for air. “Y-yes.”
“He has not half my skill.”
“Oh?”
“Were you to declare your eternal love for me this moment, fair Miss Lucy Gordon, I would push back this pillowed seat you recline upon and set you before the fire.”
“It’s called a sofa,” she noted, wishing for the strength to break his stare.
“As you wish,” he acquiesced with a gentle nod. “I would shove the so-faa back and then free your breasts of their unattractive binding, and—”
“I-I like this.” Lucy glanced down at the utilitarian white blouse she’d owned for years.
He leaned deep into her personal space, in the process setting off dozens of alarms. When he helped himself to unfastening her blouse’s top button, like a wandering sheep caught in headlights she sat there frozen and just let him. Pushing apart the two halves of her collar, exposing her chest, he splayed his great hand across her fire-warmed skin, the tip of his middle finger searing the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat. Could he feel her heart race? Did he hear her erratic breaths?
Onscreen, the heat had ended, but here, in her living room, there was no such relief.
“This garment you profess to like,” he inched his hand lower on her chest, sliding it boldly into the cup of her simple cotton bra. “I can no longer abide. Take it off.”
“T-take it off?” She gulped.
“Yes. I am no longer amused by watching life on the picture box. After a millennium of virtual death, I am ready to live. To suckle sweet nectar from your breasts. To mount you and ride you, spilling my seed deep within your womb.”
“Whoa. Time out there, big fella.” Finally coming round to her senses, Lucy removed his hand from her breast, then straightened and re-buttoned her shirt. “Haven’t you learned anything from the last disastrous time you spilled your seed?”
“That is in the past,” he waved his hand in royal dismissal. “Now—tonight—you must declare your eternal love. Then, once I have granted your much-deserved bedding, I shall strike out across the land in search of my destiny.”
“And I’m supposed to declare my eternal love for you, be thrilled for your mercy lay, while you fill me with your bionic seed, then wish you on your merry way?”
Expression blank, he said, “I do not understand this bi-on-ic seed?”
“Never mind,” she pushed herself up from the sofa, storming toward the stairs. She’d had it. Had it with his constant innuendoes and sexual banter—even worse, she’d had it with her own stupid longing for the man. With the way her pulse raced and stomach fluttered upon catching just a hint of his wickedly handsome smile.
Honestly, she couldn’t blame the women of his time for falling for him. He was undeniably the hottest guy she’d ever seen, but considering he was also in one heck of a bind and very much needing her pledge of eternal love, she also wouldn’t put it past him to be highly conniving. More than capable of telling her anything she wished to hear if it furthered his cause—namely, keeping his human form!
She’d halfway expected him to follow her upstairs but when he didn’t, far from relief, she felt a damning twinge of regret. And that, more than anything else that had just transpired, made her loathe her foolish gullibility.
Face it, they both wanted something.
He wanted to remain human.
She wanted him transformed back into a frog.
By cowardly dashing to her room to indulge in silly tears, she’d just been outclassed in their latest battle. But, with weeks to go until the next full moon, the real matter at hand wasn’t about winning small erotic squabbles, but the overall war.
***
Still reclining in front of the picture box, Wolfe glanced at the living room ceiling, imagining the wench’s supple m
ovements with each of the floorboards’ creaks and groans.
She was in the bathroom.
Drawing water.
Filling the bathing pool? At this very moment, perfuming her hair with the foamy white poo-sham she had purchased from the market?
As the current focus of the moving picture he was watching was the type of bloody battle he would prefer to forget, and the warriors were not even using weapons that looked anything like the ones he had once wielded, he rested his head against the pillowed seat—so-faa—and closed his eyes, dreaming of her. Lucy Gordon.
Her body was much the same as other women he had known, yet somehow different. Compact. Beneath the ridiculous garment the wench made him wear, his manhood swelled. He shifted to allow himself room.
Women wore such soft garments—not warriors.
If anyone he knew saw him garbed in such an outrageous manner, he would become more maligned than the village idiot.
But therein lay the rub.
They were all dead.
Not just his much-missed brother, Rufus, but his father, friends, even people like Cook who had been old with only one good eye even back when his life had been taken. This wench was now the only person in the whole of the kingdom whom he knew. If he had been on a mission to spy, this might not have been a bad thing but somehow, in this particular case, the notion of having only one friend in all the land did not strike him as good.
Watching with the rage and adrenaline-pumping brutality unfolding on what the wench had called a tee- vee, Wolfe realized he had been going about this all wrong.
Until the wench made her love vow, she was no friend, but his enemy. Why, when he but breathed her name across her lips had the colors of her eyes darkened and her breasts swelled? An act for which in the past he had taken as a sure sign of wanting. Which left him asking, why this constant denial of her body’s desires? To mate was inevitable. Why did she fight it so?
But then he viewed a traitor on the tee-vee, and Wolfe narrowed his eyes. Could the wench not be as simple-minded as he had first believed? While he could not fathom why, could she have reason to want him transformed back into a loathsome frog?
The very thought turned his blood to ice.
No matter her dastardly plan, he was done living in water, constantly on the lookout for predators—even more so than when he had lived in fear of his enemies trying to oust him from his throne.
Was he forever destined to live in fear?
Glancing down at his missing toe, he recalled the day he had allowed a four-legged assassin too close. Wolfe had been happily dozing upon a lily pad, soaking in hot summer sun, when—snap! He had never even seen the jaws that had nearly bitten him in two. Only smelled putrid breath and heard gnashing teeth.
Losing a mere toe had been lucky indeed! Not only had it signaled his survival of the attack but it had jolted him from his lackadaisical existence. For it was that most current brush with death that had led him to notice the wench, her apparent love of pond creatures and, he’d hoped, perhaps even one day her love of him.
To accomplish such a feat of making her love him had seemed easy then, but that had been before making her acquaintance. Before having been formally introduced to that most infuriating stubborn set of her jaw. Or the rising storm clouds forever darkening her eyes.
For alas, he now knew she did not love him.
But, that, as the seasons, would inevitably change.
Come morning, when he once again took up the armaments of war, he would be fighting for not honor, riches or even land, but the ownership of but one woman’s heart and one man’s life—his own.
***
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Lucy listened to the sounds of Wolfe settling in for the night. The creak of his closing door. Then the opening of his door. The repeated click of the bathroom lock. He was fascinated by the mechanics of so many things she took for granted.
Once he’d apparently had his fill of inspecting the lock, there came a series of flushes, then the sink taps being turned on and off, on and off.
Sometimes, as odd as it seemed, she saw the prince not as a man but a little boy, exploring his new world. Finally, came the bouncing creak of his bedsprings and then purely imagined sounds of his clicking off his bedside lamp, emitting a final sigh before shutting his dark eyes for the night.
Only then did she release her own rush of air, for it was only then that, at least for tonight, her angst where he was concerned had come to an end.
Theoretically, that alone should have been enough to allow her access to the gates of sleep, but no. While her shoulders and back ached with exhaustion, her mind reeled.
Grumsworth.
Ruth.
Wolfe.
William. She bolted upright in her bed.
How could she? They’d had dinner plans. At eight o’clock. Because even though he’d said eightish, the duke expected himself and others to always be prompt.
Creeping from her bed, poking her toes into terrycloth house shoes, then slipping on her freshly laundered robe, she crept from her room and padded downstairs. Wolfe, as she’d taught him, had carefully turned off all of the lights—even the TV. Eyeing the blinking voice message on the phone dock that lived on the table beside the back door, she instead headed for her next gen, curious to see if he’d also been listening when she’d taught him to power it down.
Guided by glowing embers radiating from the fire and the cottage’s golden exterior lights, Lucy found the device that allowed her to order most any film or TV program ever made, then enabled it to appear on her television, not only powered off and closed, but nestled neatly in its case.
If only her students did such a great job of applying her lessons.
Her voice mail she approached with trepidation.
Judging by the accusing on-off glow, that time during the movie when she’d been in the kitchen and thought she heard the phone ring, she’d been right.
Eager to get her punishment over with, she pressed the button fast, then crossed her arms, raising her left hand to her mouth, gnawing the tip of her pinky finger.
Her heart lurched when William’s voice flooded the room. At first, he sounded predictably—and understandably put out—but by the end of the recording, he sounded concerned. The fact that she’d caused him even a moment of needless anxiety filled her with shame.
Ring me when you get home, Luce. I’m worried.
“...I’m sorry,” she pressed her hand to the machine holding his voice.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Wench!” The prince bellowed. “Bring more of this curious colored nectar.”
“That would be strawberry-banana-orange juice.” Lucy refilled his glass. “In the future, please feel free to help yourself.”
Bacon strip to his lips, he said, “Yes, but I prefer having my dishes delivered.”
“Yes,” she said, sitting beside him at the dining room table, then snapping open the morning paper. “But I prefer to not be at your constant beck and call.”
“Tell me of this,” he tapped the sheets.
“What? The newspaper?”
“Yes. It looks quite hard to decipher, yet yesterday morning as well, it seemed to hold you in its spell.”
Lowering it, Lucy said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but...don’t you know how to read?”
“Aye. I signed my name when needed.”
“Well, sure, signing your name is good, but I mean reading, as in looking at this headline and telling me what it says.”
Folding the paper to the front page, she folded it again in half, then handed it to him. When he had it in hand, she tapped the headline, Local Bakery Burgled for Bread! “I know our written language must be completely changed from what you remember, but see if you can sound this out.”
“Take that away,” he barked after a good long stare. Attention back on his bacon, he added, “And talk of something else. I find this entire subject upsetting to my digestive efforts.”
Lucy sh
ook her head.
Amazing.
If the guy had lived the rest of his life in the ninth century, he’d have ruled quite a sizable chunk of real estate, yet he didn’t know how to read. Not that such a thing had been all that uncommon back in his day. And, sad but true, it wasn’t even all that uncommon in current times, but while that might be true, it didn’t have to be. Not knowing how to read could be easily enough fixed through time and a genuine willingness to learn.
Pushing aside her own bacon and eggs that she had yet to touch, she asked, “Wolfe?”
“Aye.”
“Would you like to learn to read?”
“Tis unnecessary when spoken words speak ever so much more eloquently than those on the page.”
“Sometimes.” She sipped her still-steaming coffee. “But reading is important.”
Skeptical smile hardly looking convinced, he said, “Name an instance in which it may prove beneficial.”
“Okay...well, take for instance if you wished to go somewhere on an airplane or train. If you couldn’t read, how would you know what travel times were available or how much your ticket cost?”
Eyebrows furrowed, his dark gaze turned menacing. Had she even heard a growl? “I know not of which you speak. Make it plain, wench, or be off with you.”
Blaming his gruff demeanor on pride rather than ill will, Lucy forged ahead, ignoring his comment about her being gone from her very own home—something which if she ever hoped to arrive at school on time, she actually very much needed to do! “Let’s try going at this another way. If you ever had need to, say, travel to Scotland, then—”
“Death to all Scots! Twould never happen.”
“Then you’ll have to just take my word for it. Reading’s important. Everyone should know how.”
He laughed. “Certainly not children?”
“Especially children. That’s what I do—teach children.”
“To read?”
“No. I teach them about science—about trees, animals, insects and flowers—that sort of thing, but I could teach you to read. That is, assuming you wanted to learn.”
