Once Upon a Kiss

by Nora Roberts

  She stared at him. “You’re not wanting to stay Above, are you, Alfred? Because the queen would never forgive me!”

  “Of course not,” he said quickly. “However it’s always nice to be comfortable, don’t you think?”

  Miss Golunka sighed. “I won’t be comfortable until this is over and the prince is safely home again.”

  Another tinkle heralded a new customer. She went out through the curtain and wrapped a cone of flowers for the elderly woman who’d wandered in and stayed to buy. “That will be seven pence, please.”

  “Pence?” The woman laughed. “You mean pounds, surely.”

  “Of course!”

  “Still, very reasonable.”

  After the money changed hands, the woman looked about. The sign on the window read YE OLDE FLOWER SHOPPE, GOLUNKA & PLUNKETT, PROPRIETORS, in faded gold letters.

  “It’s very odd,” the woman said, shaking her head. “I’ve lived in the village my whole life, and I don’t recall there ever being a flower shop here.”

  “And you won’t remember it being here today,” Miss Golunka said and croaked a strange little phrase. The air twinkled briefly.

  The woman was suddenly on her own front doorstep, her arms filled with flowers. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out where she’d gotten them. Her memory wasn’t quite what it used to be lately, what with X-rays and radios and televisions—and now microwaves and cell phones sending signals through the air. It was no wonder a body became forgetful at times.

  “I’ll just go round to the clinic and see Dr. Potter tomorrow,” she said firmly, and went inside to put the blooms in water.

  When the door of the flower shop was locked and the window shuttered for the day, Mr. Plunkett came out of the cooler with a cloud of baby’s breath. “I thought you might like to wear these gypsophilia blossoms in your hair for the ball tonight, Sophie. They’d be most becoming.”

  “Thank you, Alfred.” Miss Golunka took them from him. “I’m not sure if I’ll be attending the ball.”

  “But…but it’s required. And what if the prince should return? You’d want to be present for that, wouldn’t you?”

  “For all the good it would do me I might as well stay here,” Miss Golunka said in a low voice. “In any case, one of us must keep an eye on him in case he needs assistance.”

  Mr. Plunkett made sympathetic noises. “He’s young yet. Give him time. It’s only natural that the prince sows some wild oats before he decides to settle down. You mustn’t hold it against him.”

  She turned away. “It is no business of mine whether the prince falls in love a dozen times—as long as he returns before the Summer Solstice. With, or without, a bride!”

  Frederick came in from the back room, where he’d been reading a battered copy of Wind in the Willows. “Marvelous book,” he told them, setting the volume back on a shelf. “By the by, did one of you take my vial of Spring Fever Powder? I was sure I’d left it right by the carnations.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Mr. Plunkett asked. “I used the last of it up on the posy that Sir Michael purchased for Miss Singleton.”

  Miss Golunka’s eyes popped. “Good heavens,” she exclaimed. “I’d already sprinkled half the vial on it earlier!”

  She clasped her hands to her fine, wide bosom. “Oh, dear. That’s far too much. Especially when there is already such a strong attraction!”

  Mr. Plunkett was so distracted he didn’t even react when a fat fly settled down on a wall nearby. “I’ve never heard of anyone taking so large a dose of it. What do you suppose will happen?”

  She bit her lip. “I suspect that there will be two fairly besotted young people mooning about between Frogsmere and King’s Meadow for the next few days.”

  “You Victorians are so prissy,” Frederick said. “‘Besotted’? ‘Mooning about’?”

  He winked. “That’s not what we called it in my day.”

  Miss Golunka huffed and pushed upon the door leading up to the apartment. A few minutes later they could hear the sound of water running in the old claw-footed tub. “She always does that when she’s distressed,” Frederick said.

  “Yes, there is nothing so soothing as water. Unless it’s water and moonlight.” Mr. Plunkett sighed. “I’m afraid that dear Sophie is not taking this to heart as she ought.”

  Frederick eyed him shrewdly. “I believe she is taking it very much to heart. She’s been in love with the prince from the time she was a tadpole.”

  11

  THE ROAR AND rattle of the bulldozer filled the June air, but Kate was used to it now. That didn’t make it any easier for her to roll out of bed, though. After fortifying herself with a hot shower and scalding hot coffee, she went outside to watch the BBC film crew and archaeological team at work. This was the first official day of filming.

  While the ’dozer stripped off the upper layers of turf in one section of the wide meadow, two men quartered another marked-off area with metal detectors. She saw Michael Bellamy before he saw her. It affected her the same way it did every time they met. A hot rush of eagerness, a giddy little spurt of joy, followed by caution and regret.

  Their relationship hadn’t progressed since the morning when Mrs. Bean had interrupted them. If anything, it was in a strange state of suspended animation. Kate felt the same strong attraction to him she had almost from the beginning, but it was a one-sided effort. Michael was friendly enough. He even seemed to court her good opinion and to go out of his way to be pleasing to her, but there was an invisible line he never crossed.

  She’d resigned herself to nothing more than friendship on his part.

  In the past weeks she’d strolled along the river with him, or joined him at the dig site. He’d invited her to dinner at King’s Meadow twice, once with Alicia Kane, the lead archaeologist, and BBC officials, and another time with his Australian mates and their wives who were visiting England. Kate had taken her cue from him and kept the tone of their meetings cordial and impersonal.

  It was driving her crazy.

  She knew with a woman’s instinct that he was as drawn to her as she was to him. It showed in the light in his eyes when they rested on her, in the touch of his hand on her arm, and the flush of blood beneath his tan when their gazes met. She wondered if he had a girlfriend or lover. It kept her awake nights. Still, when he called to her across the meadow, she found her pulse racing as she waved back.

  He met her at the bottom of the garden. “This should be an interesting day. They’ve decided to give up on the hut circles—nothing but a few potsherds so far—and run a few more test trenches while the cameras are rolling. Either the Roman villa area, or the medieval village.”

  Kate had seen the aerial photos taken earlier in the year, where ditches and walls showed up in lighter or darker areas of turf. The circles of Stone-Age huts were cut through by rectangles indicating the foundations of a Roman villa. Traces of the medieval village overlay both.

  She pointed to the long, low hill that ran north to south at the far end of the meadow. Half of it was covered with trees and thick brush. “I thought they were interested in that long hill. The barrow, Alicia Kane called it. She thinks it’s a burial mound.”

  Michael nodded over at the red-haired archaeologist in charge of the dig.

  “Alicia is excellent at what she does, and I have the utmost respect for her—but believe me when I say that it is nothing more than a midden heap, where generations of Bellamys have thrown out their trash.”

  Alicia heard him and came over. “Even so, there are bound to be interesting items there, since your family has been here forever! I do wish you’d let us have a go at it, Sir Michael. I’m certain there’s a megalithic barrow grave beneath all that vegetation.”

  “There do seem to be an awful lot of frogs around here,” Kate said. “They’re everywhere. I find them in the house from time to time.”

  Michael looked startled. “Don’t kiss them, whatever you do.”

  Alicia Kane cocked her head. “Afr
aid Kate will catch warts, Sir Michael, or that she’ll find a handsome prince and run off with him?”

  Before he could respond, Peter Jones joined them, slapping his baseball cap against his leg. “This is it. We need to make a big find, Sir Michael, or the season will be a bust. Just let us have one crack at a test trench across the end of that barrow.”

  “You’re persistent, Jones, I’ll grant you that. Very well. Keep one group working on the villa site, and have your operator run a test trench across the southern point of it. But if you don’t find anything by day’s end, you’ll give up and leave me in peace about it for the rest of your time here.”

  Kate went along to watch as the ’dozer set to work, delicately peeling layers of turf and soil with its steel blade. “Found something!” The director shouted, and everyone came running over.

  The scrape of shovels was followed by careful digging away with garden trowels. “Looks like a piece of porcelain,” Peter Jones said. They went at it with renewed energy and revealed—a broken washbasin. The let-down was great. Over the next hours they turned up linement bottles, a cast-iron bathtub, two cracked boiler plates, and a case of smashed canning jars.

  “It looks like you’re right,” Alicia Kane said with disappointment. “Nothing here but the detritus of generations of Bellamys.”

  Suddenly a shout went up from the direction of the Roman villa traces. “Something big here!”

  Kate could hear the wild pinging of the metal detectors. Several archaeologists huddled around the spot and one began to trowel off the upper layers. “It’s more than a handful of coins,” Alicia said. “Could be the treasure trove of a Roman legionnaire, buried for safekeeping when he went off to war.”

  “Or a bloody ten-year-old bit of broken plow,” one of her compatriots teased.

  “Bite your bloody tongue!” the director snarled. “They won’t renew our program if that’s the kind of find we turn up.”

  Kate waited eagerly while they worked their way down through the sandy soil. It didn’t take long to unearth the artifacts. First was a leather sack with a rotted drawstring threaded around its neck.

  “Something metallic inside,” one of the men said. “Better let Alicia do the honors.”

  Their chief grinned and reached carefully inside. The pouch contained two glass amulets, a ring of heavily corroded silver, three bronze cloak pins green and fragile with age, and a variety of coins.

  “First century,” one of the archaeologists said.

  They passed the coins around but the jewelry expert took the cloak pins and set them in a special box, while the crew gave opinions on whether their owner had been Roman or Briton.

  Kate held the blackened ring on her palm. The green glass stone in its center was frosted and badly pitted, but she found it amazing and beautiful.

  Michael hunkered down beside her. “You look mesmerized. What thoughts are running through your head?”

  “It’s like reaching through a window in time to touch the past.” She closed her hand over the ring. “Who was its owner?” she said softly. “Why was it hidden? And why didn’t the person who hid the sack and its contents ever come back for it?”

  “Yes.” Michael turned a gold coin over in his hand. “That’s the romance and magic of it. The link to those who lived here centuries ago. I always find myself wondering what their stories were…”

  “…and how they ended,” Kate finished for him.

  Their eyes met and held. He smiled at her in a way that warmed her from head to toe.

  “I’m glad you were here to share this moment with me, Kate.”

  She felt her color rising. “I am, too.”

  He cupped her chin in his hand and gazed down into her eyes. The excited chatter of the BBC crew faded away into a low, background hum. There was nothing but the two of them. They were in total harmony with one another, even their hearts beating in time. Then he leaned down and kissed her.

  It was a long kiss, deep and passionate. Kate felt the need rise inside her and knew it did the same in him. She could tell by his quick intake of breath, the tightness of his arms as they wound around her and pulled her close. If they were alone they’d be tugging at the clothes that separated them, bringing the long weeks of growing tension to the culmination they both wanted.

  He looked down at her, and all the heat of passion that she felt in his kiss was there in his eyes. Mingled curiously with regret. “Ah, Kate. I’ve tried so damned hard not to rush you again and frighten you off!”

  She smiled up at him. “I don’t frighten easily.”

  “And I don’t kiss women in public. But I’m going to do it again.” Sliding his fingers through her shining hair, he lifted her face for a kiss that seared her lips and left her gasping.

  “I suppose,” he murmured in her ear, “it would look a little conspicuous if we suddenly left together.”

  Kate realized she was trembling. “I don’t care.”

  He pulled her into his arms and they kissed again. One of the cameramen cheered. “That’s a quid you owe me, Peter.”

  Kate flushed and Michael released her quickly.

  Peter Jones joined them. “Glad to see you’re enjoying yourself on the dig, Miss Singleton,” he said smoothly. “You weren’t so pleased with us when you first arrived.”

  “I didn’t understand what you were doing that day,” she said. “I do now.”

  “That’s gratifying.” His flicker of a smile was almost a nervous tic. “Then you won’t be upset with me when we run a test trench through the gardens.”

  “My gardens?”

  “That spot where you came flaming down like an avenging angel when we first began working the site,” Jones said, indicating the scarred turf where the bulldozer had plowed through the day after her arrival. “The richest finds will be there, so I’m afraid it will have to go.”

  Kate folded her arms across her chest. “You needn’t be. Surely you have enough places to dig on King’s Meadow property, without encroaching on Frogsmere.”

  The director looked from Kate to Michael. “Er…uh…I believe I’d best leave the explanation to Sir Michael. Got to get back to the job at hand, you know.”

  Jones tipped his baseball cap to her and started away down the slope, shouting something to one of the archaeologists below.

  “He looks,” Kate commented, “like a small boy who’s just batted a ball through his neighbor’s plate-glass window and is making his escape.”

  “Not a bad description,” Michael said wryly.

  “And,” she added, “you’re the one left behind to answer the awkward questions.”

  “Yes. Well.” He rubbed a hand along his jaw. He felt like throttling Peter for forcing this on him.

  “This is damned awkward. We need to talk, Kate, but this isn’t the right time or place. Perhaps we could have dinner together tonight. There’s a little restaurant down the coast that serves wonderful food…”

  Something in his voice had Kate’s instincts on alert: whatever he was going to discuss, she wouldn’t like it. “I think we had better talk it over now.” She regarded him levelly. “Why does Peter feel it’s your permission he needs to dig up my garden?”

  Michael flushed but held his stance. “Because,” he said, “it’s actually my garden. I own all the property from your pond down to the river.”

  She stared at him in astonishment. “That can’t be true.”

  “I’m not in the habit of making up such things. I’d hoped that we wouldn’t have to cover this ground just yet, but perhaps it’s better to get it all out in the open.”

  “This past December, Agatha Culpepper sold off her acreage to me—everything but the house itself and the three acres of park and gardens immediately surrounding it.”

  “No. That’s not possible.” Kate was indignant. “I met with her solicitor before I came down here. Mr. Plunkett said nothing about any property being sold, and he specifically told me that the acreage came with the house.”

  “I�
��m afraid that’s in dispute. Your Mr. Plunkett has reservations regarding the sale of the property—according to him, there’s a question of whether Miss Culpepper could legally split the land off from the house to sell separately.”

  A wash of relief flowed through Kate. “Well, there you are. Mr. Plunkett knows everything about Frogsmere, and he must certainly know the law.”

  Michael frowned. “It would seem so—on the surface. However, his contention goes back to a small phrase written more than three hundred years ago in the last will and testament of Josiah Culpepper. I, on the other hand, have a signed and notarized purchase agreement between myself and Miss Culpepper dated a few months ago. And while I don’t wish to cause you any distress, it’s only fair that you should know I intend to follow through on it.”

  Kate leapt on that. “Then the sale was never completed?”

  “I gave Miss Culpepper the check in good faith. She failed to endorse or deposit it, and it was found among her effects.”

  “Maybe,” Kate suggested, “she’d changed her mind, and intended to return the check to you.”

  “There is no way of knowing either way. In the end it may be up to the courts to decide.”

  She froze. “Is this your way of saying that you intend to sue me?”

  “No. Only that it may require a judge to render a ruling based on interpretation of the law.”

  Kate felt used and betrayed and deeply angry. She was so distraught that she could hardly bear to look at him.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “I haven’t handled this very well.”

  Her eyes were hard as diamonds. “Why didn’t you explain it to me that first morning, when I came charging out of the house?”

  “I expected that you knew.” Michael shrugged. “When I realized you didn’t, I thought it wiser not to bring it up just then. It was a mistake on my part and I feel badly that you’re upset, Kate.”

  “Upset is too mild a word for what I’m feeling: Now I know why you asked if I intended to sell Frogsmere! You’re not content with just the land—you want the house, too!”