by Tara Rose
“No. I think the reports are false. We didn’t find as much as a bent twig. I don’t know what it is. Something is different tonight.”
Something different—good or bad—would be a welcome change. Jarrett’s life was in such a rut he wasn’t sure most days whether it was worth it to get out of bed.
“I think another woman from the other world has crossed over today.”
Jarrett glanced over at Colton. “Wishful thinking on your part.” The other world was an alternate universe where the people lived a hectic, fast-paced life with something called computers that controlled everything they did from their environment to how they obtained food.
As far as their sorcerers had been able to discern, the women who traveled to their world from this other one didn’t travel through time, only through a wormhole that allowed passage from one universe to another. It was advanced physics that Jarrett didn’t understand or particularly care to.
“It’s not wishful thinking,” said Colton.
“She’s not out there.”
“Who?”
“Your perfect woman.”
When the women came here, they thought they were back in their own time because the way they lived in this world was apparently the way people in the other world had lived during the Middle Ages, as they called it. Except for the fact that they had electricity. That always confounded the women for some reason.
“My perfect woman?”
He gave Colton a sympathetic look. “Please. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve described her often enough. But she doesn’t exist. Not even over there.”
Apparently the people from this other world hadn’t found out how to use electricity until approximately two hundred years ago. Coincidentally, that was also when the secret of the portraits that served as portals had been discovered by the sorcerers here. Jarrett had once asked a stargazer if the two events were connected, but he hadn’t been able to give him a definitive answer.
“I suppose I should be like you then?” asked Colton. “Content to seduce the servant girls?”
Jarrett chuckled. “They’re willing and ready. What more do you need?”
“You’re cold.”
“No, I’m jaded. Our politics have rendered it nearly impossible for us to have a relationship with a woman that isn’t bound by contract or design. And as for the women from this other world, they aren’t here by choice.”
Jarrett had spoken with the women before, and learned as much about their world as he cared to. Because he’d also heard more than one of them say how this world should be more advanced by now. Jarrett imagined that depended on your definition of advanced. If it meant having a mechanical being control everything you did, he’d take the life he now led, thank you very much.
“How do you know that? They all say the same thing. They felt compelled to study the paintings until more of the picture revealed itself, and then they fell through them.”
“Which sounds so plausible.”
“What other explanation would you offer? They all say the same thing, without talking to each other or being prompted by anyone.”
Colton spoke the truth, but that wasn’t all they said. According to the women from the other world, the people here shouldn’t have servants, peasants, kings, or queens. They should live in modern homes, not castles, or the stone and brick homes most of the peasants had built with their own hands.
They should have something called automobiles for transportation, and horses should only be ridden for recreation. They should have computers and other gadgets whose names Jarrett could never remember, because they had already discovered electricity.
Jarrett didn’t know about all that, and he wasn’t aware that one had to discover something that had always been there to use. Their description of life and the things they thought were important confused him. It also made him shake his head in wonder that someone would be so arrogant as to dictate to an entire society how they thought the people in it should live.
It was one of the reasons he wasn’t jumping at the chance to choose one of these women for a sexual partner. It was his birthright as a prince to do so, but he’d do it only if he didn’t have to listen to her tell him how he and the others should be living their lives by now, as if they’d missed something monumentally important along the way.
“Did you hear what I said?” asked Colton.
Jarrett nodded. “Yes. Okay. Fine. They reach our world through the paintings. They’re still prisoners here once they arrive. We use them for sex.”
The portals through which the women entered their world were a series of erotic oil paintings discovered roughly two hundred years ago. They hung in a wide hallway inside the castle, and their sorcerers and stargazers said the bloodline from which Jarrett, Colton, and most of their various cousins were all descended held the key to the magick which allowed these crossings to take place.
Their sorcerers believed a spell had been placed on King Reginald, giving him power over women. All women, not only those in their world. Reginald had been a crafty old devil, and he was said to have seduced every female who came near him, but he never found true love. He didn’t want it. He only wanted to wear himself out with sex.
The answers weren’t entirely clear yet, but somehow Reginald had also had a spell cast on the paintings themselves. They were said to be portraits of the women he’d seduced, but there were artists in the kingdom producing more of them. And the secret that no one had been able to clarify for Jarrett was that the paintings done now held the same kind of magick as the ones discovered years ago, and that were currently hanging inside the castle.
Their sorcerers believed the princes themselves, because they were each originally descended from Reginald, had the same spell on them, and were able to infuse the new portraits with the same magick.
It all sounded like a far-fetched explanation to Jarrett, but he had to admit that the portraits working the way they did couldn’t be explained any other way. At least not yet.
“Not all of us use them only for sex.”
Colton’s remark pulled Jarrett back to the present. What he said was true. Some of the women had stayed and become mates to two or more of their cousins, uncles, and other male family members. But the same politics and ancient curses that allowed this also prevented the princes of Ashdown from seeking mates from among their own nobility, or even the peasant women. The history behind these rules was convoluted and cruel. Even Colton wouldn’t argue with that.
It was also the reason he and Colton were out riding at sunset, checking on the integrity of a fourteen-foot-tall brick wall that stretched from the Great Lake to the north, all the way to the Wastelands in the south, and kept a permanent barrier between Ashdown and Enfield. The feud between the two kingdoms went back over three thousand years.
The feud began when a woman from Ashdown spurned a king from Enfield, and he’d forced one of his sorcerers to curse all the Ashdown women. Unless they took a husband from Enfield, instead of from their own people, they became barren from the moment they first tried to conceive. This king also made it law that no Enfield woman could marry a man from Ashdown. He wanted the kingdoms permanently separated. Consequently, the men of Ashdown turned to their neighbor in the east—Wythmail.
But the rulers in Wythmail had soon tired of the Ashdown princes forcing their women into bearing their children in order to keep the bloodlines in Ashdown from dying out, and that in turn had led to the current state of arranged marriages, contracts, and so many rules in place that one needed a team of barristers simply to have sex with a woman from Wythmail, let alone marry her.
Colton pointed toward the castle. “There’s a light on in the room outside the hall of portraits. I was right.”
“So you were.” Jarrett admired the way Colton could feel such changes in the air. He’d never had that experience. All he felt right now was weariness and hopelessness. For all his bravado and arrogance when he dismissed his trysts with the servant girls as nothing mo
re than a way to pass the time, he wanted the same thing Colton did. A woman who would love him and want him for the person he was, not merely for what he could give her in terms of a title and privileges.
But he also didn’t believe either of them would find that by forcing a frightened woman from another world into their beds.
They turned their horses over to the stable hands, then made their way to the hall of portraits. Sedgewick, Colton’s father and current head of the Council, was waiting for them outside the room where they’d noticed the light. “We’ve had some excitement.”
“What could be more exciting than searching for nonexistent spies from Enfield?” asked Jarrett.
“How about another woman from the other world crossing over less than an hour ago?”
“I told him one had done so,” said Colton.
Sedgewick pointed. “She’s in there. No one has seen her yet. You two are the first.”
“I’m getting something to eat,” said Jarrett. “Let me know if she’s the one.”
“Don’t embarrass your father,” said Sedgewick, his voice hard.
Jarrett turned on him. “What does that mean?”
Sedgewick leaned closer. “The servants are beginning to gossip about you. You’re far more interested in the serving maids than in honoring your birthright.”
“That’s not a crime yet, is it?”
“No, but it does bring into question your loyalty to our ways.”
They were surrounded by servants. They were constantly surrounded by servants, but this wasn’t a conversation Jarrett wanted repeated. He hissed in Sedgewick’s ear. “You know how I feel about politics and rules.”
“I know, and so does your father. But your particular views are beginning to be noticed by others.”
Jarrett and Sedgewick locked gazes, and only because Jarrett felt dozens of eyes on him did he finally follow Sedgewick and Colton inside the room. The woman sat on a sofa, knees drawn up, head bowed, and her gaze on the floor. She’d been given an afghan as a wrap, which made Jarrett wonder what she wore underneath it. Their clothing was far more revealing than anything their own women wore.
She lifted her head when she heard them enter the room, and Jarrett’s heart gave a strange lurch at the intelligence and curiosity in her dark eyes. She was stunning. Shoulder-length dark hair and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. But it wasn’t only her looks. He’d been with beautiful women before. It was her aura. Vulnerable, but with a strength underneath that stirred him to his core.
This wasn’t a woman who needed rescuing, or who would cower in terror at her current predicament. She met his gaze without fear and without the arrogance or amusement he’d seen on some of their faces. And also…dare he hope to believe it? She found him attractive. That was certainly a good start.
He glanced toward his second cousin, and it became obvious Colton was equally taken with the newcomer. That didn’t surprise Jarrett. It was his own reaction that left him feeling unsettled. And now his damn dick was as hard as a rock. Hellfire.
This had never happened to him before. It was his birthright to claim her, as it was Colton’s as well. But he didn’t want to scare the poor girl out of her wits. A willing partner was far more fun in bed than one he had spent time persuading. And she wasn’t a servant girl. He’d best remember that.
“What do you want to do?” asked Colton.
His face was full of hope, and while Jarrett registered that emotion, he was too busy trying to keep up with the thoughts racing through his mind to give Colton’s feelings more than a passing acknowledgment.
Colton could simply claim her, and Jarrett would go on about his business. But he’d also be haunted all night with images of the fun Colton was having that he could have been part of. He and Colton had shared a woman in bed before. That wasn’t what had him so off-kilter. It was the girl’s presence. It unnerved him, but called to him at the same time. Was there some significance to that? Or was it simply that this woman touched a part of him that he’d thought long dead?
He motioned Colton toward a corner of the room where they would have more privacy, although he knew some of the servants now crowded into the room might overhear them regardless. They had eyes and ears like hawks. He leaned close and lowered his voice to a whisper. “No forcing her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. We treat her with respect or I won’t do this.”
Colton practically panted like a dog in heat. “Agreed.”
“And we let her sleep tonight. She looks exhausted.”
Colton’s face registered disappointment, but then he nodded. “You’re right. We’ve talked about this before. Taking one of them straight to our beds before they even understand what happened to them or where they are. It’s not right.”
“I can’t help wondering how I’d cope with such a shock. We can talk to her in the morning and then proceed with claiming our birthright.” Jarrett didn’t want to wait any more than he knew Colton did, but it was the right thing to do.
This woman wasn’t a maid who would lift her skirt for him in a flash, simply because he’d flirted with her. She was different. Jarrett wanted to know her on a deeper level. Since he’d never felt that way, he decided to trust his gut this time instead of his cock.
Chapter Three
The man with darker hair nodded toward the one who had introduced himself to Abigail as Sedgewick, and then both men who had come into the room a moment ago approached her. The one with the darker hair held out his hand. “Come with us.”
Abigail stared at his hand. Nothing that had happened since she’d had the horrible sensation of falling made sense. Not the identical portrait she’d caught a quick glimpse of when she’d stood up, not the men who had hurried toward her, dressed like they belonged in the seventeenth century, and definitely not the officious Sedgewick, who had introduced himself as head of the Council, whatever the hell that meant. She hadn’t known whether to laugh at him or run away from him.
But this…this drop-dead gorgeous man holding out his hand made sense. She had no idea why, but looking into eyes the color of green peridot made her feel safe and protected. It was also crazy. To take his hand and follow him anywhere was dangerous. All she wanted to do was find her way back to her condo. And then she was tossing that painting out into the street.
“We won’t hurt you.”
We. And before that he’d said come with us. So she was meant to accompany both him and the other man. Where? And why? She wasn’t in the habit of doing things like that, no matter how good-looking the guys were. She didn’t even open the door all the way when a UPS delivery person was standing on her front step.
There was no question they were gorgeous. The one with the unusual colored eyes had dark hair with just a touch of gray at the temples. He screamed dominant and sexy. The other man had brown hair, also with some gray, and deep blue eyes. His presence also suggested dominance, along with humor and kindness.
“Come along,” said the other man. “Jarrett speaks the truth. We will not harm you.”
Both voices held a note of command, but not cruelty. “Who are you?” she asked. If she was going to follow two strange men to an unknown place, she at least wanted to know their names.
“I am Colton, son of Sedgewick. Will you tell us your name?”
This sexy man was Sedgewick’s son? He must be adopted. “Abigail. Abigail Dawson.”
“And I’m Jarrett, son of Atheron.” His face took on an expression of annoyance as he glanced toward the ring of people around them. The others in the room eyed the trio like vultures ready to swoop in for the kill. What the hell did they expect to happen?
Jarrett leaned close, and she caught a whiff of sandalwood. He whispered in her ear. “You will be more comfortable away from prying eyes. We will answer all your questions. I promise.”
She swallowed hard as she glanced at the slight stubble on his face. An image of rubbing her nipples across it flitted through her mind, and she had to avert her gaze. What the fuck was go
ing on here? Where was she?
This can’t be real!
But his touch was real enough as she finally took his outstretched hand. It sent the same tiny spark up her arm as touching the painting had done. She rose from the sofa, trying to keep the afghan wrapped around her as she did so. Not that there was anything wrong with her tank top and shorts but she didn’t feel comfortable showing that much skin in a group of strangers. Her robe must have fallen off when she…
What the hell had she done? How had she landed here?
Colton repositioned the afghan around her shoulders as Jarrett closed his hand around hers. She didn’t glance at anyone as she walked out of the room and into a dim, cool hallway with the pair.
Jarrett glanced down at her feet. “We will find you footwear first.” He motioned to one of the men who’d followed them out of the room, and he scurried off. Were they his servants? “The stone floors are always cold, even in the summer.”
“Where am I?”
He cut his gaze toward the others. “I’ll answer your questions soon.”
If these men were his servants, why was he so reluctant to talk in front of them? When the man returned with an ornate pair of slippers, she put them on, and then continued walking next to Colton. Jarrett still held her hand. The others followed, and she wondered if they ever left the pair alone.
She was in a castle, or at least she thought she was, but it was more similar to the way Hollywood portrayed them than to the way they actually looked. Tapestries lined the walls, and the lights set into the stone walls at regular intervals were electric. She’d swear to it.
Which means you haven’t traveled back in time to the Middle Ages.
She didn’t detect a damp or moldy smell in the hallway, or any other odors she imagined were common in an era when people bathed once a month if they bathed at all, and used chamber pots. When they led her down a sweeping staircase that opened into a large room filled with sofas, chairs, tables, and lamps, she caught sight of a bathroom complete with tub, sink, and toilet through a partially open door at the far end of the room.
