He wanted to laugh, but someone else’s affliction was no laughing matter. He groaned instead. He hadn’t meant to do so as loud as he had. But what the hell was he supposed to think?
He frightened her. She pulled away and tried to slide from the saddle. He didn’t want her to fall so he hooked his arm under hers and lowered her down. He shouldn’t leave her. He should take her.
He didn’t want to coddle a madwoman—and he certainly didn’t want to bring one home.
“Farewell then,” he said and nodded to her.
She said nothing but looked around. She appeared faint. He closed his eyes.
“I don’t belong here,” she sobbed.
He opened his eyes and set them on her. “But here is where you are.”
“No! No. I don’t want to be here because, you see, I know how crappy medieval times were. There’s…there’s no Advil. No antibiotics. My phone—” She looked at him with a whole new horror in her eyes. “My father, my friends.” She began to walk.
He kept his horse at a slow pace beside her. “Are you certain you were not hit over the head, Miss? Your family might not be gone. They might be close by.”
“Look—”
He did, expecting that she might be about to show him how she had done it. How she’d come from the air.
“I know this is difficult to believe. I can’t believe it and it’s happening to me. But I…I got some letter in the mail this morning from a law firm telling me to go to their office in midtown. I got there and it was all very sketchy, but, you know, I went in…”
What in the name of all that was holy was she saying? It couldn’t be a different language. Some words were familiar to him. Some were not. Mail? Office? Sketchy? What did it all mean?
“…and it changed and looked brand new all of a sudden. The air seemed to sparkle and then I was here…on the battlefield.”
Sparkle? What was she saying?
She started up crying again. What was he to do with her? He couldn’t leave her. She was very pleasing to the eyes. Her odd, blue trousers fit her long legs and shapely derriere quite nicely. She wouldn’t last the night with all these Lancasters about. She’d be raped before morning.
“Come on, then, Miss,” he grumbled. He held his hand down to her. She refused it. Very well then. He flicked his reins and rode away.
He was glad she didn’t want to go with him. He’d saved her life on the battlefield. He’d done enough for her.
Still, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from returning to her while he rode. The smell of her, her fear, her sweat, and…a hint of floral. The sight of her sprawled across his lap shook him to his knees. Nothing ever had before. He was glad he was sitting. She was long limbed but weighed little in his arms. Her skin was pale against his tanned fingers. Her hair was dark brown with traces of red. It fell loose around her face, cascading over her shoulders. She wore no adornments or knots and braids. He liked it. He thought of touching it. Her lashes left shadows on her cheeks. Her hose were thick blue fabric with some kind of metal button and a line of tiny silver connecting pieces from her groin to beneath her belly. Curious.
Where had she come from? How was what he saw possible? He didn’t catch her from a side view. He hadn’t blinked. He happened to be looking straight ahead—in her direction when the air changed, and she appeared. He saw her come to being.
He shook his head. Time travel? It was impossible. Laughable. She was mad.
And what were Advil and antibiotics anyway? What did her words mean?
He rode on for another ten minutes. While he went, he told himself that she had to have come from over the hill and he’d missed her. But why would she walk straight onto a battlefield and then become so terrified?
She said she came from the future. Two thousand and nineteen to be exact. He slowed his horse. It was over five hundred years from now. Is that how women clothed themselves in the twenty-first century?
He cursed under his breath for even considering the idea that she was telling the truth.
He spotted a group of men riding toward the direction he’d left her. His blood went cold. What if they came upon her? Mad or not, she’d been through much today. She likely wouldn’t do well fighting off six men.
Muttering an oath, he turned his horse around. He’d saved her once today, and for what? So she could die a short while later?
After half an hour, he realized he couldn’t find her. There was no sign of her.
“Woman!” he called out. He didn’t know her name. Where had she gone? Had another group of men already come upon her? “Woman!” Damn him! What was he doing? Why did he care? He wasn’t the caring type. Perhaps because he saw her come alive in the shimmering speckled air. He didn’t know the reason. He only knew that she’d been through enough today.
“What in blazes is your name?” he said in a lower tone and turned his horse around yet again.