He smiled down at her. “Is this the cause of your fear? That perhaps I was angered?”
“No. When you were gone, I thought maybe you’d walked in front of a bus or a train. I was afraid of your being hurt.”
“Do I appear to have no pia mater?”
“Huh?”
“Brain. Do I seem stupid to you?”
“No, of course not. You just don’t know how our modern world works, that’s all.”
“Oh? Who is wet and who is dry?”
“Both of us are wet, since you continue carrying me,” she said smugly.
“For all your knowledge, I have found what we need to know, and tomorrow we ride to Goshawk.”
“How did you find out anything and from whom? Those women in there? Did you kiss it out of them?”
“Are you jealous, Montgomery?”
“No, Stafford, I am not.” That statement proved that the Pinocchio theory was false. Her nose didn’t grow at all. (She checked to make sure.) “What did you find out?”
“Dickie Harewood owns Goshawk.”
“But didn’t he marry your mother? Is he as old as you?”
“Beware, or I will show you how old I am.” He shifted her in his arms. “Am I feeding you too much?”
“It’s more likely you’re weak from flirting with all the women. It saps a man’s strength, you know.”
“Mine has not been impaired. Now, I was telling you?”
“That Dickie Harewood still owns Goshawk.”
“Yes, on the morrow I shall see him. What is a weekend?”
“It’s the end of the workweek when everyone gets off. And you can’t just go riding up to some lord’s house. I hope you’re not thinking of inviting yourself for the weekend.”
“The workers get off? But no one seems to work at all. I see no farmers in the fields, no one plowing. People now shop and drive cars.”
“We have a forty-hour workweek and tractors. Nicholas, you’re not answering me. What are you planning to do? You really can’t tell this man Harewood you’re from the sixteenth century. You can’t tell anyone that, even women in bars.” She tugged at his collar. “You’ve ruined that shirt. Lipstick never comes out.”
Grinning, he shifted her again. “You have on none of this lipstick.”
She moved her head away from him. “Don’t start that again. Now, tell me about Goshawk Hall.”
“The Harewood family owns it still. They come for the end . . .”
“Weekend.”
“Aye, the weekend, and—” He gave Dougless a sideways look. “Arabella is there.”
“Arabella? What does the twentieth-century Arabella have to do with anything?”
“My Arabella was Dickie Harewood’s daughter, and there seems to be a Dickie Harewood again at Goshawk hall, and he again has a daughter named Arabella who is the same age as my Arabella was when we—”
“Spare me,” Dougless said, then looked at him in silence for a moment. The papers recently found, another Arabella, and another Dickie. It was almost as though history were repeating itself. How odd, she thought.