His eyes flashed dangerously. “I have been surviving. Keeping my people fed and sheltered whilst my reputation crumbles to dust. ’Tis not so simple as you make it sound.”
“I’m not saying it’s simple. I’m saying it’s fixable.”
“Nothing is fixable!” The words exploded from him with enough force to make the candle flames dance. “The evidence was damning, the trial swift. No one will hear my protests of innocence, no lord will grant me audience. I am dead to the world that once knew me.”
“Okay, first of all, you’re not dead. You’re just having a really, really bad decade.” Rachel stood, moving closer to where he stood by the fire.
“Second, has anyone actually tried to investigate this frame job? Like, properly? With actual detective work instead of just moping around dramatically?”
“Detective work?” He looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head.
“Investigation. Research. Following the money, checking alibis, looking for inconsistencies in testimony.” She waved her hands, warming to the subject. “I may write about food for a living, but I’ve watched every episode of every crime show ever made. I know how this works.”
“You... watch crime? For entertainment?”
“We have very strange hobbies in the future.” She stepped closer, close enough to catch his scent—leather and steel and that warm spice she couldn’t identify. “The point is, I’m good at this. Finding the truth when people are trying to hide it. Spotting the details everyone else misses. It’s the same skill set that lets me figure out when a restaurant is lying about their ingredients or fudging their health inspection scores.”
Tristan stared at her for a long moment, and she could practically hear the gears turning in that medieval brain of his. “You truly believe you could prove my innocence?”
The question was so carefully neutral, so quietly desperate, that it made her chest ache. This proud, strong man, reduced to grasping at straws offered by a woman who’d literally fallen out of the sky into his garden.
“I do,” she said, and realized she meant it. “But it’s going to cost you.”
His expression shuttered. “I have little coin to?—”
“Not money, genius. Room and board. A place to stay while I figure out how to get home. Back to my own time. Protection from your charming friends downstairs who seem convinced I’m going to sprout horns and start hexing the livestock.” She grinned.
“Plus, cooking lessons. Because if you’re half as good as I think you are, I want to learn from you.”
“You would risk your life—your very soul, if Father Clement has his way—to aid a disgraced knight you’ve known for a day?”
“Hey, I’ve made worse decisions. Like that time I agreed to review a sushi restaurant in Topeka. Do you know how far fresh fish has to travel to reach Kansas? It wasn’t pretty.”
Something that might have been amusement flickered in his eyes. “You jest about matters of life and death.”
“Honey, I’m trapped in the Middle Ages wearing clothes that apparently mark me as a harlot, sleeping god knows where, with no coffee, no chocolate, and no indoor plumbing. If I don’t joke about it, I’m going to have a complete breakdown right here on your very atmospheric, disgusting stone floor.”
He studied her face in the firelight, and she felt the weight of his gaze like a physical touch. The silence stretched between them, filled with the crackle of flames and the distant sound of rain against the windows.
“Very well,” he said finally, his voice rough as castle stone. “I will grant you shelter and protection whilst you remain at Greystone. In return, you will endeavor to clear my name of the charges brought against me.”
“Deal.” She stuck out her hand, then realized he probably didn’t know what a handshake was. “It’s a... future custom. To seal bargains.”
Tristan looked at her outstretched hand for a moment, then slowly reached out to take it. His palm was warm and calloused against hers, sending sparks racing up her arm that had nothing to do with medieval magic and everything to do with the way his thumb brushed across her knuckles.
“We have an accord,” he said, and his voice had gone slightly hoarse.
“Accord,” she agreed, trying not to think about how perfectly her hand fit in his, or how the firelight turned his eyes to molten silver, or how this was definitely going to end badly.
But as his fingers tightened around hers and something that might have been hope flickered across his features, Rachel found she didn’t care about sensible choices. She was going to save this brooding medieval chef, prove his innocence, and maybe figure out where she belonged in the process.
Even if it killed her.
Which, given her track record with impulsive decisions and the general mortality rate of the fifteenth century, was a distinct possibility.
“So,” she said, reluctantly pulling her hand free before she did something stupid like wonder what those callused fingers would feel like elsewhere.
“When do we start? And please tell me you have better food than whatever that was they were serving downstairs. Because I have standards, and gruel doesn’t meet them.”
