She took his arm with her free arm and led him out, counting her breaths to the front doors. “Tell me about him outside.”
“No, no,” he chuckled, but it sounded stiff. “Just forget it. I had too much to drink tonight.”
She suddenly did not believe him. He did not want to speak of Mr. Simeon any longer. That was fine with her. How could her father believe him when he said he came from the future? Michael was sadly not right in the head.
They walked back to toward house, with Charlotte thanking God that she was getting Michael away from trouble with Preston’s men if they met in the dark. She didn’t want to see Michael get hurt. Although, she thought with a slight smile fixed to her face, it would take many of Preston’s henchmen to beat Michael.
“How are the boys?” he asked her, his handsome face cast in golden light from the lantern.
So, he was finished talking about his other friend, Mr. Simeon, then. “You mean Gerald and William? William was hit with the more serious blow. He was likely hit first.”
She thought she might have underestimated Michael earlier when the young men arrived, and he began asking questions. He was clever, asking things none of them but William were prepared for, as if he had already discovered some truth that would implicate her. What if he caught her one day? What would he do? She could grow closer to him, hopefully making it harder for him to punish her. She would need his mercy because people would always be hungry.
As for tonight, she hated how their evening had ended but she was glad William had made a full recovery.
Still, her night with Michael had been…different. Usually, any man who courted her wanted to see her face or “bask in her loveliness”. Ugh, they bored her until she wanted to start ripping strands of her hair out just to feel something. But Michael did not care about looking at her. He had sat on the other side of a wall and opened up to her about himself as she had to him. It had been thrilling. She wanted to spend more time with him, but she knew she shouldn’t.
“I enjoyed our time together tonight,” she confessed.
“You did?” he asked, looking surprised.
“Aye,” she said, just as surprised. “You did not?”
“Yeah, I did. I’m just surprised you did, too. Usually, a girl likes to be wined and dined, not spoken to from the other side of a wall.”
“Depends on who is speaking to her,” she told him with the barest of smiles when he cut his glance to hers.
“Or to him,” he muttered, taking the lantern from her tired arm and looking forward once again.
“Tell me your story,DetectivePendridge. You do not come from York—or Brittany, do you?”
“I told you,” he said, eyeing the manor house in the moonlight. “You didn’t believe me. What will change now that I also claim to have met a time traveler?”
“Did you truly tell my father that you were a time traveler and he believed you? I want to know the truth, Michael.”
“Why? So you can think less of him for trusting you to me?”
“That, and I never knew my father was so fanciful.”
He finally looked at her fully, and when he did, he smiled. It was like the dawn.
“Are you very sleepy?” she asked, gazing up at him in the lantern light.
“No. Why?”
“I know a place. We could go continue our speaking and perhaps watch the sun rise.”
What was she doing? She had only been so bold with Preston, whom she’d known most of her life. She’d met Michael yesterday! It was too easy to talk to him. She had to be mindful of what she told him. He was not like Preston and her other friends. Besides being a bit mad in the head, he protected the law. There could never be anything between them…well, first of all, because she was going to marry Preston. Someday. If he didn’t marry Amanda. But never mind that. She could not have Michael because he was the enemy. He would put her in a cell if he ever discovered…
“Michael, perhaps we—”
“Okay. Let’s go,” he said, only hesitating for a moment. He waited for her to turn in the direction of the place she knew, then he followed her. She was going. She was taking him to Belmair Hill, taking him to the place she used to come to when she was troubled.
“’Tis not far,” she said, wondering how far gone she was—never mind him!
“I told your father and John the truth,” he continued on the way. “That I received an antique brooch, bequeathed to me by my distant relative, Eleanor Pendridge. I rubbed it and the name Pendragon became clearer on the brooch. I read the name and said it out loud, Pendragon, and then I was here, in England, in the past.”
“When do you say you come from?
