The rain continued to pound on the roof of the hall, and large puddles formed below the steps. John de Chandos leaned against the doorjamb, staring out at the dark and dismal night.

It was late, well past vespers. He'd been to confession, for all the good it might have done his soul. The quiet hour had come and as he could not sleep, he paced the great hall listening to the sounds of a stormy night.

Chandos was deeply troubled. For three days he'd scoured the land between Bramber and the coast, searching the gullies and crevices for his missing wife, certain that she had long since fled England. He'd ordered the search to appease his sons. The minute Bella had turned up missing, Sir John had believed she had fled to her father in Calais.

When her horse had been found wandering in a wheat field adjacent to Cissbury Ring, her sons had raised an alarm.

Robin had reasoned their mother would have gone straight to Winchelsea where grandfather Saint Pierre attended market regularly. Geoffrey argued his Maman would never have left her Arabian mare in England. It went without saying that Isabella cared more for her palfrey than her sons.

Since he knew his sons reasoning was true, John had ordered the search. Until the moment he'd looked down into that blasphemous pit, Chandos had not dreamed his wife would be found in England. What he'd felt then and moments later when he discovered the scandalous manner of her dress was righteous anger, blind rage and indignant fury.

He had ordered Robin out of the pit so that he alone would be there to strip away the gold and jewels some unnamed lover had gifted upon her. Her bare arms and legs had been an affront to his morality he'd not ever believed possible in a Christian country.

In those moments when he was alone in that pit with her, removing her heathen garments from her body, had he allowed even the slightest fragment of his temper lose from his iron-willed control, he would have crushed his wife's slender throat between his own bare hands. Had she dared to defy him at the well, that single thread holding his temper at bay would have snapped.

That was the reason he'd sought confession this eve. For twice this same day, he had envisioned his hands circling her throat. In the scriptures that he tried to live his life by, St. Matthew had written "he who so much as looks with l.u.s.t at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart." John acknowledged that he had contemplated the mortal sin of murder, but it shamed him to envision such a cowardly means out of his troubles.

When the bloodl.u.s.t had raged the strongest in his veins, his wife had submitted to the dousing of four buckets of well water. Shivering, cold and humbled, she had said not one word against him. Not until he had wrapped her in the rough blanket had she lifted her eyes to his.

Those beautiful orbs had been so full of fear, hurt and confusion, that they had cut him to the bone. Dear G.o.d, he prayed, I once loved this woman.

Her beauty continued to stir his deepest l.u.s.t. It astounded him that she had the power to wound him after all these years.

When she had leaned against his naked chest in her tub, he had burned to possess her with a desire more consuming than any he had felt since becoming a man. The war of his own emotions regarding his wife was a hard and bitter cross for a man such as he to bear.

Few souls remained in the hall, dicing and drinking. Sir James and loyal old Neville, Chandos himself, and Owain, the Welsh bard. A motley crew at best. Abruptly, Chandos spun in the doorway and strode across the hall. At the high board Chandos reached for his horn. Owain picked up his harp and inquired pleasantly, "A song, my lord, to while away the time?"

"Nay." John dismissed the bard with a wave of his hand. Neville stood as the bard did, excusing himself to post his watch. The old French knight and the Welsh bard departed together, leaving Chandos alone with James Graham.

Sir John dropped to a vacant seat, reached for the pitcher of ale and filled his empty horn. Graham refused more ale, asking, "Do you wish to be alone?"

"Nay." Chandos shook his head. "G.o.d must have some purpose in mind by giving me this cross to bear though I cannot fathom it."

"You speak of Isabel?" Graham pushed his tankard broodingly back and forth across a puddle on the table.

"Aye."

James cleared his throat. "I thought her dead.

I mean, when I looked in that pit, she seemed to have no life left inside her. I did not realize she was alive until I saw her standing before you at the well."

"You think it would be better if she had died?" John de Chandos asked grimly.

"Oh, aye, I suppose I thought that. She's managed to make life a h.e.l.l on earth for most of us here," Graham said without charity. "The little respect I do grant Isabel is beholden to my friendship to you, Chandos."

"She is still my wife."

"Oh, aye, and she is a danger to your sons. What kind of woman vows to slay her own child?" James Graham lifted his large Nordic head and met Chandos' dark gaze head on. "Only a mad one, my friend."

"Aye." Chandos nodded. "And therein G.o.d asks us to forgive madness and treat those so afflicted with pity and kindness." He tossed his ale down his throat and cast the empty horn onto the trestle. "Sleep well, my friend."

Chandos stood, tall, straight and powerful as if by force of his will he could remove from his frame the strain that threatened to cripple him.

Graham rose to his own feet. He tasted the bitterness permeating this house and felt his friend's hurt so deeply, that his hands clenched impotently at his sides. What could any man do when saddled by a mad wife?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR.

-6.

The door burst open suddenly. Bella jumped to her feet with the quill in hand, swallowing a jolt of fear only to feel absolutely foolish when only the cat sauntered in.

Too relieved for words, she sank back onto the seat and realized she'd splattered ink all over the floor. Horrified that the beautiful oak planks would be stained, Bella looked about for something to clean with and couldn't think of what to use. There wasn't any tissue or paper toweling or handy bottle of 409 to spray at the blotches. She had no idea where any rags were kept. All she could think to use was a piece of parchment.

She knelt and scrubbed at the splatters with a leaf of vellum. The ink had a strong viscosity, the parchment, an absorbancy factor in the minus fifty range. The stain only smeared.

Resourcefully, she thought of using the inside hem of her dark overdress to remove the ink from the floor before the stain set. As she concentrated on that task, her nose twitched, catching the scent of something different--woodsy and potent. She lifted her head to look at the door, then nearly jumped out of her skin.

Sir John stood in the wide open doorway.

"What are you doing, Bella?" he demanded.

"Cleaning ink that I spilled," Bella offered lamely, feeling the fool to be caught on her knees, scrubbing up a mess in so shameful a manner as to use the inside hem of a dress she had been given to wear. Someone else's dress at that.

Lord Chandos' dark head c.o.c.ked to one side as if puzzled. "Why didn't you call for a servant?"

"Ah, the door was locked." Bella staggered awkwardly to her feet, embarra.s.sed.

"Nay, 'twas not locked."

"Yes, it was so," Bella insisted. "There's some guy out there opening the door every time somebody wants in."

"They are footmen, that's their job, to open doors. Did I order a lock put on the door, no one would come in and you certainly would not go out."

Now, it was Bella's turn to c.o.c.k her head to one side in puzzlement over Sir John's reply. She approached him with some caution, saying, "But I definitely heard a lock click."

"Clique?" he echoed. "What do your friends have to do with the door being locked or not?"

"No, the sound, click, like..." Bella made the sound with her tongue imitating the sound of a lock closing. He gave her a strange look, as though she babbled nonsense. Bella stepped past him and peered out the door.

The two footmen stood there as blank-faced as store mannequins. While she had head and shoulders out the door, she took a second look at the well-lighted solar. It was as spa.r.s.ely furnished as the king's bedchamber.

Stepping back, she focused all of her attention on the tall knight. Again, she found him strikingly handsome in a troubling way with strongly contrasted features, black hair and blue eyes that a woman like her could melt under the intensity of. He was much too tall, muscular and powerful to suit her. He certainly had not shrunk any since their last encounter.

If anything, in the gloom of the king's bedroom, he looked more sinister than he had when she'd opened her eyes in his arms that morning. It certainly didn't help her opinion of him that he came armed with both a broadsword and dirk strapped to his hips to visit her.

The dark mustache snaking around his mouth reaffirmed her first impression of him as a dangerous man. That thought was compounded by the fact that she knew only clean-shaven men--in the Twentieth Century. It was clearly up to her to elicit from him any sort of good will that he might be willing to extend to her.

"All right, I was wrong. The door wasn't locked. Don't those men have something else to do? Don't they have wives who would like to have them home for the night? I think I'm capable of answering the door myself."

"Then dismiss them," he said curtly. "They are your servants."

"They are?" Bella blinked. She stuck her head back out the door and waved her hands as if the men were pigeons she could shoo away. "You can go now. Good night."

Sir John poked his head out past her and said the magic words in French. Both men bowed from the waist to him, then obeyed the command.

As best she could without violating body s.p.a.ce, Bella shooed Sir John out of her way and pulled the one door of the two that was open, closed. A hasp under the handle clanked. She found a tongue cleverly hidden by the cleft-shaped handle. The hasp raised easily. Feeling chagrinned, Bella offered Sir John a slight smile of apology. Okay, she'd made a misjudgment. She could admit when she was wrong. That didn't mean she was going to trust him.

Bella left the door open partway. She wanted an avenue of escape open as she confronted the man she believed responsible for driving his wife to commit suicide. "I suppose there's a reason for your visit. What do you want?"

That question brought another peculiar look to his face. He moved across the chamber with panther-like grace, so soundlessly that she looked to his feet to discern what kind of footwear he wore. It was a soft boot, unfamiliar to her.

Again, he was dressed in somber black, closely fitted hose on his long, muscular legs and a cotte hardie--a simple long-sleeved tunic--draping to the middle of his thighs. Only two points of his appearance were relieved of any color other than austere black; a blue garter tied just above his left knee and the gilt-handled sword buckled at his left side.

He extended his hand to the heavy chair Bella had sat in while meeting the children and twisted it away from the hearth. Before he sat, he unbuckled his sword belt and laid both belt and sword on the gleaming floor.

He gestured toward the harp stool which was the only other seating device in this room besides the dainty chair at the escritoire. "Sit down, Bella. 'Tis time you and I discussed the events of this past week." So he wanted to talk, did he? Bella lifted one brow as well as her chin. Maybe talking was a good idea. She moved to the stool and sat on its tufted cushion seat, dropped her hands over one another to hide the smears of ink, and waited for him to be seated and begin.

"You look very beautiful."

"I don't look different?" Bella was not fishing for compliments. She certainly did not want to mislead him into thinking she would appreciate any from him. "Now that I've had a bath, do you still think I am your wife?"

"'Twas never in any doubt, bath or otherwise."

Her shoulders slumped. She had hoped, that now that she was relieved of the sc.u.m and filth her journey through time, he would not mistake her for his Lady Bella. She shivered, thinking of that other woman with her same features, but not the same imperfections. Surely, he was more astute than the servant or his three sons.

Bella recalled an incident that happened when Iain was a toddler. One of her mother's sisters returned home for a visit. Aunt Beatrix, like Bella, had married a city man. They lived in Houston, far from the tightly knit Alsatian community in Castroville.

It was Iain's first time to meet Aunt Beatrix. She and Bella's mother were sitting side by side on the porch swing. Iain came bounding up the steps from the car, shouting, "Grammy, Grammy," with the energetic relish that only a child can give that call. Then he came to a full stop, looking at the two grammies, staring from face to face. He could not tell his grandmother and her older sister apart.

Enjoying this small game, the sisters were quiet as knickknacks on a whatnot shelf while Iain clambered onto the swing, stepping all over them, taking off gla.s.ses and touching their weathered, careworn, yet so, so similar faces. For all that the two sisters had lived separate lives, one on a farm all her life, the other in a city with more luxuries and comforts, they were very much alike.

Iain finally clasped one face between his pudgy paws and said, "You're not my Gramma, she is!"

Bella's mother laughed and told him, "Oh, yes, I am your Gramma. She's your Auntie Bea."

Then Iain laughed and laughed, because when he heard his Great-aunt speak, he vowed he'd never have been fooled for a minute. "Faces and wrinkles could be the same," he said with a wiseness beyond his years, "but you can't fool ears."

So Bella looked at this stranger in the high-backed chair opposite her and wished in her heart of hearts that he didn't believe only the proof of his eyes. If he allowed himself to think that she was his wife, then he must have a very powerful motive for believing that Isabel de Chandos was still alive. She felt pity for him.

She knew his Bella was dead, though proving that escaped her. It went beyond a mere feeling. In the Well of Souls, she and Isabel Chandos had pa.s.sed one another--an exchange of sorts. Dying was the last thing Bella wanted. But Sir John's wife had sought the end of her life. Such things, Bella felt were inexplicable, as unexplainable as women's intuition. It existed, but she couldn't prove it.

So Bella tried to look at Sir John beyond the surface. A bath had also worked wonders on him. His thick head of dark hair was brushed back from his striking, square-jawed face, falling in handsome waves to his shoulders. The heavy stubble of the afternoon was gone, his cheeks and jaw were clean shaven. Shed of his terrifying armor he didn't look nearly so sinister, but his aura of authority did not make him approachable.

"Where have you been for the last six days, Bella?"

Now, that was question Bella most wanted to answer. She laced her fingers together, looked him squarely in the eye and said, "Six days ago, Sir John Chandos, I was in San Antonio, Texas, in the United States of America. That is a country a very long way from England. My name is Sarah Isabel Saint Pierre Wynford. I am thirty years old. I was born on Valentine's Day, in the year 1965. That's February 14, nineteen hundred and sixty five.

"I regret having to tell you this, but you are not my husband. My real husband and I were on vacation, visiting England. This morning, I stumbled into a time warp that must have something to do with this Well of Souls where you found me, unconscious. I am not your wife, Isabella. I don't where your wife is. I don't know how I got here. But, I would certainly like to know how to get back where I belong."

Bella waited for his reaction to all of that.

The black knight sat so completely motionless, he might have been a Rodin sculpture cast in bronze. The light from the fireplace flickered across his tanned face and the folds of velvet on his right arm, deepening the shadows and gilding the highlights but he, himself, did not move. Then one corner of his mouth twitched under the drape of his black mustache.

The hard line of his mouth twisted into a most enchanting grin then split into a glorious smile that showed each and every one of his perfectly aligned white teeth.

Then he laughed.

It was a deep, resonant laugh, a bolt-out-of-the-blue mirthful laugh launched directly from the pit of his belly.

Bella had antic.i.p.ated some unusual reaction, but not laughter!

His head tipped against the high back of the chair and he gripped his belly with one broad fingered hand. His laughter went on and on while red, hot fury quickened inside Bella like summer lightning.

"It's not funny!" she declared as she jumped to her feet. Her hands clenched into impotent fists at her sides. "It's not funny, d.a.m.n you! Stop laughing at me. I'm serious. I won't be born until six hundred years in your future."

Engrossed in the horror of her predicament, she saw nothing amusing in it. Her outrage only induced him to laugh all that much harder.

Tears squeezed out his eyes. He brought both hands to his face, wiping at the moisture, still laughing, trying to gasp out something.

That was just too much! Bella gave in to the temptation to pound her fists against his stupid, thick skull. But the moment she launched her indignant attack, he came to his senses. Her small fists hadn't even connected when his quick hands captured both of her wrists.

"This isn't a joke, d.a.m.n you. I'm serious!"

"You're mad as a March hare, woman."

"d.a.m.n right I am. I'm so angry I could bite nails in two. Stop laughing at me!"

His dark face sobered at the same instant that she realized what she'd done. Come within touching distance of him. Something strange and very overpowering had happened when he'd touched her earlier. She had come close to surrendering everything to him when he'd caressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s while the heated water of the bath swirled around her half-frozen body.

It happened again when he yanked her down on his lap, pinned her arms to her sides and covered her mouth with his.

The moment his lips touched hers, all hope of salvaging her pride in a show of force, ended. She yielded to his punishing kiss, allowing and accepting his physical dominance. Self-preservation decreed she had no other choice. What force could a woman of a hundred and six pounds enjoy over a man of at least two hundred? None, whatsoever. Of that, she was certain.

As far as kisses went, this one was expertly delivered and electrically charged. He knew exactly the right moment to soften his hard lips, when to let pa.s.sion increase his pressure and how to daringly slide his tongue inside her mouth and torment and tease her past the brink of sanity.

Bella had always been a sucker for a great kisser. She knew that, but he couldn't possibly know that about her.

At some point, Bella ceased her useless struggling and met him on the same battle ground, taking stroke for stroke, taste for taste, tremor for tremor. But that didn't make her his wife!

When he finally lifted his head, a smug, arrogant smile graced his lips. "What was that you were saying about not being my wife?"

"Oh!" Bella exclaimed indignantly. She took advantage of his unguarded moment to jump off his lap and out of his reach. "That's. .h.i.tting below the belt, you smuck!"

Her pride was stung. Words hadn't convinced him she was not his blasted wife. That kiss hadn't proved that she was, either! She would convince him, somehow! Though the how eluded her.

Sir John wiped away laughter's tears and sought his wits. Bella considered their discussion ended, turned away from him and stomped to the escritoire.