Her Knight at the Museum

Chapter Five

Five

Emily chased after Griffin, carrying his helmet, as he bolted out of the photography room and into the office—making Terrence, at his worktable, jump and drop a piece of ruby glass. It shattered into a few pieces on the floor.

Terrence put his hands on his head. “Fuck!”

Emily cowered.

“Your pardon, good sir!” Griffin called out. Then he froze. Emily followed his gaze. The Essex suit of armor that Laurie was going to restore stood near the entrance to the photography room.

Griffin asked warily, “Whose dark armaments are these?”

“Those would be our dark armaments,” Terrence said, crossing his arms. “Do you have a visitor badge?” Laurie wasn’t at her desk, thank God.

Griffin shook his head. “It reminded me of something. But all is well.” Then he laughed. “More than well!” After a quick glance around him, Griffin ran for the doors to the museum offices.

With a helpless whimper, Emily hurried after Griffin, grabbing her purse off her desk with her free hand as she passed. How was a man in a full suit of armor so fast? She shifted the purse to her shoulder and clutched the helmet to her midsection as she jogged after him. He barreled down the stairs, clanking. Oh God —what if he tripped and fell? It had been so long since he’d moved.

He had no trouble, jumping down the last two stairs like a child. “Huzzah!”

“Griffin!”

He held up a finger, as though to say he’d only be a moment, and dashed down the length of the gallery like a bull in a china shop—if instead of china, the shop was filled with Greek and Roman marble sculptures of gods, goddesses, and great men from the first century a.d. He ran into a brass pole holding up a velvet rope around a marble statue of Cronus, and Emily gasped as it clattered to the floor, taking down a second pole with it.

Oh, shit. Her heart pounded as she ran after him, less from the effort than from the shock of it all.

Well, she had promised Laurie that he’d be out of the photography room.

Griffin paused in front of a large window in the middle of the gallery, his steel-plate armor shining brightly in the sun. Her purse strap fell from her shoulder to her forearm, and her purse banged against her thighs as she caught up with him. Below, in the formal garden, colorful flowers bloomed at the bases of trees with white blossoms that, at every strong breeze, rained petals onto the grass.

He turned to her and shouted, “I’m free!”

He threw his arms wide, and Emily let out a shriek as she put out her free hand to protect a marble statue of a toga-draped Athena. Griffin’s gauntleted hand came within a fraction of an inch of smacking the goddess in the face. He was resplendent, joyous, and a museum conservator’s worst nightmare.

A woman with her two children stared at him. The boy smiled in delight, while the girl, maybe five or six, frowned and asked, “Who’s that, Mommy?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Terrence said, striding down the gallery toward them. Emily pulled her purse back onto her shoulder, thinking, Just act normal.

Griffin spun to look at him, his face still lit up in a smile. “Again, grant pardon, good sir, but I am overcome with joy at being alive.”

“Good for you.” Terrence’s voice dripped with irony, and he looked to Emily for an explanation.

What could she say? That she was really, really good at restoring sculptures?

“He’s, uh, practicing for the Renaissance Faire,” Emily said. It popped into her head because she’d just been talking about it. Her breath was shaky. She’d always been a terrible liar.

Griffin said to Terrence, “I am Griffin de Beauford, called by many Griffin the Proud, and now that I am able, I’m honored to meet you.”

“Terrence.” His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t see you come in.”

“You get so focused on your work!” Emily blurted out, sounding inane to her own ears. “We, uh, I have to go. There’s an emergency.” She handed Griffin’s helmet to him and then grabbed his free hand. That would keep him from stretching his arms out again and possibly knocking something over.

“What emergency?” Terrence looked Griffin up and down. “Does he have to go save a fair maiden?”

Griffin laughed. “Nay, for as you can see, ’tis this fair maiden who has saved me!”

Oh God. She had to get him out of here.

Emily tugged at Griffin’s hand. “Come on.”

To her relief, he obeyed, though he raised a hand and called back over his shoulder to Terrence, “I bid you good day, sir.”

She needed to get him to a private place where she could have a minute to think , to process all this, to talk to him without being disturbed. But after a few more steps, he stopped, pulling Emily closer to him.

She completely forgot she was in a rush. How amazing to see his human face, not in a dream, but in the light of an ordinary morning.

His eyes, summer-sky blue, were narrow but fringed with longer-than-average lashes. He had fine lines at the corners of his eyes and near his mouth, as if he’d smiled and laughed often before the curse. He looked the same as he did in her dream, with his straight nose and a full and sensuous mouth, but the most striking thing about him was his open, unguarded expressions and manner of speaking. It was as if it had never occurred to him to lie or to even tamp down his feelings. And right now, his gaze was filled with grave devotion.

“Gentle and beautiful lady,” he murmured, “grant me one more kiss, I beseech you, for this may be but a brief reprieve from my doom.”

She hadn’t even thought of that. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think you’re really alive.”

A gleam came into his eye that could only be described as wicked. “I will truly know so, if I may have that kiss.”

Emily laid her hand on his cheek and he kissed her again. The museum around them, her office, her wonder and alarm at his transformation, all blurred into nothing.

His armored grip around her waist and breastplate against her chest were startling new sensations; caught between steel and more steel, she felt soft and fragile, and he groaned into the kiss, urging her lips to part.

He’s really here. She’d been having a hard time processing that, but the way he kissed her filled her soul with the truth. She felt giddy with it, a wild thrill because magic was real…and because everything about his kiss was magic, too, warm and vital.

When he pulled away and she opened her eyes again, several people had gathered to stare at them.

“Wow,” one teenaged girl breathed to another.

“This museum is getting so cheesy,” a white-haired lady muttered, shaking her head.

Emily ducked, her face flaming. “We should go.”

“As you wish.” He spoke loudly, his baritone voice carrying, as if to make up for all the centuries he’d been silent. As they walked, his armor clinked softly, but there was joy and energy in his every step that matched the happiness of her heart. He nodded toward one of the headless Roman sculptures they passed. “I am fortunate that my head stayed on my shoulders!”

Emily shuddered at the implications of this. “What would’ve happened then?”

“It matters not,” Griffin said, with an expansive wave of his hand. “I’m alive!” His voice rose to almost a shout again.

But then he stopped dead in his tracks at a bronze Rodin—a figure of a muscular man in a contorted position with a downcast head. His face went white.

“Hey.” Emily looked from the statue to him. “What’s wrong?”

A line etched between his brows. “What is this place?”

“It’s, um, it’s a museum.”

“I do not know the word.” He swallowed. “And are there other tortured souls such as myself?”

“No!” Emily’s heart went out to him. The Rodin was especially expressive, and it was exactly life-sized. She could see why it had given him that idea.

“These are just ordinary statues,” she explained. “For this one, the artist made a mold and poured melted bronze in, and then the bronze hardened.”

“Truly?” He turned to her, distracted by this new information. “Like bakers use molds for the breads for Candlemas?”

“Um, maybe?” What he would’ve called Candlemas, February second, had turned into a celebration of a weather-predicting rodent. She gestured at the Rodin. “We have the mold the artist used. It’s just a sculpture.”

He nodded with a wry chuckle. “Forgive my foolishness.”

“Oh no, I get it!” She squeezed his hand. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

He raised his eyebrows as they turned the corner. Then he looked down at the helmet tucked under his arm and jiggled it. “It feels good to carry it under my left arm instead of my right.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I’ll bet.”

A wave of vertigo swept over her. What if none of this was happening? What if she was having some kind of psychotic break? Maybe she was walking alone, imagining that people around them were stopping to stare at Griffin in his armor.

But no, there were warning signs before psychotic breaks. Okay, thinking she could hear a statue’s thoughts might count as a warning sign…but overall, she was sane. Worried about her job and her future, yes, and pissed at her ex—but really, what could be more normal than that?

She could just be dreaming again, though. Her footsteps slowed. Wake up, wake up . Nothing changed.

Griffin gave her a questioning look. “My lady, are you well?”

“I—yes. I think I’m a little in shock.”

He nodded, but his eyes glinted with joy. “?’Tis a most miraculous thing.”

She guided him down a wide-open hall leading to a side exit to the street. His gaze traveled everywhere, scrutinizing the floating stairway and the trees and cars outside the two-story-high windows.

Then he tugged at her hand and pointed. “My name?”

She looked up at the sign. “Griffin Court, that’s right.” She laughed. “It’s a coincidence.” Or was it? She’d thought that in the past year, she’d wised up and learned how the world worked, but apparently, she had no idea. He gazed up at the glass ceiling and the bright blue sky and clouds beyond it, his face suffused with happiness.

“I’m starting to believe that you’re really here,” she said.

“As am I, my lady. Though I still know not where I am. Is a museum a palace?”

Unexpected joy bubbled inside her like champagne. “No. They collect a lot of beautiful paintings and sculptures, and people visit to look at them.”

“Like a cathedral,” Griffin said promptly.

“Uh, not really. People are here to see the artwork.”

“As I said. The bright colors of the windows and the altarpieces delighted us, especially in the winter when all was brown.”

Huh . That made sense. In his time, no one had screens filled with an endless supply of bright images.

She shook her head. “Just think of all the things I can learn from you.”

He gave a hearty laugh. “Meseems it will be I who learns from you.”

He showed no signs of slowing down as they approached the glass doors that led outside, and Emily rushed ahead to open one before he walked right through it. He looked it up and down, marveling, as he stepped outside. Then he strode forward, stretching his arms out to either side again as if to accept the adulation of the entire city of Chicago.

What would she say to her coworkers when she returned? She’d have to think of something. No one could blame her for a giant statue gone missing…could they? It wasn’t as if she could’ve shoved it into her purse.

Then he gasped, thunderstruck, staring up at the buildings on the other side of Millennium Park.

“Are those towers?”

A smile slid across her face. She couldn’t imagine what the city must look like to a man of his time.

“They are. Look, some of them are even taller.” She nudged him and pointed down the street, to the other side of Michigan Avenue, where they loomed shoulder to shoulder. He stared at them in rapt astonishment.

“We call them skyscrapers,” she supplied.

“Ha! An apt name!” He waved his arm in a gesture that encompassed the whole city block. “Did men build all these?”

“Yes. Probably a few women, too. A woman designed that one—the curvy one?” She pointed to the Vista Tower, her favorite building in Chicago: three columns, the tallest standing 101 stories high, of glass in varying shades of aqua.

He turned to her in wonder. “And people live in them? Up there in the sky?”

She nodded happily. “And work in them.”

A mild breeze touched their faces, and Griffin peered down the street. “We’re near the ocean,” he murmured with pleasure, looking toward the blue expanse beyond.

“It’s a lake,” Emily corrected him, and when he turned to her, shocked, she laughed. “Lake Michigan. It’s very big. But we’re going this way. You can stay at my place.” She inclined her head in the opposite direction, toward her train stop.

He touched his hand to his chest. “That is very kind…” He trailed off, peering down the sidewalk, at a woman jogging in their direction. Her braids were pulled up into a high ponytail, and she was silently lip-synching to whatever song she was listening to.

Griffin raised a hand to her, calling out, “My lady, are you in distress?”

She stopped as she reached them and took out one of her earbuds, squinting up at him. “What?”

“Who chases you?” As he stood even straighter, his gaze swept their surroundings. He reached for a sword at his hip, then glowered at the realization that it wasn’t there. Emily clapped a hand over her mouth. God, if he didn’t look sexy, standing there ready to fight off whatever threat might come along.

As the woman gave his costume a once-over, he added stoutly, “If I may be of service, I will.”

She laughed. “You’re cute! That’s good!” With a smile at Emily, she put her earbud back in. “Have a great day!” She jogged off again, leaving Griffin bewildered.

“Some people just like to run,” Emily explained as they continued down Monroe. “For exercise.”

“Does life not offer exercise enough?”

“Not really—”

“Who is that?” he hissed, grabbing her hand and staring across the street with fresh alarm. “That face ?”

She knew what he was talking about even before she followed his gaze to Crown Fountain. A fifty-foot-high screen displayed a video of a woman’s face, blinking. For a medieval man who’d been cursed by evil magic, it had to be terrifying.

“It’s not real,” she told him, squeezing his hand. “It’s like a big painting, but it moves. Come on, I’ll show you.” She looked for traffic, then hustled across the street with him. The sounds of young voices and laughter reached their ears.

“It’s a fountain,” she explained. “See the pool, where the children are running around? And if we’re lucky—there! Look!”

The woman on the screen pursed her lips and a stream of water emerged. Children ran under the stream, screaming with delight, and Griffin burst into laughter.

“I have never seen such a grand folly! Are these the children of the noble families of Chicago?”

“The… No . Anyone can come to this fountain.”

He turned to her in surprise. “Even the peasants?”

Reflexively, she looked around her to see if anyone had overheard him. “Don’t call anyone peasants, okay?” She tugged on his hand, urging him to walk again.

He waved a hand at the passing traffic. “These coaches. How do they move so fast?”

“They’re called cars, and…I don’t know how to explain that.”

“Are they armored for war?”

“What? Oh no. We just make them out of steel.”

They reached the corner of Michigan Avenue and he took in a deep breath, scanning the skyline again. “Chicago is a country filled with marvels.”

Emily’s heart swelled with pride. Although she loved all four seasons, he was seeing the city at its best, in late spring. Along the clean streets and sidewalks, planters and raised flower beds overflowed with yellow pansies, periwinkle hydrangeas, and other colorful plants and flowers, and some of the country’s most brilliantly designed buildings gleamed in the sun.

“I’m so glad you think so,” she said. “It’s a city, not a country. A city with almost two and a half million people. More than that, actually.”

His head inclined back and his mouth parted with astonishment as he took this in. A young man in a polo and khaki shorts, walking in their direction, side-eyed him.

“Good day to you, sir!” Griffin called out to him.

The guy snorted and mumbled something under his breath.

Griffin’s smile evaporated. He straightened and strode after the guy. “You do me a discourtesy, sirrah.”

Oh no. As Emily trotted after Griffin, the young man took a step back. “The hell?”

“You have answered my goodwill with disrespect. If it is a quarrel you seek—”

“All right, good morning, okay?” The guy held up his hands. “Jesus.”

Griffin nodded in the guy’s direction as he hustled away.

Emily grabbed Griffin’s gauntleted hand and pulled him in the opposite direction. “Don’t you dare start any fights.”

Griffin blinked. “My lady, it was he who spoke to me in an uncivil manner.”

Oh, boy. He started it had probably been a reasonable defense in his time.

“Listen, most people in Chicago are friendly. But if someone’s rude, you have to just let it go.” Off his blank look, she added, with a grand wave of her hand, “Um, pay it no heed.” She felt ridiculous saying that, but when comprehension crossed his features, she mentally patted herself on the back.

He frowned. “Do all men now suffer fools to answer fair words with foul ones?”

“No,” she admitted. “People get in stupid fights all the time. But it’s what uncouth, vulgar people do. And drunks.”

Amazement dawned on his face. “I wonder that the nobility allows themselves to be spoken to in a churlish manner.”

“We don’t have nobility here. Per se,” she added. The very rich had way more power than any bygone duke or earl. “But if a stranger is rude, yeah, the…noble thing to do is ignore it. Besides, some people have guns.” She hated to have to tell him about this, but he really needed to know. “They’re a weapon that can kill you very easily, just by moving a finger.”

His face fell. “Yes, I’ve heard of these, from the TV.”

Oh. “You’ve watched TV?”

“I could see but little of the pictures, from where I stood inside the front door, but I could hear.”

“Okay. Wow. So you know some things.”

He shrugged. “All too little, I fear. I greatly enjoyed the plays, but I could not make sense of all the news of the world.”

“I’ll bet. Well, if you fight someone, even if you don’t get shot, you could get arrested.”

He blanched at that. “To have only a cell’s breadth for pacing ’twould be little better than being trapped in stone. I would sooner die than be a prisoner again.”

“Speaking of getting locked up…” She took his hand, continuing with him down the sidewalk. “You probably shouldn’t tell anyone you used to be a statue. Or that you’re from the 1400s.”

“Why should I not?”

“Because no one will believe you, and they’ll think you’re…They’ll think you’re mad. And they have these prisons for mad people.”

“Like the lunatics at Bedlam, chained in their filth.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be that bad, but…yeah, I don’t know if they can put you in one against your will, but I’d rather not tempt fate.”

He nodded gravely. “I will pretend to be a man of this time.”

It wasn’t going to be easy. He carried himself with his head held high and his shoulders back, he kept gaping at things, and he had that booming voice and that rich accent, a bit different from any British accent she’d heard before. And of course, he was wearing a full suit of armor that glinted in the sun. Even on the sidewalks of Chicago, filled with people with different styles, languages, and backgrounds, he didn’t exactly blend. She couldn’t take him shopping immediately, and they couldn’t lug all that armor home on the train. Everyone stopped to stare as he passed.

“To be sure, though,” Griffin said, “your friend Terrence knows that I was once stone.”

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. Because that’s not a thing that happens.” What had Terrence made of it all? Ugh . And Griffin had inadvertently caused him to drop and smash a piece from a stained glass window about two hundred years older than Griffin. Would she be fired for having an unruly guest at the office?

Lost in thought, Emily stopped at the crosswalk, but Griffin strode a few more steps right into the traffic.