Both sounded equally deranged.
Which led her to a third option: that whatever wounds she had suffered had left her either brain damaged or mentally unbalanced, and all of this was just some massive delusion.
The fact that she was tempted to laugh maniacally did not ease her worries.
Time travel didn’t exist yet, so that one was pretty much out.
Insanity left a bad taste in her mouth, so Beth decided to nix that one, too.
That only left her with the implausible scheme or joke.
Okay. So someone with a lot of money (never mind that everyone she knew lived from paycheck to paycheck) must have arranged for me to be abducted from that clearing after I was shot. They… drugged me?
Yes. That was it. They drugged me, patched up my wounds and—while I was still sedated—transported me to someplace else. Maybe Pennsylvania? Ohio? Indiana?
Someplace cooler than Texas, that was for sure.
Then, after my injuries healed, they stopped drugging me. Or maybe I was in a coma. That would’ve worked, too. So, when I came out of the coma, they left me in this forest and hired actors to pretend they are medieval knights. And peasants. And a merchant.
So I would…
So they could…
Beth sighed. Even if all of the other stuff were true, which it only would be in a really bad B movie shown very late at night, what was the point? What was the end game? To make her think she was in Medieval England?
Yeah, right.
To make her think she was crazy?
They’re succeeding.
Why? If someone had wanted her to lose her mind, there were far easier ways to go about it. And except for the bail skippers she and her brother hunted down, who she was fairly certain did not possess such grand connections, she couldn’t think of a single person who might wish her harm.
Nor could she believe that Robert would participate in such a deception.
Feeling utterly confused and defeated, she let her head drop back against Robert’s chest and closed her eyes.
Maybe this was just another in a long line of crappy television reality shows: Thrust a modern woman into a medieval setting without telling her and watch her crack up.
Yeah, right. And get sued six ways from Sunday when she realizes what’s happened. Besides, how stupid would it be to do that to an armed bounty hunter? After shooting her! Because all of this had begun with her getting shot and nearly dying.
No television studio would be that stupid. And anyone crazy enough to pitch such an idea would be shut down by the studio’s legal team.
And, again, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that Robert would be a part of something that devious. Or Michael. Or Adam. Or even Stephen, as aggravating as he could be.
They could have harmed her in so many ways since they found her, yet they had all been perfect gentlemen.
Perfect gentlemen with no apparent knowledge of objects commonly used in the twenty-first century.
Again she sighed.
Maybe this was an Occurrence-at-Owl-Creek-Bridge thing and everything around her was a very elaborate fantasy crafted by her mind in the moments before she died. It would make sense, in a weird kind of way, since the last thing she had seen before losing consciousness was Josh. And, when they were younger, she and Josh had used Middle English as their secret language, confusing friends who—upon asking what language they were speaking—wouldn’t believe them when they had said they were speaking English.
But, damn, that was an unsettling notion. She wasn’t ready to die.
Lifting her head, she opened her eyes.
Terror engulfed her, as great as that which had pummeled her when she had watched blood spray from Josh’s wounds.
Gripping the arm Robert kept around her waist with one hand, she dropped the other to his thigh and clutched it so tightly the chain mail dug into her fingers.
“Stop,” she whispered through stiff lips.
Robert dipped his head. “What?”
“Stop,” she repeated louder.
“You wish me to—”
“Stop. Stop! Stop!”
Berserker did an edgy little dance when Robert halted him. Either the fearsome creature wanted to keep going or he sensed her fear.
Twisting to the left, Beth wrapped both hands around Robert’s big arm. “Help me down. I need to get down.” Too impatient to wait, she threw a leg over the saddle, slid off the huge horse, and landed on the ground with a stagger.
“Beth, what is amiss? Are you ill?”
She barely heard Robert over the sudden pounding in her ears as she turned away. Her heart felt as though it might explode at any moment. Her breath came faster and faster until she feared she might hyperventilate.