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was thinking that if Mark O’Donnell or Marcus Donatus or whatever the hell he wants to call himself had never encountered you, you brainy little temptress, he probably would be completely content to stick it out in the past, fighting barbarians and marching and digging and sharing tales of soldierly glory around campfires late into starry, only-slightlyobscured-by-the-pall-of-smoke-from-a-nearby-burning-village nights.”
    Allie raised an eyebrow.
    â€œWhat? Those were my exact thoughts, more or less. Which is when I realized something.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œI grudge.”
    â€œYou grudge ?”
    â€œI do. I actually begrudge him. Soldier Boy.” Clare frowned, evidently troubled by the admission. “Not proud of it. But I think I’ve been distinctly biased against the guy based solely on his profession.”
    â€œBecause he’s a legionnaire.”
    Clare nodded. “And that’s not cool. It’s not fair. To either of you.”
    â€œNot fair how?”
    â€œBecause I keep thinking that, if he was some hot Druid who’d fallen for you and wanted to move to the future, or not even a hot Druid but just some regular Iceni tribesman—”
    â€œStill hot though, right?”
    â€œRight.” Clare dismissed any un-hot possibilities with a wave. “And if that was the case, I probably wouldn’t have even argued with you. I’d be all like ‘Awesome! Let’s turn on the Wayback Machine, collect the dude, and then do a musical shopping montage where we hit the High Street and transform Barbarian to Babe, huzzah!’” She did a little jazz-hands cheer and then dropped her arms to her sides, sheepishly shaking her head.
    â€œBut,” Allie continued on Clare’s behalf, “because Marcus is a Roman … sort of …”
    â€œEven though he’s not, ” Clare nodded, “he looks and acts like one, and so my first reaction was still ‘The hell with that guy.’ I realized, well, that that makes me a … something-ist. I’m not quite sure what. But I don’t like it.”
    Allie was touched by Clare’s honesty. And, as always, more than a little amused.
    â€œYou’re not a something-ist,” she assured her. “And I think a musical shopping montage is one of your better ideas. Let’s go see if we can’t convince my cousin, your boyfriend, of that.”
    â€œLet’s!” Clare linked an arm through Allie’s and improvised ridiculous lyrics based on their adventures to a variety of cheesy musical numbers all the way from the Avalon Mists down the street to the pub.
    MILO WAS SITTING WITH Piper on the Rifleman’s patio when Clare and Al joined him, a steaming pot of coffee at his elbow, already half-empty. His food order, according to Goggles, had been prodigious.
    Al launched directly into a passionate defence of going back and getting her man, Clare wedging in her own affirmations and sound-bite backups.
    â€œSo that’s it. I’m going,” Allie summed up finally. “Come hell or high water.”
    â€œI’m betting on both!” Clare enthused.
    And then Milo called her a traitor.
    But when Clare began to sputter a protest, he held up a hand. “A traitor in the service of a noble cause. Look, I get it.” He held up his other hand. “And I give up.”
    Clare exchanged a glance with Al. “You do?”
    â€œClare,” Milo sighed wearily, “I don’t know if I ever really thought I had a hope—I mean a real, legitimate hope—of convincing you to stick close to the old homestead, temporally speaking.”
    â€œYou didn’t?”
    He shrugged. “Let’s face it. You’re an off-leash beagle.”
    Goggles almost did a spit-take with her coffee.
    â€œI’m a what ?” Clare asked a bit frostily.
    â€œYou had that beagle named Reggie growing up,” Alcommented