by Lynn Kurland
He clung to that thought desperately as he watched the queen flit around the back of the table and come to a stop next to his chair. She looked Gunnild over, as if she considered her potential prowess in battle.
“Move,” she slurred, in French. The word was accented strangely, but perfectly intelligible.
Gunnild obviously understood her, for she bristled. “I will not.”
The Faery Queen didn’t wait for another response, she merely wrestled the chair away and sat herself down in it, catching both Gunnild and Boydin with her wings. War would have ensued, Montgomery was certain, if he hadn’t rushed forward and stopped it before it could bloom and flower.
“Our guest will of course have the place of honor,” he said with a pointed look at Gunnild.
Gunnild stepped aside, though Montgomery didn’t doubt he would pay for that concession at some point in the near future. Montgomery ignored his cousin’s look of fury, then saw the queen seated.
She yawned hugely, then shook her head. A few of her sparkles fell and some of her hair came lose from its coiffure. “I’m hungry.”
“I’ll fetch you something,” Montgomery said politely.
The queen looked at him, then looked at him a bit longer. Apparently she saw something she liked very much because she wielded her wand with great deliberation on Boydin until he got up out of his chair and retreated with a curse to safer ground. The queen patted the seat.
“Come sit.”
Montgomery suspected he knew how it felt for a man to be bewitched. She was just so lovely, so flawlessly beautiful, so achingly perfect that he supposed a man could do nothing but watch her draw breath—
“Persephone!” she bellowed. “Food!”
Montgomery blinked and the spell was broken.
The queen’s handmaid looked as if she would have liked nothing better than to have bolted—that, or have silenced her mistress as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, she appeared to be unable to decide what she should do. She winced every time her queen shouted at her, but she seemed unwilling to move past Everard, who was looking at her with a now less-than-friendly eye.
Montgomery walked across the great hall and stopped next to her. She regarded him warily as well; not even his most unassuming and unintimidating expression seemed to ease her. He elbowed Everard out of the way, then put himself in front of her so she wasn’t favored with a full view of what was left of his household. Unfortunately, that left him with a full view of her.
She looked impossibly tired. Indeed, he suspected that the dual trials of the bump on her head and her lady’s demands had been very wearing on her.
“I daresay your mistress requires supper,” he said carefully. “Unfortunately, my servants seem to have decamped for more promising larders. I’m not sure if your duties include preparing your lady’s food, but I wonder if you might manage it today.”
She looked at the queen for a moment or two, then up at him. “Kitchen?” she echoed faintly.
“Aye. Shall I show you the way?”
She nodded slowly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Persephone, is it?”
“Yes.”
He made her a little bow. “I’m Montgomery de Piaget. Of Sedgwick,” he added, because he supposed he should, though it felt strange on his tongue. Sedgwick was not a place he’d enjoyed visiting in his youth—indeed he could remember only a pair of occasions when he’d been forced to do so with his father and brothers—and there were still times he could hardly believe the keep was now his. He could only hope at some point that he could make it a hall that inspired something besides headshaking and sneers.
He looked at Persephone to find her gaping at him.
“De Piaget?” she said, putting her hand to her head and wincing. “Montgomery?”
“Persephone, now!” the queen bellowed.
Montgomery wasn’t about to insert himself between Persephone and her lady, but he could readily see she was in no condition to be doing aught but going somewhere quiet and having a lie-down. He looked at Everard.
“Would you fetch our displaced noblewoman there a bit of wine?” he asked, nodding toward the woman sitting in his chair looking particularly out of sorts. “I’ll find her food quickly, before her complaints increase.”
“Is she a noblewoman now?” Everard asked with a deep frown. “I thought she was a player.”
Montgomery sighed to himself. Yet more lies that he would rather have avoided. But desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. He took a deep breath.
“I thought so, too, at first, but now I understand she is one of Henry’s acquaintances.” He cast about for something else plausible. “From Italy,” he added. “Her clothing is part of her, ah, charm.”
“A pity her charm doesn’t extend to quietly voicing her demands,” Everard said with a wince. “Perhaps you’d best send her little maid here to the kitchens quickly, so we might have a little peace.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Montgomery agreed. “So please, offer her wine, if you will, until we can see to food for her.” He didn’t wait for Everard to comply; he simply took Persephone’s hand and drew it through the crook of his elbow without thinking, as he might have done with his mother or his sisters. Her hands were icy cold. He looked down quickly into her face to find her visage very pale.
Who knew the horrors she was experiencing? She was obviously from a lovely and more cultured world, so how must his world seem to her?
And how daft must he be to be thinking anything of the sort? Faery? He had obviously gone too long without sleep.
But the very noisy woman sitting in his chair, queen of the netherworld or no, had obviously gone too long without food. The faster that was seen to, the sooner he would have peace for thinking.
He walked Persephone through the passageway to the kitchens. Joan had styled herself a benevolent monarch and was directing none other than Phillip of Artane to do the fetching of water and lifting of heavy things for her. Phillip looked at him and smiled briefly.
“I thought I might be of use.”
“You are too good for me,” Montgomery said with a sigh.
“So says my father,” Phillip said with another smile. “I think, however, my lord, that we won’t be able to feed the garrison with just us two here.” He paused and set his water down to come closer. “Forgive me for speaking freely, but I wouldn’t trust our cousins near the cooking fire.”
“Neither would I, Phillip. We’ll manage until I find other souls suited for the task. There might be a lad or two in the garrison happy to leave the lists for a bit.”
Phillip nodded, then shoved a stool closer to the fire with his foot. He looked at Persephone and made her a small bow.
“Perhaps you would care to sit?” he asked gallantly.
Persephone felt her way down onto that stool, then looked around her as if she’d never in her lifetime seen a kitchen before. Montgomery considered that for a moment or two. Perhaps she was accustomed to loftier surroundings. Or perhaps surroundings that didn’t look as if they’d just recently suffered a lengthy and quite injurious siege. She said nothing, but her shoulders slumped slightly.
Joan apparently thought she’d acquired help, for she walked over and began to give Persephone numerous instructions that showed she had either cooked for her mother at home or paid close attention to how things carried on inside a keep. Persephone only stared up at her as if she couldn’t understand a bloody thing she was saying. Montgomery frowned. Perhaps she wouldn’t have any cause to know the peasant’s English, but still . . .
He would obviously have to stay nearby and translate. In fact, he supposed he might do well at the moment to simply stay nearby and help. Persephone looked as if the simple act of sitting upright was taxing enough. He squatted down next to her to be more easily heard over Joan’s commanding of Phillip, then realized that he had made a grave tactical error.
Persephone’s queen might have been perfection embodied, but that queen was some
how not nearly as lovely as was Persephone herself, wearing his spare tunic and hose. She was lovely, and grave, and very, very lost. He reached up before he thought better of it and tucked a strand of her wildly curling hair behind her ear. She startled, as if she’d been a deer, then took a deep breath and visibly forced herself to remain calm.
“I will see to supper for both you and your queen,” he said quietly, pulling his hand away. “What will please her, do you think? Bread and cheese, perhaps? Stew, if it can be found in that pot yonder?”
Persephone blinked. “Queen?”
“The Queen of Faery,” he said. “Your mistress.”
“Oh,” she said, drawing the word out a rather long time, as if she’d just begun to understand something she hadn’t before.
“Persephone!”
That voice carried better than it should have. Persephone sighed, then rose.
“Thank you,” she said, apparently not having heard his offer. “I’ll help her.” She looked around her, then shuffled about the kitchen to see what it contained.
Montgomery supposed that looking would be the extent of what she would manage given that she was having to hold his tights up with one hand and keep the other pressed against her head. She hitched, rearranged, then took a bucket and walked toward the back door to no doubt go fetch water.
“I hate my life.”
He supposed he understood the sentiment. There had been times during his life when the difficulties had been such that he might have expressed something akin to—
He blinked.
Had she just said what he’d thought she’d said? In the same English that Jennifer, Abigail, and Jake spoke to each other—which, as it happened, Robin, Anne, Nicholas, Amanda, and Miles could converse in with equal ease? The same English tongue he had learned vast amounts of thanks to copious and unknightly amounts of eavesdropping?
The same English his siblings-in-law had brought with them . . .
“My lord?”
“Not enough sleep,” Montgomery said promptly, shutting his mouth with a snap. He left Joan standing there with a long wooden spoon in one hand and a knife in the other, then walked out of the kitchens to follow Persephone.
He caught up with her as she was standing at the well, peering into its depths as if she intended to call forth the water with words alone. He pulled up the bucket, filled hers, then dropped it back into the water. Then he looked at her. In the light of day, he realized he had been overtaken by a bout of stupidity. There was an easy answer to all the questions he had about her and that woman inside pretending to be the Faery Queen, he just hadn’t wanted to look at it.
Because if he admitted what he knew about times not his own, he would have to face things he would rather not, things that ate at him still, things to do with more than just his siblings-in-law—
He took a deep breath. Nay, it could not be. The queen was a well-dressed noblewoman pretending to be a queen and Persephone was . . . well, he wasn’t sure what she was, but she was surely just a wench. A beautiful wench, but a simple wench after all. Not a woman from the Future, nor from Faery, nor from other places he couldn’t convince himself existed. What he needed was sleep. It would clear his ears and his head.
But first things first. He carried water back into the kitchens, discussed with Joan what had already been planned for supper, then paused next to Persephone.
“I will take the bread to your . . . your queen,” he finished, because he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge any of his other ridiculous thoughts.
The Future?
Impossible.
“That is kind of you.” Persephone’s accent hadn’t improved, but her words were intelligible enough.
A bit like Jake’s had been, and Jennifer’s as well when they’d first arrived from . . . well, wherever they’d come from.
“ ’Tis actually self-preservation,” he said without thinking. He managed a brief smile. “My servants have fled at the sight of her. I don’t want her terrifying the garrison as well.” Though he imagined she would do less terrifying than she would bewitching, he declined to say as much.
Persephone looked very, very pale. He thought there might have been tears beginning in her eyes, but those could just as easily have been from the onions Joan was cutting. He suppressed the urge to pat her on the back and flee, as Robin would have done. Instead, he nodded his head briskly and fled, because he imagined he would do less damage to her that way.
He had things to do, and those things didn’t include wasting time with wenches who weren’t where they were supposed to be. He would see the woman masquerading as the Faery Queen fed, hope Joan fed Persephone, then he would get himself the hell out to the lists where there were swords and curses and other things he could understand. Perhaps he would stay there for the rest of the day. Perhaps he would have torches brought and stay there far into the night until he’d rid himself of any more fanciful imaginings about faeries and the Future and things that didn’t belong in his nice, orderly, responsible world.
He paused and wrestled with himself for a moment or two. He gave in, only because he allowed himself to, and looked back over his shoulder. Persephone was standing at Joan’s worktable, looking off into the distance as if she could see things he couldn’t. Her profile was hauntingly familiar, and now he understood why. She had obviously been standing in the middle of a time gate and he’d somehow seen her from his side of it. That she was now in his hall, in his care, within his reach meant nothing but that he was responsible for finding a way to get her home.
Because he was the only one for leagues who would know how.
Chapter 8
Pippa didn’t think she was one to overreact, but she was fast coming to a conclusion that was about to make her do so.
Her sister was delusional.
It wasn’t just the little let me show you how well I internalized that method acting class I took in New York from Someone Famous or the less erudite but equally annoying let me show you that this tiara I have on my head comes with an attitude so fetch me some carrots and hummus. It was a full-blown I’m the Faery Queen so deal with it, only Cindi had taken it to a level that made Pippa wonder if her sister had had one too many crowns pinching her poor head and they had finally cut off blood flow to important reality centers of her brain. For all she knew, all the parts of her body Cindi had injected and scraped and lifted had finally rebelled and pushed her over the edge.
“Serving girl,” Cindi said, sitting in a hard, uncomfortable chair that had been made less uncomfortable by the addition of a pillow, “fetch me something to drink.”
Well, one thing could be said for Cindi, and that was her French was excellent. Maybe the utter craziness she was wallowing in had tapped into previously untapped reservoirs of language aptitude. Either that or the thrill of sitting at the lord’s table the day before and having the entire cast of castle characters staring at her as if she’d really been the bloody Fairy Queen belched out from the land of fairies to astonish and delight them had finally shorted out her Botox-drenched brain and given her abilities far beyond the norm.
Maybe it had simply been the deliciousness of being waited on hand and foot. Pippa had supposed she didn’t have much choice but to humor her sister so she didn’t break into some sort of Broadway tune or throw some sort of tantrum in modern English that would have changed admiration to anger. A vision of villagers with pitchforks was right there for examination, but Pippa pushed it aside because it wasn’t helpful.
The question of where they might have been or why she was sharing so fully in her sister’s hallucinations was one she hadn’t been able to answer. It had been all she could do the day before to keep her sister fed, keep herself from throwing up from the pain of the bump she still had on her own head, and finally get them both to bed in accommodations that were substantially less comfortable than any KOA campground she’d frequented in her youth. She’d hoped for a better day—or a return to reality—when she’d awoken.
N
o such luck, but she wasn’t ready to toss in the towel yet. Her headache had receded a bit, her determination had increased, and she was ready to ditch her sister and do some investigating. The last was an especially attractive alternative to sitting locked in a chilly castle room with a beauty queen who had become far too empowered by her crown.
She poured her sister a glass of wine that Cindi downed with abandon, dribbling a bit down her chin. It went down her cleavage, but Pippa wasn’t about to dive after it there with a Kleenex—not that any were to be found in their mutual delusionary state. Cindi didn’t seem to mind, so Pippa moved on. She gathered up a few more crystals from the floor out of habit, stashed them in the little pile she’d made inside one corner of the trunk, then took stock of her day.
First on her list was figuring out where the hell she was.
Second was figuring out how she was going to get out of wherever the hell she was.
She looked at her sister, but Cindi was staring into the fire as if it held answers she couldn’t get anywhere else. “Cindi?”
Cindi looked at her. “I will rest now. Leave me.”
“No problem,” Pippa muttered under her breath. She made her escape before she got to indulge in any more servitude. She heard the door lock behind her, so she supposed she could go on her little explore without undue anxiety about the safety of her clueless sibling.
She hitched up her tights, then remembered they weren’t hers. She suspected that they—plus the cloak someone had delivered to her door the night before—belonged to Montgomery de Piaget. She had deduced from Joan’s rustic English that she and Cindi were sleeping in his chamber. The fact that he was a de Piaget and looked as much like Stephen de Piaget as he did was enough to make what was left of her puzzler sore. He didn’t look like a thug, his rather serious and grim expressions aside, but he also didn’t look like a reenactment fanatic who was hiding his rather ordinary Marks and Spencer shirts in his very medieval-looking trunk.
That was just the beginning of what bothered her. Why did the castle—which she was certain was Sedgwick—look nothing like it should? Where was Tess and running water? Why was there nothing in the kitchen that would have made a quick snack except a few carrots? She could have gone on all day with the things that alarmed her, but she decided to just deal with the most troubling, which was why the castle looked as if it had been overrun by a medieval French reenactment troupe with a few members who’d escaped from Cambridge’s department of Anglo-Saxon literature. It was almost as if she’d stepped back in time—