One Enchanted Evening

by Lynn Kurland

  “I appreciate this,” she said. “I don’t think I can stand myself much longer his way.”

  Joan looked at her briefly. “Don’t let her push you again.”

  Or at least that’s what Pippa thought she said. Anglo-Saxonish English wasn’t exactly the Cockney stuff she’d been used to hearing on stage, nor was it the crisp vowels of the Shakespearean actors she’d listened to.

  “I’m not sure she pushed me this time,” Pippa said slowly. Or at least that’s what she hoped she’d said. Her conversations with Joan had been pretty basic, but she’d had a lot of them. She could converse fairly decently about food.

  Joan shot her a skeptical look, then gestured toward the tub. “The lord has brought you his clothes to use again.”

  “He’s very kind,” Pippa managed.

  Joan shrugged. “A hard man, it appears, but fair enough. But I only know what I’ve heard of him from his cousins.”

  “Cousins?”

  “The lords Boydin and Martin, the lady Ada, and their mother, the lady Gunnild. I imagine she wasn’t happy to learn her sons wouldn’t inherit what she’d thought they would after Lord Denys’s death.”

  Pippa only nodded, first because she wasn’t entirely sure she was translating that all correctly, and second because she wasn’t sure she wanted to have anything to do with servants’ gossip.

  She shook her head. Servants’ gossip. Who would have thought she would have cared anything about that? Or even been in a place where it mattered?

  Life was, as she’d decided before, very weird.

  She looked behind her, saw no one there, then decided there was no point in worrying about it. If the choice was between being seen in her altogether and having to endure her smell, she would chose the first without hesitation. She stripped, hunkered down in the tub and did the best she could. Disgust was a powerful motivator and she was very disgusted.

  She was also very happy for the buckets of warm water Joan dumped over her head. She wasn’t quite sure she’d gotten all the soap out of her hair, but she supposed that didn’t matter because she was equally sure she was going to find a way to get back to where she came from before too long and she would use that really lovely lavender shampoo Tess kept in the guest bathrooms.

  She washed out her dress and her underthings, then considered the last. She wasn’t about to give up her knickers, but she supposed she could claim those were some sort of French invention if pressed. But being stuck in the past and possessing a bra with modern hooks . . . well, that might not go so well for her. She looked at the fire, then tossed her bra into the roaring middle of it. It didn’t take long before the cloth was consumed. The hooks wouldn’t melt, but hopefully no one would dig around in the ashes for them before she was long gone back to the future.

  Pippa put on Montgomery’s clothes again, feeling very grateful for them. It could have been a lot worse. She combed her hair with her fingers, then sopped up what she could of the moisture with the cloth she’d used on herself. By that time, she was fairly cold and beginning to wonder where she was going to sleep since Cindi had banned her from the bedroom. Maybe she would manage a night in the great hall without having more company than she cared for. She gathered up her clothes, thanked Joan for her aid, then turned and walked slowly up the passageway to the great hall.

  She almost ran into Montgomery before she saw him there, leaning his shoulder against the arch with his back to her. She stepped to one side and looked up at him.

  She really wished she didn’t have to catch her breath every time she saw him. He was just too good-looking for her peace of mind. She was fairly tall herself, but he had to have been pushing three or four inches over six feet with broad shoulders and muscles she could see from where she stood. It was completely ridiculous, but he made her feel fragile. Too bad he never seemed very happy to see her.

  Of course, it wasn’t as if she wanted him to be happy to see her. She was apparently hundreds of years out of her time, living in a point in history that she most certainly didn’t want to have any more to do with than necessary. The sooner she left the whole thing behind, and that included the man in front of her, the happier she would be.

  “Persephone?”

  She blinked at the use of her full name. “Yes, my lord?”

  “Montgomery,” he said.

  “Yes, my lord Montgomery?”

  He frowned, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. She understood completely.

  “Let us check on your . . . charge,” he finished. He paused. “Then again, perhaps I should just send Phillip.”

  “You might want to, unless you want Cinderella remembering she thinks you’re a prince.”

  He lifted one eyebrow briefly. “I’ll send Phillip. Perhaps you would care to sit by the fire in my solar and dry your hair.”

  She suffered a small twinge of something, responsibility perhaps, but turned her back figuratively on that soon enough. Cindi wanted Montgomery’s room all to herself. It was her fault if she didn’t have her servant to stoke up her fire and fetch supper for her. Besides, it would be rude enough not to accept Montgomery’s hospitality. No sense in not leaving him with a good impression of fairies.

  “Thank you,” she said, realizing he was still waiting for her answer. “That would be lovely.”

  He nodded toward his solar. “After you, my lady.”

  She refused to blush at the term. He was, she imagined, well within his right to call her whatever he wanted. She squelched her way out into the great hall in her clean but definitely not-dry shoes, waited while he talked to a man he called Ranulf, then continued on with him to his solar. Ranulf disappeared upstairs, so she supposed her sister would be safe enough. Given her newfound suspicions about her, she almost wasn’t sure she cared.

  Or she would have been sure of it if she hadn’t suffered from a deplorable sense of responsibility. She supposed she could blame Peaches and Tess for that. She certainly hadn’t learned it from Cindi.

  “Will she be safe?” she asked quietly as Montgomery opened the door.

  He looked at her in surprise. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  She hesitated, then decided to cast caution to the wind. “That man, Boydin. He isn’t . . . nice.”

  The change in his expression was slightly unsettling. “Has he hurt you?”

  “No,” Pippa said quickly. “I just don’t trust him.”

  He blew out his breath, then smiled very briefly at her. “I’ve no love for my cousins, but you needn’t worry for your sister’s safety. Ranulf will watch over her well. And you will be equally safe with me watching over you.”

  She imagined she would be. She would have thanked him, but she was suddenly too busy being overwhelmed by where he’d led her to. In Tess’s day, the solar was the castle’s office. Over there against the wall where a table sat was where Tess’s desk was, a desk Pippa had tossed her portfolio on that fateful afternoon before she’d gone back upstairs to dress for the birthday party. Pippa tried not to wonder if her sister was sitting in the same room over seven hundred years in the future, wondering where she was.

  “Persephone?”

  She looked up at Montgomery. “Nothing.”

  He frowned thoughtfully, pulled up two chairs in front of the fire, then gestured for Pippa to take one. Pippa sat down gratefully, realizing only then that she’d been on her feet almost all day long. She wasn’t unused to physical labor—sewing was harder on the back than it looked—but the past few days had been absolutely draining. Maybe time travel was harder on a person than she’d imagined it might be.

  And Montgomery de Piaget was more distracting than any man had a right to be.

  She watched him as he built up the fire, then continued to watch as he sat down and stared into that fire, apparently looking for answers to deep thoughts he couldn’t seem to find in the cups of ale he had also poured for them both. She wondered where he got his soap because he looked remarkably fresh scrubbed, but perhaps there were tricks of the
trade she hadn’t learned yet.

  She wondered quite a few things about him, actually, things she wasn’t sure she dared ask him on the off chance he would think her completely bonkers and decide his solar fire just wasn’t hot enough to get her out of his hair and maybe a bonfire in his courtyard would do the trick.

  She realized he was watching her and she wondered how many of her thoughts had shown on her face. She smiled slightly.

  “Just thinking.”

  “Shall I guess?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure you would want to, but I’ll tell you just the same. I was just wondering about you.”

  He shifted a bit, as if the topic made him uncomfortable. “I’m not a very interesting subject, but I’ll answer your questions, if you’ll answer mine.” He tilted his head to look at her. “Is that not a fair bargain?”

  “That depends on how far away from your hands your sword is.”

  He pointed to the sword propped up in the corner. “You’re closer to it than I am.”

  “I don’t think I could use it even if I had to.”

  “You might be surprised.” He reached down and pulled both of his knives free of his boots. They were sheathed in worn leather and the handles were equally well loved. He held them out. “Will holding these make you feel safer?”

  She wasn’t sure it would, but she wasn’t going to argue the point. She also wasn’t about to discuss the fact that he seemed to be speaking slowly and carefully, as if he was afraid she might not understand him. She couldn’t imagine he had any inkling of where—or when—she was from. Maybe he thought she was a servant and not very bright. It wasn’t flattering, but she couldn’t blame him. Why would he think differently? She put his knives on her lap, then attempted a smile.

  “You start,” she said. “Where did you grow up?”

  He looked at his hands for a moment or two, then up at her. “In the north. My father’s keep is Artane. Do you know it?”

  Pippa knew she wasn’t good at masking her reactions. She had played innumerable forbidden card games with her sisters in Aunt Edna’s attic and never won a single one. Moonbeam had always had the best poker face, followed by Tess and Peaches. She, however, had never been able to hide either her glee or her disappointment.

  She didn’t imagine she’d been able to hide her surprise at present.

  “I’ve been near it,” she managed, after she’d attempted to come up with a reasonable answer. “With my parents.” She didn’t dare say that she had seen Montgomery there, standing in the sunrise and looking like something out of a dream. “It’s enormous,” she added. “Very impressive.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think anything of it when I was a child. I was too busy learning swordplay and keeping myself from being killed by my older brothers.”

  She smiled. She could just imagine. “How many brothers do you have?”

  “Four elder, and two elder sisters.”

  “You’re the baby?”

  “It defies belief, doesn’t it?”

  She laughed a little, then forced herself to sober when she realized she was on the verge of getting too comfortable with him. She wasn’t in the market for a guy, and the guy in front of her wouldn’t have been on her shopping list even if she had been.

  Really.

  “So,” she said, grasping for something innocuous to say, “you grew up on the seashore in that magnificent castle and your father is very famous.”

  He only nodded slightly.

  She cast caution to the wind. Maybe if she sounded disinterested enough, he wouldn’t think anything of the question. “When were you born?” she asked casually.

  “In the Year of Our Lord’s Grace 1213.”

  She had almost expected the like, but it was shocking just the same. She didn’t realize just how shocking until she found Montgomery was taking his knives back and rescuing her cup of ale. She was shaking so badly, she almost fell off her chair.

  He moved her, chair and all, closer to the fire, then sat down on a stool and took her hands. “The cold has caught you up.”

  “I’m fine,” Pippa said, her teeth chattering. His hands were callused, likely from all that swordplay he’d been working on since 1213. It defied belief, but there with the truth holding her hands, she couldn’t believe anything else.

  She had gone back in time almost eight hundred years and landed in a castle with her sister who thought she was the Queen of Faery and had decided the castle’s ultra-studly lord would make a good consort for her.

  Karma had a lousy sense of humor.

  And that didn’t begin to address her most pressing problem, which was how in the hell was she going to get home?

  “Persephone.”

  She focused on him. He was still chafing her hands, as if he thought that might help. Or maybe he just thought he’d stand a better chance that way of catching her before she pitched forward into his fire.

  “What?”

  “You’re pale as a ghost.”

  Ghosts. Right. Not only was Tess’s castle haunted, it was a veritable hotbed of all kinds of paranormal activities. If she ever saw her sister again, she’d tell her to put up warning signs. It might ruin some bits of her business, but it would certainly save people an unexpected trip to a place where the swords were real and the garderobe fully functional.

  She felt Montgomery’s hand on her head and she looked at him in surprise.

  “Your hair is still wet,” he said quietly.

  And it would dry in a mass of curls that would stick out vertically if she didn’t put some gel on it. Oh, that was right. She couldn’t. Because she was stuck in the Middle Ages.

  “How old are you?” she croaked, because apparently she just couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

  “A score and seven. You?”

  “A score and four,” she said. No sense in not fitting right in with the times as far as speech patterns went. She wasn’t about to tell him when she was born, though, and he didn’t seem poised to ask.

  Then again, that might have been because he was looking at her with no small bit of alarm. Maybe she looked as unsettled as she felt. It was one thing to imagine she was in the past; it was another thing entirely to know. If he was twenty- seven, that made the current year 1241.

  Unbelievable.

  “Phillip, lad, there you are. Fetch more wood, if you please. Let’s make her a pallet here and cover her with what furs we can find.”

  Pippa looked up to see Phillip standing nearby, watching her with worried eyes. She hadn’t noticed him until that moment, but perhaps that wasn’t unexpected. She’d been pretty busy toying with the idea of losing it over the now-undeniable facts staring her in the face.

  “Shall I stay with you, Uncle? I can sleep in the corner.”

  “Aye, lad. That’s likely the safest place for you.”

  Pippa soon found herself being fussed over by a medieval lord and his squire, and couldn’t bring herself to protest. The fire against her face was divine and she had never had a couple of blankets on the floor be so comfortable. She supposed Cindi was safe with Sir Ranulf standing guard. And she herself, for the first time in what had to have been a handful of days, would be warm.

  She felt those days catch up with her fully. She managed to tilt her head back and look at Montgomery who was sitting at her head, resting his elbows on his knees and watching her silently.

  “Thank you,” she managed. “Very chivalrous.”

  He only watched her gravely. “One act a day, or so my father instructed me.”

  She had no idea how to ask him if that chivalry might extend to helping her figure out how to get home, or if she even dared ask. She was living in a place where she couldn’t dial 911, but she could tap the lord of the keep on the shoulder and ask him to draw his sword in her defense. Her sister had lost her marbles, there wasn’t a Mini Mart in sight, and she had no idea how she was going to get home again. It was enough to make her wish heartily for a paper bag so she could avoid a bit of well
-deserved hyperventilating.

  Montgomery leaned over and brushed a stray lock of hair back from her face.

  “I don’t think you should go swimming in my cesspit again,” he said quietly.

  “I’ll try not to,” she managed.

  He sat back and stretched his feet out behind her head. “Sleep in peace, Persephone. I’ll keep watch.”

  In a place hundreds of years out of her time. She took a deep breath. “You are a very kind man, Montgomery de Piaget.”

  “You are easy to be kind to, Pippa.”

  She felt a flash of envy sweep over her for the woman who would eventually find herself the beneficiary of that very quiet sort of chivalry. Of course, that woman couldn’t be her, but she couldn’t help but wish for the very briefest of moments that it could be. She wasn’t looking up at any stars and there were no untoward sparkles in the area, so she felt fairly safe doing so.

  She closed her eyes, then felt herself drifting off to sleep.

  Safely.

  Chapter 11

  There was nothing worse than having to admit Robin was right.

  Montgomery cursed under his breath at the thought. When that didn’t make him feel any better, he cursed out loud, rather enthusiastically. Robin had told him, many years ago, that he really should learn to curb his curiosity because it was going to get him in trouble one day. That he should have listened irritated him. That Robin had been right galled him beyond words to express it. He frowned fiercely, but that didn’t distract him from his damnable curiosity.

  He wondered about Pippa.

  He knew he shouldn’t. She had no business being in his time, and he had no business looking at her twice. He had his hands full with a keep that needed to be restored, cousins that needed to be resettled, and a titled, trouble-free bride to acquire at some distant point in the future. The last thing he needed was a woman who kept falling into his cesspit thanks to her sister who was daft as a duck.

  Watching over her the night before had been very hard on his heart.