by Lynn Kurland
“Are you going to take yourself out to the lists?” she asked hopefully. “You know, to work out some of that frustration you seem to be feeling?”
He only glared at her, which helped her decide that the time for examining what he might and might not want to do had not yet come. He still looked perfectly capable of wringing someone’s neck, so she supposed she would do well to make sure that neck wasn’t hers. Medieval men. How was a modern girl supposed to figure them out?
Montgomery brushed past her, took her by the hand, and pulled her along after him toward the front of the castle. She put her hand on the wall to steady herself only to have that piece of wall fall over the edge. She gasped and looked over in time to see it land in the moat. She’d been there and done that before with no desire to do it again.
She stumbled along after Montgomery into one of the barbican towers, smiled sheepishly at the guardsmen he threw out, then looked around for escape routes as he unbuckled his sword belt. Good heavens, he wasn’t—
No, he wasn’t. He caught her by the arm before she could run, then led her over to a stone bench near the window. He sat down and pulled her down next to him. Well, he pulled her down practically on his lap, but not quite. Maybe he was afraid if he left any space at all between them, she might run. Maybe he thought if he kept her close, he’d have an easier time of shouting at her. Maybe he had absolutely no concept of personal space.
Again, a topic better left for examination at another time.
He glared at her again, his mouth working as if he simply couldn’t come up with just the right thing to say to break the tension.
“What?” she asked, attempting to look clueless.
“Woman, when I tell you to stay in the solar, you will stay in the solar!” he exclaimed.
A dozen things were immediately on her tongue, tripping over themselves to get out, beginning with telling him he was a medieval barbarian—which he was—and ending with telling him that she was a modern woman perfectly capable of taking care of herself—which she was. In the twenty-first century. As long as she wasn’t walking down a darkened alley in a crappy part of a thuggish town.
But since she wasn’t in the twenty-first century, and she had almost taken a nosedive into a sewer, she had no option but to agree she had blown it.
She took a deep breath. “You’re right.”
He frowned, as if he hadn’t understood her. “I’m what?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I made it difficult for you to protect me when I didn’t stay where you’d put me.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “I’m having difficulty believing you’re in earnest.”
“I’m being tractable. Isn’t that what you want?”
“The saints preserve me from a Future wench with delusions of acquiescence,” he grumbled. He shot her another look of disgust, but the tension began to ease out of him. “A bit of tractability might serve you quite well in the future, given how close you’ve come to running fully afoul of my ire today.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You’re not nearly as intimidated as you should be,” he said with a frown. “Obviously I’ve failed at some point to instill the proper amount of deference in you.”
She’d watched him instill deference in others and really had no desire to have a place in that line. She leaned back against the wall carefully, then attempted a smile. She had a scowl as her reward, then a gusty sigh.
“I would like not to repeat that,” he said pointedly.
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it fully. “I didn’t really think I was in danger.”
He took her hand and held it in both his own for a moment or two in silence before he looked at her with the full extent of his concern plain on his face. “Please, Pippa, don’t leave my sight again.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I’m equal to describing my distress at seeing you there in Martin’s power.”
Pippa decided at that moment that every woman should have at least a week with a medieval lord who felt compelled to protect her at all costs. She did her best to remind herself that he was holding her hand in a brotherly sort of way and meant nothing by it. She also reminded herself that reminding him he was engaged would really ruin the moment. She limited her comments to a nod she was certain he understood.
“Did you find your little stick?” he asked after a bit.
She remembered suddenly why it was she’d been looking for him in the first place. She pulled away from him and fished around in her pocket. “It seems that she had the stupid thing in her pocket the whole time. Still does, I imagine. She did me the favor of being lucid enough to write this note before we left to go to your brother’s.”
Maybe lucid was pushing things a bit. Cindi had written the words I’m not stoned, but she’d apparently fallen in love with making swirling, curly Os because they’d gone on for the rest of the page. Turning the page to continue with her poisoned pen had apparently been the only thing to snap her out of it.
Montgomery frowned as he listened to Cindi’s literary stylings. “Why would your sister do such a vile thing?”
“Because she thought it would inconvenience me, maybe,” Pippa said with a shrug. “Or maybe she wanted to get to the Future ahead of me, steal my designs, and sell them as her own.”
“Surely not,” he said, sounding appalled.
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He took the note and set it aside, then reached for her hand again. He held it in both his own, staring down at it for quite a while before he spoke without looking at her. “You should likely hurry back home, then.”
“Fashion world domination awaits,” she agreed, though she suddenly found herself suffering a serious lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of it.
He met her eyes briefly. “ ’Tis too late to start today.” He nodded toward the window. “And it’s begun to rain. Will tomorrow be soon enough, do you suppose?”
“Of course,” she managed. One day wasn’t going to make any difference. Well, it might to her heart, but she would pay the price for that later when she was at home busily trying to avoid dating jerks. “What do you want to do?”
He looked down again at her hand. “Pass the time with you.”
She closed her eyes briefly. Maybe one more day was one day too many. If she managed to escape medieval England without leaving her heart behind her in pieces, it would be a miracle. “Shall we play chess?” she asked, latching on to the first thing that crossed her mind. She wasn’t good at it, but it was probably more reasonable than suggesting charades.
Montgomery shook his head. “That would require going and fetching a board and pieces.”
She smiled. “Montgomery, it’s cold up here.”
“Your fault, not mine. I was happy to stay in my solar, but you had to climb the stairs to the roof.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Therefore, here is where we’ll remain. We’ll enjoy the added benefit of my being less tempted to kill my useless guardsmen if I don’t have to look at them.” He stood up, took off his cloak, then wrapped it around her and sat back down. “Better?”
“I am, but I imagine you won’t be.”
“Trust me, I could use a bit of chill,” he said, half under his breath. He shot her a look. “I suppose ’tis your chivalric duty to keep me warm.”
She smiled, because she couldn’t look at him and not smile, then arranged half his cloak over his shoulders. She couldn’t bring herself to protest when she found herself again pulled against his shoulder and her hand taken again with both his own.
It was torture, pure and simple.
“I have provided warmth and a comfortable seat,” he said. “You may determine our activities for the rest of the day.”
She considered. “I could tell you a fairy tale.”
“Do you think that’s entirely appropriate right now?” he said dryly.
“As long as nobody’s eavesdropping, we’ll be fine. I could talk quietly.”
He leaned his head back again
st the stone and smiled. “Very well, if you like.”
She thought for a minute, then decided on one that just couldn’t miss, given the circumstances. “I’m going to tell you the story of Cinderella.”
He winced. “Please tell me this isn’t about your sister.”
“No, she’s just named after that character. Actually, given how she’s treated me for the past ten years, I should have been the one named Cinderella, but that’s another story entirely. And yes, she was named after the story.” She spared a thought—a very brief one—that she hoped would pass for concern about her sister’s having made it to the right place in time instead of winding up as a servant in some Tudor household where she really would be sleeping by the kitchen hearth, then allowed herself the no-doubt unwise pleasure of making herself comfortable next to Montgomery before she started her story.
She couldn’t say her parents had been particularly coherent during her childhood, but mother—stoned or not—had always known how to tell a good story. Pippa wasn’t quite ready to credit her mother with instilling a love of a good fairy tale in her, but as she retold Cinderella’s story, she had to admit that it was probably true.
She knew she was mixing equal parts Disney and half a dozen other remakes of the story, but part of being a good storyteller was recognizing the audience’s tolerance for embellishment, sort of like knowing how many sequins she could put on a costume before the leading lady protested.
Montgomery, as it happened, was the perfect audience. He laughed in all the right places, looked indignant when called for, and wore a rather tenderhearted look on his face as the prince looked through his kingdom for that special girl with the right-sized foot. He was silent after she finished, looking off through the opposite window at the mist that hung in the trees, then he cleared his throat.
“Do you have your prince waiting for you at home?” he asked quietly.
“Me?” she asked in surprise. “Not even close, but I’ve dated plenty of toads that didn’t turn into princes. Not kissed them, mind you, because we never get past the first date. But I’ve had plenty of first dates.”
“Toads?” he echoed. He looked at her with a frown. “Dates?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“I’ve no idea,” he said weakly. “Do I?”
“You never know when another future girl is going to walk across your bridge. You might want to be prepared.”
“Persephone, I’m not certain I would survive another future gel,” he said with a faint smile. “You have finished me for this particular lifetime.”
He didn’t sound all that bothered by that, but maybe he was just being polite. She cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure we’ve inconvenienced you terribly.”
He shot her a look that she couldn’t decipher, then he brought her hand up and kissed the back of it quickly before he pulled his cloak back over it. “You have been no inconvenience,” he said roughly, “but you might be considered a vexation if you don’t go about bludgeoning me with these details about toads and dates I’m sure I’ll never believe. Curiosity is, as you know, one of my greatest faults.”
As was a gruffly tender sort of chivalry displayed in cold guardtowers. She ignored the fact that her hand would definitely never be the same, then quickly latched on to the distraction of discussing with him the niceties and rituals of modern dating. She admitted to the two guys she had actually kissed over the course of her rather eternal and unsatisfactory dating career, then she told him all the other fairy tales she could remember.
And all the while, Montgomery watched her, held her hand, kept her close to him. After she had finished her last story, then told him again the final part of Cinderella where everything worked out as it was supposed to, he simply sat with her, trailing his callused finger over the back of her hand.
“And they lived happily ever after?” he asked quietly.
“So the story goes.”
He looked at her, his gray eyes very serious. “I imagine the prince’s castle didn’t have holes in the walls.”
“I’m not sure the princess would have cared if it had,” she said quietly.
He took a deep breath. “Pippa—”
Pippa waited for him to finish his thought, then realized he wasn’t going to because he was suddenly no longer next to her. She looked up to find him on his feet in front of her with his sword in his hand, then found herself fumbling with the scabbard he’d tossed at her.
Obviously it would take a lot of practice to be a medieval sort of gal.
Phillip came to a skidding halt just inside the tower door. “Half the garrison is gone,” he blurted out.
Pippa found herself on her feet without knowing how she’d gotten there. Montgomery swore, then held out his hand for his scabbard. He belted it around his hips, then resheathed his sword with an angry thrust.
“Damn them to hell,” he growled. “Who led them off?”
“I’m not certain, my lord,” Phillip said faintly. “There is too much confusion below to tell.”
“Come along, Pippa,” Montgomery said shortly. “I’ll see you safely downstairs.”
She wasn’t going to argue. She simply trotted along after him and kept her mouth shut until they were standing at the top of the stairs. Even she could hear the shouting below. She felt her breath begin to come in gasps. “I’m sorry.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Why?”
“I kept you from seeing to your duty—”
“You forget who was keeping whom captive, which means you’ve also forgotten who is in charge. And nay, you aren’t responsible. This battle has been brewing since Lord Denys died.”
“Battle?” she echoed weakly.
“Not to worry.” He looked over her head at Phillip. “There are a handful of knives in the trunk in my solar. Teach her to use a pair of them.”
“As you will, my lord!” Phillip said with all the enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old boy facing an enormous stack of video games and unlimited time to play them.
Montgomery paused, then looked at her. “We may have to fight our way to the solar, but once we’re there I want you to go inside and bolt the door.”
“Sure,” she managed, wondering if she would even manage to get herself downstairs without her knees buckling. “No problem.”
He squeezed her hand, hard. “I will keep you safe.”
She wished she’d been a little more militarily minded when she’d designed her gowns. A corseted bodice that would have doubled as body armor would have been nice. She would have to ask Tess about that sort of thing when she got home.
If she got home.
“Pippa.”
She wrenched her gaze to his. “You’ll keep me safe.”
“I will.”
But who would keep him safe?
Chapter 19
Montgomery pulled the door of his solar shut and waited until he heard the bolt slam home before he spun around and looked over his great hall. He cursed viciously. It was empty, which wouldn’t have troubled him any other time, but somehow it now seemed an ominous sight. He decided it was best to see what had actually befallen the inhabitants of the keep before he closed the gates and tried to block the holes in the walls. No sense in locking enemies inside with those who needed to be protected.
He walked across the hall and into the kitchens. François was standing there, a wicked-looking knife in his hand and his lads clustered behind him. Joan was standing by his side, clutching a spit in both hands as if it had been a sword. Montgomery paused, then leaned against the wall and smiled.
“Preparing for battle?”
François’s eyes widened, then he shouted out a warning. Montgomery spun, ducking as he did so and narrowly avoiding losing his head to Boydin, who had apparently decided he’d had enough of not being lord of his own hall. Montgomery drew his sword, for he had also had enough of not being lord of his own hall.
He pushed Boydin back into the hall, giving him no cho
ice but to retreat until he was backed up against the lord’s table. Montgomery continued to fight him until he saw other lads pouring into the hall. He quickly rid his eldest cousin of his sword, caught him full in the face with his fist, and sent him slumping backward into the remains of supper.
He turned to find what was left of his garrison, all twelve of them, wearing murderous looks. Ranulf and his lads were suddenly standing beside him with swords drawn. He supposed they could have made quick work of the garrison by themselves, but he wasn’t going to discourage Petter and the handful of masons who came running up the passageway from the kitchens carrying quite useful-looking swords.
A glance toward his solar revealed his squire, his steward, and his steward’s son hurrying out the doorway, accompanied by their own bit of decent steel. Montgomery saw the door shut again, which eased him some. He could only hope Pippa would have the good sense to keep that door shut. He couldn’t get her home if he couldn’t keep her alive.
Never mind how little he wanted to think about getting her home.
He turned to sweep his garrison with a look he hoped came close to revealing his fury. He suspected part of that fury had less to do with the mutiny afoot than it had to do with the cracks the thought of Pippa leaving were causing to appear in his very hard heart, but so be it. If his pain fed the fire of his wrath, so much the better.
“Which one of you started this?” he snarled.
The men only looked back at him belligerently.
“You live an interesting life,” Petter murmured from where he stood nearby. “A pitched battle in your great hall?”
“My father would be appalled,” Montgomery said shortly, and that was the truth.
His sire, however, would have done just what he was about to do without hesitation, so he didn’t spare any regrets for what he was certain would be unpleasant ends to miserable lives.
“Lay down your swords and honor your fealty oaths,” he said, through gritted teeth, “or draw your last breaths. You will not leave the hall without having made one of those choices.”
A handful of lads lowered their swords, but they were heartily jeered into renewed compliance by their less intelligent fellows. Montgomery cursed under his breath. The choice was clear: he had to have men belonging to the keep who were willing to guard him and those he loved. Anything less was simply unacceptable.