The Perfect Match

by E. D. Baker

  “I’d rather not talk in here,” Georgie told her as he looked from Cory to the crate. “It’s too crowded.”

  Lillian sighed and stood, holding out her hand for Georgie to help her down. Georgie didn’t seem pleased when Cory followed the princess.

  “You were right,” Cory told him. “It was crowded in there.”

  He scowled, but when he saw the impatient look on Lillian’s face, he said, “My sweet, I’m sorry you had to endure such an awful scene at what was supposed to be your wedding, but I assure you it’s all for the better. You can’t imagine how relieved I am that you didn’t marry Rupert. He’s a good fellow, but not nearly good enough for you.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lillian.

  “I mean that you deserve someone better—like me!” Georgie told her, and reached for her hand.

  Lillian pulled her hand free, saying, “Georgie, this isn’t the time or place! I was just left standing at the altar!”

  “In the aisle, actually,” said Georgie. “I was there.”

  Lillian took a step back. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to go home.”

  “You don’t understand!” Georgie cried. “I’ve thought about you every minute since I learned that you were engaged to Rupert. If you’re going to marry someone, it should be me! I tried to tell you before the wedding, but we missed your carriage and stopped the wrong one. When the wedding was called off, I was so happy! But when I realized that you must be upset, I couldn’t go home knowing that I could ease your pain. I had my men break the axle on your carriage so you couldn’t leave yesterday with your parents, and waited for you to come by so I could tell you how much I love you.”

  “And how would you ‘ease my pain,’ as you put it?” Lillian asked.

  Cory wasn’t expecting it when Georgie dropped on one knee and tried to take Lillian’s hand again. Apparently Lillian wasn’t expecting it, either.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” she said, pulling her hand from his grasp. “You have no right to propose to me now! You courted me for an entire year and could have asked me at any time. Lord knows I gave you enough opportunities! But no, by your own words, you didn’t even consider me for your wife until I was engaged to someone else. If you had proposed first, I would have been happy to marry you! When you didn’t, my parents made me accept Rupert’s offer, even though I didn’t really know him. It’s your fault that I had to go through the hurt and humiliation of this awful wedding. My parents are so embarrassed that I don’t know if they’ll ever speak to me again.”

  “Please forgive me!” said Georgie. “I didn’t know how much I loved you until I thought I’d lost you forever.”

  “I can’t marry you now,” said Lillian. “It would look like a rebound romance.”

  “I don’t care what it looks like!”

  Cory had had enough. She just had to know one more thing before she took an irrevocable step that would change their lives forever. “Lillian,” she began, “do you know that he is a highwayman? He holds people up so he can steal from them.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Lillian. “This is Prince Georgie from the ancient and highly venerated Porgie family, not some common thief!”

  “He stole my bracelet and my girlfriends’ jewelry. Admit it, Georgie!”

  “But . . . But . . . This is preposterous!” Georgie sputtered.

  “You said you haven’t gone home yet,” Cory told the prince. “If that’s true, I may find the jewelry in your saddlebags!”

  “Don’t you dare go near my horse!” said Georgie.

  “Why would you care if you don’t have anything to hide? What do you say, Lillian? May I look in his saddlebags or are you worried that I might find something there?”

  “Go ahead and look!” Lillian exclaimed. “You’ll see that it’s not true.”

  Georgie’s face turned red, but he didn’t move to stop Cory. She found the usual things in one side of his saddlebag: a bag of coins, some dirty clothes (some stained with pudding, others with pie), a ratty-looking comb, and a copy of Robin Hood’s autobiography. The saddlebag on the other side was a different story, however. Wrapped in a clean white shirt and a handkerchief decorated with yellow duckies was the jewelry that he had taken from Cory and her friends.

  “Now do you believe me?” Cory asked as she held up all four pieces of jewelry.

  “I bought those!” Georgie declared. “I was going to give them to Lillian.”

  “Really?” asked Cory. “You were going to give her a bracelet that says Cory and Blue? Is her name Cory? Is your name Blue? Because I am Cory and my boyfriend is named Blue, and this is the bracelet he gave me!”

  “I’m sure there’s some mistake,” said Lillian.

  “There was a big mistake, and Georgie made it! He never should have stopped our carriage and robbed us!”

  “Georgie Porgie is the most honest man I have ever known!” Lillian cried. “He would never steal from ladies!”

  Well, that answers that question, Cory thought. Her impression of him is going to hold no matter what she hears. Holding out her hands, Cory thought bow! and the bow and quiver appeared even as time stood still for everyone else. She shot Georgie first, using the arrow labeled “George Eugene Porgie.” The next arrow, labeled “Lillian Rosemarie Denubia Theodora Shuttersby,” went straight to Lillian’s heart. While the gold glimmer faded away, Cory climbed into the carriage to give them some privacy.

  She tucked the jewelry in her knapsack while taking the small box out, staying in the carriage until she’d thought they’d had plenty of time to kiss. They were still kissing when she climbed out again and cleared her throat, loudly and repeatedly, until they both turned to face her.

  “I’ll be going,” said Cory, “if someone would direct me to the nearest hostelry where I might get a ride to town.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Lillian said in a dreamy voice. “My coachmen can take you home. I’m riding with Georgie now.”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind. But what about your dragon?” Cory asked.

  “You can have it if you’d like,” said Lillian. “I don’t want the nasty thing any more now than I did when Rupert gave it to me.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” said Cory, “but if you’re sure, I’d be happy to take it. Before I go, however, I need to talk to you, Georgie.”

  Lillian looked confused when Cory pulled Georgie aside. “I was going to return this to you in exchange for the jewelry if I needed to, but I already have the jewelry, so here—take it,” Cory told him. “I think you need this now.”

  Georgie’s eyes grew wide and his hand flew to his pocket when he saw the box on Cory’s palm. “How did you get that?”

  “If you want to be happy with your future bride, there are two important things for you to remember,” Cory told him. “Do not steal, and do not kiss strange women. Doing either of those things can get you in very big trouble.”

  “I, uh,” was all Georgie could say.

  Cory waved as she left them and headed for the front of the carriage. “I need to go to town,” she told the driver, and climbed back inside. After tucking the jewelry in her pockets, she turned to the baby dragon. She had never thought about getting a dragon, but now that she had one, she had plenty of uses for her. With a little training, the dragon might be just what Cory needed to keep the guild from harassing her anymore.

  Cory settled back in her seat as the carriage started moving again. She spent the next few hours giving the baby dragon treats from the basket she found under the seat. The dragon had gotten friendlier and had even let Cory pet her head through the side of the crate. Cory named the dragon Shimmer because of the way the light played across her copper-colored scales; she was already becoming attached to the little creature.

  After the dragon ate all the dried fish that the cook had sent for her, Cory rooted around in the basket, trying to find something else. She was wondering if dragons liked cheese when the carriage began to slide. Cory let out a small shri
ek as the carriage skidded and slid off the road into a ditch filled with briars.

  “What happened?” she shouted to the driver once she got the door open. Prickly briars surrounded the carriage, making it impossible for her to get out.

  “We hit a patch of ice,” the driver shouted back. “Stay there, my lady. We’re going for help.”

  “Ice, in the summer? That doesn’t make sense unless the frost fairies put it there,” Cory told the little dragon. “At least no one was hurt. I guess we’ll just have to wait here until the coachmen come back and . . . Ow! Who did that?”

  Something had pricked Cory’s arm. When she turned to see who had done it, she found briars coming through the doorway. Pulling the door shut wasn’t easy, but by the time she had it closed, briars were already coming through the windows. She cried out again when one tried to wrap itself around her wrist, pricking her fingers and her wrist as she pulled it off. It was hard to get away from the briars with the dragon’s crate taking up so much room and . . . Suddenly, Cory had an idea; maybe she wouldn’t have to wait to see if the dragon could be useful.

  Although Cory’s fingers were sore from touching the briars, she was able to pry off an already loosened board from the front of the crate. The little dragon was scratching at the door when Cory finally opened it. By then, the briars were creeping across the floor. One was trying to latch onto Cory’s leg when the dragon burst out of its crate.

  “Burn the briars!” Cory told her, and had to cover her face with her arms as the dragon toasted the plants. The briars shriveled back, pulling out of the carriage even as the dragon burned them to a crisp. When there were no more inside, the dragon flew out the window and burned the plants to the ground.

  By the time the coachmen returned, the carriage was free of briars, the ice on the road had melted, and the baby dragon was asleep in Cory’s arms. Cory had to climb out then, however, because the coachmen had brought a farmer and two draft horses with them. Waiting by the side of the road with Shimmer, she watched the big horses drag the carriage out of the ditch. Once the carriage horses were hitched up again, Cory returned to her seat. The carriage had scarcely started moving before something flashed past the window.

  “What was that?” she wondered out loud. She was still holding the sleeping dragon, but the baby was heavy for her size and generated a lot of heat even when she wasn’t breathing fire, so it was a relief to set her down to peer out the window. Cory jerked back just in time to keep her nose from getting frozen as a frost fairy sent a frost bolt her way. The bolt hit the back wall inside the carriage, turning it white with ice crystals. Cory shivered, glad that it hadn’t been her. When she sat down, she bumped the baby, who looked up at her with sleepy eyes.

  Another bolt hit the back wall, only inches from Cory’s head. Cory ducked down, trying to get out of the fairy’s reach. The baby dragon yawned and sat up, curious about so much activity. When she spotted a frost fairy at the window, she gave chase, singeing the fairy’s wings before returning to Cory. When no more fairies showed up after that, Cory was able to relax. She smiled to herself as she petted the dragon’s head. Having a dragon in the house might work out very well.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Cory learned how persistent frost fairies could be the next morning. When she got out of bed, the fairies were busily flying around the outside of the house, covering it with a thick layer of frost. Noodles and the little dragon hadn’t gotten along when they first met, so Shimmer had slept in a makeshift bed in the kitchen. She was whining and clawing at the door when Cory entered the room. Cory let her out, delighted that she could do something about the fairies, but she wasn’t so delighted when her uncle came into the room a few minutes later.

  “Why’s your dragon chasing fairies past my bedroom window at five thirty in the morning?” he asked. “The school’s getting heavy-duty pipes put in, so it’s closed today. I would have slept in if Shimmer hadn’t woken me!”

  “I’m sorry!” said Cory. “I woke early and came to see how Shimmer was doing. The fairies were already frosting the house, so I let her out.”

  Micah sighed and shook his head. “I know I said last night that we’d give it a try, but I really don’t think it’s a good idea to have a dragon in a house with a thatched roof. Do you know how easily she could set the roof on fire?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Cory.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to find a new home for your dragon. A woodchuck is one thing; a dragon is something else. It would be different if we lived in a stone castle like Prince Rupert.”

  Cory nodded. She had been afraid of this, but she’d hoped it would work out. The baby dragon had already wormed her way into Cory’s heart, so giving her to someone else wasn’t going to be easy. It would have to be someone who’d be good to her; someone with plenty of room for her to fly and a nonflammable roof on their house. No neighbors with flammable roofs, either, she supposed. There was only one person who came to mind, and she wanted to see him anyway.

  Cory would have preferred to take the baby dragon in her crate, but it wouldn’t fit in the basket on the pedal-bus. Instead, she left the house with the baby dragon in her arms, hoping she’d be good for the ride. The people on the bus gave her odd looks when she climbed on carrying Shimmer, but no one objected when she set the dragon in the basket and they started off.

  They made three stops before they reached the Dell, where Jonas McDonald lived. When Cory knocked on the door, no one answered, so she lugged Shimmer to the fields, where they spotted the young farmer examining his potatoes.

  “Hello, there!” he called when he saw her walking down the aisle between the crops. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Shimmer,” said Cory. “Someone gave her to me, but my uncle says she can’t stay with us. His house has a thatched roof and, well, you know dragons. I was hoping she could come live with you. She might be able to help you with that problem we discussed. How is that going, by the way?”

  Jonas shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up at the sky. “It worked really well at first, but then a few of them dusted my fields on purpose, and when they saw I wasn’t really going to do anything, it got a whole lot worse. They do flybys every evening when they leave work and dump their leftover dust on my fields. Now my tomatoes grow to be huge, but they explode when you touch them. And those darned grapes get ruder every day. I wear earplugs now when I go near the grapevines.”

  “My boyfriend came up with a good idea,” said Cory. “You could sell the potatoes with eyes and the corn with ears and the gossiping grapes as novelty gifts. Some people might actually like them. But if you just want to make the fairies stop, I bet Shimmer could help you. She’s great at chasing away fairies, and she’s really smart. Just tell her what you need her to do and she does it.”

  “Is that so? Then maybe I will give her a try. I wasn’t so sure about having a dragon around the farm, but if she can keep the fairies away from my crops, I’m all for it.”

  Cory handed the little dragon over, along with the few toys she’d taken from Noodles’s collection. She could hear Shimmer crying as she walked away, but she didn’t dare look back for fear she’d never be able to leave the baby dragon if she did.

  Cory tried not to think about the little dragon on her way home and was almost relieved when a vision came unexpectedly. She’d forgotten about finding Mary Lambkin’s true love in all the excitement, and was delighted to see her face along with that of a nice-looking young man. She was already thinking about how she could find him when she got off the bus and saw Blue waiting on the front porch.

  “Your uncle told me you were back,” he said, getting to his feet. When she reached the top of the steps, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. They didn’t move apart for a while, but when they did, he stroked her hair, saying, “From the little bit he told me, it sounds as if you had quite an adventure.”

  “I guess you could call it that,” Cory said as she led Blue
back to the chairs. “Nothing turned out quite the way we expected it to.” She told him about how Rupert had changed his mind during the wedding, and was going to marry Goldilocks. Then she told him about how they had played an unexpected concert the day before the wedding, and didn’t play one after the wedding was canceled. What she didn’t tell him was why Rupert had changed his mind, or what happened to the princess afterward. Once again she wished she could tell him everything.

  “I heard that you were robbed on the way there, but nobody was hurt.”

  “No, thank goodness!” said Cory. “They took the bracelet you gave me and Chancy’s wedding ring and Daisy’s earrings and Goldilocks’s necklace. Everyone was so upset!”

  “Don’t worry about the bracelet,” said Blue. “I’ll see if I can get another one just like it.”

  “But I got it back! Princess Lillian gave me a ride in her carriage. We saw the highwayman and I got the jewelry from his saddlebag.”

  “What?” said Blue. “How did you do that?”

  Cory realized her mistake. There was no way she could explain it all without telling him about flying to the tavern and hearing the highwaymen talking, and to do that she’d have to tell him about her wings and being a Cupid. Somehow, this didn’t seem like the right time for that. “It’s a long story, and I will tell you someday, but I can’t quite yet. Do you trust me to tell you the whole story later?”

  “You weren’t in any danger, were you?” Blue said, looking worried.

  “No! He didn’t threaten me or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then I can wait if I have to,” said Blue. “But I do want to hear everything, including why you can’t tell me now.”

  “I’ll tell you every bit,” Cory said, and kissed him to seal the promise. When they moved apart, she sighed, realizing just how much she had missed him. “Now you tell me. What happened here?”

  “A lot, actually. Your grandfather Lionel finally got the FLEA to go after the guilds. Mary Mary and the leader of the Flower Fairy Guild have been arrested for not obeying restraining orders. Micah showed me what the frost fairies did the day you left, and we’re trying to get a restraining order against them, too. Now that you’re back, you’re going to be asked to testify in front of the big jury tomorrow. Your friend Stella Nimble is also going to testify. We’re hoping that when people hear about what the guilds have done, more people will come forward with their stories.”