One Enchanted Evening (19 page)

To get rid of her.

She stood there for quite some time, considering the ramifications of that. She’d always thought Cindi was slightly ditzy, but she never would have credited her with maliciousness. But now? Now she could credit her sister with quite a few things, up to and including an intense bout of craziness. And the more she thought about it, the more she decided that the trips into Montgomery’s moat—both of them—had been intentional.

It was an unpleasant conclusion to come to.

She started to reach for the crank to the well only to find a hand in her way. She jumped a little in surprise, then realized it was only Montgomery standing next to her.

Only Montgomery. She shook her head. She was looking at a man who was a lord’s son and a lord in his own right, a
medieval
lord who was good at all sorts of things, beginning and ending with waving his sword around as if he knew what to do with it, and she was treating him like he was just another stagehand down at the theater.

She supposed that sword should have been her first clue that he was more than that. His sword, or his knives stuck down his boots. Or the way he was always referred to as
my lord
whenever anyone approached him. Or that she’d seen the tiniest of smiles the day before when he’d been standing next to her in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with a knife she was almost positive wasn’t sterile. It had been for Cindi’s lunch, though, so she hadn’t cared.

“I’m having Joan prepare a bath for you.”

She dragged herself back to the present. She would have pushed her hair out of her eyes, but she just couldn’t bear to touch any part of herself.

“Thank you,” she managed, “but I don’t think I want to get in the tub with myself. I’ll just rinse off here.”

“The well water is freezing,” he said. “You’ll catch your death.”

“I’m willing to chance it.”

He sighed. “I don’t like it, but I can’t say I don’t agree with you.” He pulled up a bucketful of water. “Hold your breath.”

She did, but she gasped just the same. The water was bitterly cold, but she was so desperate to get most of the disgusting stuff off herself before she got into a tub with herself that she didn’t care. The bucket had made a good start on her hair, but she suspected there might still be things down the front of her gown, so she pulled the wet fabric away from her skin as best she could.

“Again, please.”

He obliged her, then dumped a third bucket over her head to finish getting the gunk out of her hair. She couldn’t say that the soap she knew she had to look forward to would be much better than straight water, but when desperate in Rome . . .

“I’ll clear the kitchen.” He stepped back a pace. “Perhaps if you bathe by the fire, you won’t be so chilled.”

Pippa pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at him by the light of a faint moon. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

“ ’Tis nothing,” he said dismissively, then his expression lightened just the smallest bit. “ ’Tis unfortunate that you’ve become so acquainted with my poor excuse for a moat.”

“Accidents happen.”

“Hmmm,” was all he said, though it wasn’t a terribly convincing
hmmm
.

Pippa couldn’t have agreed more. She followed him through the back door of the kitchen. A wooden tub that looked a bit like half a wine barrel sat near the roaring fire, already halfway full of water.

Montgomery shooed everyone from the kitchen, then looked at her briefly. “I’ll stand guard.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Montgomery.”

“Thanks to him, too.”

He smiled faintly, then turned and walked up the passageway toward the great hall. Pippa looked at Joan, who was putting another bucket of water to heat over the fire.

“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.