One Enchanted Evening (20 page)

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.

T
here
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.

His personal discomfort had been good for the swordplay of his men, however, given that he’d left Pippa sleeping peacefully under Phillip’s watchful care at dawn so he could retreat to the lists and take out his frustrations on his garrison. That had taken up the bulk of the morning quite nicely, but not done much for his heart. He supposed the only thing that would do that would be watching Pippa go back through her gate and seeing it close behind her.

Something he didn’t particularly care to think about, actually.

He cursed again as he walked across the bridge and into his courtyard, hoping for mud and swords and other things he didn’t have an unhealthy curiosity about. Petter and his lads were making steady progress on the worst spots in the walls and a few of the garrison lads had been willing to work on the roof of the garrison hall. With any luck, he would have most of his basic defenses in place before he had snow to deal with along with marauding ruffians. He supposed mucking out his courtyard would have to wait until spring. That and ridding his great hall of its tendency to be so smokey he couldn’t breathe.

At the moment, though, even smoking fires sounded better than the chill that had suddenly descended outside. He walked into the great hall to find something warm to drink, then suddenly wished he hadn’t.

Cinderella was sitting in a chair next to the fire, alternately coughing from the smoke and shouting for Pippa to come serve her something to eat. Montgomery came to a lurching halt one step too late. He’d been spotted.

Cinderella stood up and fixed him with a look that rooted him to the spot. He wanted to run, but he found he couldn’t. He had begun to suspect that Cinderella was a witch, not just a refugee from the Future. When he looked at her, he felt just a little bewildered. Her crown was listing so far to the right that it was almost over her ear and her gown had started to look a little bedraggled, but somehow that didn’t detract at all from her perfection.

“Well, good afternoon,” she purred. “Are you prepared to perform in my beauty pageant?”

“Ah,” he began, suppressing the urge to flee. He was a bloody bespurred knight with scores of battles, skirmishes, and tourneys behind him. Surely facing a simple woman wasn’t beyond his skill.

It wasn’t Cinderella that terrified him, truth be told, it was what she was suggesting. She had begun to mix into her French the same English Jennifer did, but even with all the words he knew, he had no idea what a beauty pageant entailed. He suspected that demonstrating his talents, something Cinderella had announced the night before he would be doing, would unfortunately include something performed on the lute. As for the rest, he hoped whatever questions she wanted him to answer in the Final Five would be painless.

The saints preserve him, he didn’t think he could endure much more of the woman.

Cinderella raised her wand to tap him, but before he could wince at what he knew from experience was not a pleasant feeling, a hand caught it on the way toward him.

“Sit, my queen,” Pippa said, taking Cinderella by the arm and tugging. “Your prince must go on his way to prepare himself for the entertainments he will provide.”

Cinderella’s perfect brow creased. “For whom?”

“Why for you, my queen,” Pippa said. “Of course.” Montgomery watched her settle her sister, then he frowned thoughtfully. Why Pippa continued to humor her sister, he couldn’t have said. Perhaps she feared Cinderella would say something she shouldn’t, something that would draw even more attention to herself than she had already. His household thought her nothing more than a daft noblewoman from the continent—something he had gone out of his way to noise about—but even they were growing weary of her screeching. He wasn’t sure he could listen to it much longer.

He also couldn’t watch much longer as Pippa tried to keep Cinderella in check, do all the tasks she’d taken upon herself in his hall, and no doubt spend the rest of her time worrying about how she was going to return home. Even if he hadn’t been entertaining feelings for her that were completely out of the question, he would have been concerned simply because she was a lovely, responsible woman bearing a burden that he could see was wearing on her. He supposed he could simply tell her what he knew and hope she would believe him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that yet. There was no sin in wishing that she might remain in his hall another pair of days, surely.

Was there?

He watched her distract Cinderella with a bowl of carrots, smile briefly at him, then start off toward the kitchens. He would have counted himself well rescued and hurried off to do more of his manly labors in the lists, but he caught sight of something that he didn’t particularly care for.

Boydin and Martin slinking off along behind Pippa.

He glanced at Cinderella, but she seemed perfectly happy where she was, no doubt examining each carrot for flaws. That left him free to go see to Pippa, who most certainly wouldn’t see danger where it might be lurking.

He stopped at the entrance to the kitchens and looked at Pippa who was standing next to the fire, leaning over to stir something Joan had hanging there. She tasted, then straightened with a spoon in her hands.

Boydin and Martin were easing toward her. Montgomery supposed he should have gone close enough to listen to what they were saying, but he didn’t need to. He could see by the way they stood that they were not intending anything good. They began to crowd Pippa at the fire, leaving her no choice but to back up until she had no more room to do so.

He stepped up behind his cousins and cleared his throat. Boydin turned slowly, his hands on his sword. Martin was apparently assuming that a scowl alone was enough to intimidate.

“I think the gel needs room to breathe,” Montgomery said calmly.

“And I think she’d like me a bit closer,” Boydin said, with an unmistakable look of challenge in his eye.

Montgomery looked at Martin. “And what do you say?”

“I say ’tisn’t your place to tell me what to do,” Martin said, all trace of any friendliness gone from his features. “The whelp of Rhys de Piaget you might be, but you’ve no authority here.”

Montgomery lifted one eyebrow. “I wonder which of you has the sword skill to accompany your very fierce words? I suspect neither.”