One Enchanted Evening

by Lynn Kurland

  She put the brakes on that thought before she finished it. She knew all about those impossible time-travel romances Peaches read. She’d even read the start of one in which a poor girl had fallen asleep on a park bench and woken up in medieval Scotland, only to find herself tossed into the castle dungeon while the laird tried to talk himself into burning her as a witch. That was entertaining when read in an overstuffed chair with a cup of hot chocolate nearby, but not so diverting when considered after two days in backwoods England without a single sighting of toilet paper.

  It was time to have a few answers.

  She pulled Montgomery de Piaget’s cloak around her and started down the passageway. She’d already begun day three without the appropriate twenty-first-century hygienic items—in an inside biffy that looked a great deal like the garderobe Tess had showed off with pride and a great amount of descriptive detail—and poached a bit of what Cindi had found too far beneath her to eat. She would have preferred to have had some sort of weapon, but maybe she could nab a kitchen knife later.

  The hallway was empty, but the stairwell wasn’t. She’d made it only partway down the stairs before she ran into one of the men who’d been sitting at the lord’s table the night before. She suspected he was related to the other man sitting with him and perhaps to the woman who’d just about stabbed Cindi with her glares. He had been, she could readily admit, the most unpleasant looking of the lot.

  “You and I should speak privately,” he said with an ugly smile.

  “We should,” she agreed, feinted to her left, then dashed past him to the right. She kept on trotting right through the great hall, ignoring her would-be friend’s family and continuing on outside before anyone could stop her.

  She concentrated on her usual slog through the courtyard mire, managing to keep her shoes on her feet this time. She paused by the barbican gate, then looked over her shoulder.

  The place looked worse in the daylight. The courtyard was full of shells of buildings that had been perfectly restored in her sister’s castle. She knew she should have turned away, but she couldn’t. It simply wasn’t possible that within hours, the castle should have gone from perfectly glorious to perfectly horrible, but she couldn’t deny what she was seeing. It was truly as if the clock had been turned back.

  And not in a good way.

  She turned away and walked through the gatehouse. It was just as functional as it had been three days earlier, with the portcullis spikes hanging down through three separate gates. Where things took yet another turn for the worse was the bridge. Her sister’s bridge was a solid, well-built thing with no propensity to rising and falling depending on the mood of the guards in the tower. Pippa hurried over it and had to jump off the end thanks to a couple of jokers who laughed as she did so.

  Karma was going to give them something nasty for lunch, she was just sure of it.

  She walked over to where the gift shop should have been and sat down. She did so even though the shop with its quaint table and chairs was gone and all that was left for her to sit on was a fallen log. At least she had a good view of the reenactment practice going on in the field in front of her.

  Men were training with swords. She thought she might have recognized a few of them from the night before, particularly the blond man named Everard. The rest of the guys were a guess, but she felt fairly confident in identifying their leader. He was tall, exceptionally handsome, and definitely knew how to use a sword.

  Montgomery de Piaget, apparently.

  She would have gaped, but she was tired of gaping. She was just plain tired of everything—and cold, and rather frightened, truth be told, so she just sat there with her knees pressed together to keep them from trembling and her chin resting on her fists. She watched the madness in front of her with a detachment that should have worried her, but somehow she just didn’t have the energy for that, either.

  That detachment helped her ignore the fact that there was something about the whole scene that just didn’t belong in the twenty-first century.

  Take, for instance, Montgomery de Piaget. He didn’t look like he was simply practicing for a mock fight, but what did she know? She was a costume designer from a sleepy little town on the West Coast where people recycled their theater programs and it rained a lot. She knew actors with collapsible swords and the occasional crazy method guy who carried his weapon around with him at all times to stay in character. Not even those rare birds ever looked as serious about their training as Montgomery did. Either he was somehow the real deal or he was planning on putting on one helluva show. He wasn’t flashy, or loud, or obnoxious; he was just in charge. She might have liked that about him if she hadn’t been so uninterested in the whole thing.

  The morning passed. She was sure the three men who seemed to always be closest to Montgomery would give up, or give in, or beg for mercy, like the man named Everard had. To her surprise, they seemed as driven as their leader was, as if their primary task was to whip the rest of the guys into shape. The other, less skilled men weren’t as driven, but still they worked as if their paychecks depended on how well they did their jobs.

  Their paychecks, or maybe their lives.

  She didn’t want to believe it, but she couldn’t help but think that somehow, beyond all reason, she had become trapped in a paranormal romance novel where she—as the heroine’s servant, of course—had been sent back in time to watch the gorgeous, if slightly gloomy, hero fall in love with the gorgeous, if slightly batty and undeniably buxom, heroine named Cindi. The only thing that kept her from believing that fully was that not even Karma would have been so cruel as to relegate her to watching her sister get the guy. Again.

  It certainly wasn’t as if she wanted any of the guys stomping around in the dirt in front of her, no sir. If this was some other century than her own and this was the way guys passed their time, that meant the bad guys had swords as well and were likely spending their time running around not saving maidens in distress, but creating them.

  Sort of like the guy who had just grabbed her from behind and jerked her to her feet.

  She shrieked before she could stop herself, then, blessing Peaches for having dragged her to more than one self-defense class, she put into action the training she’d never been sure she would have the guts to use. She bit the hand that was covering her mouth, then elbowed her captor as hard as she could in the stomach.

  “Duck!”

  She dropped to her knees partly because her attacker had let her go and her knees buckled, but mostly because Montgomery de Piaget had a knife in his hand and looked like he meant business with it. There was a thud, then the man who had attacked her fell over her, rolled over the log she’d been sitting on, and landed on his back in front of her. She stood up and stared down at him in surprise. She realized she was screaming only after Montgomery took her by both arms and shook her.

  “Cease,” he said loudly. “You’re safe.”

  She shut her mouth, but that didn’t help at all with her teeth chattering. There was a man lying at her feet with a dagger shaft poking out of his chest and Montgomery didn’t look like that bothered him. He patted her, as if by so doing he could calm any and all hysterics, then reached down to jerk his knife free of the man’s flesh. He cleaned his blade on the man’s tunic, then looked over his shoulder at one of his men.

  “Rid us of this refuse,” he said simply.

  Pippa turned away and threw up. It was becoming a very bad habit, that getting so worked up over things. She felt a hand on her back and shrieked again in spite of herself. She realized almost immediately to whom it belonged, though that wasn’t terribly useful in ending her shivering. She dragged her sleeve across her mouth, then found herself turned around. Montgomery dabbed at her cheeks with the hem of his sleeve, then patted her again.

  “You should go back inside.”

  Pippa was desperately tempted to have that nervous breakdown Montgomery de Piaget was trying to stave off, but instead settled for a shuddering breath. “He could hav
e been a nice man.”

  “Nice men do not assault women.”

  “Maybe he wanted my seat.”

  Montgomery pursed his lips. “Then he should have asked. As he didn’t, he paid the price. Now, lady, I think you would be served to perhaps seek out the fire in the great hall.”

  Not when the hall wasn’t her sister’s, with running water, a roaring fire, and lack of rough-looking actors. Pippa took a deep breath, a steadier one this time around. “I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind. I think I need fresh air.”

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “As you will.” He stepped back over the log, called to someone to come look after her, then went back to his work.

  She sat, she shivered, and she realized she hadn’t thanked him for the rescue. She would, when she thought she could get two words out without some new sort of hysterical display. She looked away from the extreme sports going on in front of her and stared at her sister’s castle, which was looking not nearly as pristine and magnificent as it should have looked. It was definitely her sister’s castle, but then again, it wasn’t.

  It was as if the castle—and she herself—had been pulled out of her time and plunked down in another reality entirely, one full of people who didn’t have any reason to think what they were doing—namely hacking at each other with very sharp swords—was weird. But that sort of thing was something that belonged in a book; it wasn’t the sort of thing that happened in real life.

  Was it?

  She wished she could stop questioning it, but just saying the words was soothing in a way she wouldn’t have expected. It wasn’t possible. Reality was reality, and space-time-continuum stuff didn’t just intrude on it. Or at least didn’t in her life.

  Then again, it was hard to argue with what was right there in front of her. Cindi might have been delusional, but she was most definitely in full possession of all her faculties. She was sitting on a rough, uncomfortable log, and she was wearing a tunic and tights made of something that had been spun on an old-fashioned loom. The cloak, which was surprisingly warm, had also been made by hand, though the quality of it was very nice. The ring of steel was audible and the sound of men cursing in a version of French she wasn’t entirely familiar with didn’t seem to be a figment of her imagination. They certainly seemed to be pretty sure they were just going about their daily business.

  But how was it possible that she could have been sent to another reality . . . or another time?

  She considered all the sparkles she’d seen around her and Cindi, but that could have been the glitter Tess had been throwing over the girls to give them a good send-off. She hadn’t really felt anything unusual that night besides an intense desire to push her sister into the lake so she could actually have a conversation with a very nice man. Had there been a stray star she had inadvertently wished on, or a fairy godmother hiding in the bushes she hadn’t noticed?

  She froze.

  She had wished. She had wished for a guy who would want a second date and something—Karma, probably—had taken note. Maybe it was that other shoe she’d been waiting for. Maybe that blast of good fortune in having Stephen de Piaget actually like what she was doing was so amazing that she was being thrust back into hell to pay for it ahead of time. Maybe she would pay the price, then get a one-way ticket back to where she was supposed to be, life would become amazing, and her current straits would all be nothing more than a bad dream.

  Assuming she could get herself out of them to enjoy that amazing life in the future.

  She honestly had no idea how she was going to do that, but she supposed the first thing to do was figure out where she was—or perhaps when she was. She couldn’t get to an ending point if she didn’t have a starting point.

  She just hoped her ending point wasn’t anywhere near a stake surrounded by a robust pile of kindling.

  She took another look at the men in front of her, trying to decide who might best help her without helping her to her doom. Montgomery looked less unkempt than the rest of that rough-looking group, but he more than made up for that by the aura of toughness he exuded. She didn’t suppose he would go all medieval on her, but there was no sense in tempting Fate.

  She knew where that led.

  She searched for a likelier suspect, then realized that there was someone she had overlooked. There was a teenager standing about ten feet away from her, watching her surreptitiously. He might be young enough to still intimidate, though he was wearing a sword as well. Maybe he didn’t know how to use it very well yet. She scooted over on her log, then looked at him. When he didn’t move, she patted the seat next to her and nodded in a casual way.

  He looked momentarily taken aback, then he seemed to consider. He looked at Montgomery, who had glanced over his shoulder, possibly to make sure there were no more murderers hanging around the edge of his training field. When Montgomery nodded slightly and turned back to his exercises, the teenager took a deep breath and sidled over a step or two at a time. It took him a few minutes to get close enough for speech to be possible. Pippa wasn’t sure how good her as-yet-to-be-determined-vintage French was, but she thought she could make herself understood. She smiled her most unassuming smile.

  “I’m Pippa,” she said. “Who are you?”

  He frowned. “My lord uncle said your name was Persephone.”

  “Pippa is my short name. Montgomery is your uncle?”

  “Aye.” He paused, then smiled very slightly. “I am Phillip. My father is Robin, my uncle’s eldest brother. He will be the lord of Artane when my grandfather passes.”

  Well, that sounded like the usual sort of English nobility structure that might have been found in the twenty-first century. There was no reason to assume Phillip or his family was of a Victorian vintage, or Tudor, or . . . or an earlier time. It didn’t mean that at all.

  She thought about that for a bit until she realized what was starting to bother her: Phillip kept looking behind her. Surreptitiously, of course, but he was still doing it. She looked behind her as well, but saw nothing unusual.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Phillip shifted uncomfortably. “You had wings before, my lady. I don’t see them today.”

  She blinked. “Wings?”

  He nodded earnestly. “I think my lord uncle thinks you come from Faery. I know I do,” he added, not entirely under his breath.

  She would have laughed, but Phillip was obviously quite serious. She supposed that it was understandable, from Montgomery’s point of view. After all, both she and Cindi had shown up with wings on. Montgomery wouldn’t know that they hadn’t been attached unless he’d—

  Her thoughts ground to a halt. Unless he’d been the one to pull her dress off her, in which case he’d seen far more than he should have. She supposed the time for blushing furiously was long past, but she did it anyway just on principle.

  “Lady, are you unwell?”

  “It’s warm out,” Pippa said, fanning herself. She looked at Phillip, grasping for a good distraction. “Do you believe in fairies?”

  “My father and I don’t believe in paranormal oddities.” He paused, then shrugged. “I will admit there are strange happenings in the north, however, for which I can conceive no reasonable explanation.”

  “Paranormal oddities?” she echoed.

  He flashed her an utterly charming smile. “None that I would admit to having seen.” He paused and seemed to chew on his words before he was ready to spit them out. “I must say, my lady, that your mistress could hardly be mistaken for anything but a queen. I don’t have much experience with royalty, but I have seen the king. She carries that same air about her.”

  “The king,” Pippa said, as if she expected Phillip to fill in the blank for her. “And that would be king . . .”

  “Henry,” he supplied, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “Of course,” she said quickly, pretending to smack her forehead. “Bump on the head, you know. Lost my recent memories. Henry, the son of . . .”

&nbs
p; “John Lackland,” Phillip said, looking slightly relieved. “Do you remember him?”

  “It’s coming back to me,” she said. She looked up at him. “Have you met the king?”

  “Aye, when in the company of my father, though it was a dodgy business indeed. My father complained quite loudly about the king’s habit of spending the people’s money on such lavish buildings.” He shrugged. “At least we have a bit more power since the barons forced John’s hand, though I’m not sure Henry will hold to the bargain.”

  “You know a lot about politics,” she said with frank admiration.

  He smiled, a little sheepishly. “My father is very outspoken and has the sword skill to defend his views. I’m mostly just repeating what he says—” He looked toward the castle and stiffened. “Someone comes.”

  That someone turned out to be Joan, who had apparently come for her.

  “The queen calls for you.”

  Pippa decided it was in her best interest to answer that call. She accepted Phillip’s very gallant aid to get to her feet, thanked him for the pleasant conversation, and walked back to the castle with Joan as if she were doing nothing more interesting than taking a little Saturday afternoon stroll to the Mini Mart for a bag of peanut butter cups and a cup of slushy, cherry-flavored courage. She wasn’t going to lose it, especially not in front of witnesses. So she was living with people who thought they were hanging out in the middle of the thirteenth century where there was no plumbing to speak of, no running water, no lovely Aga stove in the kitchen to provide a place to set a cheery tea kettle. No problem. It was a collective hallucination.