My Unfair Godmother (30 page)

• • •

An hour later, the carriage was packed, the horses were ready, and I was wearing a worn brown dress that smelled of onions and gar-lic—one of the servant’s gowns. The wizard had also given me a head-covering wimple to hide my blond hair. “If we see anyone, shrink down so as not to appear so tall,” Bartimaeus had told me. I wasn’t that tall, but the Middle Ages was populated by short people. Then Bartimaeus had grumbled disapprovingly. “And for mercy’s sake, do something so you don’t look so pretty.” Personally, I thought the ugly brown dress and wimple did a suffi-cient enough job of that. The wizard also gave me an outfit for the baby—a beige shirt that was so long it looked like a shapeless dress.

Cute baby clothing hadn’t been invented yet.

Hudson changed into new clothes too because King John had told his knights that I was traveling with one of his guards. He wore an oversized gray tunic, leggings, and a leather belt. Unlike my wimple and kitchen-staff ensemble, Hudson’s outfit somehow looked good on him. It was his broad shoulders. He could make anything look rugged.

I had to quell the urge to call him “farm boy,” and pretend I was But-tercup from
The Princess Bride.

But I did let my eyes rest on him a lot.

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Before we left, the wizard sprinkled a spicy-smelling liquid on each corner of the carriage. “Don’t touch these spots before they dry,” he told us. “If you ruin the hiding spell, our enemies will be able to see the carriage.” He sent me an especially deep frown. “We can’t have that while we carry a fugitive.”

I wasn’t looking forward to a day-long carriage ride with Bartimaeus and his many complaints, so I was happily surprised when he climbed up to the box seat and announced he was driving. “There are things out in the forest that only a wizard can ward off,” he told us in a condescending tone.

Fine. More power to him and more room for us. Junior was already bored with the baby toys in the diaper bag, and I had no idea how I was going to entertain him in a carriage all day.

The answer to this question was soon evident. Junior wanted to play Grab Mommy’s Lips. Hudson was coconspirator in the game and kept holding Junior airplane-style, zooming him toward my face.

After we played that for a stretch, Junior moved on to Try to Throw All of the Baby Toys Out the Carriage Window. Then he tried to teethe on the seats. We fed him creamed carrots, which he somehow managed to smear across not only his bib but his entire body. I only had wet wipes to clean him off, which weren’t very effective, especially since Junior then decided he wanted to eat them.

By the time he took a bottle and fell asleep that afternoon, I was exhausted. I propped him against the crook of my arm and noticed a smear of carrots near the shoulder of my dress. I tried to clean it off with a wet wipe, one-handed.

“Don’t worry about stains,” Hudson told me. “I’m sure the book will erase them.”

“This dress belongs to the wizard’s servant and you know he’ll gripe about me getting it dirty.” I kept wiping but couldn’t manage 282/356

very well with only one hand. Finally Hudson moved from his seat to mine, took the cloth, and wiped it for me. He was so close now, bent over and touching my shoulder, that my heart skipped a few beats.

He finished, and straightened. “There. Now it blends in with the general brownness of the dress.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Neither of us said anything else. Hudson didn’t go back to his seat. The silence seemed to be waiting for something. Or maybe that was just me.

His eyes were a warm brown, gentle but intense. “You know … I never gave you a good-bye kiss.”

It was hard to breathe. “Oh. That’s right.”

“I was supposed to do that so you wouldn’t be lying.”

“Yeah,” I said. Had I actually told Robin Hood that I was going to kiss Hudson, or had I merely implied it? But then, it was better to be safe than sorry.

The suggestion of a smile played on Hudson’s lips. “We’d better kiss now so fireworks don’t go off around your head.” Fireworks. I nodded. Somehow I couldn’t speak anymore.

He leaned toward me gradually, as though giving me time to change my mind. I shut my eyes and let his lips come down on mine.

Hudson wasn’t in a hurry to say good-bye. The kiss was slow, caressing. All the bumps of the road and the sway of the carriage seemed to fade away, replaced by the beating of my heart. I didn’t remember putting my free hand around his neck, but it was there somehow, twining through his hair. His arm moved from the back of the seat to my shoulders. I liked the feel of his arm around me. I felt envel-oped, cared for. When he lifted his head from mine, my mind was spinning.

I blinked at him. “Well, you certainly have a way with good-byes.” 283/356

He smiled, amused, then moved back to sit across from me. I wondered if he really had only kissed me to make sure no sparks went off around my head. Maybe he hadn’t meant to cause the sparks that were now going off inside me.

I waited for him to say something about the kiss, about us. Was he interested, or was he just the type of guy who liked to prove he could turn girls into quivering piles of hormones?

Still smiling, Hudson looked at the baby. “You ought to call him Stetson.”

I tried to keep my voice calm, like the kiss hadn’t really mattered.

“My husband might not appreciate me naming our son after a hat.”

“It’s not like you’re naming him Baseball Cap or Sombrero.” Did he want to be more than friends? Not even that? I wanted to ask, but instead I stared at Junior. He was safe ground. “Can you believe how tiny his fingernails are?”

“They match his tiny fingers.”

“His pinky curves in a little,” I said, noticing it for the first time.

“I’ve never seen that before.”

“It’s not so uncommon.” Hudson lifted his own hand. “Mine are that way.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Hudson’s gaze shot to mine.

I stared back at him, suddenly light-headed. The baby had brown, wavy hair and dark brown eyes like Hudson. I felt a blush creep into my cheeks.

Instead of blushing, the coloring dropped from Hudson’s face. He clenched his jaw. This was not a good indication that he wanted to be more than friends.

When he at last spoke, it was with marked frustration. “Chrissy said she went to the future and got
your
baby.” 284/356

I nodded, still blushing.

“But she’s your fairy godmother, so she probably didn’t want to risk your child. I’m just a nameless extra who’s messing up the story.

She would have thought it was dramatic justice to take
my
baby instead.”

I gulped, finally able to breathe. He hadn’t connected the details the same way I had. “You don’t think I’m the mother?” Hudson’s gaze swept over the baby. “He doesn’t look anything like you, and he loves it when I hold him—he probably recognizes me.” Hudson leaned back against his seat, folded his arms, and let out an exasperated breath. “He’s my kid, and his name is Stetson.” But I knew he was mine. He had calmed down at the sound of my voice. I wasn’t about to relinquish him. “The story is about the miller’s daughter. Rumpelstiltskin bought
my
child, not yours. Why would Chrissy have brought the guard’s son into the fairy tale?” Hudson waved a hand in my direction. “You’re not actually a miller’s daughter. Your father is a librarian. Chrissy is improvising and she doesn’t care whose baby she steals for the story. Fairies don’t follow rules.”

“They must have some rules because they have a magical alliance.”

Hudson shook his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.

He looks just like my baby pictures. Trust me, he’s mine.” There was no point in arguing about it. “Fine,” I said, wrapping an arm around Junior possessively. “He’s
ours
.” I meant for the duration of the trip, but Hudson understood what I hadn’t meant to say. I could see the realization dawning on his face.

“You think that … you and I?” The words hung in the air for a moment.

I didn’t answer. I probably blushed again.

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Hudson tilted his head back and grinned. He looked like he might break out laughing.

What did that reaction mean? Did he think the idea of us being a couple was funny, that it could never happen?

I sent him a challenging look. “I suppose you’re too good to marry me?”

He leaned against the carriage wall, settling in with satisfaction.

“Not at all. You’re King John’s fiancée, the heroine of the story. One day Disney will make a movie about this and then you’ll have thousands of little girls toting around lunch boxes with your face on them.

Me, I’m only a nameless extra.”

“Then why do you look so smug?”

“I’m contemplating telling our kids I met their mother at a police station after she was brought in for questioning.”

“That’s probably grounds for not marrying you right there. And besides, I’m not positive you’re Junior’s father. I bet when I go back to New York I’ll meet lots of brunet guys with wavy hair and weird pinky fingers.”

He leaned forward, checking on the baby. “How is Stetson doing?”

“
Junior
is doing fine.”

Hudson tucked the blanket back around him where it had come loose. “I’m never going to live in New York, so that means you must stick around Arizona. A city-girl-finds-her-country-roots sort of thing.”

“Maybe you fall so desperately in love with me, you follow me to the city. Country-boy-sheds-his-boots sort of thing.” Hudson rubbed his jaw, considering. “No, you don’t want to raise Stetson in some apartment building in a city. A growing boy needs a yard. Trees to climb. Mud to play in—”

“The Empire State Building. Museums and cultural events—” 286/356

“A horse.”

“Snow.”

Hudson opened his mouth to speak and stopped suddenly. A new thought had occurred to him and whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

“Maybe Chrissy didn’t take the baby from the twenty-first century.”

“You think she stole some random baby from here that just happens to look like you?”

“Not random. Ours. Maybe this means we never get home. We’ll marry each other here because we’re the only ones around who won’t think we’re crazy when we do modern things. If we made it back to our own century, what are the chances we would even live in the same place back home, let alone get married?” Judging by his facial expression, not great.

That stung. It was like he was telling me he could only see himself marrying me if I were the last woman on earth—or at least the only woman on earth who knew what dental hygiene was.

He let out a deep breath. “Forget I said that. We shouldn’t think about being stuck here. We’ll get home.” I couldn’t forget he said it. He had been trying to come up with a sensible reason why he would ever marry me.

After that bit of discussion, Hudson changed the subject to con-tingency plans. He not only wanted to figure out a plan B, he also went over plan C and D and probably would have gone beyond plan Z if there were more letters in the alphabet. He went over what I should do if the carriage were stopped by King John’s men, if we were separated, attacked, lost, wounded, captured, or ran out of food. Hudson’s face was completely serious during these instructions, and I wondered which fate he was trying to change: being stuck in the Middle Ages, or marrying me because of it.

Chapter 21

We stopped at an inn to eat and hire fresh horses for the rest of the trip. By getting new horses now, Bartimaeus’s horses would be rested and waiting for him on the way home. After some deliberation, Bartimaeus decided it would look suspicious if Hudson and I didn’t go inside the inn to eat while the horses were being switched. He scoped out the place for king’s men, then came back and told us, “When the horses are ready, we’ll leave. No dawdling. I have to go oversee things in the stable. Innkeepers are all cheats and scoundrels.” This sort of speech was probably the reason why the wizard was known as Bartimaeus the Proud and not Bartimaeus the Friendly.

After he left, Hudson climbed out of the carriage, then helped me down. He kept hold of my hand when I was on the ground, intertwin-ing my fingers with his. When I looked at him questioningly, he said,

“It’s part of our cover. You’re my wife.” I wasn’t sure who the cover was for, since no one else was on the street by the stable and no one could see us yet from the inn window. “And,” Hudson went on, “this is our son, Stetson.”

I didn’t move toward the inn. “We should at least choose a name that works in the time period. Edward, or maybe Jacob …”

“You are not naming our son after
Twilight
characters.”

“They’re older names,” I pointed out. “I can’t help it if they’re also good-looking fictional guys.”

Hudson shook his head. “Women.” To the baby, he said, “Don’t worry, I won’t let her name you after a vampire.” He bent and kissed the top of Junior’s head. As Hudson straightened, he hesitated, and looked at me questioningly. Seemingly on a whim, he put his hands on 288/356

my shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed me too. The pressure of his lips on mine made my heart skid helplessly inside my chest. I shut my eyes and kissed him back, then was angry at myself for acting that way. We weren’t a couple. He had never even said he liked me. He thought he would only marry me if he were stuck in the Middle Ages.

I stepped away from him, taking a deep breath to clear my mind.

“Okay, just because I might at some point have your baby, it doesn’t mean you can kiss me whenever you want.” He smiled, self-satisfied. Whatever his question had been, he thought he knew the answer. Hudson took the baby from my arms and spoke in a hushed tone. “Here’s another thing you need to learn about women, Stets. They might pretend to like the bad-boy Robin Hood types, but they can’t resist hick-town boys.”

“You’re so sure about that?” I asked.

He smiled. “You’re into me, I can tell.”

“I’m not into you,” I said hotly. Hotly, because as soon as the words left my lips, sparklers erupted on top of my head.

Hudson looked at them, and a grin spread across his face. The baby cooed and reached out, trying to grab the flaring light. Hudson moved farther away. “Don’t touch. Just look at Mommy’s pretty liar hat.”