One Enchanted Evening (3 page)

She dashed back into her apartment, tossed her future into a suitcase, then bolted for the stairs.

 

 

Several
hours later, she stood on a the edge of tree-root-ravaged bit of sidewalk, pushed back the hair that was curling frantically around her face and dripping down the back of her now-soggy pajamas, and decided that there was only one explanation for the swirling events she’d been plunked down into.

Karma was out to get her.

She was a big believer in Karma. A girl couldn’t grow up as the child of flower children and not have a healthy respect for that sort of thing—and for tie-dye as well, but those were probably memories better left for another time when she had peace for thinking and some mini chocolate muffins to ease the pain.

She rubbed the spot between her eyes that had almost ceased to pound, then looked around for somewhere to sit. Her sturdy, vintage suitcase was there next to her, looking imminently capable of standing up under the strain, so she sat and was grateful for the recent departure of fire engines and Dumpster delivery trucks. She rested her elbows on her knees, her chin on her fists, and gave herself over to the pondering of the twists and turns of her life.

She also kept a weather eye out for that rather large and clunky other shoe she was fairly sure was going to be dropped onto her head at any moment. One couldn’t have the sort of spectacular good fortune she was about to wallow in without some sort of equal and opposite cosmic reaction. And to keep herself from breaking into the kind of jubilant rejoicing she was sure Karma took note of, she reviewed the path that had led her to her current enviable spot on a suitcase out in the rain.

It had begun, she supposed, when Susie Chapman’s mother had given her a Barbie and a lunch sack full of fabric scraps for her seventh birthday. A world of possibilities had opened up for her, a realm that included plaids and paisleys, stripes and polka dots, all made from fabrics that weren’t made from hemp and were probably anything but organic. Her parents would have rent their tie-dyed caftans if they’d seen any of it, but Pippa had avoided detection by keeping her contraband doll and those glorious mass-dyed fabrics hidden cunningly in a couple of Birkenstock boxes.

She had continued her illicit evening-gown-making activities even after she and her siblings had been dumped by her überflaky parents on the doorstep of an aunt who had sprung, fully formed, from the pages of a Dickens novel. Pippa had in public sneered at romance, fairy tales, and designing clothes for dolls who savored both, but in the privacy of her little garret room she had sewn magical things from the best her lunch money could buy. She had gone on to major in art and costume design in college, then spent the ensuing four years slaving away over seams for others to wear in their own fairy tales acted out on stage.

And while designing for shows had been good practice, her burning and up-until-now secret desire had been to have her own line of clothing. In spite of her own avoidance of the like in her personal life, she dreamed of creating modern things with a hint of medieval romance and fairy-tale magic for others, things with little touches that only those looking for them would see. She wanted the women who wore her clothes to feel like the heroines of their own fairy tales, beautiful and beloved.

She paused. It was entirely possible she had some unresolved issues concerning romance, knights in shining armor, and her time at Aunt Edna’s.

She made a mental note to consider therapy later—after she’d eluded Karma’s steely eye and leaped at the chance she’d been recently offered to make her dreams come true.

Her sister Tess, who owned an honest-to-goodness English castle and made her living by hosting parties for all sorts of people with money and imagination, had shown some of Pippa’s designs to one of her clients. The man had looked at the kids’ costumes, then spontaneously uttered the magic words.

I say, your sister Pippa doesn’t design for adults, does she
?
I’m looking for a new place to invest a bit of money.

Pippa had immediately begun fiendishly working on things to expand her collection, wondering all the while if there might be something bigger at work in her life than simply her wishing for it. She certainly didn’t believe in magic, pixie dust, or any of the romantic drivel her older sister Peaches read on what seemed to be an alarmingly regular basis. She most certainly didn’t believe in the fairy tales put on by any of the theaters she’d sewn for.

But in this, she couldn’t deny that there was something, well,
unusual
at work.

“Pippa, what in the world happened?”

She looked up at that aforementioned over-romanced sister Peaches, who had suddenly materialized next to her on the sidewalk.

“Gaspard had his flambé get a little too friendly with his natural fibers, apparently,” she said with a sigh. “What are you doing here so early?”

“It’s not early. It’s almost nine. And I’m here because I thought that since you were leaving tonight, you might need help packing.”

Pippa supposed Peaches would have thought that. Her sister made a living by acting as a life coach, plucking people one by one out of a sea of bills, undeclared intentions, and old pizza boxes to send them off into a new life of organizational calm. Their parents were almost proud of her, though they would have preferred her credentials in feng shui be a bit more solid.

“It’s all finished,” Pippa said, patting her suitcase and hoping Peaches wouldn’t want to check her work. “Costumes for the kids’ party, my passport, and some granola. And my backup thumb drive with all the new designs I scanned for ease in display. I was sort of in a rush and left everything else behind.”

Peaches glanced at the smoldering ruins of Pippa’s building. “I imagine you were. And I suppose you can replace what you lost.”

Pippa nodded, though she couldn’t exactly agree. She’d spent years collecting one of a kind vintage fabrics and trims. In fact, she could have started her own store with what she had stacked on shelves in her apartment, or hidden cunningly under her bed and skirted end tables. There had been a few times—all right, there had been more than a few times—when she had simply sat there and stared for a few minutes—all right, it might have been for an hour or two at a shot—at the stacks and stacks of fabric she possessed, all full of possibilities, all waiting for her to take them and make them into something more than they had been before—

“I mean, it’s not as if you don’t have money in the bank,” Peaches continued relentlessly, “or renter’s insurance, or all your valuables tucked safely away in a safe-deposit box like I’ve been advising you to do for the past year.”

“I don’t have any valuables.”

Peaches studied her in a way that made Pippa feel as if her sister really did know that she hid money in her mattress and family heirlooms in hot chocolate cans.

“But the insurance, Pippa,” Peaches prodded. “You did take care of that, didn’t you?”

“I have an appointment with the insurance guy,” Pippa said, trying not to sound defensive. “At noon today, so yes, I did take care of that. And I did have savings, but I took it all and bought an embroidery machine last week. And a nicer serger. And a few bolts of velvet and silk.” She paused. “Maybe a few sequins.”

“How many sequins?”

Pippa waved her hand toward the wreckage she couldn’t bring herself to look at any longer. “I think they would be the enormous swath of multihued sparkles you see up there where the second floor used to be.”

“That’s a lot of sequins.” She took a deep, calming breath. “At least you have your scooter. It could be worse.”

Pippa pointed over her shoulder to where the Dumpster had been dumped earlier that morning. A wheel and part of a fender stuck out from below the container.

Peaches looked, paused, then laughed a bit. “You’ve had quite a morning.”

“Tell me about it.”

“At least you have your trip to look forward to.” Peaches nudged her over a bit to join her on her suitcase. “Tell me more about this guy who wants to look at your designs. He could be the reason for all this cosmic attention you’re getting.”

Pippa was happy to talk about something else besides the stench of incinerated fabric she could still smell lingering in the air. “I don’t know anything about him except that he’s nobility and he has really deep pockets.”

“Nobility?”

“He’s the son of an earl, I think, and runs in Tess’s academic circles. And he has deep pockets.”

“You already said that.”

“His deep pockets are very attractive to my ultimate plan of fashion world domination.”

Peaches laughed. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your focus.”

“Mr. Nobility might front me some dough for more sequins, and Karma is probably done with me,” Pippa said with a shrug. She ignored the little niggling doubt at the back of her mind that said Karma was nowhere close to being finished with her. “You’re taking me to the airport tonight, and I have enough money in the bank to buy more underwear. What else can go wrong?”

“You can open your big mouth, that’s what can go wrong,” Peaches said quickly. “Don’t tempt Fate.”

“Nah,” Pippa said confidently, “I think the worst is over. After all, bad things come in threes and my quota is full.”

“My little disorganized friend,
good
things come in threes. I don’t think bad luck is constrained by the same rules.”

“Ridiculous,” Pippa scoffed, finding it in herself to rally a bit. She stood and wrapped an emergency blanket around herself because she was cold, not because she was unnerved. “You can go along with all that woo-woo business we were weaned on, but I’m not buying it.”

“Liar.”

Pippa shook her head sharply. “Look, Peach, Karma’s done her bit with me this week. In the past eight hours I have lost, in no particular order, my apartment, my life’s savings, my inventory of irreplaceable fabric and salvaged trims, my means of making a living, and my purple Vespa. I’m in the clear.”

Peaches only zipped her lips, locked them, and threw away the key.

Pippa put her shoulders back and stood tall. Her destiny was not controlled by some cosmic, unreasonable force. She was in charge. Hadn’t she just the night before looked life in its steely eye, clutched her Pop-Tart like a sword, and announced as much?

Approximately thirty seconds before she’d smelled the smoke, but surely the two were unrelated.

“Oh, no,” Peaches said, standing up so quickly, she knocked Pippa’s suitcase over. “Not this.”

“What?” Pippa asked, leaning over to right her suitcase.

“I told you there was no limit,” Peaches said pointedly. “Number Four’s on its way. I’m not sticking around to see what Number Five’s going to be.”

Pippa looked over her shoulder, then found herself assailed by a sudden desire to collapse. Fortunately, her suitcase was still there, sturdy and dependable. She sat down heavily.

“This doesn’t count.”

“Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better.”

Pippa watched gloomily as the ultimate hippie-mobile came up the way. It was a tie-dyed Winnebago, powered by solar panels and used french-fry oil, with a faint cloud of cannabis hovering overhead and Grateful Dead stickers plastered all over the back.

“What are the parental units doing here?” she asked uneasily.

“Maybe they came to visit before you took off for yon blessed isle,” Peaches offered. “Maybe they’re going to insist they be the ones to take you to the airport, in style no less. You might manage to get them to stop by the mall, unless Mom has some hemp underwear hiding in a drawer you could have.”

Pippa shuddered and stood up. “I’m not about to go looking in her drawers. I don’t want to know what else is hiding there.”

Peaches slung her arm around Pippa’s shoulders. “How is it with parents like these we turned out to be so normal?”

“Don’t ask,” Pippa said darkly. That was the last thing she wanted to think about. She’d spent her entire life fighting against her parents’ lifestyle, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

She paused. That wasn’t exactly true. She had, at fourteen, been sprung for a couple of months from Aunt Edna’s Gloomy Victorian Boardinghouse to go with her parents to England. She’d loved the place so much, she’d happily spent her time brewing herbal tea and creating Renaissance-inspired tofu delights to sell at all the reenactment gatherings they could find. One place she had fallen particularly in love with had been a castle on the northern coast. Artane, she thought its name might have been. She had been standing near that castle early one morning, when she could have sworn she’d seen—

Well, never mind what she’d thought she’d seen. She’d been fourteen at the time, an age particularly prone to vivid imagination. Gorgeous guys in chainmail just didn’t pop up out of the mist, even in England. She’d been taking the whole reenactment thing too seriously, eaten too much refined sugar, and her mind had played tricks on her.

Never mind that she’d gone back to that exact spot every morning for the week they’d been there, hoping beyond hope to catch another glimpse—

She took a deep breath and rubbed her hands over her face. She was losing it. Maybe it was smoke inhalation, or the off-gassing of too many sequins. What she remembered most about that summer was that even though she’d done a very brisk business in medieval and Renaissance faire food, her parents had grown tired of her and dumped her with her aunt again so they could go back to doing their own thing. She had gone back to her usual habit of denying the existence of anything magical, wearing it even through college like a badge of honor.

And if she made cone-shaped headgear with sweeping netting cascading down behind them, or crowns of flowers with streamers placed just so, or low-waisted gowns with slight trains, it was strictly business. She had never indulged in any more romantic imaginings about the women who might have worn them and the medieval knights in shining armor who might have loved them. No sir. And she had
definitely
never indulged in any speculation about the more fantastical and magical items she made for fairies and their ilk. She was a steely-eyed, determined businesswoman sitting on a suitcase full of samples. The chance to impress an investor with her reasonably priced, impossibly charming line of little-girl fairy clothing and further impress him with an equal number of very subtle, medieval-inspired grown-up things had been an opportunity she hadn’t dared turn down.