One Enchanted Evening (34 page)

Only this time the water was clean. And deeper.

She swam to the bank, rather grateful for the light she could see in the distance. Maybe someone had run out of the keep with a torch so Montgomery would be able to see Boydin and do him in. She would also have to have a conversation with him about Ada. That girl was dangerous.

She crawled out of the water and found to her surprise that she wasn’t covered in sewer leavings. It was odd enough that she stopped to consider it. The little lake had stunk to high heaven as they’d ridden across it the day before. She straightened, then felt a tingle begin at the back of her neck. It was almost dark, true, but she could have sworn that wasn’t the lists she was looking at.

It was Tess’s gift shop, tucked back in the forest where it wouldn’t be seen immediately and ruin the appearance of Sedgwick being stuck in the Middle Ages.

She turned around slowly, then felt her mouth fall open. She looked up and saw a castle silhouetted against the sky in a lovely autumn twilight.

A castle in perfect condition.

She supposed it didn’t matter this time what might drip down from her hair into her mouth given that she obviously had fallen not into Montgomery’s cesspit, but her sister’s moat. She shut her mouth and looked around her frantically, but there was no sign of Montgomery, or his evil cousins, or anything she had grown accustomed to over the past few weeks. All that was there in front of her was modern perfection with its floodlights and long wooden bridge and moat water that contained nothing more nefarious than fish and frogs.

She turned around and around frantically, looking for the sparkles that signaled the opening of the gate she had used twice now, the gate that had suddenly and unpredictably taken her from a place she suddenly realized she hadn’t been ready to leave yet.

Arms flung themselves around her. She fought them ferociously until she realized they belonged not to one of Montgomery’s evil cousins but to her sister. She was even more surprised to find that sister was Peaches, not Tess.

“Pippa, you idiot, where have you been?” Peaches demanded, blubbering copiously.

Pippa couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She wasn’t prone to physical weakness, her habit of going a little weak in the knees when faced with a room full of vintage buttons and trims aside, but she thought she just might pass out from shock.

She had gone through the gate she’d been waiting to go through for two solid weeks.

The unfortunate thing was, she hadn’t wanted to.

“And what in the
hell
are you wearing?” Peaches demanded. “Pip, I hate to say this, but you need a shower.”

Pippa might have laughed another time, but she couldn’t at the moment given that she felt as if her heart had just been wrenched out of her chest. She was making some sort of sound, though, and it sounded pretty unhinged.

She had to get back. There, that was the ticket. She had to get back to the past even if it was just to tell Montgomery good-bye properly and thank him for his hospitality. Even if she could just poke her head through the gate and wave, that would be enough. But this . . . this leaving without so much as a look . . .

It was intolerable.

“Come on,” Peaches said, tugging on her. “Let’s go inside before you freeze to death out here.”

“No,” Pippa said, trying to pull away. “I have to stay—”

“Pip—”

“I have to stay out
here
,” Pippa said, fighting Peaches’s hands off. “I have to stay out here and wait for the gate to open back up.”

Peaches took her by both arms and held on tightly. “Look, Pippa, we’ve already dealt with Cindi a few days ago after she called us in hysterics from some random native’s house. Stephen’s still shaking from the return trip with her. Don’t make me lock you up, too.”

Pippa supposed she was glad Cindi had made it back to the right time. She imagined she might at some point in the future care what Cindi had had to say about their whole adventure and more particularly where on her sister’s person her flash drive could be found. Now, though, she could only stand there and shake. She looked up over Peaches’s head at the castle that stood there, visible now only thanks to the floodlights and not the sky behind it.

Montgomery would have been pleased with how it looked.

“Pippa?”

Pippa dragged herself back to the present—a shocking thing to contemplate, truly—and looked at her sister. “Cindi?” she echoed. “You locked her up?”

“We put her in an involuntary detox program,” Peaches said briskly. “She’s now peeling the wallpaper with her swearing and entertaining her keepers with all kinds of interesting stories.” She squeezed the fabric of Pippa’s sleeves. “You’re sopping wet, sister. Did you fall into the moat?”

Yes, three times now
was what she wanted to say. Instead, she simply looked around her for things that had disappeared centuries ago.

Or five minutes ago, depending on one’s point of view.

She pulled away from Peaches, then walked back and forth in front of the end of the wooden bridge that spanned Tess’s almost pristine moat. She stopped each time at the spot where the time gate should have been, but each time there was nothing there.

Or, at least she thought there was nothing there. It was a little difficult to decide that given that she was so cold, she could hardly think straight, much less pay attention to her surroundings. Five minutes ago, she could have reached out and touched Montgomery de Piaget, thrown herself into his arms, told him that even though there were a whole slew of reasons it was crazy, she thought she just might love him.

Now, she couldn’t even write him a letter.

Things started to go a little fuzzy, but she didn’t go for a swim as she might have at another time in those circumstances. She felt herself being caught suddenly and lifted up in strong arms. She managed to focus on a face she recognized.

From the future, unfortunately.

“Oh, not you,” she moaned.

Stephen de Piaget looked a bit startled. “I am having terrible luck with women these days. Is it something I’m doing?”

Pippa pushed herself out of his arms. That he let her down without a peep in protest showed that he was obviously not used to the determination of a woman who’d just spent half a month going toe-to-toe with a medieval lord. He did, though, take hold of her arm. When Peaches took the other, she looked at her sister in surprise.

“You aren’t going to put me in the loony bin, are you?”

“The shower,” Peaches said. “I think you’ll feel better when you’re warm.”

“I can’t go inside,” Pippa protested.

“Yes,” Peaches said firmly, “you most certainly can. And you will. I’ll come back out here with you later, after you’ve warmed up.”

Pippa didn’t want to go, but she could tell the fight wasn’t going to be worth it. Peaches was tougher than she looked, and the silent message she’d telegraphed to Stephen had resulted in his taking a firmer grip on Pippa’s arm as well. Maybe if she humored them for a bit, she could escape out the front door and camp out by where the gate should be.

She honestly didn’t know what else to do.

And the truth was, at the moment, a shower sounded heavenly. Hot showers had certainly been on the list she’d made of things she loved about the future and couldn’t wait to get back to, hadn’t they? She was five minutes from having something she had wanted very badly.

Too bad she’d had to give up something else she wanted very badly in order to have it.

She stumbled when she walked into the courtyard only because she was so used to picking up her feet to keep them from sinking into the mire. It was only then that she realized she was no longer wearing her shoes. Maybe she’d lost them in Montgomery’s courtyard. She stared down at her feet and felt the world begin to spin. Only Stephen’s arm around her shoulders kept her from falling on her face.

“Now, shall I carry you?” he asked kindly.

She looked up at him numbly. He looked so much like Montgomery, yet not at all. He was all polished modernness, not all rough around the edges, not at all likely to draw his sword and do serious damage with it. He was a lovely man, true, but he was not the one she wanted—

No, she didn’t want Montgomery de Piaget. She latched on to that thought with all the tenacity of a woman barely holding on to her sanity. Of course she was thrilled to be back in her time with all its myriad luxuries and opportunities. She could hardly wait to pour herself a big bowl of Cheetos, plunge her face into it, and revel in all the unnatural cheesiness.

She paused. That didn’t sound as good as she’d hoped it would. Maybe there was a French restaurant nearby where she could go, just for old time’s sake.

She realized Stephen was still waiting for an answer. She shook her head, because that seemed a reasonable response to whatever question he’d asked her that she could no longer remember, then she accepted his arm and walked with him across the courtyard. Peaches still had a hold of her on the other side, so perhaps she looked a little more fragile than she felt.

She entered the great hall and gasped in spite of herself. She stepped away from Peaches and Stephen and stared at her surroundings. She turned around in a circle—which she couldn’t seem to stop doing—and looked at the hall. The tapestries were lovely, the fireplaces perfectly capable of keeping the hall smoke free, the furnishings obviously quite new and sturdy.

It was devastating somehow.

She saw Tess come to a skidding halt in the middle of the hall, then watched her sister start to weep. It was odd, the sight of that, because Tess was not a weeper.

“I’ve had an adventure,” Pippa croaked.

Tess almost tackled her where she stood. “I thought you were dead,” she said, hugging Pippa so tightly, Pippa lost her breath. “I had divers out to comb the moat for you and Cindi both.”

“I’m sorry,” Pippa managed. “I . . . I got lost.”

Tess pulled away and looked at her searchingly. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”

Pippa shook her head. She didn’t suppose a heart that felt like it was broken—especially since she was
thrilled
to be back in her proper place and time—counted as being hurt. Maybe that ache in her chest was indigestion, or contact with something in the moat she hadn’t remembered.

“Pippa?”

“I’m fine,” Pippa managed. “Cold, but fine.”

“I’ll take her upstairs,” Peaches said, taking Pippa’s arm in that no-nonsense grip again. “Tess, your shirt is wet. Go change and we’ll meet in Pippa’s bedroom later.”

“I’ll bring tea,” Tess said weakly. “And something to eat. Stephen, are you hungry?”

“I’ll forage for something for you girls,” Stephen said, “then deliver it. I’m not sure you’ll want me underfoot for anything else.”

Pippa forced herself to focus on him. “Stephen de Piaget, you’re a very nice man.”

He shifted and looked almost as uncomfortable as Montgomery did when enduring the heaping of praise on his head. It must have been a family trait hardwired into generations of de Piaget men. Pippa managed a smile, then let Peaches pull her away and help her up the stairs. She squelched down the hallway next to her sister.

“When did you get here?” she asked finally.

“About thirty-six hours after you disappeared,” Peaches said, sounding as if she hadn’t enjoyed the process. “Tess called and I came running.”

“Expensive.”

“Lord Stephen paid for my ticket.”

“Those de Piaget men are very chivalrous,” Pippa said, before she realized what she was saying. “Or so I’ve heard.” She shivered violently, once. It apparently didn’t matter what century Sedgwick found itself in, it was still cold as hell inside the walls.

“That’s an interesting observation,” Peaches said carefully.

Pippa imagined Cindi had told all sorts of interesting stories—interspersed no doubt with drug-induced hallucinations. She supposed she would have to set the record straight at some point, but she wasn’t sure she could manage that at the moment. It was all she could do to get herself into her bedroom.

She realized eventually that she was simply standing in one place, staring at the instant water heater attached to a showerhead. Someone somewhere along the way had obviously knocked out a wall between rooms and turned one of them into a bathroom. Handy, that.

She realized, after she heard Peaches say her name again, that she hadn’t answered her sister’s question. That was becoming a bad habit, that losing touch with what was in front of her.

The hazards of time travel, apparently.

Which she was never going to do again, of course. She was happy, happy,
happy
to be back in the twenty-first century with all the noise and junk food and hot water that hadn’t been heated by a servant.

“Pippa,” Peaches began in the same voice she used while beginning the weaning-away-from-useless-junk process with her clients, “I think you would feel more like yourself if you got in the shower, don’t you?”

Pippa looked at the water that Peaches had turned on, then nodded numbly. “Can’t think of anything I’d like more.”

“Pippa,” Peaches said slowly, “do you realize you’re speaking French? Well, sort of. Your accent has really gone downhill.”

Pippa laughed a little, but she stifled it very quickly. She sounded as if she was about to lose it. That was ridiculous given that she was so perfectly happy. She hadn’t lost anything but cold fingers and toes. Montgomery was going to marry his docile, mousey bride, and she was going to go on to rise Godzillalike from the sea and stomp all over competing designers in Manhattan’s garment district. Being lost in the Middle Ages for even a brief time had been very good for her. She was feeling damn fierce.

“Do you want me to stay with you?”

Pippa shook her head and concentrated on using the right English words. “I’m fine, Peaches.”

“You don’t look fine.”