One Enchanted Evening (37 page)

Pippa scowled. She didn’t need babysitting. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d caused
that
big a scene in the gift shop earlier. Surely she could get herself through the evening without someone following along five steps behind her. She’d managed it earlier that morning, hadn’t she?

Admittedly, it had been the first time in almost a week that she managed to elude her sisters long enough to have a little time to herself. After a week’s worth of hot showers—plus a few extra to make up for her earlier lack—a week’s worth of decent meals, and a week to wonder why it was that Montgomery de Piaget had obviously decided she wasn’t worth following, glass slipper in hand, she’d needed to get out of the castle. She’d needed the distraction from the inescapable conclusion she’d come to.

She loathed fairy tales.

She wasn’t sure she didn’t feel the same way about her life. Tess and Peaches had been wonderful to her, if not a little stifling. Stephen de Piaget had seemingly taken up temporary residence in the castle. She wasn’t sure why, but he seemed to feel some sense of responsibility where she and her sisters were concerned. Either that, or he was just desperate to get details about medieval England he somehow thought she could provide. She wouldn’t have been surprised by either, though she was a little startled every time she ran into him and he was Stephen and not a modern version of his medieval uncle.

She had given in on Day Three and told her trio of keepers of her trip to the past—not everything, but enough to satisfy the barest minimum of their slack-jawed curiosity. If she’d neglected to elaborate on her feelings for a certain medieval lord or left out a recounting of the times he’d held her hand, well, who could blame her? There had been enough detail about mayhem and attempted murder to keep her sisters and Stephen satisfied without having to divulge more personal details.

Never mind that Tess and Peaches had exchanged glances, as if they guessed quite a bit of what she’d left out. Either that, or their knowing looks had been a twin thing she just didn’t understand. She hadn’t had the energy to ask.

The only bright spot in the perpetual October gloom had been that Cindi was still drying out from things none of them realized she had been on—and screaming at the top of her lungs for more Botox, apparently—so Pippa found herself free from the burden of having to deal with that. Over the past week, all that had been required of her had been to get up in the morning, get through the day, then go back to bed. She’d found a sketchbook and her favorite pencils waiting for her in her room on Day Four of her return to the future, which she had shunned at first, then found herself turning to more and more often.

Too bad all she seemed capable of drawing was Montgomery, and a damned good likeness those drawings of him were, indeed.

She knew she was eventually going to have to stop thinking about him. Not only was he centuries out of her reach, he was set firmly beyond her possible matrimonial grasp. He would marry his compliant medieval gal and she would be stuck trying to find someone remotely like him in her century. She was afraid not even Stephen would fit the bill. He was utterly gorgeous, of course, and rich, and brilliant, and a decent swordsman.

But she didn’t love
him
.

All of which had led her on what had turned out to be an ill-advised trip to the gift shop earlier that morning to do a little research. She’d had a distinct and unpleasant feeling that she should have just left well enough alone, but she had ignored it. There was nothing wrong with trying to find out how Montgomery’s life had gone. She had hoped that seeing in print that he’d married that compliant mouse, had a dozen children, then lived to a ripe old age in a castle that had eventually stopped looking like a piece of Swiss cheese would be enough to put that particular chapter of her life to bed.

She had stood in front of the small shelf of books published just about Sedgwick castle and selected one at random. It had been full of all sorts of paranormal experiments yielding interesting things, but it had yielded nothing of interest to her so she’d put it back without even creasing the very slender spine.

It had taken her half an hour before she’d hit the mother lode. She’d begun to read, then had to sit down on the floor right in the middle of books and china and tea towels to devour everything she could about the early lords of Sedgwick.

She read about the history of Montgomery’s family’s link to the castle, about his father’s dealings with the lords of Ayre and Segrave, then Rhys’s eventual inheritance of Sedgwick itself and how it had been handed over to his brother for safekeeping until one of his sons could grow up and claim it.

The youngest son, as it happened.

Montgomery de Piaget had indeed been given the castle, but the rumors surrounding him had begun almost immediately and had seemed to include most notably his falling in love with a fairy.

Though the writer had cast some doubt on whether or not such a thing was possible.

Pippa had found herself rudely interrupted at that point by the shopkeeper, who seemed not to care that she was the owner’s sister. There had been a bit of a scuffle over the book. Pippa would admit that when she had jerked it away from the woman, she might have overturned a teapot or two. It was also possible that she might have thrown a rather substantial resin replica of the castle in the direction of the woman’s terrier who had been ordered to sic. In return, she’d been clobbered over the head with a stitchery kit that had contained not only cloth and thread but wooden stretcher bars.

Things had spiraled out of control after that.

Pippa supposed the only reason she was now standing in her sister’s great hall instead of languishing down at the local pokey was because Tess had come looking for her at just the right time. The shop had suffered minimal damage, but the shopkeeper’s pride had been grievously wounded. Pippa had apologized, grudgingly, but she hadn’t let go of the book. Never mind that she’d almost dropped it in the moat when she’d managed to get it back open to the place where she’d been keeping her middle finger and read what was written there.

Lord Montgomery had never married.

That might have been because he’d been killed.

Tess had yanked the book away from her and instructed her sternly to stop making noises that frightened them. Pippa had agreed meekly, then followed her sister up to her room where she’d been pushed into a chair and told to sit. She had sat, because her legs hadn’t been equal to the task of holding her up any longer. It was one thing to think Montgomery was miserable without her; it was quite another to think his life had been cut short, perhaps even because of her.

It had taken the rest of the morning to get her sisters to leave her alone so she could break into Tess’s office, find the book, and read the rest of the story. The only comfort she’d subsequently found was that there was apparently some disagreement on the fate of that early lord of Sedgwick. Some reports said he’d been killed outright while others said he’d been maimed so badly in an attack that the rest of his life had consisted of merely being carried to a sunny spot in his courtyard and left there for the day whilst others went about their work.

For Montgomery, she wasn’t sure which would have been worse.

She’d spent the afternoon getting pruny in the shower, because that had seemed the safest place to be. She’d managed to forget about Montgomery for long stretches of time—at least five minutes a shot—and concentrate on her own life.

Her life in which every moment that passed was full of the knowledge of how his would end.

Tess and Peaches had dragged her out of the shower eventually and forced her to come downstairs for the party. They’d insisted it would cheer her up. What would have cheered her up was the ability to send Montgomery a note that said that he really should keep an eye out for cousins with his death on their minds.

Then again, he probably knew that already.

She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face, struggling to bring herself back to the present. What she really wanted was for him to dump the mouse and come for her, but she was living in the Land of Reality, not some fairy tale, and in the real world, medieval lords didn’t risk everything to come to the future to look for a woman they probably didn’t have any feelings for.

She pushed away from the wall, then shot Peaches a dark look when she did the same thing. “I’m going to go get something to drink,” she snapped.

Peaches only clasped her hands behind her back and smiled. Pippa didn’t imagine Peaches’s shoes were nailed to the floor, so she would probably be making her own trip to the kitchen as part of her guard-dog duties. She sighed and started trudging across the hall, dodging dancers who were like a continual stream of motion in front of her. Well, except for one of them who was simply standing in front of the fireplace. Pippa looked up, intending to toss him a compliment on his good sense.

Only she found, quite suddenly, that she couldn’t.

There, standing across the way from her was a man dressed in medieval clothing, sporting a medieval sword, and looking more handsome than any reenactment knight could possibly have looked. But that might have been because he wasn’t a reenactment knight.

He was the real deal.

Pippa made some sort of noise, but she didn’t want to identify it. Instead, she started walking again before she realized she was moving. Well, she actually ran, but she didn’t think anyone would fault her for it. Montgomery strode toward her rather quickly himself, then caught her as she threw herself into his arms. Pippa gasped as he clutched her to him, but she wasn’t about to ask him to let her go.

“I say,” a disgruntled male voice said from next to them, “I don’t think that’s part of the dance.”

Pippa laughed, because she couldn’t help herself, then caught the breath she’d lost as Montgomery set her back on her feet. “No, I suppose it isn’t,” she managed. She looked up into Montgomery’s beloved face and couldn’t stop smiling. “You came,” she said, breathless still.

“The gate opened,” he said, sounding a little breathless himself. “And it just about shut itself on my arse.”

She laughed, feeling altogether giddy. “I’m relieved you’re undamaged.”

He reached up and brushed her hair back from her face. “I am as well,” he admitted, then he smiled gravely. “You left your shoes in my courtyard. I thought I should bring them to you and see if they still fit.”

“It’s an awfully long way to come to bring back a pair of shoes,” she said. “Wouldn’t they fit your fiancée?”

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She supposed if she’d had any sense at all, she would have put her arms back around him and spent her time convincing him why she was a better choice for him than some no-name girl with big ears and a petite nose, but apparently she didn’t have any sense left.

And he didn’t seem inclined to let her go.

“She has enormous feet,” he said solemnly, “and hands like a blacksmith. Now, might we discuss other things? Perhaps we should move out of the way of the dancers to do so. I fear someone will draw a blade on us soon.”

“I don’t think you have much to worry about,” Pippa said, finding it hard to breathe properly. She realized that her teeth were chattering as well. What next, weakness in her knees?

Or being pulled behind a medieval lord who had a bad habit of doing just that. She peeked around his shoulder to find Tess and Peaches standing there.

“Montgomery, those are just my sisters,” Pippa said. She paused. “They’re twins.”

“So I see,” he said faintly.

Pippa tried to walk around him only to walk into his arm that had extended suddenly like a railroad-crossing guard gone awry. She pushed his arm down and moved to stand next to him, then looked at her sisters with what she hoped was an appropriately disinterested expression.

They weren’t buying what she was selling.

She gave in and smiled so hard it hurt her cheeks. “Tess, Peach, this is Montgomery de Piaget. Montgomery, these are my sisters, Tess and Peaches.”

He took their hands one by one and bowed low over them.
“Enchanté,”
he said politely.

And then he reached for her hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow.

Pippa thought she just might have to laugh soon. She listened to Montgomery exchange basic pleasantries with her sisters and smiled at the sound of his French with its medieval inflection. It was without a doubt the most wonderful thing she’d ever heard. She didn’t even protest when she found herself suddenly with her nose pressed against his back. She only sighed and looked around his shoulder again to now find Stephen walking toward them.

“Montgomery—”

“I’m keeping you safe, woman. Stop fighting me.”

“That’s your nephew, my lord, not the French army.”

He grunted at her, then must have gotten a good look at that nephew because he flinched. Pippa took the opportunity to pop out from behind him and attempt to get a good look at his expression. He was gaping at Stephen as if he’d just seen a ghost. She couldn’t blame him. Stephen looked enough like him that they could easily have passed for brothers. Stephen came to an ungainly halt and gaped back.

“Montgomery de Piaget meet your nephew, Stephen,” Pippa said, trying not to let her giddiness turn into uncontrollable shivering. “Stephen, meet Montgomery.” She paused and looked at Tess’s colleague. “I believe his father built your father’s hall.”

Stephen held out a hand that shook just the slightest bit. Pippa couldn’t have said Montgomery’s was any steadier when he shook his nephew’s, but that moment passed too quickly for her to make much of it. They were suddenly exchanging some species of male chitchat, but she didn’t pay attention to it. She was too busy trying not to read anything into the fact that Montgomery had put his arm out in front of her and had scooted her so she was standing just slightly behind him, or that he had kept his hand wrapped around her wrist, as if he wanted to make certain she didn’t escape. She supposed she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him draw his very sharp sword soon to mark his territory, but maybe he thought that might be going a step too far.