One Enchanted Evening (7 page)

“Surprisingly enough, I came to hear what
you
thought.”

Montgomery let out his breath slowly. “Truly, there are no words.”

“No one’s tried to kill you yet,” Robin offered, “unless you count what your cook delivered up for supper as an attempt to do just that.” He shuddered delicately. “That was vile.”

“You didn’t have to stay. I thought you were headed for Grandmère’s bounteous table.”

Robin didn’t answer. He merely stood there in silence for so long that Montgomery finally looked at him in irritation.

“What?”

Robin smiled faintly. “Montgomery, I worry about you. Why don’t I go to Grandmère’s and fetch you a few bottles of her finest? You can begin your return to being tolerable company with a glass of fine wine after dinner each night—”

Montgomery turned on him. “And just where will I put those bottles, Robin?” he asked shortly. “In my very fine cellar full of diligent servants? Or perhaps under the guard of my garrison who have gone to fat eating my winter stores? Or nay, perhaps rather I should ask our cousins who have welcomed me with open arms to watch over my goods? You tell me which, since you’re so full of useful things to say.”

Robin shook his head. “You used to be so lighthearted. Nay, you were never lighthearted, but you used to be pleasant. What happened?”

Montgomery hardly knew where to begin. Aye, perhaps he had been almost lighthearted now and again in the past, but that had been lost somewhere along the way. Perhaps it had begun with the keeping of many secrets. Added to that, he’d been weighed down by responsibility, by years of being prudent, of always being the one in charge, or never taking a single moment for his own happiness. He’d had his duty to his father, to his name, to his king, to his future bride and children whom he was actually fairly certain he would never have because he was too busy seeing to all the things no one else wanted to see to. But leisure? Nay, he would have none of that any time soon.

Robin studied him in silence. “I was provoking you before,” he said seriously. “Forgive me. It might have been ill-advised.”

Montgomery only looked at him steadily.

“Very well, I was an arse. I’m offering now to stay and do what you need. I will even go so far as to fight with my left if you need your garrison worked, so I don’t reveal my true skill and terrify them beyond being useful to you.”

Montgomery didn’t want to smile, but he couldn’t help himself. Robin’s arrogance wasn’t at all misplaced, and the truth was, Robin fighting with his left instead of his right was likely enough to terrify the garrison past reason just the same.

“And I will leave Phillip with you,” Robin added.

Montgomery shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

Robin waved dismissively. “The lad’s cannier than he seems. He might be useful to you. Besides, fear over what I’ll do to you if you lose my son will give you an added measure of courage and determination.”

“No doubt.”

“I’m not leaving you completely without the means to keep him safe. You have your personal lads, to be sure, and reinforcements have arrived as well. Well, if you can call him that.”

“Indeed?” Montgomery asked in surprise. “Who has come?”

“Everard of Chevington,” Robin said unenthusiastically. “Apparently his sire has decided that his elder brother Roland would be a better manager of his property, so he took the keep and the title away from Everard and gave it to Roland.” Robin shook his head. “The perils of having a father who is mad, I daresay. He claims he has come to offer you his sword.
I
think he has come to eat through what remains of your larder and mock you for the holes in your foundation.”

Montgomery shrugged. “He squired well enough for Father and he hasn’t been an unloyal friend to me since then.”

“That is a rousing endorsement.”

“Robin, at the moment I’ll take anyone who isn’t coming at me with blade bared.”

“I won’t remind you that I advised you to bring more than your trio of lads,” Robin said airily, “though I suppose the four of you could see to the cousins and the garrison easily enough.” He pushed away from the wall, sending a bit of it down into the cesspit as a result. He peered over the edge, then looked at Montgomery. “I’d clean up that rot down there sooner rather than later. You’ll never get a gel to come across that bridge if that’s what she fears falling into.”

“Attracting a bride is the last thing I’m worried about.”

“I wouldn’t wait overlong,” Robin said, brushing stray bits of rock off his hands and turning toward the guardtower door. “I should think you’d like to marry before you reach two score.”

“I’ve considered that.”

“Perhaps you should consider some sort of otherworldly help.” He looked back over his shoulder. “I’m fairly sure Denys’s lady, Gunnild, is a witch. She might have some species of beautifying herbs for your visage, or perhaps a perfume to leave you smelling less like horse. Who knows? Perhaps Fate will send you a faery to appease your discriminating tastes.”

Montgomery shot him a look. “I don’t believe in faeries.”

“Don’t you?”

Montgomery gritted his teeth. “Are you helping?”

Robin only laughed and continued on his way.

Montgomery turned and stared gloomily over his new surroundings. Aye, magic was indeed what he might need, and a goodly amount thereof. There wasn’t a woman of his acquaintance who would have set foot on that bridge, much less cross it to stomp through ankle-deep muck to get to the front door, never mind what she would find after she’d gained the hall itself.

He looked up into the heavens and watched as the first stars of the evening began to appear. He had done that often in his youth, standing on his father’s battlements and watching the twilight fade to evening when the skies had been clear enough to do so. He supposed he could admit without too much shame that he had, now and again, dreamed of his future where he might be lord of a sturdy, useful castle filled with honorable men who looked up to him and fought alongside him when the time came. Perhaps he also could have been forgiven for filling that imaginary castle with beautiful tapestries, tuneful music, and a lovely gel who might enjoy both.

It had never occurred to him that his reality might be so completely different from what he’d hoped for.

He shook his head at his own foolishness. Sedgwick was not what he’d dreamed of, but he was damned fortunate to have anything to call his own. He would make it into something respectable and leave the dreaming to lads with more stars in their eyes than he had in his. He’d obviously eaten something that day that had ruined his good sense. The next thing he knew, he would begin revisiting his boyhood fascination with all things magic—

He froze. Then leaned carefully on the wall and looked down at the end of his drawbridge. Had that been a flash?

Surely not. ’Twas too late in the day for sunlight on steel and there was no one there with a torch that far away from the keep. It was almost as if something, well, otherworldly . . . He felt his mouth fall open. He’d seen that particular sort of shimmer before—

“Brother?”

Montgomery looked at Robin, who had paused by the guard tower. “What?” he asked hoarsely.

Robin looked down at the bridge, frowned deeply, then shook his head. “Nothing,” he said slowly. “Nothing at all.”

Montgomery shut his mouth with a snap. He was weary from a rather trying day and wasn’t entirely sure he would survive the night with the foxes lying in wait for him below. He would consign anything he might or might not have seen to his imagination playing tricks with him, because the very last thing he wanted to encounter in his immediate future was anything that shimmered or sparkled or forced him to face anything that didn’t carry a very long sword and need training. He dragged his hands through his hair, then turned and walked off his roof.

He found Ranulf, the captain of his trio of guardsmen, then asked him to walk what was left of the battlements. Sedgwick wasn’t going to be attacked by anything more interesting than the stench from the moat, so he supposed there was little point in making certain the rest of his men were at their duties. That would come on the morrow when he began his remaking of the garrison.

At least there, the only magic he would need would come from his sword.

P
ippa
wasn’t one to panic unnecessarily, but she decided that if ever there had been a moment to indulge in it, it was the present moment.

“Can you just slow down?” she squeaked.

Her sister Tess shot her a look, then turned back to frowning fiercely at the road. “I’m only doing forty.”

“Yes, but the road is tiny and you’ve already knocked off my side mirror on something buried in that hedge.”

“It’s a stone wall,” Tess said, swinging out from behind a very large truck that was also going along at a ridiculous clip and flooring the gas to blow past him. “Probably eighteenth century, but that isn’t my era, so don’t quote me.”

“No worries,” Pippa said faintly. “You can do the carbon dating later based on the chunk that came through my window.”

“I’m not the one who wanted the window down.”

“I’m trying to keep Cindi from barfing in your backseat. She starts to dry heave in her sleep when the air isn’t blowing into her face with the caress of a gale-force wind.”

“You shouldn’t have let her drink on the plane.”

“
I
didn’t let her drink on the plane,” Pippa said, through gritted teeth. “I didn’t have the chance to let her do anything on the flight because while I was too busy sitting in the back where the whole damned trip felt like a roller coaster, she was enjoying champagne in first class thanks to a wink and a smile delivered to some single, subsequently disappointed D-list actor.”

Tess shot her a brief smile. “We could just dump her in a hedge, you know. She’d find her way back to the airport eventually.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Pippa muttered. She gripped the armrest with renewed vigor and tried not to concentrate on the scenery racing past her at inhuman speeds. Fortunately she was distracted by the rattling going on in Tess’s trunk. “What’s that noise?”

“Box of spare side mirrors,” Tess said mildly.

Pippa blinked, then laughed in spite of herself. “Do you lose lots of mirrors, or is this the deluxe tour just for me?”

“I lose one a week, whether I need to or not,” Tess said with a smile. “That way I have business for the mechanic in the village we just drove through. Or, rather, I did until he sold his shop and retired to France. I haven’t been in to see the new owner, but I’m sure screwing a mirror into the door won’t be beyond his capabilities. We’re all for that sort of stiff-upper-lip, make-it-do sort of thing here.”

Pippa shot her a look. “Learn all that from Aunt Edna, did you?”

“I will admit, grudgingly, that she did instill a cracking good bit of character in us.”

“How would you know? You escaped early!”

“And you got to come with Mom and Dad to England when you were fourteen.”

“I had to wear fairy wings,” Pippa returned. “Every day for two months. I was Persephone Alexander, Medieval Fairy. I still have scars from the straps.”

“Cry me a river. You got to travel while I stayed home and pulled anything that looked like a weed from Aunt Edna’s Victory Garden. I still have nightmares about morning glory wrapping itself around everything in sight.”

Pippa smiled to herself, then watched the road for a bit longer. The tight walls were giving away to less claustrophobic hedges, but the road was still not as large as Pippa thought it should have been, given its reputation on the map as a fairly popular thoroughfare.

Tess turned off on another smaller road that led through yet more bits of forest. “We’re getting close.”

Pippa looked out her window and watched the scenery go by, feeling as if she were stepping back in time. They’d left civilization behind a village or two ago, and her sense of leaving modern life behind grew with every moment.

It was spooky.

“I’m sorry about the change in day for the party,” Tess said. “The birthday girl had an unexpected invitation to go to Paris with her grandmother on Friday, so I couldn’t say no—especially since all I had to do was convince the caterers to come a couple of days early.” She looked at Pippa briefly. “I hope jet lag doesn’t do you in.”

“I’ll be fine.” Pippa yawned. “All I need is time to hide Cind’s designs before Lord Moneybags sees them.”

Tess looked at her mildly. “You mean the stuff she sent over last week that fell off the roof into the moat? It needed a good cleaning so I sent it out. Should be back in about a month.”

Pippa closed her eyes briefly. “I shouldn’t thank you.”

“It was my pleasure, believe me. Now all you have to do is wow our lovely specimen of nobility with
your
stuff while I keep Cindi locked in the attic. It’ll be great.”

Pippa shifted in her seat to look at her sister. “Tell me about him. Again.”

Tess smiled briefly. “He’s Stephen de Piaget, son of Edward, the Earl of Artane.”

“Artane?” Pippa echoed in surprise. “I know that castle.”

“Everyone does,” Tess said. “It’s a spectacular place up the coast. I’ve been a couple of times, though only as a tourist. Why Stephen chose my castle to put on a birthday party for a friend’s daughter when he could have used his father’s place, I don’t know, but I wasn’t going to argue.”

“Maybe he likes your castle better than his. Or he just likes you.”

Tess shook her head. “He’s not my type, in spite of his academic credentials. He’s way too familiar with the mechanics of medieval geopolitics.”

“Are you telling me he’s packing a Claymore?”

“He’s English, not Scottish, but no, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had ventured over the border to add to his unwholesomely extensive collection of weaponry that I’m fairly sure by the look of him he uses. He doesn’t seem to hang out at his father’s castle much, so I’m wondering if he’s harboring secrets he doesn’t want the family to know—which I completely understand as I’m not into pointy metal things, my fascination with all things medieval aside.”