“You should go back inside.”
Pippa was desperately tempted to have that nervous breakdown Montgomery de Piaget was trying to stave off, but instead settled for a shuddering breath. “He could have been a nice man.”
“Nice men do not assault women.”
“Maybe he wanted my seat.”
Montgomery pursed his lips. “Then he should have asked. As he didn’t, he paid the price. Now, lady, I think you would be served to perhaps seek out the fire in the great hall.”
Not when the hall wasn’t her sister’s, with running water, a roaring fire, and lack of rough-looking actors. Pippa took a deep breath, a steadier one this time around. “I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind. I think I need fresh air.”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “As you will.” He stepped back over the log, called to someone to come look after her, then went back to his work.
She sat, she shivered, and she realized she hadn’t thanked him for the rescue. She would, when she thought she could get two words out without some new sort of hysterical display. She looked away from the extreme sports going on in front of her and stared at her sister’s castle, which was looking not nearly as pristine and magnificent as it should have looked. It was definitely her sister’s castle, but then again, it wasn’t.
It was as if the castle—and she herself—had been pulled out of her time and plunked down in another reality entirely, one full of people who didn’t have any reason to think what they were doing—namely hacking at each other with very sharp swords—was weird. But that sort of thing was something that belonged in a book; it wasn’t the sort of thing that happened in real life.
Was it?
She wished she could stop questioning it, but just saying the words was soothing in a way she wouldn’t have expected. It wasn’t possible. Reality was reality, and space-time-continuum stuff didn’t just intrude on it. Or at least didn’t in her life.
Then again, it was hard to argue with what was right there in front of her. Cindi might have been delusional, but she was most definitely in full possession of all her faculties. She was sitting on a rough, uncomfortable log, and she was wearing a tunic and tights made of something that had been spun on an old-fashioned loom. The cloak, which was surprisingly warm, had also been made by hand, though the quality of it was very nice. The ring of steel was audible and the sound of men cursing in a version of French she wasn’t entirely familiar with didn’t seem to be a figment of her imagination. They certainly seemed to be pretty sure they were just going about their daily business.
But how was it possible that she could have been sent to another reality . . . or another time?
She considered all the sparkles she’d seen around her and Cindi, but that could have been the glitter Tess had been throwing over the girls to give them a good send-off. She hadn’t really felt anything unusual that night besides an intense desire to push her sister into the lake so she could actually have a conversation with a very nice man. Had there been a stray star she had inadvertently wished on, or a fairy godmother hiding in the bushes she hadn’t noticed?
She froze.
She
had
wished. She had wished for a guy who would want a second date and something—Karma, probably—had taken note. Maybe it was that other shoe she’d been waiting for. Maybe that blast of good fortune in having Stephen de Piaget actually like what she was doing was so amazing that she was being thrust back into hell to pay for it ahead of time. Maybe she would pay the price, then get a one-way ticket back to where she was supposed to be, life would become amazing, and her current straits would all be nothing more than a bad dream.
Assuming she could get herself out of them to enjoy that amazing life in the future.
She honestly had no idea how she was going to do that, but she supposed the first thing to do was figure out where she was—or perhaps
when
she was. She couldn’t get to an ending point if she didn’t have a starting point.
She just hoped her ending point wasn’t anywhere near a stake surrounded by a robust pile of kindling.
She took another look at the men in front of her, trying to decide who might best help her without helping her to her doom. Montgomery looked less unkempt than the rest of that rough-looking group, but he more than made up for that by the aura of toughness he exuded. She didn’t suppose he would go all medieval on her, but there was no sense in tempting Fate.
She knew where that led.
She searched for a likelier suspect, then realized that there was someone she had overlooked. There was a teenager standing about ten feet away from her, watching her surreptitiously. He might be young enough to still intimidate, though he was wearing a sword as well. Maybe he didn’t know how to use it very well yet. She scooted over on her log, then looked at him. When he didn’t move, she patted the seat next to her and nodded in a casual way.
He looked momentarily taken aback, then he seemed to consider. He looked at Montgomery, who had glanced over his shoulder, possibly to make sure there were no more murderers hanging around the edge of his training field. When Montgomery nodded slightly and turned back to his exercises, the teenager took a deep breath and sidled over a step or two at a time. It took him a few minutes to get close enough for speech to be possible. Pippa wasn’t sure how good her as-yet-to-be-determined-vintage French was, but she thought she could make herself understood. She smiled her most unassuming smile.
“I’m Pippa,” she said. “Who are you?”
He frowned. “My lord uncle said your name was Persephone.”
“Pippa is my short name. Montgomery is your uncle?”
“Aye.” He paused, then smiled very slightly. “I am Phillip. My father is Robin, my uncle’s eldest brother. He will be the lord of Artane when my grandfather passes.”
Well, that sounded like the usual sort of English nobility structure that might have been found in the twenty-first century. There was no reason to assume Phillip or his family was of a Victorian vintage, or Tudor, or . . . or an earlier time. It didn’t mean that at all.
She thought about that for a bit until she realized what was starting to bother her: Phillip kept looking behind her. Surreptitiously, of course, but he was still doing it. She looked behind her as well, but saw nothing unusual.
“What is it?” she asked.
Phillip shifted uncomfortably. “You had wings before, my lady. I don’t see them today.”
She blinked. “Wings?”
He nodded earnestly. “I think my lord uncle thinks you come from Faery. I know I do,” he added, not entirely under his breath.
She would have laughed, but Phillip was obviously quite serious. She supposed that it was understandable, from Montgomery’s point of view. After all, both she and Cindi had shown up with wings on. Montgomery wouldn’t know that they hadn’t been attached unless he’d—
Her thoughts ground to a halt. Unless he’d been the one to pull her dress off her, in which case he’d seen far more than he should have. She supposed the time for blushing furiously was long past, but she did it anyway just on principle.
“Lady, are you unwell?”
“It’s warm out,” Pippa said, fanning herself. She looked at Phillip, grasping for a good distraction. “Do you believe in fairies?”
“My father and I don’t believe in paranormal oddities.” He paused, then shrugged. “I will admit there are strange happenings in the north, however, for which I can conceive no reasonable explanation.”
“Paranormal oddities?” she echoed.
He flashed her an utterly charming smile. “None that I would admit to having seen.” He paused and seemed to chew on his words before he was ready to spit them out. “I must say, my lady, that your mistress could hardly be mistaken for anything but a queen. I don’t have much experience with royalty, but I have seen the king. She carries that same air about her.”
“The king,” Pippa said, as if she expected Phillip to fill in the blank for her. “And that would be king . . .”
“Henry,” he supplied, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Of course,” she said quickly, pretending to smack her forehead. “Bump on the head, you know. Lost my recent memories. Henry, the son of . . .”
“John Lackland,” Phillip said, looking slightly relieved. “Do you remember him?”
“It’s coming back to me,” she said. She looked up at him. “Have you met the king?”
“Aye, when in the company of my father, though it was a dodgy business indeed. My father complained quite loudly about the king’s habit of spending the people’s money on such lavish buildings.” He shrugged. “At least we have a bit more power since the barons forced John’s hand, though I’m not sure Henry will hold to the bargain.”
“You know a lot about politics,” she said with frank admiration.
He smiled, a little sheepishly. “My father is very outspoken and has the sword skill to defend his views. I’m mostly just repeating what he says—” He looked toward the castle and stiffened. “Someone comes.”
That someone turned out to be Joan, who had apparently come for her.
“The queen calls for you.”
Pippa decided it was in her best interest to answer that call. She accepted Phillip’s very gallant aid to get to her feet, thanked him for the pleasant conversation, and walked back to the castle with Joan as if she were doing nothing more interesting than taking a little Saturday afternoon stroll to the Mini Mart for a bag of peanut butter cups and a cup of slushy, cherry-flavored courage. She wasn’t going to lose it, especially not in front of witnesses. So she was living with people who thought they were hanging out in the middle of the thirteenth century where there was no plumbing to speak of, no running water, no lovely Aga stove in the kitchen to provide a place to set a cheery tea kettle. No problem. It was a collective hallucination.
And when she could breathe again, she would look for a way to get them all out of it.
But the first thing she was going to do was stop sleeping in the same bed with her sister. No more of that drug-laden breath for her.
Because a collective hallucination made a lot more sense than thinking she had walked through a shower of sparkles and landed herself back in the Middle Ages in the care of a man who patted her to keep her calm, killed guys who tried to abduct her, and loaned her his clothes.
She needed to get home, and fast.
Chapter 9
M
ontgomery
listened to the comforting scratching of his steward’s quill across parchment. It made him feel secure to listen to the business of the keep running so smoothly. A pity that was the only thing in his life running smoothly.
“Uncle?”
Montgomery looked up. Phillip was standing in front of the fire, no doubt warming his backside. Montgomery would have smiled if he’d had it in him, for he had done the same thing on many an afternoon, in more than one hall. “Aye, lad?”
“Did you know the Faery Queen’s name is Cinderella?”
Montgomery didn’t want to admit he did, for that would lead to questions about where he’d heard Persephone calling her that—in less-than-dulcet tones, truth be told—and he wasn’t about to admit he’d been sleeping in the passageway outside his bedchamber. Then again, he supposed Phillip knew that already. He supposed the entire keep knew that by now. It wasn’t as if he could do anything else, not with Boydin roaming the halls at all hours and Everard leering at both guests whenever possible. But he didn’t need to dwell on those two gels and neither did Phillip. He frowned at his squire, then went back to his business.
“And Mistress Pippa,” Phillip whispered. “She seems unfamiliar with the politics of the current day, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Montgomery didn’t want to hear it. Bad enough that he now knew not only Persephone’s full name but a pet name for her. Worse still that he knew when she entered the chamber and when she left it. He had no desire to hear anything about what she might and might not know about the current day.
For obvious reasons.
He shot Phillip a look, the same sort of look Robin was wont to use when he didn’t particularly care to continue a certain conversation. He most certainly didn’t want to carry on that conversation where his steward could hear it.
Besides, it wasn’t unusual for a body not to be familiar with the politics of the day. His family enjoyed a rousing discussion about the foibles of the king and his court, but there were others he knew who would rather have faced an army of irritated Scots than discuss the like.
Phillip fell silent. Montgomery went back to his study of what was before him and tried to recapture the happy feelings he had at looking at what stood to be a decent fall’s harvest if Gunnild didn’t raze the larder with what he’d discovered were her endless plans for feasts involving large numbers of important guests.
“Uncle?”
Montgomery sighed before he could stop himself, then looked up. “Aye, Phillip?”
Phillip seemed to be chewing mightily on his words. Montgomery could only imagine why. In fact, he could imagine quite a few things, but given that they were things he didn’t care to examine too closely, he knew he would be better off to ignore them as long as possible.
He didn’t imagine that happy bit of avoidance would last very long.
“But Mistress Pippa,” Phillip said in a loud whisper. “Her wings . . . well, her wings aren’t always on her. Have you noticed?”
“Nay, I had not,” Montgomery lied shortly. He had most certainly noticed that, as well as several other things including her very lovely blue eyes, the fairness of her face, and her glorious dark hair that fell down her back in a cascade of curls— especially since that she had managed to wash it the day before and it was now free of cesspit leavings.
But more particularly, he’d noticed her hands, long-fingered and delicate. He realized that even after so short an acquaintance, he could tell her mood by her hands. They were most relaxed when working in the kitchen. They tended to clench when she was talking to her, er, queen.