One Enchanted Evening

  She would have to go out the door.

  It was her only choice. She couldn’t remain where she was, she couldn’t call for help on her nonexistent cell phone, and she saw no point in screaming given that Tess’s castle was so far out in the sticks, a signal fire probably wouldn’t have attracted any attention.

  She would get out of the keep, then first try the gift shop. If that didn’t work, she would take off through the woods and hope she got far enough away quickly enough to get help before she was caught by the hunk in the hall and whomever he’d hired to help him trash Tess’s castle. Cindi was on her own. Hopefully she would wake up and screech too loudly for anyone to do any damage to her.

  She took her courage and her tights in hand, then crept over to the door. She put her ear to the wood and listened carefully. She heard nothing, but that was no guarantee that the hallway was empty. She would just have to deal with what she found.

  She jerked the door open and found that she was still not alone. Her captor, if that’s what he could be called, didn’t even flinch. He simply watched her, wide-eyed and silent. Pippa looked to her right and gasped. She pointed for good measure and gasped again. Apparently she’d done a fairly good job of faking because the man actually pushed off the wall and looked where she’d pointed.

  She took off down the hallway in the opposite direction. She didn’t immediately hear heavy footsteps following her, so maybe she would get farther than she’d dared hope. She ran to the end of the hallway and practically leaped down the circular stairs that had somehow lost their very useful rope handrail at some point during the night.

  She was unsurprised. Mr. Universe upstairs and his band of merry marauders were thorough, she would give them that.

  She burst out of the stairs and was halfway across the hall before she skidded—literally—to an unsteady halt. She wished she could have blamed the sight that greeted her on her headache or on her former hallucinatory state, but she felt quite unfortunately in full possession of most of her faculties.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same about the state of her sister’s great hall.

  The place was a disaster. The floor was strewn with hay—and not very nice smelling hay, as it happened. The lord’s table was in the right place, but the chairs were rickety and the walls were devoid of those lovely tapestries she had admired. All right, she’d coveted them in a fairly dangerous way, but that was beside the point. The walls were bare, the furniture—what there was of it—wasn’t even worth taking to the thrift store, and the fireplaces were belching smoke as if they’d never had a good chimney sweep take a look at their innards. The people in the hall were just as unkempt.

  And they were all staring at her as if she’d just sprouted horns.

  “Demoiselle,” a voice behind her began carefully.

  She knew that voice and she was fairly sure she didn’t want to hear anything else it might have to say. Besides, she was too busy trying not to hyperventilate to listen. She wasn’t one to freak out, not really. She was unflappable in the face of actors with split seams and stuck zippers. She was a rock when faced with screeching beauty queens with hems that dragged or buttocks that didn’t fit into skimpy swimsuits. She generally reclined on an island of serenity when the seas around her heaved and roiled with violent fabric-strewn storms.

  But now she thought she just might lose it.

  She hitched and hit the road again, barely escaping a hand that reached out for her. She had no idea what was going on, and she had even less desire to figure it out. She wanted out, and the sooner she got there, the better.

  She ran through the crowd that had gathered near the door. They looked tempted to stop her, but suddenly they all backed away as if they’d been commanded to. Pippa looked over her shoulder and saw why.

  The poster boy for Medieval Monthly had drawn his sword.

  She might have muttered a very unladylike expletive. Or she might have squeaked. She couldn’t have said which, and she didn’t want to know. She shoved a teenage boy out of her way and bolted out of the door. She put her head down and slopped through what had to have been six inches of muck now slathered over her sister’s courtyard. She lost her shoes on her trip to the gate, but didn’t stop to try to liberate them. She just ran on, under the three portcullises and across a drawbridge that was quite a bit sturdier than what she would have expected it to be. She continued to run until she was almost to the forest, then felt herself slowing to a halt.

  She came to a stop.

  There in front of her where the gift shop should have been was . . . nothing. Just forest that was quite a bit farther back from the castle than she remembered it being the day before. And there, between her and that forest, was not a green, grassy place but a brown, muddy place half full of men going at each other with swords.

  She was just sure she’d stumbled onto a movie set and that the movie was a very realistic, very ruthless something about the realities of life in the Middle Ages.

  Only there didn’t seem to be any lights, or cameras, or trailers for the stars and tents for the caterers. There was definitely not a prop trailer or prop mistress hollering at people to keep themselves clean until they weren’t supposed to be. No, none of those things seemed to be in the vicinity, nor was there a director screaming at her that she’d walked onto the set and ruined his shot.

  Where in the hell was she and what had happened to her world?

  She turned and looked at the castle behind her.

  Her mouth fell open.

  The ruin she had seen hinted at in the great hall and vaguely remembered from the night before was on full display in front of her. Walls were missing parts of themselves, the moat had disappeared, and there were holes in just about everything else. It was as if the whole place had been bombed while she slept. She didn’t think she was particularly dense or particularly susceptible to an overactive imagination, her flights of fabric fancy aside, but she was beginning suspect she just wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, she also wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  She felt something begin at the base of her spine. It wasn’t quite a tingling and it wasn’t a warmth, but it was somehow both. She watched the Stephen de Piaget non-look-alike walking toward her, an expression of concern on his face. His sword was sheathed, which she thought boded well.

  He said something to her, but she couldn’t hear him for the sudden rushing sound in her ears that sounded a great deal like wind. The stars swirled around her head, then even they faded as blackness descended.

  She surrendered without a protest.

  Chapter 7

  It wasn’t every day that a man lost his wits whilst being able to watch them vanish into the ether.

  Montgomery stood in the middle of his great hall and contemplated that. He wasn’t one to indulge in idle thoughts, but he couldn’t deny that he was beginning to fear for his sanity. There was something going on in his keep that defied all rational thought. That he was taking any of it seriously—or allowing himself any improbable speculations about the homes of his uninvited guests above—said much about the condition of his mind.

  He had no time for the distraction, but in truth he had absolutely no idea how in the hell he was going to get the two lassies in his bed back to where they’d come from. He had an enormous and quite useless amount of faery lore stored in his memory, but he wasn’t sure he dared begin to think about it seriously—or try to put any of it to use.

  He didn’t like to dither, though when faced with a delicate and unfamiliar situation possibly requiring a decent amount of diplomacy, he wasn’t above holding back for a bit to see how events were going to proceed before he inserted himself into them.

  His household obviously didn’t share his patience. His cousins were whispering amongst themselves, his servants were pretending to go about their chores whilst not doing anything at all, and his garrison knights were standing in little clusters as if they awaited something terrible they couldn’t n
ame. The hall was full of a heaviness that came from superstitious souls who feared what the future might bring.

  He supposed they had cause.

  He listened to the faint sound of otherworldly laughter float down the stairs at the back of his hall and realized one of his charges was awake. It wasn’t an overly large hall, as it happened, so the laughter sounded a bit louder than it might have otherwise. He looked over his shoulder at his garrison knights, who were now standing as an uneasy group near the door, apparently unsure if they should come farther inside for something to eat or depart with all due haste back to the lists where things went on that they understood. Montgomery nodded at Ranulf and his two companions, who firmly and without brooking argument ushered the men to the long tables placed by each hearth.

  The servants were not so easily convinced. They had now all come into the hall and were gaping at the stairwell opening as if they expected a demon to come bursting forth from it at any moment. Montgomery wished he had, at some point in the past, asked his mother for an idea or two on how to manage servants, but ’twas too late now. He would just herd them back to their places with his sword if he had to.

  His cousins were taking up their accustomed amount of space at the lord’s table. Gunnild had gone so far as to look to her left with a deeply suspicious expression but she had not vacated her chair. Her children seemed less interested in that than they did what might be coming from the kitchens. Well, save Martin, who looked at Montgomery and winked. Montgomery had to admit that he liked Martin, though he supposed he shouldn’t trust the man any farther than he could throw him. The others only glared at him as if he were responsible for all their ills. He shrugged and looked away.

  His steward Fitzpiers had come to stand at the door of his solar, and he looked particularly unperturbed. Montgomery sent him a fond thought. His father’s steward was also an excellent man, one Montgomery had never truly appreciated for the size and complexity of his task. Artane was a small city in comparison to Sedgwick, yet his father and his father’s steward managed it with ease.

  Montgomery had much ahead of him, he could tell.

  Before he could truly give that the thought it deserved, a vision burst into the hall with a magnificence that made him catch his breath. Her wings fluttered, her wand waved, her crown was askew, but somehow that didn’t detract in the slightest from her regal carriage or her beauty.

  The Queen of Faery had arrived.

  Montgomery didn’t want to believe that of her, but what else was he to think? He had never in his life seen anyone like her. And had he not realized the day before that her maid was the same gel he’d seen standing in the midst of that odd spot of ground near his father’s hall? He’d been convinced in his youth that she was a faery, though he’d put that thought behind him along with other trappings of childhood.

  Now, he wasn’t convinced he hadn’t made a mistake there, though he wasn’t sure how clinging to the memory of that vision would have helped him. It wasn’t doing a damned thing for him now save giving him a pounding pain behind his eyes.

  He drew his hand over those eyes briefly, shook his head to clear it, then looked at his household. His garrison knights were gaping as if they’d just seen an apparition. Some were standing, some were half standing, and some looked as if they might soon become senseless. The kitchen staff looked no less affected, nor did the rest of his servants, though some of them had begun to cross themselves furiously. The cousins had deigned to put their feet on the floor, but Montgomery thought that might be the extent of their reaction. Gunnild had stood up, as if she sensed there might be trouble coming her way.

  Montgomery watched the Faery Queen make her way about the great hall, twirling, sparkling, singing as if she were still in her own realm and they her loyal and adoring subjects. Montgomery couldn’t look away from her. The woman was graceful, as if every move was a dance created especially for those who watched her, and benevolent, as if the smiles she bestowed were destined for none other than those she favored with them. She spun in the middle of the hall and sparkles flew from her wand, floating through the air and landing with a tinkling sound that reminded him of rain on the roof of his father’s stables at home.

  She floated over to the cluster of servants and kitchen staff and trilled at them.

  Montgomery watched with resignation as the majority of them shrieked, then bolted past the queen, across the hall, and out the front door. Perhaps majority was the wrong word to use. All of them bolted save a lone gel, who stood there with a long knife in her hand and a scowl on her face.

  Montgomery glanced at his garrison. His own men were leaning negligently against a wall near the doors, but he knew them too well to believe them uninterested. They were just too well-mannered to give any indication of their thoughts. Sedgwick’s garrison seemed divided between those who were annoyed at the cloud of dust left by the departing kitchen staff and those who now seemed less terrified by the white-garbed woman than intrigued by her. He wasn’t sure that was an improvement over his servants, but he wasn’t going to argue at present.

  He nodded to his own men, then walked across the hall to stand next to the remaining kitchen lass. He reached her as the queen fluttered away.

  “I don’t imagine you’ll need your blade,” he said quietly. He looked at the Faery Queen, who was now dancing in the middle of the great hall to music apparently only she could hear. “I think she’s fairly harmless.”

  The girl stuck it back into her belt. “I’ve seven older brothers. It’d take more than a silly twit to frighten me away from me post.”

  Montgomery considered for a moment or two, then looked at her. “Can you cook?”

  “Of course,” the girl said, though she looked as if the very thought of it terrified her to the core.

  “Then the kitchen is yours. Unless I can bring back the others.”

  “Begging your pardon, my lord, but I think you would be better off without them.”

  Montgomery couldn’t help but agree. Even if he managed to find his servants, he imagined he wouldn’t find them willing to work. He wasn’t about to beat them into compliance, nor would he manage to convince them to do their jobs well if he did, so perhaps ’twas best he forgo a search for them until he’d dealt with the woman now singing bawdy French songs before the lord’s table.

  Montgomery looked at the girl standing next to him, trembling. “We’ll find aid elsewhere then. What is your name, lass?”

  “Joan, my lord.”

  “Thank you for your aid, Joan.”

  She looked at him as if she wasn’t sure he if were kind or mad. He wondered, wearily, if he might be a little of both. Joan bobbed a curtsey, then turned and bolted back to the kitchen. Montgomery turned again to look to the hall. The men were still there, obviously too accustomed to some sort of food every day to feel like trying to search for it elsewhere. Either that or they knew that in their case, he would hunt each of them down and compel them to return. Perhaps they thought there was little sense in expending the energy to flee. His lads were still in their places. Montgomery would see them fed first. They couldn’t guard his back if they were faint from hunger.

  But first to see to the woman who had already half emptied his hall. He looked at the high table to find his cousins where they’d been before, looking irritated, calculating, and utterly bored depending on the soul in question. The Faery Queen didn’t seem to find their participation in her dance to be necessary, which likely only irritated them the more.

  Montgomery realized with a start that the queen’s handmaid, that beautiful, ethereal gel he hadn’t thought about in years, was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking equal parts exhausted and apprehensive. Everard had appeared next to her, regarding her with equal amounts of suspicion and interest.

  That bothered him, for some reason.

  Everard was, however, a former member of his father’s household, and Montgomery was waiting to see which way the wind blew, so he allowed the events to proceed for a
bit longer. That gave him the opportunity to watch them as they did so—the events and the handmaid both. He studied her as she stood pressed back against the wall, looking numb to the goings-on. Perhaps she’d seem them before. He wondered how she had come to be in her mistress’s service, and how she felt being so far from her world. He wondered if she could return.

  He turned to study the woman in white. She was obviously not of this world, obviously quite used to the privilege of royalty, doubtless used to those around her immediately and without question seeing to her every need. She was no doubt rich far beyond even his rather high standards for the like, and he wasn’t precisely certain she didn’t possess magical powers. How else had she walked through a gate from her world to . . .

  He felt his thoughts grind to an ungainly halt.

  How else had she walked through a gate from her world to his?

  His thoughts took him in a new and rather alarming direction. It was a rather well-kept secret that there were a few souls in his family who weren’t—how was he to say it?—exactly from the current day, as daft as that sounded. His sister-in-law Jennifer, for instance, had seemingly sprung up from the grass, yet Montgomery had spent enough of his youth with his brother Nicholas to realize that Nicholas’s wife was not a faery, but rather from a time not their own.

  The Future, as it happened.

  It couldn’t be that the Faery Queen was . . . it couldn’t be that she came from . . .

  He rubbed his hands over his face and wished he’d had more sleep. Any sleep, actually. He’d spent all night either sitting or standing in front of his bedchamber door. He’d had no other choice. Only one brief trip to the garderobe had resulted in his two male cousins trying to sneak into his bedchamber. His vigil had kept the women safe, but it had apparently resulted in the complete ruination of his wits. The women were nothing more than he’d said they were: players who had wandered away from their company and become lost. Anything else was too fanciful, too improbable, too far out of his normal sphere of existence to be believed.