One Enchanted Evening

  “Was she a faery, do you think?”

  Robin slapped the back of Montgomery’s head sharply—no doubt in an attempt to dislodge good sense—then hesitated before he put his hands on Montgomery’s shoulders. “I do not know what she was, or if you even saw what you think you saw,” he said in a low voice, “but I can well imagine what happens to souls who consort with things not of this world.”

  “Like Jake and Jennifer—”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about there,” Robin said promptly. “What I do know is that faeries are for children, not for grown men.”

  “I know what I saw—”

  “Then forget it quickly,” Robin advised, “and instead think on what it would mean for you if it were noised about that you still believed in things better left to find home in children’s tales.” He slid Montgomery a sideways look. “Really, Montgomery. Faeries? At your age? Better that you concentrate on things that will keep you alive.” He patted his sword. “Steel and cunning. We’ll consider both at length over the next pair of months.”

  Montgomery nodded reluctantly, and then continued on for a handful of steps before the temptation to look over his shoulder became too great to ignore. He paused, then looked back at that particular spot in the grass that was now nothing out of the ordinary until he’d come to a decision. He hated to admit it, but Robin was right. He was ten-and-seven, well past the age of believing in things better left behind in childhood.

  No matter what he’d just seen.

  He stepped away from the sight, to give himself distance from it. It had no doubt been nothing more than sunlight on a bit of leftover morning mist, or too much rich food the night before and not enough time in the lists that morning. The possibilities were endless, but the truth was easily narrowed down to one simple thing: a true knight concentrated on steel and horses and honor. There was no room in his future for things of a more ethereal nature.

  Surely.

  “Montgomery?”

  He turned back to the business at hand, nodded briskly, then followed his brother to the keep. Steel, horses, and honor. Those would be the stars he would guide his life by and thereby find himself comfortably joining the company of his father and brothers. That was, after all, what he wanted most.

  He nodded to Robin, put on a determined expression, and left his childhood behind him as he should have done years earlier. It was done without a twinge of regret.

  Truly.

  Chapter 1

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON PRESENT DAY

  It wasn’t often that a girl had the chance to get lost in a fairy tale.

  Persephone Josephine Alexander wasn’t one to find herself in those sorts of straits, but she was hardly in a position at present to do anything about it. She was captive in the darkened wings of a venerable Seattle theater, watching something undeniably magical unfold in front of her. The handsome prince, accompanied by a breathtaking set of strings, was vocally waxing rhapsodic about the charms of the appallingly lovely girl across the stage, while that girl was accompanying his waxing with her own musical commentary about his perfections. It wasn’t long before the pair fell into each other’s arms as if they’d been born for just that moment, their voices mingling in perfect harmony, soaring above the orchestra and leaving very few dry eyes in the audience.

  Pippa was sure of that because she’d peeked out into that audience—after she’d dragged her sleeve across her own eyes, of course. Damned dust allergies kicking up at the most inopportune moments.

  She got hold of herself, then turned back to her purely academic study of the love story going on in front of her. She had to admit, grudgingly, that it looked as real as anything she’d ever seen anywhere—or at least it did until the handsome prince stepped on the back of his soon-to-be princess’s dress and tore it half off.

  Pippa came back to earth abruptly at the two glares she found thrown her way as the prince and his lady attempted to dance as if nothing had happened. Fortunately there were no further mishaps before the couple managed to get themselves off stage for the last costume change.

  “Lovely designs, Pippa,” the princess said shortly as she ran off the stage. “Too bad you couldn’t have sewn them better. I imagine Frank agrees.”

  “Pippa didn’t design them,” Frank whispered sharply, “and given what I’ve seen tonight, it was a mistake to let her sew them.”

  Pippa didn’t bother to respond to that. She had indeed designed all the costumes, as well as having sewn most of them, but she was standing on the brink of a truly remarkable piece of good fortune, and she didn’t want to jinx it by arguing the point with a successful show’s director on closing night.

  Though it was really tempting to take the pair of dressmaker’s shears she had stuck in the back of her belt and cut off Frank’s ponytail while he was otherwise engaged in sucking up to his leads and belittling the little people. Fortunately for his dignity, she found herself suddenly too busy repairing tears and replacing sequins to do any trimming.

  By the time she had gotten all the costumes put away for someone lower than she on the food chain to worry about cleaning in the morning, she had given up the idea of revenge. Petty theater directors and grumpy actors were in her past. Her future was a sparkling green city in the not-so-distant distance and there was nothing standing between them but a no-nonsense flight to England. She got herself home through a damp and rather foggy Seattle night, then settled happily into her favorite pair of flannel pajamas before going in search of a decent post-production snack.

  Half an hour later, she pulled her last cinnamon-sugar Pop-Tart from the toaster, then frowned at the smell. Something was burning, and it wasn’t what she was holding in her hand. She leaned forward and sniffed her toaster. No, not there, either.

  She followed her nose to her front door, then opened it and looked out into the hallway. Gaspard, her neighbor, flung open his door, shrieking curses in French as he jerked off his chef’s hat, threw it on the floor, and stomped out the flames. He looked at her.

  “Run, chérie.”

  It took her a moment to reconcile herself to the fact that flames were licking his doorframe, which meant he was obviously not just capable of dispensing advice on how to make a killer Bolognese sauce but could also run a mean escape operation. She watched the smoke begin to billow for a moment or two before she realized that she was about to become as crispy as the pastry she was holding in her hand.

  She dashed back into her apartment, tossed her future into a suitcase, then bolted for the stairs.

  Several hours later, she stood on a the edge of tree-root-ravaged bit of sidewalk, pushed back the hair that was curling frantically around her face and dripping down the back of her now-soggy pajamas, and decided that there was only one explanation for the swirling events she’d been plunked down into.

  Karma was out to get her.

  She was a big believer in Karma. A girl couldn’t grow up as the child of flower children and not have a healthy respect for that sort of thing—and for tie-dye as well, but those were probably memories better left for another time when she had peace for thinking and some mini chocolate muffins to ease the pain.

  She rubbed the spot between her eyes that had almost ceased to pound, then looked around for somewhere to sit. Her sturdy, vintage suitcase was there next to her, looking imminently capable of standing up under the strain, so she sat and was grateful for the recent departure of fire engines and Dumpster delivery trucks. She rested her elbows on her knees, her chin on her fists, and gave herself over to the pondering of the twists and turns of her life.

  She also kept a weather eye out for that rather large and clunky other shoe she was fairly sure was going to be dropped onto her head at any moment. One couldn’t have the sort of spectacular good fortune she was about to wallow in without some sort of equal and opposite cosmic reaction. And to keep herself from breaking into the kind of jubilant rejoicing she was sure Karma took note of, she reviewed the path that had led her to her curren
t enviable spot on a suitcase out in the rain.

  It had begun, she supposed, when Susie Chapman’s mother had given her a Barbie and a lunch sack full of fabric scraps for her seventh birthday. A world of possibilities had opened up for her, a realm that included plaids and paisleys, stripes and polka dots, all made from fabrics that weren’t made from hemp and were probably anything but organic. Her parents would have rent their tie-dyed caftans if they’d seen any of it, but Pippa had avoided detection by keeping her contraband doll and those glorious mass-dyed fabrics hidden cunningly in a couple of Birkenstock boxes.

  She had continued her illicit evening-gown-making activities even after she and her siblings had been dumped by her überflaky parents on the doorstep of an aunt who had sprung, fully formed, from the pages of a Dickens novel. Pippa had in public sneered at romance, fairy tales, and designing clothes for dolls who savored both, but in the privacy of her little garret room she had sewn magical things from the best her lunch money could buy. She had gone on to major in art and costume design in college, then spent the ensuing four years slaving away over seams for others to wear in their own fairy tales acted out on stage.

  And while designing for shows had been good practice, her burning and up-until-now secret desire had been to have her own line of clothing. In spite of her own avoidance of the like in her personal life, she dreamed of creating modern things with a hint of medieval romance and fairy-tale magic for others, things with little touches that only those looking for them would see. She wanted the women who wore her clothes to feel like the heroines of their own fairy tales, beautiful and beloved.

  She paused. It was entirely possible she had some unresolved issues concerning romance, knights in shining armor, and her time at Aunt Edna’s.

  She made a mental note to consider therapy later—after she’d eluded Karma’s steely eye and leaped at the chance she’d been recently offered to make her dreams come true.

  Her sister Tess, who owned an honest-to-goodness English castle and made her living by hosting parties for all sorts of people with money and imagination, had shown some of Pippa’s designs to one of her clients. The man had looked at the kids’ costumes, then spontaneously uttered the magic words.

  I say, your sister Pippa doesn’t design for adults, does she? I’m looking for a new place to invest a bit of money.

  Pippa had immediately begun fiendishly working on things to expand her collection, wondering all the while if there might be something bigger at work in her life than simply her wishing for it. She certainly didn’t believe in magic, pixie dust, or any of the romantic drivel her older sister Peaches read on what seemed to be an alarmingly regular basis. She most certainly didn’t believe in the fairy tales put on by any of the theaters she’d sewn for.

  But in this, she couldn’t deny that there was something, well, unusual at work.

  “Pippa, what in the world happened?”

  She looked up at that aforementioned over-romanced sister Peaches, who had suddenly materialized next to her on the sidewalk.

  “Gaspard had his flambé get a little too friendly with his natural fibers, apparently,” she said with a sigh. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “It’s not early. It’s almost nine. And I’m here because I thought that since you were leaving tonight, you might need help packing.”

  Pippa supposed Peaches would have thought that. Her sister made a living by acting as a life coach, plucking people one by one out of a sea of bills, undeclared intentions, and old pizza boxes to send them off into a new life of organizational calm. Their parents were almost proud of her, though they would have preferred her credentials in feng shui be a bit more solid.

  “It’s all finished,” Pippa said, patting her suitcase and hoping Peaches wouldn’t want to check her work. “Costumes for the kids’ party, my passport, and some granola. And my backup thumb drive with all the new designs I scanned for ease in display. I was sort of in a rush and left everything else behind.”

  Peaches glanced at the smoldering ruins of Pippa’s building. “I imagine you were. And I suppose you can replace what you lost.”

  Pippa nodded, though she couldn’t exactly agree. She’d spent years collecting one of a kind vintage fabrics and trims. In fact, she could have started her own store with what she had stacked on shelves in her apartment, or hidden cunningly under her bed and skirted end tables. There had been a few times—all right, there had been more than a few times—when she had simply sat there and stared for a few minutes—all right, it might have been for an hour or two at a shot—at the stacks and stacks of fabric she possessed, all full of possibilities, all waiting for her to take them and make them into something more than they had been before—

  “I mean, it’s not as if you don’t have money in the bank,” Peaches continued relentlessly, “or renter’s insurance, or all your valuables tucked safely away in a safe-deposit box like I’ve been advising you to do for the past year.”

  “I don’t have any valuables.”

  Peaches studied her in a way that made Pippa feel as if her sister really did know that she hid money in her mattress and family heirlooms in hot chocolate cans.

  “But the insurance, Pippa,” Peaches prodded. “You did take care of that, didn’t you?”

  “I have an appointment with the insurance guy,” Pippa said, trying not to sound defensive. “At noon today, so yes, I did take care of that. And I did have savings, but I took it all and bought an embroidery machine last week. And a nicer serger. And a few bolts of velvet and silk.” She paused. “Maybe a few sequins.”

  “How many sequins?”

  Pippa waved her hand toward the wreckage she couldn’t bring herself to look at any longer. “I think they would be the enormous swath of multihued sparkles you see up there where the second floor used to be.”

  “That’s a lot of sequins.” She took a deep, calming breath. “At least you have your scooter. It could be worse.”

  Pippa pointed over her shoulder to where the Dumpster had been dumped earlier that morning. A wheel and part of a fender stuck out from below the container.

  Peaches looked, paused, then laughed a bit. “You’ve had quite a morning.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “At least you have your trip to look forward to.” Peaches nudged her over a bit to join her on her suitcase. “Tell me more about this guy who wants to look at your designs. He could be the reason for all this cosmic attention you’re getting.”

  Pippa was happy to talk about something else besides the stench of incinerated fabric she could still smell lingering in the air. “I don’t know anything about him except that he’s nobility and he has really deep pockets.”

  “Nobility?”

  “He’s the son of an earl, I think, and runs in Tess’s academic circles. And he has deep pockets.”

  “You already said that.”

  “His deep pockets are very attractive to my ultimate plan of fashion world domination.”

  Peaches laughed. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your focus.”

  “Mr. Nobility might front me some dough for more sequins, and Karma is probably done with me,” Pippa said with a shrug. She ignored the little niggling doubt at the back of her mind that said Karma was nowhere close to being finished with her. “You’re taking me to the airport tonight, and I have enough money in the bank to buy more underwear. What else can go wrong?”

  “You can open your big mouth, that’s what can go wrong,” Peaches said quickly. “Don’t tempt Fate.”

  “Nah,” Pippa said confidently, “I think the worst is over. After all, bad things come in threes and my quota is full.”

  “My little disorganized friend, good things come in threes. I don’t think bad luck is constrained by the same rules.”

  “Ridiculous,” Pippa scoffed, finding it in herself to rally a bit. She stood and wrapped an emergency blanket around herself because she was cold, not because she was unnerved. “You can go along with all that
woo-woo business we were weaned on, but I’m not buying it.”

  “Liar.”

  Pippa shook her head sharply. “Look, Peach, Karma’s done her bit with me this week. In the past eight hours I have lost, in no particular order, my apartment, my life’s savings, my inventory of irreplaceable fabric and salvaged trims, my means of making a living, and my purple Vespa. I’m in the clear.”

  Peaches only zipped her lips, locked them, and threw away the key.

  Pippa put her shoulders back and stood tall. Her destiny was not controlled by some cosmic, unreasonable force. She was in charge. Hadn’t she just the night before looked life in its steely eye, clutched her Pop-Tart like a sword, and announced as much?

  Approximately thirty seconds before she’d smelled the smoke, but surely the two were unrelated.

  “Oh, no,” Peaches said, standing up so quickly, she knocked Pippa’s suitcase over. “Not this.”

  “What?” Pippa asked, leaning over to right her suitcase.

  “I told you there was no limit,” Peaches said pointedly. “Number Four’s on its way. I’m not sticking around to see what Number Five’s going to be.”

  Pippa looked over her shoulder, then found herself assailed by a sudden desire to collapse. Fortunately, her suitcase was still there, sturdy and dependable. She sat down heavily.

  “This doesn’t count.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better.”

  Pippa watched gloomily as the ultimate hippie-mobile came up the way. It was a tie-dyed Winnebago, powered by solar panels and used french-fry oil, with a faint cloud of cannabis hovering overhead and Grateful Dead stickers plastered all over the back.

  “What are the parental units doing here?” she asked uneasily.

  “Maybe they came to visit before you took off for yon blessed isle,” Peaches offered. “Maybe they’re going to insist they be the ones to take you to the airport, in style no less. You might manage to get them to stop by the mall, unless Mom has some hemp underwear hiding in a drawer you could have.”