Florida Knight (23 page)

“No way.” Michael literally dug the heels of his sneakers into the dirt.

“Relax, it’s just henna. Elaborate but harmless. I’ll let them do my cheek if you get one on the arm.” Kate grabbed Michael’s hand and dragged him to a pavilion set up under one of the giant oaks.

An hour later Michael was still shaking his head as they ate pitas stuffed with roast vegies, downed with draft beer. “It’s much too gorgeous to wash off,” Kate chided. “Your uniform has long sleeves, right? So nobody’s going to see it.”

“You going to work like that?” he taunted, his gaze lingering over the intricate design ornamenting Kate’s right cheek.

“Probably. It’ll brighten up the office.”

“I’ll say!” Michael breathed. “You’ll be the talk of
Golden
Beach
.”

“For heaven’s sake, Michael, face painting is done at every dinky little fair on the
Gulf
Coast
. Everyone’s used to it.”

“Not henna designs that look like they came out of some ancient
Asian
art book!”

“So admit it’s too nice to wash off.”

Michael sighed. “It’s too nice to wash off. But I’m not about to cover it in plastic while I shower,” he amended under his breath.

“You’re a hopeless philistine.”

“So we’d better hurry if we’re going to catch the tournament,” Michael countered.

“It’s a postage stamp,” he pronounced a few moments later as they walked toward the bleachers set up along one side of the Lyst Field.

“Compared to
Manatee
Bay
, yes,” Kate conceded, “but they do a good tourney. Some of the same . . . Look! It’s the same Lyst Marshal.”

They found a seat while Michael tried to deal with a nasty case of déjà vu. He hadn’t realized the players might be the same on this field as at The Medieval Fair where Mark was hurt. He should have realized . . . after all, how many people could there be who were crazy enough to travel the circuit, fighting in heavy armor in ninety-degree heat?

The setting here was more intimate, Michael had to admit. The action closer, easier to see. The Marshal was putting his horse through a series of intricate dance steps usually associated with Lippanzaners. Airs Above the Ground, wasn’t that what some called it? Horse and rider were superb, moving as if to inner music, prancing as lightly as a fairy over the scuffed turf of coarse
Florida
grass. The audience was perfectly silent, seemingly afraid to risk breaking the beautiful rhythm. When both horse and rider came to rest, then bent their bodies in a low bow, the crowd broke into applause dotted with cheers and rebel yells. The tournament hadn’t even begun, and they’d already had their money’s worth.

When the knights circled the field, helms on their saddles, Michael recognized two of Mark’s buddies. The Yellow and Black Knight and the Blue and White Knight. But no sign of the Scarlet and White Knight who
had
downed Mark. Perhaps he’d dropped off the circuit. Certainly, the young man had been pale and visibly shaken when Michael interviewed him the day after the ill-fated tournament in
Manatee
Bay
.

The knights donned their helms. The action began.

Michael pasted on his most expressionless face and remained stoically glued to his hard wooden seat while inwardly wincing as the two knights broke lances on each other’s armor. Every moment he anticipated disaster. The two combatants clashed swords on horseback, then with booted feet firmly planted on the ground. There was nothing but the clang of metal on metal, the shouts of the crowd, the low hum of the fair going about its business in the background. Nothing unusual happened, except Michael’s stomach churned so violently he thought he was going to have to jump off the bleachers into the bushes in order to keep from losing his lunch in full view of the entire tourney audience.

“I’m sorry,” Kate said as they made their way toward the exit at one end of the field. “That must have been tough on you.”

“I’m okay.” Michael increased his pace, focused on avoiding the strolling fairgoers in front of him. Admitting a weakness would come on the Day of Never. Not even his soft spot for the tall girl in denim cut-offs who had to lengthen her stride to catch up with him was going to crack a chink in his tough-guy armor.

So he was being a stupid ass.

Michael came to an abrupt halt. “Is that archery?” he asked.

Kate followed his bird-dog gaze. “A game, I think. Not a formal contest like LALOC.”

“Want to try it?”

“I’ll watch.” Concentrating on a bullseye might help exorcize Michael’s demons. At least Kate hoped so.

Fifteen minutes later Kate was in proud possession of a fluffy white polar bear with a pink bow. “You’ve been practicing,” she commended with a grin.

Michael shrugged. “Spent a little time in my parents’ backyard. I have to make a good showing at the next Event, after all. Can’t give out my phone number so I can be contacted about fighter practice with the jocks, so archery is my only hope to demonstrate I’m not a wimp.”

“I doubt you’ll ever have to worry about that.” Kate smiled at her bear, gave him a pat. How Brocc could have thought the man called Raven was anything but the most macho jock on the block had to indicate a mightily confused brain. Or that he possessed an ego so strong he refused to believe Raven had succeeded where he failed. Either quality would put him near the top of the Villain List. But motive . . . what could Brocc gain by causing so much trouble, by actually hurting people? It was more like the person they were looking for just plain crazy.

“Look up there!” Michael was pointing high above their heads to a knothole in a live oak that shaded the booth of one of the jewelry vendors.

Kate frowned. “What?”

“Look closely. Something sort of yellow.”

Kate took another look, clutched her bear in a stranglehold. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“Yellow rat snake,” the female vendor spoke up. “Every year we set off bug bombs in our house here to get out the spiders and anything else that’s taken up residence. He came crawling out, shinnied up the tree, and has been in that hole ever since.”

Kate studied the knothole where a small thin head protruded from the bark. It really was a yellow snake. Small, yes, but still a snake. She didn’t like snakes. And Michael, who was grinning from ear to ear, knew it. Blast him!

“Wave bye-bye to the snake, Kate,” he murmured, his lips close to her ear. “I want to check out the Mud Pit.”

Reacting as if his warm breath against her cheek were jet propulsion, Kate shot forward a foot, coming to rest that much closer to the snake. She refused, absolutely refused to reveal that snakes turned her knees to water. Almost as badly as Michael himself. Shoulders square, her face a perfect blank, she executed an abrupt about-face and marched off, not caring if she was going toward the Mud Pit or not. Truthfully, it wasn’t the snake. She was fleeing the man. A menace to her sanity. To her carefully constructed way of life.

“This way, Rambo.” Strong hands turned her to the left as if she were a featherweight. Kate bit her lip, hugged her bear, and let Michael steer her toward the Mud Pit. The arm around her shoulder was a lead weight she couldn’t shake off. She didn’t want to see the stupid mud wrestling or whatever it was, but she was moving in that direction as if she had no will of her own. A few more weeks in this man’s company and she’d be the one who was called a wimp.

Correction. She, a LALOC knight, was already a wimp. Michael Turco was ruling her actions, haunting her thoughts, maybe even tugging at her heart. He looked at her, and she felt small and petite and . . . almost fragile. Like a real woman instead of a warrior.

But she couldn’t give in, couldn’t stop fighting . . . She’d spent too many years accepting what life dished out, allowing adversity to overwhelm her. She’d woken one morning in a white-walled room and known she was free at last. The worm had turned. No man would ever control her life again. No way, no how.

Shouts, roars of laughter, screams of delight. Kate dragged herself back to the reality of the Mud Show. Obviously, a great many people were delighted by the sight of two young men doing pratfalls into a giant tank of dark, oozing, gooey mud. Both actors were already unrecognizable, covered in gray-brown mud from head to toe, only the whites of their eyes and an occasional flash of teeth breaking through their monochrome hi-jinks.

Kate and Michael were seated on one of several rows of wooden benches set up in front of a giant aboveground swimming pool. Behind the yawning pit of mud was a stage where the two young men traded jokes and antics that inevitably ended with one or the other falling, or getting pushed, into the pool. Mud splashed indiscriminately in every direction as the actors’ lithe young bodies tumbled into it. Kate was suddenly extremely glad she was not wearing one of her Medieval costumes.

She glanced at Michael, shook her head. He was actually enjoying this. Kate didn’t like farce, couldn’t understand why anyone would willingly take a series of mud baths for four shows a day. Idly, she wondered how many Renaissance outfits they went through in a weekend. The very thought of the wear and tear on their costumes—no matter how modest they were—made her ill. Men! She’d never be able to understand them.

The shouts died away. A sudden hush. A growing uneasiness as the audience fixed its eyes on the young man standing on stage, staring down into the Mud Pit. Even with his features obscured by mud, he suddenly appeared uncertain. As if waiting for a cue that didn’t come. Was it part of the act? Kate couldn’t tell. Beside her, Michael stirred, poised to rise.

More seconds passed. Nobody moved. There was a mud-drenched actor on stage. No sign of the one who had crumpled into the Pit a full minute earlier. Crumpled. That was it, Kate realized. He hadn’t done a prat fall or been pushed. He’d simply crumpled up and tumbled into the mud. And now, as the ripples in the tank quieted into a perfectly flat dark sea, everyone sensed something was wrong.

The actor on stage plunged, feet first, into the pit. Michael was right behind him.

Chapter 14

The search was short. They’d all seen the performer fall straight down from the stage. Kate was at the forefront of the mass of willing hands surrounding the tank as Michael and the other actor hoisted the young man’s inert body up out of the sucking goop. The two men, supporting the third, looked like some nightmare creature out of a horror film, a brown amorphous mass lumbering through waist-high mud without visible means of locomotion.

“Hose. Behind the stage,” the actor gasped as they reached the side of the tank. Several young men in the audience took off at a run.

Kate and two other spectators relieved Michael and the actor of their slippery burden, hoisting the inert performer over the edge, carefully lowering him to the ground. Fortunately, the hose was equipped with a spray nozzle. Kate set to work clearing the young man’s nose and mouth. Handkerchiefs appeared, passed hand to hand from people in the crowd. From the unconscious actor, however, there was no sign of life. Forty seconds, maybe sixty, since he’d cleared the tank. How long in the mud before that?

A hand, dripping mud, thrust past her, checking for a pulse. Michael’s decisive voice rang in her ear. “He’s not breathing, Kate. “You know how to pump his chest? Good. I’ll do the mouth-to-mouth.”

“Your face!” Kate handed him the hose and the last clean handkerchief.

As Michael dashed water over his head, he suffered his second attack of déjà vu for the day. “Did anyone call 911?” he shouted as he shook water out of his hair, scrubbed the handkerchief across his face.

“I did,” “Yes!” chorused several voices from the crowd.

Michael nodded his satisfaction, squirted water into his mouth, spat a dirty stream onto the ground, repeated the process. “Okay, let’s do it,” he said to Kate.

While the unconscious actor’s partner hovered like a black wraith over the proceedings, Michael and Kate performed CPR. A few minutes later, as the
EMS
crew made its way through the burgeoning crowd, they were rewarded by a gasp, a faint stirring of life. “Okay,” Michael breathed on a gusty sigh. For a moment before the professionals took over, he and Kate stared at each other above the performer’s mud-covered body.

“Damned golf cart,” Michael grumbled twenty minutes later as he and Kate took turns hosing each other off.

“Huh?”

“They brought one for Mark. At the fair in
Manatee
Bay
. I wouldn’t let them touch him. But there’s no way to get an ambulance in here. I have to admit the idea of a stretcher on a golf cart isn’t such a bad idea.”

Kate couldn’t think of an adequate response. Although the young man on the way to the ER was the victim, Michael had not exactly had a good day either. No matter how tough a façade he put on, Kate knew the tournament had hurt. Watching his brother’s friends perform the same acts that had caused Mark’s injury must have been torture. And now . . . finding himself responsible for yet another life. Kate supposed Michael was used to it; it was part of his job, but . . . enough was enough. Time for some comic relief.

They were nearly clean now. Hair, black and blond, hung heavy, wayward strands edging across eyebrows, stretching toward their mouths. Clothes stained beyond the power of the hose, socks drooping over sneakers that squished with every step. Kate’s lips twitched. What was a little more water?