Hard Day's Knight (3 page)

“Just because when you were a kid your mom had a horse that used to snack on you doesn’t mean that all of them—”

“That horse was trouble on four hooves,” I interrupted, the memory of the indignities I suffered from the brute wonderfully clear in my mind. “But it wasn’t just him, monster that he was. They’re all like that. They’re big and pushy and they do whatever they want and stomp all over you while they’re doing it. Do you know that I still have scars on both feet from being run over by horses? At least with a cat you can confine it to a room. Horses are just impossible.”

CJ pulled a suitcase toward her. “
That
is most definitely an opinion you should
not
share with anyone here unless you want to be lynched. Now, where did I put your garb?”

“I don’t need any,” I said a bit petulantly, immediately feeling ashamed of myself. It wasn’t her fault my life was a disaster, and she
had
promised to do everything she could to match me up with my ideal mate—not that I was convinced she could do any such thing, even if I was the sort of a girl who’d fall for the kind of man who wore tights and a funny jester’s hat. Then again, some of the jousters that CJ had told me about on the trip up sounded intriguing, very masculine, filled with a dashing sense of adventure, with just a tiny smidgen of the thrill seeker. . . . Maybe I should think positive. I made a resolution right there to not be a clinging, whiny pain in the butt. So I was stuck with Moth watching and had to dress up like a medieval harlot—I could deal with that. The perks—hunky guys in knight clothes, one of whom could potentially be
him
—were sure to outweigh the drawbacks of the next two weeks.

Or so I told myself. My Wise Inner Pepper was reserving judgment.

“Here.” CJ extracted some garments from the suitcase and shoved them into my arms. “Go put your garb on. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I hardly see how,” I muttered, but obediently ducked my head to enter the tent, chastising myself that ten seconds into my resolution, I’d already broken it. “Being self-conscious because I’m strapped into a harlot’s outfit is not generally known to make me feel better.”

“Everyone wears garb at the Faire. You’d stand out if you didn’t. Besides, you’re a Wench, an official representative of the League of Wenches. It’s a violation of LOW bylaws for you to appear in street clothes at a Faire.”

“You’re the one who signed me up,” I pointed out as I let the front flap fall so I could peel off my sticky clothes. I used another bottle of ice water to give myself a fast sponge bath as CJ puttered around outside the tent, shivering at the delicious feeling of the cold water on my sweaty flesh. No doubt I’d be refilling the big water cooler from the fairground’s water main frequently, but it was a small price to pay to cool down. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a League of Wenches, let alone that you were one of the Wench Pimps.”

“That’s Madame Wench, missy! Charter members are all Madames. Newbies like you are Harlots until you prove your Wenchness and move up to Temptress status.”

I slipped into a thin ankle-length cotton chemise before lacing up the black bodice with gold embroidery that CJ had presented to me.

“How very—cheese on rye, how tight is this bodice supposed to be? My boobs are flowing over the top!—flattering to be known to all and sundry as a Harlot.”

CJ popped her blond head into the tent and gave me the once-over. “Can you still breathe?”

I straightened up and tried to take a breath. My lungs didn’t expand any noticeable amount, but I was still standing. “Yeah.”

“Then it’s not tight enough. Hurry up; I want to get this gear stowed so we can go Wench Butcher and his team. He promised to bring his kilt, and I’m dying to do an official LOW kilt check on him.”

The lascivious glint in her eyes told me everything I needed to know about just what a kilt check consisted of. “I can’t go out like this, Ceej. Look at my boobs!”

She frowned as my hands fluttered around my chest. “What’s wrong with them?”

I thinned my lips. “Well, for one, I no longer have individual breasts; I have a bosom shelf. This bodice is too small. My boobs are practically touching my chin.”

She rolled her eyes and started to back out of the tent. “Don’t be silly; all boobs look like that in a properly fitted bodice. Guys love it. They’ll offer to drop grapes down your bosomage and do a grape dive. Don’t forget to put on your Wench pin. I have some favors you can give away, too.”

I eyed the mound of breasts that rose like overflowing bread dough in a too-small pan. “I don’t think a grape would fit in there.”

“Fine, you stay and fuss with your breasts. I’m going to go see what’s happening in the jousting field. Butcher and his team should be there practicing with their loaner horses. See you there. And don’t forget Moth. You’d better get your skirt on quick; he’s eating someone’s pennant now.”

“Oh, lovely, he’ll probably barf all over me when I pick him up. God almighty, how am I supposed to bend in this bodice?” I asked as I shook the wrinkles out of a black-and-gold cotton ankle-length skirt and slipped it over my head, then spent five minutes twirling around ineffectually trying to see over the breast shelf to fasten the skirt’s buttons. “All I wanted was a chance to get away for a bit, a chance to find some nongeek potential husband material, and where do I end up? Cinched into a bodice with a four-legged, hairy companion who has a taste for canvas. Moth!” Skirt in place at last, I stepped out of the tent to find that Moth had dragged the chair over to a neighboring tent. I swore under my breath and ran out to get him.

Right in front of a massive thundering herd of deranged killer horses.

“Jesus effing Christ!” a male voice bellowed.

I froze into a nearly six-foot-tall, begarbed, soon-to-be-trampled pillar of terror as a huge white horse screamed, rose up on his back legs, and pawed the air with razor-sharp hooves just inches from my head. The man on the horse’s back yelled something else, but I was too stunned and horrified to understand it. Just as the white devil’s hooves made the downswing straight toward my face, a black shape loomed up from the side of my vision, and suddenly every last molecule of air was driven from my lungs as a heavy arm grabbed me around the waist and swung me up and out of the way of certain death and dismemberment.

Still stunned, my brain operating sluggishly, I turned my head at the same time I was slammed down hard on top of pair of muscular thighs, my right leg ramming painfully against the front of a deep, leather-covered wooden saddle.

The man looking back at me was dressed in medieval clothing—a long, gorgeous red tunic embroidered with three golden dogs, black tights, and knee-high leather boots tied on with leather garters. The man’s eyes were a beautiful pure, unblemished gray ringed with black, and made positively devastating with the thickest black lashes I’d ever seen.

“Wow,” I breathed as my mind suddenly came to life, realizing that the man had just saved me. “Rescued from certain death by a brave, dashing knight. It’s just like something out of a romance.”

“You bloody idiotic fool!” the handsome dark-haired knight swore, his eyes narrowing in anger. “You stupid git! What the hell do you think you were doing? You could have killed someone! Are you completely daft, or do you just look it?”

Well, it was
almost
like something out of a romance.

“What the bloody hell were you thinking? You could have seriously hurt someone!”

How mortifying. My first half hour at the Faire, and I was being yelled at by a big, handsome knight. On a horse.

A really
big
horse.

“Argh!” I clutched the angry knight’s arms as it suddenly struck me that I was perched a good six feet off the ground. “Look, I’m sorry, but this cat I’m babysitting ran out, and I just wanted to grab him before he ate someone’s tent.”

The knight glared at me for a second. “I’m not talking to you.”

“You’re not? Oh.” It took me a minute to realize that he was narrowing his eyes at the man facing us on the murderous white horse, the one that had almost run me down. I turned to add my glare to his. “Yeah! I could have been seriously hurt, not to mention what would have happened to Moth, and if you think I want to explain to my aunt that her precious baby was murdered by a horse, you can just think again.”

The man on the white horse unhinged his metal helmet and took it off, pulling off a soft white cloth cap before shaking out a glorious mane of shoulder-length golden hair. Even red-faced from riding in full armor under the broiling August sun, he was handsome, handsome, handsome—tanned face, sun-streaked hair, vivid blue eyes, and one of those chiseled chins with a dimple in the middle. He didn’t even give me a glance as he fought to control his slobbering-all-over-the-bit, almost-bucking horse. “Walker, what a completely unexpected surprise. I had heard that the motley group of misfits you call a team had registered for the competition, but I never thought you’d actually have the balls to show up. That’s not really your forte, is it? Actual jousting, I mean, not just hulking around the fringes reliving the distant, vague images of your former glory.”

“Farrell, I might have known it was you,” Walker rumbled. A little shiver went down my back at the sound of his voice. He was English (my favorite accent!), and his vocal cords must have been wrapped in velvet, because the words that emerged—when he wasn’t bellowing them—had the same effect on me as if I were being stroked by the softest touch imaginable. “No one else would be so arrogant, so self-centered, so
stupid
as to gallop a green horse through the tents.”

“Green, but fully under my control,” the blond man named Farrell snapped. Evidently he didn’t like being called stupid by the rich velvet rumble that came deep out of Walker’s chest. I had the worst urge to lean back against him to listen to its source, but managed to keep myself from cuddling into his broad chest. This wasn’t the moment to investigate the interesting man behind me; this was the moment to request that he put me down—very slowly and carefully. Before I could ask, though, Farrell smirked and slapped Walker with a zinger. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a prime piece of flesh between your thighs, but I assure you that I am more than capable of controlling any ride.”

“Ooooh, that was a low blow,” I told Walker. “You’re not going to take that, are you?”

He turned his narrowed gaze to me, and I saw again just how pure his eyes were. They were like silver discs edged with black. “Do I know you?”

“I’m the damsel in distress you dashed in and rescued in the very best brave-knight manner,” I answered.

“In other words, I
don’t
know you.”

I offered him a perky smile. “No, but I
am
sitting on your lap. That’s gotta count for something, don’t you think?”

“No,” he said, and tried to swing me off the side of the horse. Evidently the black monster he was riding didn’t care for the act, for it tossed its massive head in the air and snorted that warning snort that horses always give before they start doing things like trampling little girls, or eating their hair, or knocking them down, or any of the gazillion other things that loomed up out of my nightmares as the torments I used to suffer with my mother’s horses.

“Don’t drop me!” I screamed, and twisted my body around so I could cling to Walker. I got one leg wrapped around his waist as I clutched at his head, struggling to free my other leg from where it was confined in the yards and yards of cotton that made up my Wench skirt. “Please, whatever you do, don’t drop me!”

“What is wrong with you, woman?” Walker asked. His voice was a bit muffled because, straddling him as I was, his face was smooshed into my overflowing breasts. Beneath us, his horse shifted sideways.

“There’s nothing wrong with me that can’t be cured by being off this horse!”

“I’m
trying
to get you off, blast it!”

“You’re going to drop me! I’ll fall and break something!”

“Having a bit of trouble with your Wench?” Farrell asked. He managed to get his hooves-of-death horse under control and rode over to my side.

“I’m not his Wench, and I’m—Argh!” The black horse evidently took exception to the white horse’s nearness, because he snorted again and did a little sideways dance that had me shrieking and clawing at Walker’s back when he tried to peel me off him.

“For God’s sake, woman, I can’t breathe.” He gasped as he strong-armed my overflowing chest off his face. His gaze dropped for a minute to my bosom (heaving, in the proper Wench fashion), and he added in a much softer voice, “Not that I don’t appreciate the wubby, but I’d prefer one that isn’t conducted on horseback.”

“What are you talking abo—oh, my god, he’s going to rear! Don’t let me fall!”

“Marley is too well bred to do any such thing, but he doesn’t like you squirming around,” Walker said as he pried me off his chest. “Sit still, will you? Marley, stand!”

“Clearly the lady wants away from you, a fact that illustrates her obvious good taste and intelligence. My lady, I am your humble servant. If you will allow me to remove you from the knave Walker’s slug of a horse . . .” Farrell reached for my arm as he maneuvered his horse even closer. He grabbed my wrist and tugged me to the side, nearly making me fall off.

“Augh!”

“Let go of her, you damned fool,” Walker snarled as he nudged the black horse in the opposite direction.

“Help!”

“
You
let go of her! It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be near you.” Farrell pulled me harder toward him until the top half of me was draped over his lap, while my lower half was held tight by Walker’s arm around my waist.

“Someone, please, help me!”

“It is
not
obvious; she just admitted that I saved her. And she shoved my face in her breasts. Which she certainly wouldn’t have done if she didn’t want to be near me. Now let go of her!”