Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set (92 page)

“Phillip, I don’t think—“

“Please, Lisa. I really need you to do this.”

I stretch out on the sofa, feeling nervous and
conflicted. As much as I feel attracted to Syr Phillip, the whole
task stinks of the kind of dirty work that is probably unfair to
ask of a clueless SCA newbie like me—super-handsome knight’s
girlfriend or not. “And if I don’t?”

Syr Phillip sucks in his breath again. “I can’t
force you, of course. But if you really do want to be Queen—“

“And I do,” I snap.

“Then you’ll help me with this one, small thing.
It’s not a big deal. You’re new to the SCA, after all. People will
think it’s perfectly natural for you to ask a lot of questions—even
questions that more experienced SCA folk would find tactless and
rude are fine coming from an inexperienced person like you.”
Now my blood is up. “Oh great. So now you think I’m tactless and
rude?”

“Lisa, you’re twisting my words—“

“Syr Phillip—“

“Phil. I’m just plain old Phil Dawson right
now.”

“Fine, plain old Phil Dawson, whatever.” To my
surprise, I find myself stamping my foot and wagging my finger at
the empty space just in front of me. “I’ll have you know that I
do not
appreciate you putting me up to this little spy
assignment of yours one bit. I know that I’m a SCA newbie and I’m
pretty much clueless when it comes to everything about the
SCA—“

“And that’s precisely what I love about you,
Lisa.”

My finger freezes mid-wag and my jaw drops, banging
itself against the phone with a painful crunch.

What
was that he just said?

Did the sexiest SCA knight this side of Cleveland
just say that he
loved
something about me? Suddenly, I feel
my body turn into a sticky pile of goo.

“Lisa, are you all right? Because I can’t have my
fair lady getting the vapors at such a crucial point in time.”

“Huh?” is the wittiest retort I can manage.

“Lisa, I just said that your naiveté as far as all
things SCA are concerned is one of the many, many things I love
about you.”

“Huh?” I sputter again. All of my other vocabulary
seems to have flown out the window. Why do I always clam up when
hot, handsome men say they love things about me?

“Okay, Lisa, if you’re going to give me the silent
treatment, I’ll just hang up.”

“No, no!” I finally manage to say. “Wait! It’s just
that—it’s just that you never said you, ahhhh,
loved
anything about me before.”

“I love and adore many things about you, Lisa.”

“Like what?”

“Well, most of them are a little difficult for me to
discuss with the Vice President of Pfizer Midwest Sales Development
sitting just a few cubes away, darling.”

Darling! He called me
darling!
My body is now
making the transition from a sticky pile of goo into a river of
very runny, sexy oatmeal.

“Lisa, I really need to hang up now. The sales
director is giving me a dirty look. Pegeen should have all the
information on when and where the next Winged Hills meeting is.
Just go, see what you can find out about Master Melphus, and call
me back with what you find out.”

“Okay—“

“And one more thing. I need you to think up a more
elaborate SCA name and persona in time for Crown Tournament.
Apparently the SCA already has a ‘Lisa of Winged Hills’ on its
official roster, so you’ll have to come up with some other
variation. Baron Grizzly can probably help you with that.”

“But—“

“Lisa, I adore you, but I really must hang up now.
I’ll call you later in the week. Goodbye, milady.”

With that, there is a muted click and the velvet
voice of my beloved knight is gone, replaced by dial tone.

I stand up and begin to pace the room, rubbing my
hands together in an effort to restore them from runny, sexy
oatmeal-goo back into solid flesh. Okay, so Syr Phillip—or plain
old Phil Dawson, as the case may be—didn’t exactly say he loved
me
. He said he loved the fact that I am clueless about all
things SCA-related. I’m not sure if being clueless and ignorant of
how the SCA works is necessarily a good thing. Plus there’s the
fact that Syr Phillip wants me to spy on Master Melphus. Shy as I
am, I’ve never been much for backstabbing and intrigue. It goes
against my earnest, hardworking-Midwestern-orphan nature.

Then again, Master Melphus
is
kind of a rude,
crude, oafish jerk. He probably
deserves
to be spied on.

Syr Phillip also said he adored me. Which isn’t
exactly the same thing as saying “I love you.”

But in a pinch, I’ll take it.

I pick the phone back up to call Pegeen. I’m sure
I’ll be needing her expert gossip advice on my spy assignment.
After all, Pegeen knows more about gossip, spying, and creative
backstabbing than any woman I know.

Chapter
18

“
No way
am I helping you with this,” Pegeen
growls at me when I meet her at Max and Erma’s half an hour later.
“No frigging way.”

“Why the hell not? You love gossip. You love
meddling into other people’s business so much, you practically
invented it.”

Pegeen swirls around the straw in her iced tea glass
with a perfectly manicured finger. “This is different, Lees. You
want to spy on Master Melphus Mattingar the Hun? A Master-at-Arms
in the Horde? This
is
the Great Dark Horde we’re talking
about.”

“So?”

“They’re called the Great
Dark
Horde for a
reason, Lees. Do you have any idea what happens to people who spy
on the Great Dark Horde?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t either, but I’m sure it can’t be
good.” Pegeen dumps four packets of sugar into her iced tea, which
shows me that she’s only a little wary of taking on this
assignment. If she were really so scared of the Horde as to be
completely opposed to spying on them, she’d have dumped in at least
six sugar packets.

I shake my head and sigh. I know now that although
persuading her is not an impossible task, I will still have to
appeal to Pegeen’s all-too-sensitive, busybody ego in order to get
what I want. “You’ve never let me down when it comes to gossip
before, Pegeen. Is it possible that you’re losing your touch when
it comes to getting the juiciest bits of scandal and hearsay?”

Pegeen’s jaw tenses, which means my little jab is
having the desired effect. She mumbles something unintelligible
into her iced tea just as our loaded potato skin appetizer
arrives.

“I’ve never seen you walk away from a top assignment
in rumor-gathering before, Pegeen. And I know you well enough to
think that you wouldn’t be walking away from one now unless you
were
losing your touch.”

“I’m
not
losing my touch!” Pegeen wads up her
paper napkin into a ball. “I’m just a little scared of the Horde,
that’s all.”

With as little as I know about the inner workings of
the Great Dark Horde, I know I’m flying by the seat of my pants.
But I shrug off my ignorance and just say, “I’m sure the Great Dark
Horde is made up of perfectly nice people, even if they are a
little weird.”

“A
little
weird?” Pegeen tries in vain to
smooth out her crumpled napkin, then gives up and flags the
waitress for another one. “You and I are a
little
weird,
Lees. Hell, almost everybody is a
little
weird. The Dark
Horde people are a
lot
weird.”

“Like how?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest.
"Other than that jerk Master Melphus being a member, of
course.”

Pegeen’s goes blank. “Uhh—well, I know they
uhhhhhh—they all camp together at Pennsic. Instead of camping with
their local SCA groups like most people do, all the Dark Horde
members from all over the world camp together in their own special
campground. Or so I hear, anyway.”

A slow smirk tugs at one corner of my mouth. The
fact that Pegeen knows even this seemingly inconsequential fact
about the Horde shows she is more than up to the job of helping me
spy on them. “Camping together in a special Horde campground isn’t
very weird in and of itself, Pegeen. Certainly not weird enough to
keep you from your gossip duties. You’ll have to do better than
that.”

Now Pegeen almost chokes on a mouthful of potato
skin. I’m definitely treading upon more than a few of her
mother-hen nerves. She finally manages to clear her throat and
says, “Well—well, the thing about the Horde is, not every member
actually publicly admits to being a member. Some of them do by
wearing the little red-and-black Horde badges, but others are Horde
members in secret. That’s the tricky part. Hordesmen are everywhere
and nowhere. At least that’s what Arundel says, and he has some
Horde friends. You just never know who might be one!”

“But I bet
you
could find out, Pegeen. If
anyone could find out who is and is not a Horde member, it’s
you.”

Pegeen fingers the stack of fresh napkins the
waitress just dropped off at our table. She purses her lips and
makes a low growling sound in her throat as she grabs and swallows
the last bit of potato skin. I know that I’ve won.

“All right, all right,” Pegeen sighs, throwing up
her hands in defeat. “I’ll do it. But I will have to lay out some
ground rules.”

“Fine. Shoot.”

Pegeen pulls a ballpoint pen out of her purse and
starts jotting some things down on a napkin. “Okay, here goes.
Ground Rule Number One: Lisa must accompany Pegeen on all Horde
spying tasks. There’s safety in numbers, you know.”

“Okay, fine.”

Pegeen licks the tip of her pen and writes the next
rule. “Ground Rule Number Two: If Lisa and Pegeen are caught
spying, each of us will pretend that we don’t know the other.”

I stifle a laugh. “Well, I’m not sure how well that
will go over, since pretty much everybody who was at the Blood and
Roses Tournament knows we’re best friends mundanely, but—“

Pegeen gives me a surly look. “Do you agree to Rule
Number Two or not?”

“Yeah yeah, sure, whatever.” Our entrees arrive and
we both dig in—me into a medium-rare Buffalo Burger and Pegeen into
a side salad.

Pegeen drizzles low-fat Italian dressing onto her
salad with her left hand and jots something onto a napkin with her
right. “One more rule,” she says, and sets down her pen. “I’ll go
find out whatever you or Syr Phillip feel you each need to know
about Master Melphus and the Horde, on one final condition. At some
point during all this investigation, one of us has to
join
the Horde.”

“Excuse me?”

Now it’s Pegeen’s turn to smirk. “Do you agree to my
terms or not?”

“I’ll agree to it as long as it’s
you
who
agrees to join the Horde. I don’t want to get mixed up with those
weirdos.”

Pegeen laughs. “Just a few minutes ago you were
saying you didn’t think there was anything wrong with the Horde
people— other than Master Melphus being a bit of an ass—and now you
don’t want to join them? You’re not scared, are you?”

“Of course not! But how are we going to decide which
one of us has to join? And why would one of us have to join at
all?”

“I have a feeling that we may not get all the
information we need unless one of us is a full Horde member,”
Pegeen explains. “In any case, those are the terms I require to
help you with your dirty work. Plus, there is the little matter of
payment—“

“
Payment?”
I sputter. “I thought you were my
friend, Pegeen. I shouldn’t have to pay you to gossip, which I know
from experience you are always more than happy to do for free.”

“This isn’t just
any
bit of gossip, Lees.
This is the Great Dark Horde, after all. Now, what are you going to
pay me for helping you with Syr Phillip’s dirty work? I speak
barter as well as cash.”

I ponder this while I take my first bite of Buffalo
Burger. Juice dribbles down my chin and onto my T-shirt. As I mop
up the mess, I get an idea.

“How about this? I agree to clean your apartment
from top to bottom once a month for three months. I’ll mop the
floors, do the bathroom and kitchen, vacuum, even laundry. But I
don’t do windows.”

After a moment, Pegeen nods. “Agreed.”

“Good,” I say. “So it’s settled then.”

“Yep. I’ll just have to make sure to be a lot
messier over the next three months so I’ll get my money’s
worth.”

Damn
. Even after almost twenty years of
friendship, Pegeen always manages get in the last word.

****

Pegeen and I are driving in her Tercel to the Wright
State campus for my first Shire of Winged Hills meeting. Pegeen’s
already attended a couple meetings on her own, but she still
doesn’t seem to think we’ll find out the kind of information Syr
Phillip is looking for.

“I dunno, Lees. Pretty much the only things that get
talked about at these meetings are whether the site for the next
Winged Hills SCA event allows alcohol or not. And there’s always
the little show-off contests some of the women have with their
latest embroidery projects. On a good day, you might hear a little
bit about who is sleeping with whom as of the most recent
post-revel, but that’s about it. I don’t see why Syr Phillip thinks
you’re going to find out anything important by going.”

“Are you sure?”

Pegeen switches on her turn signal to merge onto the
I-675 ramp. “I’m pretty sure. But I suppose there’s always a first
time. Watch out for Mistress Naomi, by the way.”

“Who’s Mistress Naomi?” I ask. I practically have to
shout to be heard over Pegeen’s barely functioning excuse for a
muffler.

“She’s the Winged Hills calligraphy and illumination
Laurel. The Midrealm has a huge backlog of award scrolls to be
produced, and Mistress Naomi is always trying to recruit new
calligraphy apprentices to help her with the backlog. She’s pushy
and manipulative, and rumor has it she even makes her apprentices
pay for all of her paint, vellum, and calligraphy pens—which do not
come cheap, by the way. So stay away from her.”