January 2005/NAL
ISBN 0451213866

Chapter One

“Right, so where are all the men in tights?”

“Probably rehearsing. You can set that down next to the cooler.”

“Rehearsing? Rehearsing what? Men in tights don’t rehearse! They’re far too manly for such a sissy thing. Actors rehearse. Men in tights…well, they just don’t. Unless…hey! You wouldn’t drag me out here to the middle of nowhere by promising me really handsome guys in form-fitting tights without telling me they were all gay, would you?”

CJ grinned as I deposited a box of toilet paper, napkins, and assorted towels on top of the red plastic cooler. “I’m sure some are, but not all. Don’t worry, you’ll have lots of guys in tights to slobber over.”

“I’d better,” I muttered darkly as I stomped off to the car to fetch another load of camping accessories. Ten minutes later I returned from the wilds of the parking lot. “You know, I always imagined ye old days of medieval yore had a whole lot more dashing, daring, manly knights hanging around, and much less steaming piles of poop.” I stepped carefully over the huge pile of fly-bespecked horse manure, and staggered toward the ever growing pile of bags, boxes, coolers, food hampers, and suitcases that contained those items my cousin deemed vital to our continued existence.

“Oh, no, poop was everywhere back then. Open sewers, you know,” CJ answered from where she was on her knees digging into a rucksack, muttering to herself as I dropped a box of canned beans and packages of freeze dried hiking food next to her.

“I still haven’t seen even one man in tights. There’s a couple of women a few tents down who are dressed like knights, but that’s it. So help me, Ceej, if you dragged me out here on false pretences…”

“I didn’t!” CJ all but climbed into the rucksack, her voice muffled as she tried to placate me. “They’re rehearsing, I promise. Everyone rehearses before opening day. The vendors are probably vendoring or setting up their booths. And the jousters are doing practice runs.”

“OK, but I’d better start seeing some soon. You promised me great big herds of manly guys being knights and rogues and swashbuckling pirates.” I peered around at the sea of tents that surrounded us. The flat, open field adjacent to the fairgrounds housing the Faire served as a tent city of Faire performers, vendors, employees, and joust participants. Most of the tents were blocky squares and rectangles of dull grey or green, like the one CJ had provided for us, but at the far end of the tent city were clustered beautiful striped tents of all colors, some with pennons and flags bearing coats of arms waving lazily in the late afternoon summer breeze. Other than the two women I’d seen coming in from the car, the tent city was strangely devoid of human life. “I’m not seeing even a small flock of manly knights, much less a herd of them. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be anyone here at all. Are you sure that this Faire is a hotbed of romance and dishy guys?”

“Would I lie to you?” CJ pulled herself out of her rucksack, a smile lighting her happy grey eyes. “I personally know of six couples who met because of Faire in the last two years, and they’re all happily married. So don’t worry, there are oodles of manly knights here, all of them dashing and daring, and wildly romantic, just like my lamb.”

I rolled my eyes as I started back toward the car, located a hot, sweaty half-mile away in a distant field. “Oh, yeah, your lamb, the man known to everyone as The Butcher of Birmingham. I said I wanted a modern-day personification of knightliness, Ceej, a man who’s not afraid to laugh triumphantly in the face of death, a man who lives for adventure and excitement—not a guy who scares the crap out of anyone who gets a good close look at him. I’ll go get the last of the stuff. If I’m not back in half an hour, find the bravest, handsomest jouster you can and send him after me. Maybe you’d better make it two. I’m feeling like I’ll need a lot of resuscitating.”

CJ waved an acknowledging hand at me as she dug through the canvas bag. “Right. After you get back you can slip into the garb I brought for you.”

I sighed the sigh of the soon to be martyred and staggered off toward the car. By the time I collected the last items, locked up CJ’s VW Beetle, and returned to our tent, sweat was rolling down my back, soaking the light gauze shirt I’d donned before we left my aunt and uncle’s house in London.

“Whew!” I set down the box of kitty litter, kibble, tiny little cans of premium cat food, bottled water, three different kinds of cat treats, a bag of dried catnip, assorted cat toys, and one huge domed litter box with infrared beams and automatic clump removal. “Criminy dutch, the things this cat…MOTH! Come back here, that isn’t yours! Ceej!”

My cousin CJ looked up at my whine. “Hmm?”

“Your parents’ cat is eating someone’s tent.” I pointed at the huge white cat with four orange stockings that was gnawing on the black canvas tent set up next to ours.

“Oh. Probably isn’t best that you let him do that. He’ll just puke it up later. I wonder where I put my side-lacing bodice?” Ceej walked on her knees over to where three suitcases were stacked neatly in front of the pea-green tent it had taken us a half hour of sweating (and swearing) to erect.

“Me? He’s not my responsibility any more. My job was to get him from Seattle to Ontario in one piece while your parents did the cross country thing. I did that, not that it was easy since he insisted on yowling and trying to claw me through the cat carrier the entire flight. But we’re here now, and that means he’s your responsibility.”

“Nope, sorry, I’ve got too much to do what with the official Wench’s Conference and all. Besides, Mom paid you to take care of him.”

“Only for the flight!” I dug through the ice in the cooler and extracted a chilled bottle of water. “They were supposed to be home by now to receive the horrible beastie with open arms.”

“Yeah, well, you know how Dad is. Once he gets an idea in his head, there’s no changing his mind. He’s always wanted to see the Klondike.”

“He’s the only man I know who’d feel it necessary to drive from Seattle to Ontario via Alaska,” I grumbled as I swigged the cold water. “Moth, dammit…argh! No! Spit it out! Bad cat!”

“You really should keep a closer eye on him,” CJ said as I grabbed the cat and pulled out of his mouth the bit of tent he was gnawing on. “Mom’s really attached to him. She’d never forgive you if anything happened to him.”

Moth glared a slitted, yellow-eyed glare at me as I picked him up.

“The feeling’s mutual,” I told him, and lugged him over to the pyramid of stuff in front of our tent. I checked the snap on the long leash that was tied onto a lounge chair, adjusted his harness so he couldn’t slip out of it again, and tethered him to the chair so I could put stuff away. “There isn’t enough money in the world to pay me for having to baby-sit him for two whole weeks.”

“Well, it’s not like you have a lot of other options, is it?” CJ asked.

I froze in the act of hauling the sleeping bags into the tent.

“Oh, Pepper, I’m sorry. That wasn’t nice of me. I didn’t mean it. It’s not your fault that unemployment is so high in Seattle.”

I shrugged the sting of her comment away and tossed the sleeping bags inside the musty, faintly mildew-scented tent. “It may not be nice, but it’s the truth. I don’t have anything else to do except sit around and watch my unemployment benefits run out.” That wasn’t really the truth, my day was very busy what with job-hunting and all the volunteering I did to keep myself sane—I didn’t even have time to date, let alone sit around and do nothing—but still, her point was made.

“Maybe if you went to California? I always heard that was a good place for software engineers.”

“It was, which is why when so many of us were laid off two years ago, everyone moved to Silicon Valley and its environs. I figured with the mass migration south, I’d have a better chance at finding a job where I was, but—“ I shrugged, unwilling to dwell on my increasingly desperate situation. This was supposed to be my vacation, my man-hunting, romantic, fall-madly-in-love- with-some-dishy-guy vacation. I wanted to forget the depressing life I would have to face if the vacation came to nothing.

“Isn’t there anything else you can do?” CJ asked, her brow wrinkled as she sat on her heels watching me. “You’ve got a degree, surely there must be some job—“

I shifted a few more boxes into the tent. “You’d think so, huh? But since there were some fifty thousand other people let go by the local airplane building company, there’s nada job-wise. Squat. Zilcho. Not even a McDonald’s fry jockey job.”

“Boy, that is hard.” CJ sucked her lower lip for a moment as I flopped down exhaustedly on the cooler, brushing at the trickles of sweat snaking down the valley between my breasts. “I guess you don’t really have any other option but to find yourself a man, fall in love with him, and live happily ever after. Fortunately, I’m here to help you.”

My shoulders slumped as the full realization of what I was doing hit me. I’d been in delusional mode ever since my cousin had convinced me that she’d be able to hook me up with a veritable god of perfection, courtesy of the local Renaissance Faire and international jousting competition. And now here I was, actually believing her promise of finding me a man, a soul mate, someone who would fill my empty, lonely life. It was all so…sordid. Unrealistic. Stupid. I let my damp forehead drop into my hands as I moaned. “Oh, Ceej, what am I doing? Why did I let you talk me into this? Your plan is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous! What was I thinking? I’m thirty-six, unemployed, have a degree in programing, and half of one from the vet school I quit before I got eaten by something big with sharp teeth, and guys don’t even look twice at me. Why on earth did I imagine that you can find me a man in two weeks when in I haven’t in sixteen years of concerted searching?”

“Because I can!” She tipped her head to the side as I rocked miserably on the cooler. “I told you that Butcher and I met at the Faire last year, and we were madly in love after just a couple of days.”

“He lives in England. You live here,” I pointed out, wondering if I shouldn’t just give in and have an indulgent wallow in self-pity.

“But I see him every couple of months, and just as soon as I get that job at the BBC, we’ll be set. And then there was Fairuza Spenser, Cathy Baker, and Mary Denhelm.”

I looked up, having decided against the wallow. “Who are they?”

“Wenches in my local chapter who I introduced to their respective husbands last year at various Faires. You’ll meet them later. And the year before that there were three others who I also found hubbies for. I’m a matchmaker extraordinaire, so relax and place yourself fully in my capable hands. Before the Faire is over, I will have not only found you your perfect man, you’ll be deeply in love and well on the way to happily ever aftering.”

“Life is not a fairy tale,” I said morosely, wanting to believe her, but knowing things like that just didn’t happen to people like me.

“No, it’s better,” she said calmly, then frowned as her brows drew together. “You have to help, though, Pepper. You can’t just stand around waiting for the love of your life to swoop you up and carry you off.”

“Why not, we’re surrounded by knights in shining armor.”

Her frown pulled her eyebrows together. “I just want to make sure that you’re totally committed to the idea of finding a guy.”

“Committed like to a madhouse?”

“Pepper!”

I held up my hands in mock surrender. “OK, OK, little joke. I’m committed, I really am.”

“I hope so, because once I find a guy for you, you’re expected to keep him. I just worry that you’re not really serious about this. After all, look what you’ve done at home.”

I stood up and glared down on where she sat poking through the bag. “What do you mean, what I’ve done at home? I haven’t done anything!”

She grabbed a handful of jeans around my knee region and tugged me down to the cooler. “Stop looming over me like a great hulk. You’re too tall. I can’t bend my head back far enough to see you. And that’s exactly what I mean—you seem to expect the perfect man to drop into your lap without you lifting a single finger to find him, but that’s not going to happen unless you get proactive. You have to admit that until now, you haven’t actually expended any energy in dating.”

I grabbed her ear and peered in. “Hellooo, anyone home?” She slapped my hand away. “Didn’t you hear me on the drive up here? I’ve looked and looked and looked, but all the guys back home are either unemployed plane mechanics or likewise unemployed software geeks. The first group hang around bars ogling women and having competitions about who can pee the furthest, while the second thinks a wild time is getting drunk and creating dirty computer animations.”

“Maybe your standards are too high,” CJ said thoughtfully as she eyed me up and down. “There’s nothing really wrong with you. You’re pretty, in a general sort of way. You have nice thick red hair. And freckles—guys like freckles. And if you’re a bit…well…solid, guys like that, too. Some guys. Most guys. And you’re smart, that’s a plus.”

I paced the length of the tent, avoiding Moth as he lunged for my ankles when I passed in front of him. “You try it cat, and you’re going to find yourself locked into the tent for the next two weeks. Thank you for your so reassuring assessment of my many fine qualities, CJ.”

“You’re also stubborn, very set in your ways, and you like to argue, but that’s OK, I think we can work around those points.” She gestured expressively with her tiny little hands. I added that to the list of injuries I was nursing. In addition to being gainfully employed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a researcher—a job that allowed her to travel to England several times a year—CJ was graceful, delicately built, had a charming little heart-shaped face, and a fragile manner that left most men prostrate before her. I, on the other hand, was built along the lines of a brick house, or so my mother always used to tell me. Big-boned, tall, and gawky—that was me. The only way a man was going to be prostrate before me was if he accidentally ran into me and was knocked out cold. I knew it wasn’t fair to add her genetic makeup to my list of Ways The World Was Picking On Me, but I was too crabby to care.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s me. Maybe something’s wrong with me.” I avoided Moth’s lunge at my shoelaces and plopped down to snag another bottle of cold water. “It just seems to me that guys today don’t have any cajones. They just sit around and whine, and don’t do anything. At least I’m out trying to find work. And when I’m not, I’m volunteering. I don’t spend my day watching soaps and complaining and trying to pee further than anyone else.”

“It must be frustrating to be unemployed,” she said, accepting a bottle of water. “And yes, you’re doing more than just complaining. It’s too bad that the women’s shelter or the literacy center can’t hire you. But with regards to the men in your area, you have to cut them a little slack. They must feel just as helpless as you do at being in such a bad situation.”

I waved her explanation away. “It’s not just that, it’s the sort of men who are being produced these days. They’re all so wimpy! No guts to them, no balls! Whatever happened to the men of old, the men not afraid to stare death in the face and laugh a mocking laugh at it? What happened to their sense of adventure? Where are all the bold, daring men who would risk anything for the woman they loved?”

“You’ve been reading too many historical romances,” she answered with a smile. “Real men like that don’t exist. Well, they do, my lamb is one, but they’re few and far between.”

“Yeah, well, it seems to me that you’ve match-made all the good guys already. There’s probably nothing decent left over.” I watched Moth as he dragged the canvas chair over and tackled my left tennis shoe, viciously biting at the hard rubber of the shoe’s front. “I just want a little romance, Ceej. I just want a guy who will like me for the person that I am. I just want someone to love. Is it asking so much to find Mr. Pepper Marsh?”

CJ snickered for a second. “Mr. Pepper. Sounds like knock-off soft drink or a swishy hair dresser.”

“Ceej!”

“Is now the time to make a Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band joke?”

“NO!”

She put on a suitably sincere face. “Sorry. No, it’s not asking too much. You just have to have faith in me, Pepper. I’ll find him for you, I promise.”

“Before the end of the Faire,” I reminded her, feeling once again the brief flare of hope deep within me. Say what you will, CJ did seem to have an extraordinary talent in matching up her friends and acquaintances. Maybe my luck was about to change. Maybe it was my turn to have something go right. Maybe…ow! “Cat, I swear to you by all that is holy, if you do not release the flesh of my ankle, I’ll be wearing a cat stole!”

CJ snickered even harder as I squatted to disengage Moth’s claws from where he had attacked my naked ankle. “He’s just expressing his affection for you. He doesn’t like many people, you know. He tolerates Mom, but that’s because she’s the only one who feeds him. He pees in Dad’s shoes.”

“He’s about to use up one of his nine lives,” I said grimly as I plopped the cat down onto the chair he was tied to. “Sit. Stay.”

“You really don’t like animals, do you? No wonder you didn’t become a vet.”

“It’s not that I don’t like them, I just don’t trust them. You never know what they’re thinking,” I said, glaring at the huge orange legged cat until it curled up into roughly the shape of a meatloaf, his front legs tucked under his big white chest. I wasn’t at all fooled by the air of innocence the cat wore—I knew from experience he had a particularly creative and vengeful mind. “You’re up to something, I know you are. Just don’t try it when I’m around,” I told the cat, then looked back at my cousin. “Beastly things, animals.”

CJ giggled at my intentional pun. “There speaks the daughter of a vet. How on earth could you grow up with animals all over your house and not love them?”

“You have no idea what it was like having a mother who was more interested her four-legged clients than in her only child, but I know all too well how innocent-looking, cute, adorable beasts are really bloodsucking leeches that demand constant attention.”

“Whatever.” CJ clearly wasn’t buying my sob story. She didn’t look the least bit sympathetic as she straightened her blood red Irish Dress and strapped on a long leather belt and tapestry pouch. “If it gives you pleasure to think you were abused, go for it. Just don’t say anything about not liking animals. Faire people are gaga over them, especially the horses, and that goes double when we’re talking about the way the men here adore their horses.”

I shuddered and plucked the water bottle from where I’d set it, reveling in the icy cold as I guzzled thirstily. I had the erroneous idea that because Ontario was further north than Seattle, it wouldn’t get at all hot. I was very, very wrong. “Horses are the worst,” I said, tossing the now-empty water bottle in one of the many garbage cans that were scattered throughout the tent city. “They’re big, smelly, they step on you, and they eat your hair.”

“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 Satan 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. 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 tights, one of whom could potentially be it—was sure to outweigh the drawbacks of the next two weeks.

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

“Here.” CJ extracted some garments from the suitcase and shoved them in 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. “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. “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…jeezumcrow, 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 blonde 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 boobs. 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…god almighty, how am I supposed to bend in this bodice?...all over me when I pick him up,” I complained 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 button the skirt’s buttons. “All I wanted was a chance to get away for a bit, a chance to find some non-geek, non-peeing potential husband material, and where do I end up? Strapped into the bodice with a four-legged, hairy minion of hell who has a taste for canvas. MOTH!” Skirt in place at last, I stepped out of the tent and ran over to where Moth had dragged the chair over to a neighboring tent.

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, be-garbed, soon-to-be-stompled-to-death 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, beautiful 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 grey, ringed with black, and made positively devastating but 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.