Teresa Medeiros (25 page)

Colin pried her arms from his neck and gently set her on her feet. She beamed up at him, her lovely face so radiant Tabitha almost wished for a pair of sunglasses.

His answering smile was wan. “My goodness, Lyssandra, how you’ve”—his despairing gaze seemed to drop of its own volition to a bosom that was even now threatening to burst from its silk confines—“grown.”

Arjon reached down and nudged Chauncey’s jaw shut before he could drool.

“As have you, my lord. When you left, you were little more than a lad.” The girl trailed one coral-tipped finger down his chest, stopping only when she reached the silver links of the belt slung low on his hips. She fluttered her fringe of sooty eyelashes, managing to look both shy and seductive. “Now you’re a man full grown.”

“That’s it,” Tabitha muttered beneath her breath. She slung one leg over the horse, fully prepared to jump down and snatch the little minx bald.

The appearance of a second figure on the drawbridge stopped her. “Ravenshaw, is that you?”

The demand boomed like a cannon blast, rattling glass and teeth for miles around.

The flush drained from Colin’s face, leaving it drawn and pale. This must be the demon he had feared!

“Aye, sir. ’Tis me.” He squared off with the newcomer with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man facing a firing squad.

The squat stranger rested his hands on his hips. Although his legs were spindly, his girth was ample. He possessed what, in less polite twenty-first-century terms, could only be called a beer belly. “Rumor has it that you’ve been home for nearly a sennight, yet haven’t troubled yourself to ride over and greet the lord who fostered you. Have you forgotten the manners I taught you?”

“No, sir. I’ve simply been otherwise occupied.”

Tabitha could sense Colin struggling, for some inexplicable reason, not to look at her.

“And I suppose you expect me to overlook your churlish lack of courtesy?”

“If it pleases you, my lord.”

The man rocked back on his heels, startling them all with a boisterous laugh. “Always could charm the devil himself, couldn’t you? Very well then, lad. All is forgiven now that you’ve finally come home to claim your bride.”

Tabitha swayed and would have fallen off the horse if Arjon’s hand hadn’t steadied her shoulder. Lyssandra, still beaming, slipped her slender arms around Colin’s waist and snuggled her cheek against his chest as if that was where it had always belonged. Colin slowly turned his head to meet Tabitha’s stricken gaze, his eyes darkened in appeal.

CHAPTER
20

T
abitha Lennox was a loser.

She’d been born a loser and she would die a loser and no amount of money or magic could change that one fundamental truth. She’d been born to both power and privilege, but had spent every waking moment since that snowy Connecticut night bumbling her way from catastrophe to disaster with all the hapless ineptitude of a gate crasher at the party of life.

And now she’d traveled over seven hundred years into the past to find the man of her dreams only to discover he belonged to another woman.

Not just any woman, either, but a fairy princess who slept in a tower and possessed the gamine flair of Audrey Hepburn and the petite grace of a Ukrainian gymnast. As Tabitha watched Lyssandra flit about the bedroom, filling the awkward silence with her musical chatter, she was tempted to peek over the girl’s shoulder and check for wings. She fingered the amulet, battling a spiteful urge to wish for a giant fly swatter.

She would never know how she’d survived those first dark moments outside the castle. It had taken every ounce of spinal starch she possessed to slide off the sorrel without doubling over.

But she had.

She’d even managed to paste on a brilliant smile and slip her hand into Lyssandra’s, assuring the blushing bride-to-be that she and Colin would surely be very happy together. If her bloodless fingers felt like ice, Lyssandra had been too polite to comment.

Rubbing the back of his neck in abject misery, Colin had fumbled for an introduction. Tabitha would have let him twist in the wind if she hadn’t been afraid he was going to introduce her as his spinster aunt. So she’d cranked up her smile another hundred watts and blithely announced that she was Colin’s cousin visiting from the distant village of Gotham.

Unfortunately, that had led to the discovery that Lyssandra’s ethereal beauty was surpassed only by her generosity of spirit. The girl’s velvety brown eyes had sympathetically taken in Tabitha’s travel-stained gown and disheveled hair. She’d chided Colin and Arjon for their thoughtlessness, then gathered Tabitha under her gossamer wings and hustled her up the winding stairs for a medieval makeover.

She wasn’t even to be allowed the satisfaction of hating Colin’s fiancée. After only an afternoon in her company, it was apparent that everyone loved Lyssandra—from the lowliest servant who hastened to do her bidding to the pug-nosed terrier who crouched at his mistress’s dainty feet, following her every move with his moist, adoring eyes. If
everyone
loved Lyssandra, how could Colin not? Tabitha thought despairingly.

There was even something naggingly familiar about the girl. Her aimless chatter and tinkling laughter was oddly comforting. Perhaps she was just one of those rare people you meet once and feel like you’ve known forever. Or at least for seven hundred years.

As Lyssandra fluttered from the four-poster bed to an
ornate chest, Tabitha slumped on her stool, feeling more like Quasimodo with each passing moment. Although she was fresh from a jasmine-scented bath, she could already feel herself wilting—a homely dandelion smothered by the shadow of a rose.

Lyssandra threw open the chest and dove in, tossing veils left and girdles right in her frenzied search for something Tabitha could wear to the banquet the MacDuff was hosting in honor of his prodigal son-in-law-to-be.

Even muffled, Lyssandra’s voice retained its enchanting lilt. “I had no inkling that Colin had a cousin. ’Tis odd he never mentioned you.”

“I could say the same,” Tabitha muttered, wondering if she could live with herself if she tiptoed over and slammed the lid of the chest.

Lyssandra bounced up, gripping a bouquet of hair ribbons. “Are the two of you very close?”

We were last night
, she mentally replied, blinded by a vision of their moonlit bodies entwined in a lover’s kiss. Blinking back the threat of tears, she inflicted an airy smile on her stiff lips. “Where I come from, you might call us kissing cousins.”

Lyssandra clutched the ribbons to her heart with all the drama of a lovesick teenager, which, as Tabitha noted, she probably was. “I do believe I should swoon if Colin kissed me.” She demonstrated her faint by tumbling back into the chest. “Ah-ha!” she trilled, popping back up like a manic-depressive jack-in-the-box. “Here’s one that might fit you. Let’s try it, shall we?”

Whipping several yards of brocaded damask from the chest, the woman-child skipped across the chamber, even doing a flawless pirouette around Tabitha’s stool. Before Tabitha could protest, she was tugged to her feet and the sleeveless slip she’d been forced to don after her bath was covered by her hostess’s find.

The gorgeous smock, too tight in the shoulders, too loose in the bodice, fell to just below her knees.

“I do believe my slip is showing.”

“Oh, that won’t do at all.” Lyssandra’s dismayed pout was the only mirror Tabitha needed to know she must look like a giraffe wearing a tutu. The girl’s expression was so crestfallen, Tabitha almost apologized for disappointing her.

Then a sparkle of inspiration lit those almond-shaped eyes. “Don’t give up hope. All is not lost. I know just the thing.”

As Colin’s fiancée dashed from the room, Tabitha sank down on the stool, more dejected than before. Longing for Lucy’s purring company, she reached to pet the terrier. He bared his crooked teeth and growled at her.

Tabitha and the ill-tempered little beast were still glaring at each other when Lyssandra swept back into the tower, a shimmering length of silk the rich blue of morning glories cradled in her arms.

She stroked the exquisite fabric as if it were woven of moonbeams and spiderwebs. “ ’Twas my mother’s. She died when I was five, but I still remember how willowy and graceful she was.” Lyssandra smiled tenderly at Tabitha. “Just like you.”

Tabitha jumped to her feet, nearly stumbling over the stool, and backed away. “Oh, no, I really couldn’t. I’m a terrible klutz. I’d probably get my heel caught in the hem or dribble grape juice down the front of it.” She lifted her hands in an imploring motion only to feel the shoulder seams of the gown she was wearing give with a woeful groan. “See! That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Oh, pooh,” Lyssandra said. “That old rag means naught to me.” As if to prove it, she literally ripped the gown from Tabitha’s body, then dropped the cloud of silk over her head.

As Lyssandra gave her mother’s gown a tug here and a tuck there, Tabitha sighed in resignation. How could one oppose someone who actually said things like “Oh, pooh”? And she had to admit, as she stole a tentative glance downward, that the gown fit as if it had been personally tailored for her by Christian Dior.

Lyssandra draped a wide gold belt around her hips before shooing her back toward the stool. Tabitha obediently plopped down, robbed of her will to resist the little tyrant.

As Lyssandra began to do mysterious things with her hair, wielding an ivory comb as if it were a scythe, Tabitha asked, “Isn’t six years a long time to be engaged?”

“So it would seem.” The girl’s wistful sigh bubbled into a giggle. “But Colin and I have been betrothed for almost thirteen years, since I was five and he eleven.”

Tabitha didn’t know whether to be heartened or horrified. “It must have been love at first sight,” she said weakly.

Curling an uncooperative strand of Tabitha’s hair around her finger, Lyssandra nodded. “I shall never forget the first time I saw him. He came to be a page at Papa’s court when I was four and he was ten. He was the most handsome lad you could imagine with those flashing eyes and dark curls.”

Tabitha squirmed on the stool. The girl’s naked adoration was all too familiar.

“Even as a boy, Colin was always so gentle and patient with me.” Lyssandra wrinkled her pert nose, only succeeding in making herself look even more adorable. “Unlike that nasty Norman.”

Tabitha was surprised into a laugh. “Sir Arjon?”

“Aye, Arjon. I begged Papa to send him back to Normandy, but he’d promised Arjon’s father he’d try to instill the fear of God into him. He was a most horrid
boy. Always yanking my hair and dropping beetles down my back.” Her dulcet voice oozed contempt. “I loathed him.” Lyssandra sighed. “But my beloved Colin was always there to champion me. He challenged Arjon to a duel once on my behalf. Papa would only allow them to use sticks, of course, but Colin buffeted Arjon so hard, he knocked him right into the horse trough. I laughed until my sides ached.”

Tabitha put a hand to her own stomach. She was beginning to feel distinctly nauseous and she suspected it wasn’t from lack of food. She didn’t think she could stand to hear any more gushing tales about Colin and his lady fair.

Lyssandra spared her that torture by giving each of her cheeks a maternal tweak and tugging her to her feet. Then Tabitha was ushered over to a candlelit alcove where an enormous mirror hung in a gilded frame composed entirely of entwined hands. Tabitha shook off an absurd impulse to ask it who was the fairest of them all. She had no desire to hear its answer.

But as Lyssandra urged her closer to her shimmering reflection, she realized the mirror must be enchanted after all. For the woman peering shyly back at her was a stranger.

This woman was not gawky, but statuesque. The silk smock draped her in regal elegance, its pleated train rippling around her ankles like a waterfall. The fabric’s rich hue darkened her eyes until she could almost pretend they were a subtle blue instead of ordinary gray.

Being deprived of the Big Macs and pints of Häagen-Dazs she gobbled more out of boredom than hunger had carved intriguing hollows beneath her cheeks. If she squinted, she could almost catch a glimpse of the legendary Lennox bone structure that had always made her father look like a Nordic prince.

The sun had washed away her city pallor, burnishing her skin and ripening her hair to honey-gold. The gleaming tendrils curled lightly against her shoulders, framing a face that had traded its pinched expression for the becoming vulnerability of a woman in love. Even her lips seemed softer and fuller, as if still savoring the memory of a lover’s kisses. With a mixture of wonder and despair, Tabitha touched her fingertips to those lips, just as Colin had done so tenderly the night before.

“You are a rare beauty, are you not, my lady?” Lyssandra said softly before indulging in a melodramatic moan. “Why, oh, why couldn’t I have been tall like my mother instead of stunted like Papa?” She stamped her slippered foot. “If I stand too close to you tonight, someone may very well mistake me for one of Papa’s dwarves.”

Tabitha burst into helpless laughter. It seemed she had made a terrible mistake. Colin’s fiancée was not a fairy princess after all, but a fairy godmother, generous enough to bestow glass slippers on even the most skeptical of Cinderellas. It was precisely at that moment that she realized why Lyssandra seemed so achingly familiar to her.