Free One Enchanted Evening by Lynn Kurland Page A

indeed he was. Pippa shook his hand because she had decent manners even while being dazzled by extraordinary good looks. Tall, dark-haired, and yes, he obviously spent more time with a sword than poring over medieval manuscripts. The medieval-looking getup he was wearing only added to that impression.
    “I wanted to meet the designer before the little girls made too much of a ruckus screaming over their lovely gowns,” he said with a small smile.
    “Happy to meet you,” Pippa said, fighting the urge to fan herself. She had expected him to be attractive in a tweedy, professor-ish sort of way, not immensely distracting in a hunkish sort of way. Tess had a very annoying habit of leaving out pertinent details, a habit Pippa fully intended to chide for her at her earliest opportunity.
    Stephen inclined his head down the hallway. “Perhaps we should go raid the kitchen for a bit of courage before the festivities begin.”
    She nodded, because that was all she could do. She followed him down to the great hall, concentrating on not rolling down the circular staircase. She would have gone along with him to the kitchens for the proposed snack and hoped it would cure what ailed her, but Stephen was pulled aside by his friend who was paying for the whole affair, and she found herself cornered by the mother. She realized she was more jet-lagged than she thought, because she didn’t hear much of the conversation past ghost and spooky .
    Unsurprising.
    She grabbed a glass of something that looked like juice and got half of it down herself before she heard everyone fall silent. She didn’t have to look behind her to know who was sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Tonight, though, she almost managed a smile. After all, she had made Cindi’s dress.
    “That is the most amazing gown,” Stephen said faintly, coming to stand next to her. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    “Thank you,” Pippa said modestly. If ever there were a time to take a little pride in all her hard work, this was it. “As I said before, it’s a little more understated than what I usually . . . do . . .” She turned around slowly, looked at the apparition at the bottom of the stairs, then felt her mouth fall open.
    Her sister was stunning, as usual, carrying herself as if she were indeed some sort of fairy-ish royalty deigning to grace mere humans with a glimpse of her glorious self. But it wasn’t Cindi’s frighteningly spectacular face, the fact that she looked almost coherent, or her enviable figure that left Pippa gasping. She could hardly believe her eyes, but there was no denying it.
    Cindi was wearing a dress Pippa hadn’t made.
    It was white, with a fitted bodice and billowing skirts made of what Pippa could tell at fifty feet was an obscene amount of hideously expensive taffeta. Lace dripped from the sleeves and cascaded down from the waist, while tastefully marching up the bodice seams to curl lovingly around the neckline. There had to have been a small fortune in Swarovski crystals dripping from every reasonable location. Cindi sported a pair of fairy wings that were even wider than her dress. Pippa supposed that with the right gust of wind, she might have taken flight, damn her anyway.
    Cindi’s hair was swept up into a messy bun with tendrils curling artfully down her neck but not around her face—heaven forbid anything should compete with the absolute perfection of that . And atop it all, like a diamond-encrusted candle atop a fancy birthday cake, was a tiara that was almost blinding in its sparkliness.
    Pippa thought she just might kill her sister this time.
    “Well, I say,” Stephen said weakly.
    She could just imagine what he would say if he could manage to pick his jaw up from off the floor and use it for the purpose of speaking.
    He looked at her in surprise. “Did you make that?”
    “No,” Pippa said shortly.
    “I must admit, I thought not,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “It is lovely, to be sure, but I daresay