Page 8 of Renaissance Bear

"No. Idohave a project due on Tuesday and I'm only halfway done with it, so I can't watch movies tonight anyway, so you might as well go look for hot sword boy. Just don't bring him back to the RV."

"He isextremelyhot," Alis said, "but I can't imagine the disaster of an early-faire hookup that turned out to be lousy and then having to keep seeing the guy for the next week."

"Maybe it'd be great and you'd have a passionate but brief affair to remember when you're old and boring."

Alis squinted at her twin. "Why do I have to get old and boring?"

"Somebody has to, and it's obviously not going to beme.Turn around," Jasmine added, since Alis had stopped halfway through getting dressed to argue with her. "I'll zip you up and you can go look for sword boy."

"All right. I'll text in the wildly unlikely event that I won't be home by, I don't know, midnight." Alis turned and let Jazz zip her up while she fixed her own hair to reduce the helmet-head look she was currently sporting. Then she turned back to her sister, gesturing at herself. "Will I do?"

"Babe, you're almost as gorgeous as I am, and if Sword Boy doesn't want to hit it, he's got no taste anyway. I'm gonna tidy up here and then head back to the RV where there's actual air conditioning."

"Thanks, Jazz. You're the best twin anybody could ask for."

"I really am." Jasmine had waved Alis off, and Alis had wandered the faire as it slowly wound down for the night. The 'Red Court,' one of two major factions of actors in the faire, wasset up on the east side of the fairgrounds, and was filled with human 'royalty' and courtiers. The Silver Court, to the west, was 'faery' and mostly dressed like they were the elfin lords from the movies, although there were a number of more earthy elves and fairy creatures among them. Throughout the days, the courts had an ongoing rivalry that was part of the fun of participating in the faire as an actor.

The rivalries were played out in human chess games, in the various fighting tournaments, and in half a dozen other scenes that sprang up around the fairgrounds every day. It was all more or less scripted, in the same way professional wrestling was: everybody knew the end game and had certain lines they were supposed to say or things they were supposed to do, but they had some freedom to improvise within that.

Alis wasveryhappy to stick to her own specific job of "find a knight, cheer him on" because off the fighting fields, improvisation was not her strong suit. But between and after the scenes they were meant to play, she got to walk around the faire, checking out the booths, chatting with visitors, and taking pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. That was what she loved most about being a member of ren faire casts: talking to the people who came to be whisked into a magical world for a little while, so they could forget about any troubles in their own.

Her thoughts danced back to the guy Jasmine had dubbed Sword Boy. Shecoulduse him taking her mind off her troubles for a while, maybe. Not that she had any real troubles just then. And not that she'd been kidding when she'd told Jazz that a faire romance gone wrong at the beginning of the season would be a total disaster. Still, he'd beensopretty, and Alis couldn't remember the last time a guy had taken up this much space in her brain for more than a minute or two.

"Beer," she told herself firmly, aloud. Beer would be a distraction from Sword Boy, and she'd get to know a bunch ofthe actors from the Courts if she went over to the tavern after hours. This early in the faire, everybody had a lot of energy and enthusiasm for meeting up with old friends and making new ones. By the third weekend they'd be having hard time making it through the day, never mind hanging out all night, so Alis figured she should take advantage while she could. And a party was definitely going on: she could hear singing and instruments coming from the direction of the tavern.

She saw it had a great setup as she approached: a semi-permanent structure for the back wall and actual bar, with a banner featuring a silhouetted grizzly against a foaming beer mug pinned snugly against the upper wall. Picnic tables, benches, and backless log seats were protected from bugs by fabric screens that fell from the heavy canvas tent roof, and there were fans set up in as out-of-the-way places as they could be, making sure the now-cooling air kept moving.

The musicians—five or six of them, mostly men—had gathered in one corner next to the bar, perched on one of the picnic tables and on log seats that had been dragged around it. A wider circle of tavern patrons had pulled more tables and chairs around to face the band, and for a minute Alis stood at the outskirts, looking at everyone and taking it all in.

Everybody was still in costume: tavern wenches with underbust corsets and low-cut blouses wove through silver-clad elfin lords and velvet-adorned human courtiers. The musicians, men and women alike, wore loose shirts with long billowing sleeves, tucked into or belted over snug-fitting breeches and tall boots. People wore their hair in intricate braids, or cropped anachronistically short, which Alis thought was very sexy when combined with the romantic styles of clothing.

There were men in kilts and women in breeches, beautiful flowing gowns and snug-fitted tunics, corsets and leather, and costumes that were half made up of things bought at adepartment store but combined withonething that sold them as fantasy Renaissance. Alis loved them all. Someone she knew from the Red Court waved a greeting, and she went into the crowd calling hellos, pausing to order a tankard of ale, and sat down near the musicians. Half the gathering was singing along, which made conversation hard, but she chatted with a couple of people before the musicians struck into a song that made the guy next to her laugh and say, "Not exactly traditional," before Alis recognized it and laughed, too.

"No, but if they can use instrumental Taylor Swift inBridgerton…" She threw her voice high, turning the chorus into a harmonic round up where the fiddle sang high. "My-my-my-my Galway girl, my pretty little Galway girl." Other people joined in, catching the tune as it came back around, and Alis threw herself into the joy of singing until the guy on the lute looked up, his gaze fastening unerringly on hers.

Alis's voice squeaked on a high note and she clapped her hands over her mouth, caught somewhere between laughter and embarrassment. She'd only seen the top of his head for the last several minutes, and yet somehow couldn't believe she hadn'trecognizedhim, since even the top of his head was attractive.

Hoo boy, she had a crush. Usually she had to at least talk to a guy before becoming enamored, but Sword Boy Lute Player was stepping into a brand new, undiscovered space for crushing. His hair was still loose, and had mostly been hiding his face as he'd bent over the instrument. That was her excuse for not recognizing him.

Well, that and she'd had exactly two brief glimpses of the guy before now, which wasn't the world's best basis for quick and easy identification. In the tavern's evening light, his brown eyes were completely black, deep and easy to drown in. As she watched, he tucked some of his hair behind his ear, and if she'd thought he was handsome before, now she wanted to giggle.That jawline was good enough to write sonnets about. The awed astonishment in his dark eyes could sustain a girl for a week. The breadth of his shoulders, now that he was straightening up from his lute, practically pushed the musicians around him away. His voice, when he spoke, was deep and melodic. "Laurie, take over."

He shoved his lute to the side like he expected someone to magically appear and claim it. Someone did, actually: another blond limped out from behind the counter, looking so much like the lutist that Alis blinked. After the blink, she could see the other man was a little shorter and his hair was lighter in color, but they almost as identical as she and Jasmine were.

His voice was also lighter. "What? I don't play the lu—" He followed the lutist's line of view to Alis herself and finished his protest with, "Ooooh," which made her feel sort of like maybe they'd been talking about her, or maybe like he just recognized the kind of girl his brother was into.

She assumed they were brothers, anyway. Presumably twins. Which was almost enough to make her leap up and run away, because this kind of thing led to double marriages and cousins who were also each other's aunts and uncles and stuff, and Alis was having none of that.

On the other hand, she was definitely prepared to have some ofthat, wherethatwas the lutist, who rose to what had to be a solid six two without once taking his eyes off her. He wore a fitted doublet in honey brown, currently unlaced, as were the laces on the cream-colored shirt he wore beneath it. His breeches were the high-waisted pirate-style breeches, made of a slightly tawnier shade than the doublet. Alis, her attention caught by that high waist and the double rows of matching buttons, was stricken with the almost irresistible urge to start unbuttoning them.

Fortunately he was out of arm's reach, although as he thrust his lute into Laurie's hands, it appeared he had every intentionof closing that distance immediately. Which he did, by dint of actually steppingoverone of the other musicians. A woman, at least. A small woman, sitting on the ground as she played her tin whistle. Still. That was a lot of leg, to step over somebody like that.

And then he was there, a huge masculine presence scenting of beer and wind and sunshine and deodorant, with a sting of sweat in the background, which Alis couldn't blame him for: the faire was hot work. He said, "Hi," in that resonant deep voice of his. "I'm Jon."

"Alis. You got your ass handed to you this afternoon."

Very smooth,she thought:excellent way to get on a guy's good side. Remind him of his failures. Ten out of ten for pickup lines, Alis.

"I did. In my defense, it was because I'd just laid eyes on the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen."

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