But my smile back was tentative, because the last time we’d talked . . . well, it hadn’t so much been talking as bitching at each other. So I didn’t understand the feeling tightening my chest. Why was I so glad to see him?

“Emma, my love!” He closed the distance between us in a few strides—he wasn’t a tall man, but he could command a space when he wanted to. He caught my hand and brushed his lips over my knuckles as I bobbed my curtsy at him. “Have you come to see me win against these rapscallions?”

“Oh, aye, Captain.” I almost laughed at his turn of phrase, but I knew the choreography. He lost the fight every time. His confidence was contagious, though, and I couldn’t help but play along. “I have come to wish you the best of luck.”

One more dazzling smile, and he dropped my hand to join the rest of the cast on the chessboard. “D’you hear that?” He turned to one of the other cast members, a tall, slim, blond young man leaning on a quarterstaff. “Did you hear how she called me ‘Captain’? I love it when she does that.”

Stacey giggled beside me. “He’s sticking with this whole handfasting story line, isn’t he?”

“Apparently.” I didn’t know what he was getting out of pretending to be involved with me. Sure, it was a fun little bit of business, playing a love story as a sideline thing. But it wasn’t like we interacted very often. Shouldn’t he have picked someone he’d be able to banter with on a more regular basis?

Then the chess match started and I refocused my attention, glad to not be thinking about Simon and his confusing smiles.

Everything that had confused me about the concept of a human chess match evaporated about thirty seconds after the match started. The cast stood on the chess squares, while the two people who “played” the game called out directions in turn. When a piece was called, the cast member standing on that square moved to the designated spot. Pawns moved forward. Knights leapt two squares up and one square over. Rooks paced back and forth in short horizontal paths. It all moved kind of slowly, though. Where was the pow-pow Stacey had promised?

And then: “King’s bishop . . . take the queen’s rook, if you please,” said the overly polite monk who ran the white side of the board.

The cast scattered from the field, leaving Quarterstaff Kid and a slender, dark-haired woman armed with a rapier. She shrieked in fury and launched herself at the rook, who blocked her attack with his staff. I didn’t remember seeing them during rehearsal, but even if I had, a partially blocked, half-speed fight was nothing compared to the grace they fought with now. The fight flowed like a dance as they disarmed each other and moved to hand grappling. I assumed at this point that he would best her easily, since he was about a foot taller. But she jumped on his back, hanging from his neck and taking him to the ground. I found myself caught up with the crowd in cheering her victory, before Simon’s raised eyebrow made me realize I was cheering for the wrong side. Oops.

But when I expected a frown and some kind of silent rebuke, instead he gave me a warm smile as he resumed his position on the board. So Captain Blackthorne liked me in public, despite my gaffes. I could get used to this.

Simon and Mitch’s fight was last: the big showdown between the queen’s knight on the black side and the king’s rook on the white. There was something about Simon being the queen’s knight, the way he blew a kiss to the cast member playing the queen on the board as he strolled to the middle, that made my eyes narrow and my jaw set. Then, to my horror, he sensed my eyes on him and looked in my direction.

“It’s all right, love!” he called to me. “The queen and I have an . . . arrangement. She doesn’t mind that you and I . . .” He gestured between us, letting his voice trail off.

Oh, God, he was making our fake relationship part of the show. Fine. I crossed my arms. “But you and I made no such arrangement!” I called back. “We shall discuss this later.”

Ooooooh, went some of the cast members, accompanying his wincing expression. Some of the audience joined in, craning their heads to look back at me. Meanwhile, Simon maintained most of his swagger as he prepared to face off against Mitch in the center of the board.

“All right, then, MacGregor?” Face-to-face like this, their size difference was readily apparent. Simon practically had to crane his neck to look up at Mitch.

Mitch stared down at him, stone-faced. This was the most I had seen him in character since Faire had started, and it was unsettling to see. Mitch was the most cheerful guy on the planet, so this giant of a man, arms crossed over his massive chest and looking daggers down at the pirate, was a stranger I had never met before. A pretty scary one.

“All right.” Mitch’s response was a rumble of rolled r’s as he slowly drew his sword. Also massive. “Said goodbye to your girl, then?” He tilted his head. “Both of them?”

Simon never lost his cocky grin as he drew his own sword, a rapier as slender as he was. “No need. This will only take a moment.”

For a few beats they circled each other, Simon with loose-limbed grace and Mitch with solid, slower movements. They took turns testing each other with experimental taps of the sword, a quick occasional thrust and parry. Then the fight started in earnest.

I’d seen this in rehearsal. I remembered how exciting it had been, how my heart had leapt into my throat. Compared to what I watched now, that had been nothing. Now, at true full speed and in character, it was breathtaking. A dizzying spectacle. These guys knew what they were doing. Swords went flying. Mitch went flying in a flip over Simon’s shoulder, the physics of which I still didn’t understand. Their hand-to-hand grappling ended in that final moment with Mitch standing over Simon, the blade of his dirk against Simon’s neck. The pirate knelt in the grass, his arms outstretched in defeat, his head tilted back to expose his throat, leaning back on his heels away from the blade.

After a beat of silence Mitch (well, Marcus MacGregor) was declared the winner, and the audience burst into applause. The two men broke the tableau, and Mitch took his knife away to offer his hand to Simon. It was a moment of breaking character as he helped him to his feet, but after the tension of the fight no one seemed to notice or mind.

I jumped as Stacey elbowed me in the ribs. “Good, right?”

I dropped my hands from where I had been holding them pressed to my mouth. “Yeah,” I managed. “Yeah, that was pretty amazing. They do that twice a day?” I shook my head. I thought I was tired at the end of the day. At least I wasn’t flipping people over my shoulder.

There was a bit of skit as the chess match ended; the two people who’d been calling the moves bickered over who had cheated and whether that checkmate was an illegal move. Then all the players came out for a curtain call, and the match was over. Patrons got up from their wooden benches and Stacey and I stepped even farther back to be out of their way.

But doing that put us in the path of the whole retinue of royalty, coming down off the dais. “Make way for the Queen!” The guards bellowed the command, and we all obeyed, patrons and cast alike, scurrying to the sides of the lane so the Queen and her ladies could pass by. Stacey and I dropped to the lowest curtsy possible. The Queen got the best, after all.

My eyes were still cast down, focused on the dirt about six feet in front of me, when the gold cloth of the Queen’s skirts came into view. I waited for her to pass, but she stopped in front of me, causing me to look up.

“Ah, Emma.” Chris as the Queen modulated her voice so that it was a smooth melody. I marveled again at how she sounded like a completely different person from the woman I’d spent the week with rearranging bookshelves. When I looked up, she looked like a different person too. Not only because of her makeup and elaborately braided hairstyle, but in the way she carried herself, the way she turned her head. She was regal with every inch of her being. And as a tavern wench, I was astounded she was calling me by name.

“Your Majesty.” I met her eyes for a brief moment, then cast them back down again. Pretty sure wenches weren’t supposed to make eye contact with royalty, much less make conversation, but speak when spoken to, right?

“I am glad to see you are out from behind the bar and enjoying this glorious day. Are you enjoying yourself, my girl?”

“Oh, yes, Your Majesty. Thank you.” I chanced another look up at her. “Thank you,” I said again, with a little more emphasis. I couldn’t break character and thank her directly for getting those other volunteers to our tavern, but I did my best to get the message across. I think it worked. It was hard to tell; with another smile she was on her way, and Stacey and I headed back to the tavern. Extra volunteers or not, we still had drinks to serve.

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully, or at least as uneventfully as an afternoon spent in the woods at a Renaissance faire could pass. Patrons in various stages of costuming came through, and at one point I found myself kneeling in the dirt, marveling at a miniature knight wearing plastic chain-mail armor. He wielded a wood-and-foam sword with a lot of enthusiasm, if not skill.

“What’s this?”

I heard Captain Blackthorne before I saw him. While Simon was pretty reserved in general, my pirate (oh, no, had he become my pirate?) easily made his presence known. Especially in a space like our smallish tavern.