When Lightning Strikes Twice by Barbara Boswell

Author:Barbara Boswell [Boswell, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780062243249
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1997-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

“I’ve never been to anything like this. It’s fun.” Rachel was caught up in the lively atmosphere of the Renaissance Festival. “Isn’t it?” she asked Quint, who walked alongside her.

The four children were a few feet ahead of Rachel and Quint, their heads bobbing back and forth, like spectators following the ball in a tennis match, as they took in the strange sights and sounds.

Festival personnel wearing period costumes and speaking a kind of pidgin Chaucerian English moved through the fairground, staging miniscenes with each other, acting as drunk or amorous or loquacious villagers.

“Fun,” Quint repeated doubtfully. He watched a medieval-garbed nun scold a pair of drunken villagers, and the men’s muddled responses drew laughs from the surrounding crowd.

“Well, I’ll admit there is pageantry and a certain infectious air to the whole thing, but I’m reserving judgment about how much fun we’re having. Those affected Middle English accents are awful beyond imagining and the costumes—”

“You seemed to be enjoying the cleavage of that buxom blond wench selling ale back there,” Rachel observed dryly. “You couldn’t tear your eyes away from Canterbury Tales Barbie.”

Her own ice green ribbed cotton sweater and slim-fitting wheat-colored jeans were a drastic contrast to her severe courtroom wardrobe, yet seemed downright demure in comparison to some of the festival players’ provocative attire.

There was plenty of overflowing cleavage on display, thanks to the low-cut gowns and corsets that plumped up flesh more efficiently than the modern-day Wonderbra. Some of the men wore tights and tunics, but most had on baggy pants and shapeless shirts, presumably the practical unflattering garb of peasants of yore. Long, dark, hooded cloaks, elegant yet somewhat sinister, were sold at one of the booths, but more fairgoers than actors were wearing them.

“I wasn’t staring, Rachel,” Quint assured her, tongue-firmly-in-cheek. “I was simply wondering if they had silicone implants back in the Middle Ages.”

“Sure. They had funnel cake, too. And deep-fried vegetables drowned in cheese sauce and frozen cappuccino.”

They’d passed booths selling that anachronistic cuisine, along with pizza slices, soft drinks, hot dogs, and ice cream. From the long lines at each booth, it was clearly modern crowd-pleasing fare.

They walked past a small crowd gathered around a festival actress—another blonde with an amazing chest stuffed into a brocade corset—who had engaged a male attendee in a bawdy conversation. The woman didn’t break character while the man stammered his replies and the onlookers laughed, enjoying the scene.

“Poor sap, you can tell he feels like a fool,” said Quint, warily eyeing those around him. “This is too interactive for me.”

The festival actors aggressively approached people to start a mock quarrel or pepper them with ribald questions and suggestions which other spectators—who weren’t targets themselves—found hilarious.

“I think I’m in hell,” Quint muttered a short while later when a young man dressed in raggedy village serf clothes demanded “a tuppence” to buy himself a cup of mead, a drink made of fermented honey.

“No,” Quint said firmly, refusing to be drawn into further banter.

Remaining firmly in character, the actor

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