A Most Charming Prince

Seven: Let the Games Begin

"My nurse also mentioned that I would marry a frog and start a war," the knight confided to Madame quite solemnly, after he had placed the three unconscious women on benches, revived them with smelling salts and ascertained that their level of comfort was satisfactory.

"A frog?" Not if she could help it, he wouldn't. A cougar, maybe. Just maybe.

He nodded. "If such is my destiny, who am I to struggle against it?"

Nigel coughed loudly. "So. Why don't we sit and have some of those potatoes and beer?" No one noticed him, though, and he had to snap his fingers in front of several faces to break the ladies from the strange spell on them. "Potatoes? Beer? Oh, and how about some of that entertainment you mentioned?" He clearly recalled the knight had been in a hurry to get here, and he was determined to prove his usefulness as the new servant.

"Of course!" Madame cried. "Where have my manners gone? They must have flown out the door like Maggie's panties."

"Those were Vivi's panties. Mine simply burst into flames," Maggie said, fanning the still dazed Julia on her bench.

"Right, girls, time for refreshment. Chop-chop! Look lively and all that!" Madame clapped her hands at her ladies, but no one moved. They blinked at her like newly shorn sheep, confused about where their coats had gone off to, or in this case, what the hell was happening to their undergarments and who was this sculpted stud muffin with shoulders wide as barn doors suddenly in their midst.

Maybe she should skip straight to the entertainment and worry about food when Julia was recovered. "Right. So, my good sir knight, while we are waiting for the potatoes, what do you prefer? Blonde, ginger, brunette? All three at the same time?"

"I'll take a dark stout, something very dry that gives a rich, foamy head. That is what the monks have given me since I was old enough to walk."

"The monks... gave you rich, foamy head?" whispered Madame. Her brain really wasn't computing. The knight nodded. Pictures ran through her head. "Oh."

"Oh." (from the back of the crowd.)

"Oh?" (this one was from Nigel.)

"Oh!" Thump. (Nina was out for the count again.)

"Oh," whimpered Madame, wondering if she had a monk's costumes in the attic she could go and fetch.

"You do have a dry, dark stout, do you not?" the knight asked. "You mentioned blonde, brown, and ginger, I naturally assumed you had a wide variety of ales."

"Ales?" Madame's feminine intellect had shut down again. He was just too manly.

"Wait a minute," said Nigel, peering in sudden inspiration the way a character does when he is beginning to get to the bottom of a mystery in a gripping murder-he-wrote (you the know the sort: filmed in black and white, true noir style with long-legged damsels as double-dealing spies, and fine whiskey served in smokey bars), but has yet to test his unspoken theory. "Bring us two pints of your darkest ale, Madame."

Fingers were snapped and ale was finally served. Under the watchful and admiring eyes of the ladies, the knight drank his pint in one long gulp. He sighed in satisfaction, setting his wooden mug on the table gently, but also with Norse-god like firmity. The hollow thump was clearly audible in the hushed room.

"There's refreshment out of the way, now how about some rousing activities upstairs?" Nigel said, waggling his eyebrows. "I think we need an initiation of sorts."

"Rousing activities, as in entertainment?" asked Madame. She checked over her ladies. They were beginning to come out of their brain-sloshed hibernations and nod vigorously.

"Yes! Entertainment!" several of them whispered."We are ready to entertain."

"Then, let the games begin," Madame said weakly.

*** How on earth will our saintly prince avoid this pitfall into sinful depravity? And who says he wants to avoid it? Hear hear! On to the next chapter with all haste! ***

*** PS ^^ Madame's monk costume, left at the brothel by a real monk. He came for the beer and brauts, stayed for the game of strip-poker, which he lost... ***