Kate Cole hung back. Looking worriedly from Derek to Emma, she said, “I’m afraid that Grayson and I must leave for Plymouth shortly, to prepare for a news conference there this afternoon. We’ll want to keep the press away from the hall, you understand, so we may have to stay on a few days, until things settle down.”
“Using Grayson as a decoy?” Derek asked.
“More like a lamb to the slaughter,” Kate confirmed. “You’ve no idea what we went through when Lex died. Photographers behind every bush. So we may be away for some time. I hate to leave you short-handed, but with Crowley looking after Mattie—”
“We’ll be fine,” Derek assured her. Kate nodded gratefully, handed Derek a card with a phone number where she could be reached in Plymouth, and turned to run up the stairs. Dr. Singh’s helicopter roared briefly overhead, then faded in the distance.
The entrance hall was suddenly silent. Derek looked down at Emma. “Library?” he suggested hesitantly. “Drink?”
“Maybe two,” she replied.
Emma rested her elbow on the arm of the brocade couch in the library and ran a finger around the rim of her glass. It was almost ten A.M., and she wished she’d eaten breakfast. The first sip of the duke’s single-malt whiskey had steadied her nerves, and the second had cleared her head, but a third, taken on an empty stomach, would probably put her under the table.
She glanced over at Derek. He sat at the other end of the couch, legs crossed and arms folded, frowning silently at the empty hearth. He hadn’t moved since Bantry had stopped by to ask if Master Peter and Lady Nell might go with him to Madama’s kitchen garden. Even then he’d only nodded.
He wasn’t worrying about Susannah, Emma knew. He’d responded to Emma’s words of consolation with a blank stare, followed by a shrug and an automatic “Bad show,” as though he’d momentarily forgotten who had been injured.
Was he still brooding over his children? Emma honestly didn’t think he had much to worry about on that score. Nell seemed to be handling the situation very calmly, and Peter appeared unfazed. Emma suspected that the children were more resilient than their father gave them credit for.
Emma, too, had recovered quickly, not only from the morning’s shocking events, but from her brief infatuation with Derek. She was no longer tongue-tied and clumsy in his presence, at any rate, and she thought she knew why: Whether widowed or divorced, a single man raising a family was invariably looking for someone to mother his children. And since motherhood, even by proxy, had never been one of Emma’s career goals, Derek was indisputably out of bounds. The realization came as a relief; Emma was tired of making a fool of herself over a pair of handsome blue eyes.
“Derek,” she said, putting her glass on the end table, “I think I’ll step outside. I need a breath of fresh air.”
Derek surprised her by immediately unfolding his long limbs and rising from the couch. “I’ll come with you,” he said. And then, as they were strolling slowly across the great lawn, he surprised her again by saying that it was his first visit to Penford Hall.
“I thought you and Grayson were old friends,” Emma said.
Derek pursed his lips. “We met in Oxford ten years ago,” he said. “I was touching up some plasterwork in the cathedral and he was practicing a Bach cantata on the organ.” Derek stopped walking and swung around to face the hall. “Haven’t really been in touch since then.” Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he tilted his head back and let his gaze travel slowly along the irregular roofline. “A hodgepodge,” he muttered, “but a structurally sound one.” He looked over his shoulder at Emma. “You wouldn’t call Penford Hall a ruin, would you?”
Pointing at the fragmented fa?ade of the castle, Emma replied, “That’s a ruin.”
“But he was talking about that.” Derek gestured to the hall. “Natural enough, given my line of work.”
“Which is ... ?” Emma prompted.
“Hmmm?” Derek looked at her vaguely, then nodded. “Ah, yes. I’m, um ...” He patted the unbuttoned breast pocket of his shirt, then began to search through the pockets of his jeans. He extracted a penknife, a keychain, a few coins, a tape measure, miscellaneous rubber bands and bits of string, and what looked like the remains of a roll of duct tape before coming up with a crumpled and lint-covered business card, which he handed to Emma. “Don’t use the cards much,” he muttered. “I work out of my home and, well, it’s a word-of-mouth sort of trade.”
“Harris Restoration,” Emma read aloud, smoothing the card as best she could. She noted the Oxford address and phone number, then tucked the card into the pocket of her denim skirt. “You do restoration work?”
“Right. Rotted timbers, damaged frescoes—”
“Stained glass?” Emma put in.
Derek gave her a sharp glance, then lowered his eyes and resumed walking. “Only natural that Grayson would tell me about his plans to refurbish the hall. Roof leaked like a sieve, he said, and damp had buckled the floorboards. Fact is, he left me with the distinct impression that the place was a bit of a shambles.”