Nineteen
Samantha had just passed Grace Webster’s former property when Christopher Sloan pulled over in his truck. “Justin said you were stubborn. Climb in. I’m missing the dancing but I’m on duty in an hour. Where you off to?”
“To retrieve my backpack.”
“It’s still at Justin’s place?”
She didn’t want to get into the details and responded with a nod. “Did he send you after me?”
“Told me to look out for you.” Christopher gave her what she was beginning to recognize as a Sloan smile. “Wouldn’t want you getting blisters. Did you panic back there?”
“Panic?”
“It’s not unusual to be jumpy at a gathering a few days after getting caught in a fire, even if you’re normally not the type to have panic attacks.” The grin again. “Must be a reason for you to run off in high heels.”
“Two-inch heels aren’t that bad. Anyway, I didn’t panic.”
“Right.” As if now he knew what had gotten into her. “You have the key to Justin’s place?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t think of it being locked.”
“Given your skills with his padlock, you could probably manage, but I know where he keeps his spare. Where are you going after you pick up your backpack?”
“The cider mill,” she said without hesitation.
“I’ll take you out there.”
And he did, first showing her the extra key tucked by a gutter, then waiting for her while she changed her clothes and grabbed her backpack. She was halfway out the door when she went back and scrawled a note to Justin on a small pad on the kitchen counter.
Sorry to run but thank you for everything.
Yours truly,
Samantha
She frowned. Yours truly? It sounded stiff, but hugs and kisses was too familiar.
What was she doing?
She left the note on the counter and ran back downstairs. Christopher Sloan was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, obviously impatient. “Thanks for waiting,” she said, climbing in. “I know you must be in a rush. I can walk—”
“It’s okay. We’ll make it.”
Samantha didn’t change her mind as he drove her out to Cider Brook. He parked on the dirt road, not taking the time to venture down the driveway and back out. “I appreciate this so much, Christopher.”
He shrugged. “Not a problem. You have a phone. Call one of us if you run into trouble.”
He sounded as if he at least half expected she would run into trouble, but she jumped out of his truck with her backpack and headed down the rough driveway to the clearing and the nineteenth-century cider mill. Abandoned, partially burned and boarded up, it little resembled its earlier incarnation in the photographs at the Swift River Country Store and even less the cider mill in the painting in her grandfather’s closet—so much so that she wondered if adrenaline and wishful thinking had made her see a similarity where none existed. It could have been another Cider Brook. One in New Hampshire or Vermont, maybe, or a creation of the painter’s imagination.
But she didn’t think so. She believed the painting was of this cider mill.
She saw the door wasn’t padlocked and went inside. When she smelled the burned wood, her heart raced and her palms felt clammy. She ran back out and steadied herself as she sat on her boulder above the brook and watched the water tumble over the small dam.
She hadn’t expected to flee the wedding.
Flee was the only word for it, as un-Bennett-like as it had been of her.
And it wasn’t only the wedding that she’d fled. It was Justin and her attraction to him. She was getting in too deep with a man for whom she was, at best, a momentary distraction. Her history with Duncan McCaffrey and her search for answers about Benjamin Farraday had caused suspicion and distrust, a wariness toward her that she could well understand.
She glanced at the mill behind her. She couldn’t go back in time and change the choices she’d made once Caleb and Isaac had dropped her off. She couldn’t find a different place to get out of the storm. She couldn’t explain herself right from the start. She couldn’t take away her own questions, suspicions, worries.
She could hear her grandfather and knew what he would tell her now. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Samantha. You got out of that fire alive. Be grateful and move on.”
She sighed. It wasn’t always so easy to forgive yourself, be grateful and move on.
Letting Justin kiss her—kissing him back—hadn’t helped her sense of equilibrium.
“Gad. Why did you kiss him back?”
Too much reading about rogue pirates, she told herself, avoiding any deeper reasons, the ones that had to do with her heart. Ultimately, she knew, that was why she’d left the wedding. Fleeing had been an act of self-protection.
She pushed aside her thoughts and settled on a reasonably level, grassy section between the mill and the brook to pitch her new tent. It was a bit more complicated than she’d anticipated, but she managed, finishing up just as dark clouds moved in from the west. This time she did a thorough check of the weather on her phone. There was no threat of severe storms. A chance of a passing shower later and colder temperatures overnight. Nothing worrisome—nothing that would drive her from her tent back to Justin’s couch.
She rolled up her jeans to just below her knees, pulled off her shoes and socks and stepped onto the narrow dam, inhaling sharply at just how cold the brook was. She stood still, watching the clear water flow from the millpond over her bare feet on the dam and then down the spillway. What an amazing spot. If only she’d waited until today to venture to Cider Brook. She would have arrived at the clearing now, with the owner at a wedding, instead of in the middle of a dangerous thunderstorm.
She heard a vehicle stop out on the dirt road, then a door shut. In another moment she was aware of Justin behind her on the driveway. “Thank you for not startling me,” she said without looking back at him. “I don’t want to lose my balance. I’d get very wet.”
“Or you’d hit your head on a rock and get a concussion.”
“I’d make sure I fell into the deeper water in the pond and not on the rocks.” She steadied herself in the constant flow of water over the stone-and-earth dam. “The water is even colder than I expected.”
“It warms up for five minutes on the Fourth of July.”
His voice was close now. He had to be on the bank of the brook, but Samantha still didn’t look back. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“I won’t, but if you fall, you’re on your own. I’m not jumping into that cold water to rescue you.”
“The millpond probably isn’t over my head. I’m more likely to get hypothermia and freeze to death than I am to drown.”
“You won’t freeze or drown,” he said. “You’ll just get wet and cold.”
“The optimist.”
She turned carefully, mindful of any slippery mud, sodden leaves or rocks hidden under the cold water atop the dam. Justin stood at the end of the dam, out of his wedding tuxedo now and back in jeans, a T-shirt and a canvas shirt. Whether in his usual clothes or in an expensive suit, he looked comfortable with himself and his world.
And fit and handsome. Always fit and handsome.
“Or are you just a pragmatist?” she asked him. “Neither a pessimist nor an optimist but someone who takes life as it is?”
“Doesn’t matter. We all have to take life as it is.”
“You don’t believe we create our own destinies?”
He grinned at her. “I think you’re creating your own destiny right now. You have cold feet and a cold night ahead of you in a tent.”
Not, she saw, the time to make serious conversation, but, in a way, she had her answer. She made her way back along the dam. Justin put out a hand, and she took it as she jumped onto the bank.
“Thanks,” she said, letting go of his hand. “Do you want to dip your feet into the water?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“It’s refreshing.” She stood up on a flat rock, still warm from the sun. “Although my feet are so cold right now they hurt.”
“That’s quite an invitation, Sam.”
She wondered if a hundred years ago Zeke and Henrietta had dipped their feet into Cider Brook. How romantic it must have been out here for a young couple, with the cider mill in full operation. But Samantha warned herself not to get carried away speculating about the unknown couple. She didn’t even know if they were a couple. They could have been brother and sister, or mere acquaintances—and couple, siblings or acquaintances, the odds they had anything to do with Benjamin Farraday were slim at best.
“I think I can feel my toes again.” She gave him a light smile. “I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t a bear coming through the woods. Now, that would have startled me. I can’t say for sure I would have been able to control my fall and end up in the pond if you’d been a bear.”
He shook his head at her. “It never occurred to you I was a bear.”
“You said you have black bears out here. How was the rest of the wedding?”
“There was dancing after you left. I had to dance with my grandmother.”
“I doubt you suffered for dance partners, and you would have danced with your grandmother whether or not I’d stayed.” Samantha sat on her rock and pulled on a wool sock over her partially dry left foot. Her toes were numb, but she didn’t regret her dip in the cold water. “What about your brothers? Did your grandmother dance with them?”
“Couldn’t hold her back.” He scooped up a sock that had ended up down toward the brook and handed it to her. “Gran grilled me about you.”
“Oh, dear. What did you tell her?”
“Nothing she didn’t already know.”
“I’m a subject of town gossip. I guess it makes sense, given the fire, if nothing else.” She put on her second sock, aware of Justin’s eyes on her as she reached for her trail shoe. “Did your grandmother really expel you from nursery school?”
“Nah. That was just Gran and me joking around, but I wouldn’t have put it past her. She didn’t play favorites with my brothers and me just because we were her grandkids. We had to toe the line. I had my share of time-outs.”
“What about high school?”
“Suspended once. Never expelled.”
Samantha eased her foot into her trail shoe, relieved she hadn’t gotten blisters from her borrowed shoes. “Why were you suspended?”
“A fight. No regrets.” Justin nodded to her. “Your fingers look cold. Need help tying your shoes?”
“Nope. I can manage. Thanks.” It was just too intimate to think about, Justin Sloan tying her shoes, although he did have a point about her fingers. They were cold from putting her sock and shoe on her cold foot. She had to tie more slowly than usual. “Who was the fight with that got you suspended? Were you settling a score with a bully?”
“Nothing so noble. Just fighting with today’s groom.”
Samantha sat up straight. “Mark? Did he hold his own with you?”
Justin smiled as he picked up at stick and tossed it into the brook. “He did not. That was the point of the fight, as I recall. He told me he could hold his own in a fight with me, and he had to prove it. He was wrong. He couldn’t. He could be an arrogant SOB.”
“And this morning you were the best man at his wedding. What about Brandon and Maggie? Did they get a chance to dance?”
“He grabbed her out of the kitchen for a quick spin.”
Samantha put on her other shoe, her fingers warmer as she tied the laces. It would be a while before her feet warmed up. “I gather they were separated for a time.”
“Longer than they should have been by their own accounts. Maggie’s two younger sisters are still annoyed with him.”
“The wounds between a couple often spread to those around them.” She stood, noticing the dark clouds had moved overhead, the gray light deepening the blue in Justin’s eyes. She pictured him dancing and suddenly wished she had stayed longer. “I gather Maggie isn’t still mad at Brandon, and he’s not still mad at her.”
Justin shook his head. “Haven’t asked. Won’t.”
“But you’d be able to tell, wouldn’t you?”
“Doesn’t matter. I stay out of my brothers’ romantic lives.”
“Do they stay out of yours?”
His gaze settled on her, then he grinned. “Not a chance. Meddling bastards.” He nodded to her tent. “Determined to stay out here, aren’t you?”
“If you don’t object, since it’s your land.”
“Now she cares,” he said with a wink.
Samantha ignored his remark. “Staying out here feels like unfinished business for me, somehow. I suppose it’s because of the fire, but I feel safe now.” She smiled. “Bears or no bears.”
“Suit yourself. I have no objection.” He stood back, his expression hard to read. Deliberately so, it seemed. “Going to do a little treasure hunting while you’re camping?”
“I suspect if a pirate had hidden treasure out here, someone would have found it by now.” She kept her tone steady, if a little cool given his scrutiny. “It feels remote to me, but I keep in mind that much of this land was once cleared for farming, a cider mill operated successfully here for decades, and you, your brothers and who-knows-who-else partied out here. That’s a lot of people for buried treasure to have gone unnoticed for three hundred years.”
“Who would treasure found here belong to?”
“Eighteenth-century treasure? It would belong to you. It’s your property.”
“You could sneak off with it and say you found it in a spot where you could legally keep it.”
“I couldn’t do that, Justin, and I wouldn’t. It’s not how I operate.”
He didn’t look as if he regretted his comment in the slightest. “So, what’s this pirate to you, Sam?” he asked, picking up another stray stick. “Why Benjamin Farraday?”
“His fate is a puzzle—a mystery I’m interested in solving. It’s what I do.”
Justin flung the stick across the brook. It hit a tree, then disappeared into the browning ferns. “Did you think Duncan would solve the mystery of your Captain Farraday first, before you could?”
Samantha forced herself to take a breath before she responded. “That he’d beat me to it, you mean? I hadn’t reached that conclusion. I just wanted to know why he was in Knights Bridge.” And that was before she’d discovered The Mill at Cider Brook and The Adventures of Captain Farraday and Lady Elizabeth. “When I realized Duncan’s presence had nothing to do with Benjamin Farraday, I didn’t say anything about having come here myself. It never occurred to me he would find out and think I’d been spying on him.”
“But you had been spying on him,” Justin said, blunt.
“It wasn’t spying-spying. I never had plans to steal secrets from him or anything like that.”
“What if he had been out here because of Farraday?”
“He wasn’t, but I’d have asked to work with him on whatever project he had in mind.”
Justin looked unconvinced as he moved closer to her tent, which hadn’t collapsed or sunk since she’d pitched it—she must have gotten it right. He glanced back at her. “Mad at me for telling him about you?”
“As if you care if I am.”
He grinned. “I care.”
She rolled her eyes. “I think I like you better taciturn.”
He leaned in close to her. “I think you like me best kissing you.”
“Maybe that, too.” Her head was spinning now. “Anyway, there was no reason for you not to tell Duncan about me, so, no, I’m not mad at you or anyone else—except myself.”
Justin put a hand on the top of her tent, as if to test if it would collapse. “You went to work for him for legitimate reasons?”
“Totally legitimate.”
“Nothing to do with Farraday?”
“I didn’t say that. I wanted to learn from Duncan—and I did—but I also envisioned getting him interested in Farraday and perhaps helping to sort out what happened to him, the rumors that he’d fled west, the fate of his last ship.”
“Somehow it figures that both you and Duncan McCaffrey ended up in Knights Bridge. A couple of treasure hunters here for different reasons.” Justin turned back to her, the shadows bringing out the sharp lines of his face. There was no humor in his eyes now. “Meant to be, you think?”
“Maybe.”
He stepped closer and traced her lips with his fingertips, then kissed her softly, just long enough to leave her with no uncertainty whatsoever of what he wanted. More, she thought. Much more.
“Go ahead and camp out here tonight, Sam.” He tapped her chin and grinned, the humor back as fast as it had disappeared. “If you get cold, you know where to find me. You can always head up to my folks’ place. By the way, they’ve invited you to a post-wedding brunch up at the house tomorrow.”
“A brunch—”
“Loads of people will be there. Not as many as at the wedding, but plenty. Rain or shine, there’ll be volleyball. It’ll be good. Gran and my mother think you’re cute.”
“Cute?”
“It’s the eyes. Your eyes are cute as hell, Sam.”
She couldn’t get a decent breath. “Right. Didn’t I say weddings addle people’s brains?”
He laughed as he started up the driveway, his boots crunching on the gravel. “Everyone’s going to think you’re camping out tonight because things got too hot between us last night at my place.”
“How does ‘everyone’ know I stayed at your place last night?”
“I’ll leave that one to your vivid imagination. In the meantime, one bit of advice.” He turned, walking backward as he pointed at her makeshift campsite. “Zip up your tent.”
She frowned. “I’m getting the new-tent smells out of it.”
“Suit yourself, but I’d rather put up with the new-tent smells than bugs and critters crawling into my sleeping bag.” He turned around, waving back to her. “’Night, Samantha Bennett. Sweet dreams.”
She waited until he was out of sight before she dived into her tent, scoured every inch for any bugs and critters, and then zipped it up tight.
* * *
Dinner wasn’t an issue. Samantha had eaten plenty of Maggie O’Dunn Sloan’s incredible food at the wedding. She had energy bars if she did get hungry, but she doubted she would.
The cold, miserable rain, however, was an issue.
It started twenty minutes after Justin left, while she was investigating the stonework around the mill’s foundation. She ran to her tent, slipped inside and zipped it shut again as raindrops splattered on the slanted top.
No thunder, no lightning, no fierce wind.
All was well.
She took off her shoes and smoothed out her sleeping bag and slipped inside, stretched out in her stocking feet. She wouldn’t bother with flannel pajamas tonight and instead would just sleep in her clothes, but it was still relatively early. She wondered what Justin was doing. Drinking beer and telling stories in front of another campfire? Watching football? Helping his folks prepare for tomorrow’s brunch?
She didn’t have to be alone, but it was good that she was. Smart.
The rain stopped, then started again, hissing in the woods, pitter-pattering on the brook. Samantha listened, cozy in her tent, warm and dry in her sleeping bag. Totally safe. She thought she could smell the faint odor leftover from the fire. She hadn’t been safe then. Her mind was catching up with what her body knew, the denial lifting that she somehow had been fine, within her limits, unexposed to serious danger.
She took out the copies of the pages she had found in her grandfather’s house. They were getting beat up, but they were still legible, even in the gray, fading light. She pictured her grandfather in his later years, still feisty and formidable—but also aware he was dying.
“I want you to have grand adventures, Samantha. It doesn’t have to be to Antarctica. It can be to the clothesline with a basket of laundry. It’s all in how you look at your life and your choices, and what you make of them.”
She hadn’t known, exactly, what he’d meant and why he’d brought up hanging laundry, even as a metaphor. He had loved that his eldest grandchild was interested in pirates and pirate shipwrecks, not for any monetary treasure but for the history, the mysteries, the clues and the pure adventure.
He had encouraged her to take up digging into Benjamin Farraday and his exploits, but Samantha wished she had an explanation for why he hadn’t mentioned the cider mill painting and the unfinished story of Lady Elizabeth and Captain Farraday in his Boston office closet. Had he forgotten about them? Had he planned to show them to her but hadn’t had a chance before he died? Had they come into his possession at different times?
Her grandfather had kept terrible records, so Samantha wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t found a note describing where the painting and manuscript had come from, whether he’d bought them or they’d been gifts.
She snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag. She wondered what would have happened if she’d gone back to Justin’s sawmill with him. Would she have stayed on his couch through the night?
Now, there was a distraction from her long-ago pirate.
Justin hadn’t worked too hard to persuade her to go back with him. Maybe the wedding—being with his family and friends—had jerked him back to reality.
Or he could have his own ideas about pirate treasure out here on Cider Brook. It’d been gnawing at her since he’d thrust her journal at her Thursday night—this notion that he knew more than he was saying.
That he was hiding something from her.
Samantha listened to the rain and kept her eyes open as darkness overtook her tent. She put the pages of her mysterious story away and got as comfortable as she was going to get on the hard, cold ground. She touched her lips and shut her eyes, reliving Justin’s kiss.
“You’re a true blackguard, Captain Farraday.”
“Aye, Lady Elizabeth, I am.”