Roses in Moonlight

chapter 13





There were odd things going on in the world.

Samantha sat at the table with the afternoon sunlight streaming in the window and contemplated the oddities she had been faced with over the past few days.

First was Derrick Cameron himself. He was a chameleon, apparently possessing a fairly substantial collection of personae and the courage to make use of them. He was CEO of his own company and obviously trusted enough by Lord Epworth to have been given the task of retrieving a matchless piece of lace. He owned a computer that had lots of things on it that she couldn’t get into, things that looked very suspicious, which only added to his cloak-and-dagger aura.

But the man also believed in time travel, which in her book cast serious doubts on his sanity.

She rested her elbows on the table and considered a few more things. Take his cousin for instance, and his cousin’s wife. Robert Cameron was from all reports the Earl of Assynt and looked absolutely like what she would have thought a Scottish lord dressed in a business suit should look like. His wife, Sunshine, was elegant in a midwifey, herbalisty, I’m-so-happy-with-my-hunk-of-a-Scottish-husband-that-I-can’t-stop-smiling sort of way. Their son was adorable, their happiness palpable.

And their utter lack of surprise or disbelief over where Derrick had gotten his wound unnerving.

She had watched them get Derrick into bed three days earlier, then listened to Cameron laugh softly over the pajamas Sunny had brought with her. He had accused his wife genially of keeping extra pairs on hand for emergencies such as the current one, had a kiss on the cheek in response, then the two of them had set to examining Derrick’s shoulder.

Sunny had concocted something, packed the wound, then they had sat down to chat as if there wasn’t a man lying in that bed with a stab wound that definitely should have been seen to by a doctor.

The one thing she could say for Sunny, the former herbalist and current wife of a Scottish laird, was that she seemed very capable. Her knowledge of herbs, as far as Samantha could tell, was extensive, and her faith in the ability of the body to heal itself with the right help was absolute. By the time she and Lord Robert had dragged themselves off home later that next morning, Samantha had been a believer herself.

The ensuing three days had fallen into a pattern of sorts. She had slept and used Derrick’s credit card—the number very thoughtfully provided by Emily who had come once or twice to bring her more clothes—to download several books of dubious scholarly quality to his tablet. She had ordered room service and thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in mysteries and romances she would have had to hide under her bed at home.

Sunny had come to keep watch over Derrick, spelled by Cameron, and neither of them had seemed to think there was anything strange about that. Samantha had spent her share of time with them, chatting about everything from British football to the weather in Scotland.

She had felt a little disconnected, as if she’d been a statue in the middle of a play going on around her. The play had been very normal, but she had been the odd man out, the odd man thinking about a man who was lying in a bed, recovering from a stab wound, whose doctor had been an herbalist and his cousin not at all interested in calling the cops.

Very strange.

She had spent her share of time sitting by Derrick’s bedside, wondering if he would ever wake back up. Sunny’s brew that she forced down him as often as possible had seemed to have the side effect of leaving him completely out of it, but she supposed that had been a good thing.

The reality of the rest of her existence was perhaps even harder to swallow. She had unlocked Derrick’s phone using his unconscious and unresisting thumb and sent another couple of texts, one to Lydia and another to Gavin, assuring them she was all right but that she’d had a little accident and was laid up, conveniently with friends of the original detective inspector from Scotland Yard. She could hardly believe she was using Derrick’s ploy of fending off the interest of thugs, but she hadn’t known what else to do and she hadn’t really been willing to talk to either Sunny or Lord Robert about it.

It was, after all, a little difficult to discuss the fact that she was the reason Derrick had gone back in time to Elizabethan England and gotten that hole in his shoulder.

So she had stayed where she was and done what she could to be useful because the alternative was going outside, empty-handed, to find herself in the care and feeding of men who would probably kill her if she didn’t produce what they obviously thought she still had.

All of which left her where she was, sitting in a suite at the Ritz, nursemaiding a man who had gotten up earlier that morning and looked as if he might pass out in her arms. How he thought he was going anywhere that day was beyond her.

A soft knock on the room door had her jumping so abruptly that she almost tipped her chair backward. She put her hand over her heart, got up from the table, and staggered across the floor with the grace of one who had been in bed for three days, suffering from a shoulder wound. She peered out the peephole, then sighed in relief.

She opened the door and let the adorable Countess of Assynt in as if she had known her all her life. Sunny smiled and shut the door behind her.

“How are you?”

“Freaked out.”

Sunny laughed a little. “I think you’re holding up very well. At least you have a great place to freak out in.”

“There is that,” Samantha agreed. She nodded toward Derrick’s door. “He’s in there.”

“Surly and unpleasant?”

“Both.”

“Then he must be feeling better.”

Samantha shook her head. “I don’t think he is, but he’s determined to be up and about. I think he’s crazy.” Well, she thought he was crazy about a lot of things, but she wasn’t sure quite how to broach the subject with Sunny. “I put him back to bed this morning and he’s been there ever since, very quiet.”

“He’s probably plotting something,” Sunny said wisely.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Samantha agreed.

But she couldn’t bring herself to even bring up the subject of what Derrick might be plotting, because she was fairly sure Sunny had no idea what that might be. She waved Sunny on to her patient, then took to pacing.

She paused by the window, looked down into the garden, and fortunately for her peace of mind found nothing unusual there. She didn’t suppose that said anything, but a girl could hope. She finally sat down at the table because she had nothing else to do. Unfortunately, that gave her too much opportunity to eavesdrop.

“I feel fine!”

There was a pause. Samantha imagined, judging by the tone of the next statement, that a stern look had been delivered.

“Derrick, you’re being nasty.”

“I feel nasty.”

“You just said you feel fine.”

Swearing ensued.

“You know, I can call a doctor and then you can answer all kinds of questions you don’t want to about what you’ve been doing over the past few days.”

“Sunny, you have no pity.”

“None. Apologize, or I won’t come back.”

Gusty sighing ensued. “I apologize. I was an unmitigated ass.”

“Jerk would have sufficed.”

“People keep using that word when they talk about me.”

“There’s probably a reason for that.”

Samantha snorted before she could stop herself. She turned when she heard Sunny come out of Derrick’s room and pull the door shut behind her.

“Well?” Samantha asked.

Sunny walked over to the table and cast herself down into a chair with a gusty sigh. “He’s on the mend.”

“Painfully.”

“Loudly.” Sunny looked at her. “Are you married?”

“Heavens no,” Samantha said in astonishment. “Not even dating anyone seriously.”

“Well, I’ll tell you now: When they start to snarl, that means they’re on the mend. It’s at about that point that my Florence Nightingale impulses have ceased and I’m happy to limit my tending to tossing them the remote and telling them to get their own damned soup.”

Samantha looked at her, then laughed. She put her hand over her mouth, because she wasn’t sure laughing was an appropriate reaction. Sunny was only looking at her and smiling.

“How in the world did you get mixed up in all this?” she asked, still smiling.

“I have no idea,” Samantha said, honestly. “I was just trying to run away from home.”

“Overbearing parents?”

“Academics,” Samantha clarified. “No offense to academics, of course. Mine are just a little . . . intense.”

“Mine are linguists,” Sunny said, “so I understand where you’re coming from. My sister and I were always foisted off on relatives and Swiss finishing schools when they were busy. What about you?”

“I was locked in a museum.”

Sunny smiled. “Poor girl. Well, you’re out now. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

Now that her employers were revealed to be crooks, her brother had proven to be useless, and she might possibly be facing jail time if Derrick didn’t stop being a jerk, she had no idea what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She looked at Sunny and swallowed uncomfortably.

“I’m not sure. I would just like to sort of disappear.”

“Cottage on the coast? Small garden? Simple husband?”

Samantha smiled. “How did you know?”

“I think we are a lot alike,” Sunny said. “You might be careful what you wish for, though. You never know what you’ll really get.”

“What did you get?”

“Pantyhose,” Sunny said without hesitation. “Well, Scottish rain as well, which I suppose mitigates the horrors of pantyhose.”

Samantha considered. “I can see how it might.”

“Have you ever been to Scotland?”

Samantha shook her head. “Thought about it now and again, but that’s it.” That was probably an understatement considering all the time she’d spent over the years looking at pictures of Scotland, or borrowing library books about Scotland, or surfing travel sights about Scotland. But that was more than Sunny needed to know.

“It’s a lovely place,” Sunny said. “You would probably like it.”

“I imagine I would,” Samantha agreed, though she very much doubted she would ever make it that far north. At the moment she was mostly worried about making it out of the country without getting arrested.

She looked at Sunny and realized the countess was watching her more closely than Samantha was comfortable with. She searched for something to talk about that didn’t have to do with anything serious.

“You’re an American?” she asked.

“From Seattle. I came over here to visit my sister. Then a set of fortuitous circumstances put me in the same place as Cam and here we are. It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?”

Samantha supposed in her own life it was less funny than strange, but Sunny didn’t need to know that, either. But speaking of strange, she had a woman sitting across from her who had looked at a stab wound and thought nothing of it. It was tempting to speculate on what else she might think nothing of. Maybe there was no harm in venturing a casual comment or two. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She looked at Sunny.

“Have you seen odd things here?”

“What sorts of things?” Sunny asked easily.

“Um,” Samantha began, “odd things. Paranormal things.”

“Like ghosts?”

“That’d do for a start.”

Sunny smiled. “Of course. It is England and Scotland after all. Lots of history hanging around.”

“Can you be specific?”

Sunny shrugged. “Our neighbor to the south has a piper who plays whenever his lord is in the mood for a little battle dirge.”

“So?”

“Well, that piper is a ghost,” Sunny said with a smile. “He’s very good.”

“Have you heard him?”

“Yes, and I’ve seen him as well.”

“Interesting,” Samantha said faintly. “Anything else?”

“What sort of anything elses?”

Samantha could hardly believe she was going to give voice to the words, but she had to know. She was starting to feel a little crazy.

“This seems so silly,” she began, finding that the thought sounded less silly than it did absolutely insane, “but what do you think about time travel?”

Sunny’s face was absolutely expressionless. Samantha couldn’t say she was any sort of investigator, but she thought she might be able to put on her Derrick hat and consider the facts of the case. Sunny had been animated before; now she was very cautious.

Something was up.

“I think,” Sunny said slowly, “that there are many things that are possible.” She smiled. “Why not this?”

“Because it’s crazy.”

Sunny shrugged. “Traveling in a plane or talking on a cell phone would have seemed crazy to someone who lived two hundred years ago. Maybe there are just things we don’t understand.”

Samantha decided there was no point in not being frank. “You didn’t seem surprised by Derrick’s shoulder wound.”

“It’s London,” Sunny said. “Lots of things happen in London.”

“You didn’t call the cops.”

“There are some things that are better kept to the family.”

“But,” Samantha blurted out, “he thinks I left the missing lace in Elizabethan England.”

Sunny looked at her blandly. “And what do you think?”

“I think he’s crazy,” Samantha said, but she had to admit she didn’t think he was as crazy as she’d thought him before. “Mostly.”

“Lots of crazy things in the world.”

“He thinks we’re going to go look for the lace tonight.”

“Now, that is crazy,” Sunny said with a smile. “He did admit as much to me which is why I gave him my supersecret, frighten-any-bug-left-in-you-out-of-you brew. He’ll be fine. He’ll also sleep until tomorrow afternoon.”

Samantha smiled in spite of herself. “He’ll be furious.”

“With me?” Sunny scoffed. “I’m not worried. I’m also not going to hang around. Give me a call if he starts hallucinating.”

“And just what am I supposed to do until you get here if he does?” Samantha asked, profoundly alarmed.

“Bean him with his laptop would be my suggestion, but he was rude to me and I found his apology somewhat lacking so I’m probably not his biggest fan at the moment.” She smiled and rose. “You have our numbers. Call if you need help. And watch as much pay-per-view as you like. Use the personal shopper downstairs if he gets really feisty. He’s picking up the tab, after all.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll need the shopper,” Samantha said faintly. “Emily keeps bringing me things.”

“Perfect,” Sunny said cheerfully. “I’ll check back in later.”

Samantha thanked her and saw her to the door, locked it behind her, then looked at her afternoon stretching in front of her and wondered what she should do. She had Derrick’s tablet, which she supposed would keep her busy for a while. She could probably have another nap in a very luxurious place, as well as a couple of meals she would probably never match again in her lifetime. She might as well take advantage of it while she could.

She wondered what would happen if she called the airline, dipped heavily into her savings to purchase a hideously expensive same-day ticket, then called a taxi and bolted for the airport. If she’d had the guts, she would have sent the personal shopper downstairs out for a wig so she could have escaped detection.

But that would only have solved one of her problems and that was her current location. There would still be people who thought she had lace she didn’t have. She would still be thinking quite seriously that Lydia Cooke was responsible for planting that lace on her. And that lace would still be sitting in Elizabethan England under a planter she sincerely hoped didn’t get watered anytime soon.

She got up and paced, trying to convince herself that none of those things mattered.

She paced for a very long time.

She finally sat down and gave in. She considered a movie, then downloaded another book to Derrick’s computer. Maybe it would take her mind off her past, which she couldn’t erase, and her present, which she couldn’t seem to avoid. It would do nothing for her future, she knew, which left her feeling rather unsettled.

Because she had the feeling that after she went to Elizabethan England with the currently unconscious grouch in the other room, she would be on her own.