Roses in Moonlight

chapter 1





Samantha Josephine Drummond set her suitcase upright, lifted her face to the sky, and took a deep breath of freedom.

Well, she was actually only looking at a ceiling and sampling nothing more rarified than the air inside King’s Cross station, but she wasn’t going to complain. She was standing alone in the midst of a crowd and life was very good.

She looked around herself to get her bearings, then glanced reluctantly at the small booklet of instructions in her hand. She supposed the fact that she was holding on to that sort of thing was her own fault. She had a smartphone and knew how to use it, and she was perfectly capable of keeping track of a plane ticket and money for a cab. Unfortunately her parents were stuck in a time warp where she was still twelve and they were eternally in their late thirties and she allowed them to keep on with it because it was easier that way.

Or at least she had until her plane had touched down on British soil. Things were going to be different from now on. As soon as she figured out where she was going.

She had another look at the little album in her hands. It had obviously been made by someone with a predilection for grunge-style scrapbooking paper and rubber stamps. At least this one had taken pleasure in her work. Samantha had, over the course of her twenty-six years, been gifted with an appalling number of similar books, though she couldn’t remember any in the past that had been fashioned with such care. She could only imagine the comments that had been made during the crafting of those life aids by the graduate assistants gang-pressed into doing so.

She checked her map, had another look around to make sure she was pointing in the right direction, then took hold of the handle of her suitcase and dragged it along behind her. She wasn’t unused to the number of people she had to weave her way through, but it was a little disconcerting to hear so many other tongues than English. She had to admit she was rather relieved to find her train and get herself into a seat on it with a minimum of fuss.

The train pulled away from the station and she had the oddest sensation of leaving her known life behind. It was even stronger than what she’d felt as her plane had taken off from the States. She’d been to London several times with her parents for various reasons, but this was something else entirely. This was just her on her own. She supposed Newcastle upon Tyne wasn’t the most glamorous spot in England, but it was easy to get to other places from it and it boasted a couple who had been willing to have her come house-sit for them for the summer.

And it was close to Scotland.

It was probably better not to think about that at the moment on the off chance some do-gooder thought she was about to start hyperventilating.

She looked out the window and happily watched the scenery rush by as she contemplated the miracles that had happened to get her where she was at present.

It had been her brother, of all people, to plant the first seed of subversiveness in her head. That was surprising given that she couldn’t say that she and Gavin were particularly close. He had left home when she’d been eight, scampering off to England to study art in London, then fall effortlessly into the cushy job of gallery manager for a woman who had subsequently retired and left him for all intents and purposes as the owner. He was almost as bad as their parents in treating her as if she were a perpetual child, though it wasn’t as though they spent enough time together for him to have any other opinion. Until his last visit home, of course, when he had apparently decided it was time for her to make a few changes to her life.

They had been suffering through yet another miserable Thanksgiving family gathering when he had casually pulled a book out of his stylish leather portfolio. Samantha didn’t really believe in paranormal happenings, but she couldn’t deny that a hush had fallen over the room, as if something monumental was about to happen.

Gavin had started to hand her a book, but her mother had intercepted it before Samantha could touch it. Gavin had frowned, but there was nothing to be done about it. When Louise McKinnon Drummond wanted something, she always got it. Samantha had watched her mother examine the cover of that rather musty old tome on Victorian ivory buttons, then toss it Samantha’s way with an uninterested sniff.

“Already read it,” she had said.

Samantha had thanked Gavin for something new to read, managed to get through the rest of the evening, then carried the book up to her room—on the top floor, of course. She’d shut the door, then sat on her bed for a few minutes, trying to still her rapidly beating heart. She’d finally opened the book and read the note hidden inside the front cover, taped carefully under the dust jacket.

Have clients in Newcastle who need a house sitter every summer. Interested?

She’d felt faint. Gavin was a boor and a cad, true, but he wasn’t an idiot. He had managed to escape their stuffy little East Coast college town, after all, and get himself out of the country. Of course, he’d known full well that he was leaving behind two sisters who would never have his freedom. Well, Sophronia had managed to escape as well, but she was another story entirely. Gavin had known that she, Samantha, had always been and would always be her parents’ last, best hope for the perfect child. Rapunzel had been a world traveler compared to how locked down she’d been her entire life.

Interested?

No, she hadn’t been interested, she’d been breathless. A desperate hope had bloomed inside her that she might finally manage to get out from under her parents’ collective thumbs.

She hadn’t managed it that first summer; she’d been working like a slave for her mother’s latest exhibition of fine Victorian antiquities. But she’d gotten a message to her brother that next Thanksgiving, a note taped to the bottom of the plate sporting canned cranberry sauce their mother wouldn’t have touched if it had been the last thing in the house left to eat. Gavin had sent an email to the appropriate party, winked at her, then helped himself to the rest of the cranberry sauce.

All of which had led her to where she was, watching the train pull into a station she’d never seen before and wondering if she shouldn’t just rip up the pages in her current journal that spelled out every step she was supposed to take during every day of the three months she was to spend in England so she could just do what she wanted to do instead.

She considered, then slipped the book back into her bag. She would rip later, when she could take a penknife to the book and do a proper job of it. It was a pretty journal, so she thought she actually might like to use the rest of it.

She slung her backpack over her shoulder, pulled her suitcase down from overhead, then got off the train and looked around her.

Unfortunately, the first thing that caught her eye was a grinning idiot holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand—cheap ones, she could see that from where she stood—and a sign in the other that read, Samantha Josephine Drummond, your carriage awaits!

She almost turned around and got back onto the train.

She could hardly believe her eyes, though she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Theodore Alexander Mollineux IV, the fly in her ointment, the suspicious substance in her soup, the annoying insect that kept buzzing around her loudly without really making the commitment to land. She’d heard he planned a summer internship in England and she’d been told it would be in Newcastle, but she had clung to the hope that he would forget she was going to be within shouting distance.

She supposed, looking at it with a jaundiced eye, that he hadn’t come to England merely to intern. Given what she knew of his family and hers, he had likely been assigned the task of not only keeping an eye on her but convincing her to marry him. Her father thought he was just the sort of young man to take her in hand and show her who was boss, and his father thought she was just the sort of young woman who needed a bit of bossing.

Not if she had anything to say about it.

Never mind that she’d only managed to dredge up the courage to decide that in the spring. She’d been plotting for weeks how her life would change once she was on her own. Planes and trains had only been the beginning of what she was sure would be an adventure she would never forget.

And with any luck, she would be telling her parents all about it via email while she lived happily in a very small house in a coastal fishing village where access to the Internet was limited to satellite cards.

But first she had to get past the test that was awaiting her there on the platform. She closed her eyes briefly, then stepped away from the train and walked over to the man she would ditch as soon as humanly possible. More difficult was to avoid Dory’s questing lips, but she managed that as well.

“Let’s not,” she demurred.

“Oh, you may have a point there,” he said, in an affected British accent that she was sure he thought displayed his blue blood to its best advantage. “When in Jolly Olde England, do as the natives do, eh?”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed quickly. She traded him her suitcase for the sign—which she murmured appreciatively over before rolling it up and stuffing it in the first garbage can she saw—and the flowers, which she didn’t bother to smell. They were carnations, which made her sneeze. She’d been actively avoiding dating Dory Mollineux and his carnations for almost a year. She would be, she had to admit, damned if she was going to find herself saddled with him now that she was so close to freedom.

“We’ll take a taxi,” he announced. “We could have walked if you were a bit less fragile, but your parents made me promise not to let you overtax yourself.”

“My parents?” she echoed.

“The Cookes are wonderful people,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’m sure you’ll get along famously.”

Samantha managed to keep from gritting her teeth because she had a lifetime of practice. She was not fragile; she was frustrated by her current life situation. She was also hardly able to believe that she was listening to Dory talk about her employers. The only way he would have known anything about them was if he had visited them to relate heaven only knew what sort of personal details about her. She imagined he had a list and that her parents had been the authors of it. The only thing she could hope for was that her brother had taken the trouble to tell the Cookes to reserve judgment until they met her. They had been willing to hire her, so perhaps that told her everything she needed to know.

She let Dory carry on the conversation because it was easier that way. Besides, he was very fond of the sound of his own voice, and since he was an expert on every subject and not shy about discussing those subjects, there was much to be fond of.

It was unfortunate, actually. He was extremely handsome, in a Top-Sider, khaki-trousered, blond-highlighted-hair sort of way. She was half surprised he didn’t wear a knitted V-neck vest and carry an old-fashioned cheerleader megaphone. His undergrad degree was in international relations, he had a law degree from Georgetown, and never used either of them. She wasn’t quite sure what he did except attend symposiums on various topics ranging from politics to musicology. He was the youngest son of the dean of the college of humanities at the small, exclusive university where her parents both taught, which she supposed was enough for them.

She had managed to avoid him for most of her life because he’d been sent to boarding school at five and had, she was sure, never looked back. In that, she couldn’t blame his parents. If she’d been his mother, she would have packed his little suitcase for him herself.

She had wondered more than once over the past year if there was perhaps something wrong with her that she wasn’t left giddy by his interest. She was fairly sure that anyone else would have taken one look at Theodore Mollineux and immediately tripped daintily in front of him so he would have had to not only notice her but leap to rescue her from potential injuries. He was rich, handsome, and heavily degreed. Maybe if she’d been able to just convince him to keep his mouth shut so he didn’t speak and ruin the illusion, she might have been able to do something more with him than look around for the nearest exit. How she was going to survive an entire summer with him in the same town, she couldn’t say.

She was obviously going to have to invent a few disguises in order to elude notice.

The taxi stopped sooner rather than later, which gave her hope for a Dory-free afternoon. She scooted out the door, reached in for her suitcase, then extricated her belongings before Dory had even stopped talking about whatever it was he’d been talking about.

“Thanks,” she said with her best smile. “Sure appreciate the rescue. I’m not sure how much we’ll get to see of each other . . . here . . .”

She stopped talking partly because he wasn’t listening to her and partly because he’d gotten out of the taxi himself.

“I’ll be fine from here,” she said. “I really appreciate the ride. I’ll treat you for scones with clotted cream the very first chance I have.”

“Sooner rather than later, because the old man hasn’t put my allowance in the bank yet,” Dory said. He looked at her with a frown. “Have any cash?”

And there in a nutshell was the reason she had only gone on one date with him. Never mind that her father had handed her a cool hundred on the way out the door to that movie. She was not interested in dating a guy who wasn’t prepared to at least fork out cab fare.

She knew she should have simply turned around and walked away, but something stopped her. She wanted to say it was good breeding, but it was probably just her inability to stand up for herself. She muttered uncomplimentary things about herself and Dory both under her breath, set her suitcase on the ground, then pulled her notebook out of her pocket.

There was money there, of course, in almost precisely the right amount for the taxi. Her mother would have determined that ahead of time, of course. Samantha paid the cab driver, then started to put her notebook away. Dory stopped her with his hand on her arm.

“Got to get back to my flat, you know.”

She gritted her teeth because she knew she was going to hand him money in the end anyway so there was no point in not handing him money from the start. She dug around in her bag for her secret stash of pound coins her brother had sent her inside a box full of ratty Victorian period costumes their mother wouldn’t have touched on pain of death, counted out what she’d handed over the first time, plus a little extra, then put it all into Dory’s hand without delay.

“So appreciate the escort,” she said waving vaguely in his direction, “but I’ve got to go. There’s no time like the present to make a good impression on the employers.”

“Already done that,” he said, taking her by the elbow and pulling her toward the door. “Introductions first, then we’ll go have lunch.”

Not if she could help it. She would bide her time, then make her escape, which would hopefully include being on opposite sides of a sturdy door from him. She didn’t argue with Dory as he took her suitcase and gallantly led the way up the two steps to the stoop just outside a dark brown doorway that seemed to blend into the stone of the building it found itself in.

The door opened and a neat, elegant woman in her forties stood there. Samantha was wearing her best work clothes, but she had to admit she had a ways to go if she were ever to stand next to that stylish woman and not feel a little frumpy. Maybe she could spent a little of her carefully hoarded money on something not insisted on by her mother. Nothing said serious scholar, apparently, like dark trousers, a polyester long-sleeved shirt, and sensible walking shoes.

Before Samantha got her mouth open to introduce herself, Dory was doing the honors for her.

“Lydia Cooke, this is Samantha Drummond. Samantha, allow me to present Mrs. Lydia Cooke. Her husband is off in Stratford, making certain their situation is what was promised.”

Could the taking of a rolling suitcase and using the heavy, wheeled part to knock a New England blue blood in the face be blamed on jet lag, or would she have to come up with a more drastic malady to excuse her bad behavior? It was excruciating in the extreme to have to listen to Dory continue to tell her details about the Cookes that she was quite certain Mrs. Cooke would have preferred to reveal herself—quite possibly somewhere besides the sidewalk.

“You know, Mr. Mollineux, Miss Drummond looks suddenly quite tired,” Mrs. Cooke said, reaching for Samantha’s suitcase. “Perhaps she could use a bit of a lie-down, yes?”

“Well,” Dory began doubtfully.

Samantha found herself and her suitcase drawn inside the house and Dory forced to step back down onto the sidewalk by the apparently unintimidatable Lydia Cooke.

“It is a long journey from the States,” she said easily. “I think she would enjoy a lunch date much more tomorrow.” She looked over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t you, Samantha?”

Samantha wasn’t about to spurn the rescue. “Definitely.”

“And so it’s settled,” Mrs. Cooke said brightly.

“But I have an agenda already planned out,” Dory complained. “I don’t like to get off track.”

“Then perhaps today’s schedule could be set aside as a fallback plan should something else fall through in the future. Do you need to have a taxi called—no, there’s one right there waiting for you, Mr. Mollineux. À bientôt!”

And with that, she shut the door, paused, then turned and smiled.

“You didn’t mind that, did you?”

Samantha tried not to look as pathetically grateful as she felt. “Not a bit.”

“Well, some lads working to impress a girl tend to become a little trying,” Mrs. Cooke said. “I doubt I dampened his spirits for long. I’ll show you to your room, then you can either have that promised lie-down or a tour of the house.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cooke.”

She laughed. “It’s Lydia, of course. There’s no call for formality. And I’ll call you Samantha, if you don’t mind. A lovely name. Very substantial and powerful.”

Samantha felt neither at the moment, but she wasn’t going to argue. She picked up her suitcase and followed Lydia up two flights of stairs to a room that resembled every artist’s garret she had ever seen depicted in any romantic movie. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was charming and comfortingly free of either her parents or any preppy interlopers.

“The bath is across the hall,” Lydia said. “Once you’ve freshened up, come downstairs and I’ll show you around.”

Samantha thanked her, then waited until she’d shut the door before collapsing on the bed with a happy sigh. She had made it. Against all odds, she had escaped. It was a miracle.

She allowed herself approximately five minutes to simply sit and breathe before she looked around to see what her summer was going to include. She was sitting on a bed that ran north and south in a room where the window was east and the door west. There was no closet or armoire, but she didn’t have all that many clothes so she would make do with the pegs on the wall and the very tall, thin dresser tucked into a corner. There was a useful lamp on a table next to the bed and a rug under her feet. She couldn’t ask for anything more.

She put her suitcase on the bed, dug around for her toothbrush, then considered her bag. She never went anywhere without it, ever, but that was simply because she’d grown accustomed to having her life tucked inside it. At the moment, it contained all her money, her passport, and her personal notebook. She didn’t suppose anyone would care about it, but she slid it under the bed all the same, used the bathroom, then descended the creaking sets of stairs to the ground floor.

Lydia was in the kitchen, making tea. Samantha joined her at the table and indulged with hardly a pucker. She wasn’t much for tea, but when in England . . .

“Your brother says your degrees are in textiles,” Lydia said without preamble. “Interesting choice.”

“I wasn’t given much choice,” Samantha admitted. “My mother is—”

“Louise Theodosia McKinnon,” Lydia said with a smile. “Yes, I know—and not just from your brother. She has an amazing reputation here in England. The Victorian era is her specialty, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Samantha admitted. “I came this close to being called Fanny.”

Lydia laughed, a sound that was so kind and gentle, Samantha had to smile as well. “No doubt. So, you were lured into the fascinating world of antiques but chose Renaissance England for your master’s. Any reason for it?”

“Rebellion,” Samantha said before she could stop herself.

And if her mother had any idea just how far she intended to rebel during the summer, she would have collapsed in a professional-looking swoon onto an original, perfectly restored fainting couch.

“I like you already,” Lydia said promptly. “We don’t have anything very interesting upstairs, but my husband is fond of antiques. Let me show you his treasure room and you can tell me all the appalling comments your mother would make about his poor collection. I can guarantee there is nothing there to offend your Elizabethan sensibilities.”

Samantha nodded, then left her tea behind and followed her employer up the stairs.

The treasure room was actually much more impressive than advertised. Both her mother and her brother would have been quite happy to poke through things and argue over their value. For herself, she was satisfied to limit herself to identifying the most valuable pieces immediately and heaping praise on her host for their acquisition and the lengths gone to in order to house and display them properly.

Lydia shot her a look of amusement. “It isn’t your era, is it?”

None of it’s my era was almost out of her mouth before she managed to bite her tongue. No, the Victorian era wasn’t her favorite, but that was probably because she’d spent so many hours helping her mother catalogue its remains when she could have been babysitting and making some money. She actually got chills down her spine when she contemplated how many years of indentured servitude she would have been engaging in if she’d actually had to pay for her education instead of getting scholarships and graduate assistantships.

“Gavin would be very impressed, though,” Samantha offered. “He loves nineteenth-century silver.” That in itself was a surprise given that she’d heard her brother vow as he’d left the house for college that he would never, ever have anything to do with anything that needed to be dusted while wearing gloves.

She understood completely.

“We would like to extend our reach back a bit more in history,” Lydia said, “but that would require a better security system, I think. The great houses are very careful about that sort of thing, as you might imagine. Perhaps as time and means allow. And as for you, I think you might want some proper supper before you fall asleep. I’m not sure you’ll want to wake up for it later.”

“Oh, I think the tea was plenty,” Samantha protested. “Or I could go to the grocery—”

“Of course you won’t,” Lydia said without hesitation. “Room and board is part of our agreement, along with the remuneration. And I think we’ll have the odd side job for you now and again. If you can bear to have anything to do with actors or lovers of antiques.”

“My brother has a big mouth.”

Lydia started to speak, then hesitated. “If I can say this without overstepping my bounds,” she said carefully, “I think it’s safe to say Gavin simply wants you to be happy and thought he might spare you discomfort if we had some idea of your likes and dislikes before we unintentionally upset you.”

Samantha looked at her and tried not to sound defensive. “I’m not really fragile. No matter what they say.”

“Oh, I never imagined you were,” Lydia said. “But you do look tired. I think rest might be what you need, if I could offer an opinion. Feel free to make yourself at home in the kitchen if you wake in the night.”

Samantha parted ways with her at the stairs, thanked her, then trudged up the stairs to her garret with as much spring in her step as she could manage. The thought of bed was almost too irresistible to be ignored.

She walked into her room, then sat down with her gear. She unpacked, because she didn’t want her clothes to be too wrinkled, then pulled out a backpack and hung it from a peg. She’d hoped for the occasional opportunity to do a few touristy things and liked to travel light. That would be easier to use than a suitcase.

She took her plane ticket and shoved it in the drawer of the nightstand near her bed. She didn’t intend to be using it anytime soon and didn’t suppose anyone would want to steal it, even if the Cookes’ security system wasn’t what it should have been. She pulled her bag from under the bed, unzipped the secret pocket she’d put in behind the regular pocket inside the lining she’d installed herself—there was no sense in not being a decent seamstress if she couldn’t revamp things to suit herself—and took out the entirety of her funds.

It wasn’t much, just a few hundred pounds Gavin had traded her dollars for at Thanksgiving. He hadn’t given her much of an exchange break, she was sure, but she’d been willing to pay for the convenience. She counted it out, considered, then took most of it and looked for someplace to stash it. She finally decided on the underside of the drawer of the nightstand. After securing it there with the small amount of duct tape she never left home without—it was better than a stapler for blown-out seams or unraveled hems—she put her mother’s agenda back in her bag along with other necessities and decided it was probably time to sleep while she could.

She got herself ready for bed, then lay there and looked at the ceiling for far longer than she should have. She had made it. She had escaped the confines of her former life and marched boldly into her future life.

She sighed. Perhaps it would turn out to be nothing more interesting than her old life where nothing exciting ever happened to her, but at least that boring life would be happening in a different country and without her parents scrutinizing her every move. She might actually attempt something daring, like leaving the house without checking the weather first, or attending a show with absolutely no educational or career-furthering value whatsoever. It could be very exciting.

She fell asleep smiling.