Roses in Moonlight

chapter 20





Derrick walked into Cameron’s downstairs office to the usual confusion that accompanied a collection of his lads setting up shop.

He had to shake his head briefly over the possessive term. They were his, he supposed, given that they worked for the company he now owned. They were loyal and seemed to enjoy their work, but whether that was because of the company or him, he couldn’t say.

How they had all come to be involved in that company was, he had to admit, perhaps slightly random. Oliver had rescued him and Cameron both one night along a deserted side street in London. Cameron had invited him to come in for an interview. Oliver’s unflinching expression during the hearing of a private investigator’s report of his entire life had earned him both a job and trust. Peter had come a bit later, a lad with a particular set of skills and a willingness to use them.

Their expertise in antiques, his and theirs, had come by working for Cameron for so long. It could be safely said that Robert Cameron had an uncanny knack for rooting out things that were staggeringly valuable. The lads enjoyed that part, but Derrick was sure it was the spy bit that they loved the most. He trusted them implicitly.

But they did tend to make a bit of a mess with their cables and cords and high-tech intrusion sweeping devices.

Oliver looked at Peter from where he had opened his laptop right in the middle of Cameron’s desk, his preferred place to roost. “Clear?”

“Still working on it,” Peter said, his head bent over his own laptop.

Samantha leaned closer to him. “Why are you bothering out here in the wilds of Scotland?” she asked.

“Thugs are everywhere,” Peter said absently.

“Cynic,” Oliver stated.

Peter only grunted and continued with his work.

“Where’s Rufus?” Derrick asked politely.

“On the way to London, leading our thugs on a merry chase,” Oliver said. “He’s a couple of hours out still.”

Derrick frowned. “Then how did you get here?”

“Rented a car, mate,” Oliver said. “You didn’t expect us to take the train, did you?”

He wouldn’t have been surprised, but then again, he’d been quite surprised several times over the past few days so perhaps he wasn’t one to judge. It had been one of those weeks.

“But,” Samantha said slowly, “won’t bad guys trace you from your credit card?”

Oliver lifted an eyebrow. “We’re ghosts, miss. That, and Peter had to have something to do on the drive north.”

She looked at Derrick with a frown. “What does he mean?”

Derrick shrugged. “Paperwork problems. Happens all the time.”

“You hacked into a rental car company’s system to erase paperwork?” Samantha asked uneasily.

“Not to worry,” Peter said, still peering at his screen. “Car’ll be back in Inverness with a bow on the bonnet by tomorrow night. They’ll never know.”

Samantha frowned thoughtfully, then leaned closer to him. “Is this what you do?” she asked. “This kind of thing? For tracking down antiques?”

“We’re a full-service operation,” Oliver said.

“Except for cleaning,” Peter said. “We don’t pick up cleaning.”

Derrick pursed his lips. “I think before we go any further, introductions are in order. Samantha, that’s Oliver, who doesn’t know when to shut up, and Peter, who is very shy around girls. You’ve already met Rufus, who isn’t here. Lads, this is Miss Samantha Drummond, who didn’t steal a very valuable piece of Elizabethan lace but unbeknownst to her seems to have picked up another freeloader.”

“Do we get to see?” Oliver asked. “Just curious.”

Derrick looked at Samantha. “Why don’t you show them what you found in the lining of your purse.”

Bless the girl, she didn’t hesitate. She simply walked over to the desk and deposited the bag of stones next to Oliver’s computer. Oliver looked at Peter.

“Clear yet?”

“Done,” Peter said, setting aside his laptop. “What’ve you got there?” He walked over to peer at the pile on the desk, then let out a low whistle. He pulled a jeweler’s loupe out of a pocket and set it alongside Oliver.

Derrick stood back and watched the pair do the other thing they did best, which was to appreciate things that cost vats of money.

Oliver sat back, considered, then looked at him. “Not modern.”

Derrick only lifted an eyebrow and said nothing.

Oliver frowned and went back to his study. Derrick waited for a bit, then finally cleared his throat.

“Five,” he suggested.

“Bollocks,” Oliver said with a snort. “Ten or none.”

Derrick waited until Peter had finished his perusal, then looked at his chief hacker. “Well?”

“Twenty,” Peter said firmly. “Not a penny less.”

“Twenty what?” Samantha asked.

Peter glanced at her only as quickly as good manners dictated. He was, for all his swaggering, all thumbs when it came to the opposite sex. “Twenty million quid,” he said. He shot Derrick a look. “Just a guess.”

“What do you think, boss?” Oliver said.

“I haven’t had a chance to look,” Derrick said. He looked at Samantha. “Want to go first?”

“Oh,” she said, hesitating, “I don’t know anything about gems.”

“Derrick will give you the lecture,” Oliver said. “Boring unsuspecting lassies is what he does best, but boring them with lectures about the various methods of cutting gems over the centuries is what he likes the most.”

Derrick rolled his eyes. “I have no preference.”

Oliver tsk-tsked him. “Shouldn’t lie. It’s bad for you.” He shifted. “Here, Miss Drummond—”

“Samantha.”

Oliver smiled. “Samantha. You take my chair while you’re looking. And Derrick can indeed give you a lecture that would leave you begging him to stop, but perhaps today I’ll give you the quicker one. It’s all about the cut. Well, quality helps as well, but the cut’s the thing. These would be worth more if they’d been in an original setting—and that setting had been either perfectly preserved or repaired flawlessly—but they’re worth plenty as is.”

Derrick had his own look after Samantha had finished, then looked at Peter.

“Fifty.”

“Well, you are the expert,” Peter said seriously.

Samantha shook her head. “Fifty million pounds?”

Derrick shrugged. “There are a lot of them and that’s just a guess. It isn’t so much what they’re worth as what someone would be willing to pay for them. There is that certain je ne sais quoi that comes with owning something from the past, so unless we were to find the right sort of lad or lassie to pull out the bank draft, I might be grossly overestimating the value.” He shrugged. “I’d have to think about a buyer or two in order to be more accurate.” He scooped the stones back up into the bag, then nodded toward the fire. “Let’s go poke around online for a bit. Oliver, do you have another tablet handy for Samantha?”

“Always. Samantha, let me set you up.”

Derrick left her in good hands, though he had to admit there was something about how happy Oliver looked to be helping her that set his teeth on edge. It didn’t help that Oliver waggled his eyebrows at him as he was seeing Samantha seated.

Derrick left the office before he did something stupid.

Elizabethan gems. Why wasn’t he surprised?

He ran up the stairs, collected his computer, then trotted back down to the office. Samantha was already engrossed in what she was doing. Oliver looked up when he closed the door behind him.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Think you can track down those Ambleside lads and find out where else they’ve been?”

“Might be able to.”

“Any word from Rufus?”

“Still the same. He sent me the plate number. I’ll see where that leads.”

Derrick nodded, then looked at Peter. “And you?”

“I’m snooping.”

“Care to divulge where?”

“Stolen property lists.”

Well, that might have been interesting, but Derrick suspected what they were looking at wouldn’t find itself listed on any stolen property—

He stopped in midstep. Maybe that wasn’t quite true. He had to wonder what might turn up if he looked for the theft of a substantial number of gems, say, in a different century. He had his doubts such a thing might appear on any easily found list, but the miscreant—if he’d been caught—might show up in some popular jail or other.

He went to sit across from Samantha. “How are you?”

She didn’t look up. “Reading email.”

She was starting to sound like one of the lads. “Anything interesting?”

“My parents told me to come home immediately.”

“Did Gavin tattle on you?”

She looked up then. “He did, actually. He said I was over here without supervision. I’m guessing Lydia told him I quit.”

“I’ll supervise you,” Derrick said. “You can tell them I said as much.” And whilst she was doing that, he would check Gavin’s email account to find out exactly what Lydia had told him.

“And just who are you, O Responsible One?” she asked politely.

“A pirate,” Peter said.

“Rabble-rouser,” Oliver suggested.

Derrick shot them both a pointed look. “A respectable businessman dealing in the acquisition of exclusive antiquities. Tell them you’re helping me with a research project. Or you could just tell them to go to hell.”

She laughed uneasily. “I’ll think about it and email them later. I’ll definitely be rude to my brother now, though.”

“He would deserve it, the annoying git,” Peter said, then he looked up quickly. “Sorry.”

Samantha only smiled and went back to her emailing. Derrick watched her thoughtfully for a moment or two. He had to admit that she had changed. The clothes were different, obviously, but it was something more than that. She was sitting in the midst of a roomful of pirates and she looked comfortable. Happy, even.

It was amazing what a little time traveling could do for a woman.

He put his head down and concentrated on his own business, because it was safer that way and would probably save Oliver’s life. If he had to look at that smirk one more time, he was going to wipe it off rather abruptly.

He decided it made sense to start with the gems not sewn into Samantha’s bag. Those, at least, he thought he could safely say had come from the sixteenth century. It would have been helpful to have ascertained the date whilst he and Samantha had been visiting the last time, but since he hadn’t, he would just have to guess. People had looked when he’d shouted that the queen was coming, so that put it definitely pre-1603.

He searched for an hour before he sighed and looked off into the fire. He had a headache and was no closer to where he wanted to be than he had been before he’d started.

He was tired, more tired than he cared to be. He didn’t particularly want a nap, but he definitely needed a change of scenery.

“Derrick?”

He looked at Samantha quickly. It was, he was fairly sure, the first time she had called him by his given name. Oliver cleared his throat, because he obviously had something stuck there. Derrick sent him a look that warned him that that thing might be his fist very soon if he didn’t shut up, had a single lifting of a single eyebrow as his reward, then looked back at Samantha.

“What?”

“Do you think,” she began slowly, “that we could find a list of inhabitants of the Tower?” She looked at him knowingly. “Just for curiosity’s sake.”

He considered, then looked back at his screen and sent her an email. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she blinked, then pulled it up.

You’re brilliant.

She smiled, but she didn’t look at him.

He attacked the problem with renewed vigor. It took him another hour to find what he was looking for. When he did, he had to simply sit there and stare into the fire until the information settled into his brain in a way he could process it.

Sir Richard Drummond had been incarcerated in the Tower in 1602.

He looked at Samantha. “Feel like a drive?”

“What?” she asked in surprise.

“I need to think.”

“That means trouble,” Peter said, scratching his cheek.

Derrick scowled at him. “What are you doing?”

“Hacking your email.”

“How’s it going?”

“You write very boring ones.”

Derrick blew out his breath. “Fix that, would you?”

“Working on it.”

Derrick considered, then looked at Oliver. “Will you look for something for me?”

Oliver looked at him. “Of course. What?”

“Sir Richard Drummond. He was tossed in the Tower in 1602. I’m curious as to why and what happened to him.”

Oliver sent him a look he had difficulty interpreting, though he had the feeling Oliver was putting together pieces that might not have been particularly apparent to anyone else. Oliver glanced at Samantha.

“A relation?”

“I hadn’t considered that,” Derrick said, wondering why he hadn’t. He looked at Samantha. “Are you related to a Richard Drummond?”

“The Shakespearean actor?”

“The sixteenth-century version,” Derrick clarified.

“I have no idea.”

“I think you’ll know soon.” He rose and set his computer aside, then took hers and did the same. “We’ll be back in a couple of hours, lads. I have my phone.”

Oliver looked at him. “Are you sure?”

“We’re driving to the coast and back,” Derrick said with a smile. “I think we’ll manage.”

“Taking the Vanquish?”

“Aye.”

“Damn,” Oliver grumbled. “There goes my chippy run.”

“Stay out of my car,” Derrick warned. “And stop hanging things from the mirror.”

Oliver only smirked and bent to his work. Derrick ushered Samantha out of Cameron’s office, bid good-bye to Madame Gies, then walked with Samantha out to the garage.

“We’ll need jackets,” he said.

“I’ll run back in,” she said.

“No, you stay. I’ll fetch you something.” He went back inside, grabbed a jacket for himself and something else that looked like it might have belonged to Sunny, then went back out into the garage. Samantha was considering the horsepower there and frowning thoughtfully. “Well?” he asked.

“Do you Camerons drive anything but low-slung sports cars and Range Rovers?”

He laughed a little. “We’re not a very imaginative bunch, but we like to go fast and not bottom out, respectively. I think we’ll take the sports car today, though.”

She looked at him seriously. “In case we need to make a quick getaway?”

“It never hurts to be prepared.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m surprised by how unnerved I am.”

“Not to worry,” he said. “Ewan will follow us at a discreet distance and you don’t want to know what he keeps within easy reach.”

“I don’t think I do.” She shook her head. “You live an interesting life.”

“And you have a small fortune in gems back inside.”

“They’re hardly mine. Do you think I shouldn’t have left everything there?”

“The lads wouldn’t think to paw through your purse, though I think we can guarantee that by the time we’re back, Oliver will have made a list of stones, weighed and identified by carat and color, and be well on his way to suggesting potential buyers for them.”

“But,” she said, aghast, “they’re stolen.”

“One set is.”

“The other set has to be, too.”

He smiled. “Probably. But it’ll keep him busy and out of my email that Peter’s hacked into.” He paused, then handed her the keys. “All yours.”

She looked so horribly torn, he almost laughed. She clutched his keys as if she didn’t intend to give them back.

“I have to go get my bag. It has my license in it.”

“I think I’ll let you get that,” he said wryly. “If I start fetching your purse, I’ll never be allowed to forget it.”

She went back inside.

She was still carrying his keys.

He leaned against Cameron’s Range Rover and considered the state of his life. He was trying not to think about it too hard or attach too much significance to it, but the truth was, he was getting ready to take a woman he hardly knew to his most private sanctuary. He had, as it happened, never taken a woman there. Sunny had been there, of course, along with Madame Gies and Emily, but they were family. But a woman he wasn’t related to in some form or fashion?

Never.

He supposed if he’d had any sense, he would have let Samantha loose with his keys and simply gone inside and banged his head against the wall. He didn’t dare hope for the return of good sense. He was simply hoping he might dislodge something useful.

She came back out in the garage, looked for him, then smiled when she saw him.

He was in trouble.

Had he ever thought her plain? He was certain he hadn’t, not really. Perhaps she would never be as stunning as those society shrews he occasionally dated, but the truth was, he couldn’t stand that brittle fakeness.

Samantha stopped short and looked at him in surprise. “What?”

He shook his head and smiled faintly. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

“About Richard Drummond?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

“Worried I’ll wreck your car?”

“Only if you don’t have a license and have never driven before.”

“I got to drive my mother’s minivan when I behaved really well.”

He laughed, because he didn’t doubt it was true. He nodded for her to open the door, then he let her into the driver’s side. She sat down, took a deep breath, then looked up at him and smiled.

It was all he could do not to lean over and kiss her.

He stepped back. “I’ll get the garage.”

“Thanks. I’ll try not to run over you on the way out.”

He could only hope. He was somewhat reassured to have her make it outside without clipping anything. He closed the garage door, then got in and looked at her. “Ready?”

“I’ve never driven on the left.”

“Best figure it out quickly, then.”

“I can’t believe you’re letting me drive your car.” She looked at him. “Do you realize how much this thing costs?”

“Possibly.”

She didn’t move. “My dad has a Ferrari.”

“How many times did you steal it at night and then try to reverse the odometer by putting it up on blocks after you got home?”

She smiled. “That’s a movie. And fourteen, if you’re curious. The stealing, not the rolling back. I blamed it all on my mother. She’s a wild woman at heart.”

He reached out and tucked a loose strand of her hair into her braid before he thought better of it. “There are depths of deviousness to you I never suspected.”

“You thought I was a lace thief.”

“I can be an idiot from time to time.”

“Does that include letting me drive?”

“Your father has a Ferrari.”

She started to nod, then froze. She looked at him narrowly. “Did you know that already?”

He smiled. “Might have.”

“And did you suspect I’d driven it?”

“I didn’t know,” he said, “but the thought did cross my mind.”

“Why?”

“Because you look so much happier in jeans and cashmere than in polyester.”

“My mother bought all my clothes.”

“Now, that is something I felt safe in assuming,” he said with another smile. “I have the feeling you may be avoiding that in the future.”

“I might be.” She chewed on her words for a moment or two. “I think I’m close to having an epiphany.”

He smiled. “Will swearing be involved?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you email your parents yet?”

She held on to the wheel with both hands, then looked at him. “I have to have my epiphany first, I think.”

“A trip in the car might help.”

Her expression was very serious. “Thank you, Derrick.”

“You’re welcome, Samantha.”

“For more than this.”

He nodded down the hill before he said or did anything he might regret, such as tell her she was undeniably lovely in her unguarded way. He didn’t want to think about how he might be tempted to show her just how appealing she was.

“Let’s go, lass. Do you like the shore?”

“Yes.”

His phone beeped at him. He pulled up the text message.

Hey, why don’t I get to drive that?

“Trouble?” Samantha asked.

“Ewan, whingeing.”

“And all is right with the world, is that it?”

He smiled approvingly. He liked her more all the time. He leaned his head back against the seat and considered closing his eyes. But then he would have missed the opportunity to look at a woman who had turned out to be not at all what he’d thought her to be at first.

“Would you have let me drive if you hadn’t known about my illicit nocturnal activities?”

“Aye.”

“Thank you.”

“To the end of the drive,” he clarified.

She smiled and didn’t spray Ewan’s car with gravel when she pulled away from the castle, which Derrick was certain he greatly appreciated.

He supposed he would have to return to reality soon enough, but for the moment, he was content to ride with a woman who was laughing as she drove away from his boyhood home.

Life was good.