Chapter 2 #2
He stashed his laptop safely in a corner, then resumed his place against the range and listened to Theo rummaging about in his bedchamber. He frowned thoughtfully as his brother strode into the kitchen and dumped an armful of gear onto the table.
“Dare I ask,” he ventured, “or are you merely tidying up before we go have ourselves something tasty at the pub?”
Theo held up a shoe in each hand. They didn’t match, which was surprising given how organized his brother generally was. They were also Elizabethan, which given his own recent encounter with an item of that vintage didn’t surprise him at all.
“No time to eat,” he said. “Go find me the mate to one or the other of these, would you?”
Sam sighed, then walked to the lounge to dig through a pile of things they’d left there after a recent trip to Lord Fulbert’s day.
He collected the matches for both shoes on the off chance they were needed, then walked back into the kitchen and set them down on the table.
He resumed his task of holding up the cooker and studied his brother for another moment or two.
“And?” he prompted when it looked as if Theo might simply stand there and swear for the rest of the evening.
Theo dragged a hand through his hair. “I made a mistake.”
Sam pushed away from the range. “I’ll go change—”
“Nay, I’ll take care of it.”
Sam didn’t bother protesting. They tended to go through life as a matched set, but there were times when it was convenient to be about whatever task lay before them singly. Not necessarily prudent, but easier.
“Where are you going and when?” he asked, because that seemed reasonable.
“Ightham Mote,” Theo said. “1657.”
Sam felt his jaw fall. “Not Penitence Chase.”
“The very same.”
“I’m not sure who’s more terrifying, Penny or her beau.”
“Or the jilted suitor who’s come between them.” Theo looked up briefly from his packing. “I’m afraid he needs to have his mind changed about quite a few things.”
“But you can’t do that alone,” Sam protested.
Theo smiled briefly. “They’ll never know I was there.”
Sam had to concede that point as well. If they managed nothing else, they had learned how to be ghosts wherever they found themselves.
He shivered. Ghosts. Would the madness never end?
“It will also get me away from a few paranormal players here,” Theo added lightly. “Sorry to leave you in their sights, but duty calls.”
Sam shot his brother a dark look that he ignored.
He himself wasn’t unused to things of a paranormal nature for obvious reasons, but there was something unnerving about coming into one’s kitchens and finding four shades discussing generations of relations as if they’d known them personally, which he suspected they did.
Having all four look up and fall silent as he and his brother walked in on any given evening to look for supper—as if they had interrupted a bit of plotting that might have concerned their own sweet selves—was substantially more alarming.
“It could be worse,” Sam said, grasping for something innocuous to talk about. “We could come home some night to find James MacLeod warming his toes by our stove.”
Theo rested his hands on the table and leaned on them, then looked up. “Should we go talk to him?”
“Are you daft?” Sam wheezed. “After what we’ve been doing?”
“He’s a romantic.”
“He’s a Highland laird, the genuine kind with a great whacking Claymore that I’m absolutely certain he’s used repeatedly on those who dare tamper with paranormal oddities.”
Theo smiled. “You’re starting to sound like Uncle Robin.”
“Uncle Robin is a very wise man,” Sam said promptly, “if not a little unyielding in his threats to have us walled up in his dungeon.” He paused. “We may have deserved that.”
“We absolutely did,” Theo agreed with another smile. “It makes you wonder, though, how much he knows about unusual things.”
“It doesn’t,” Sam said without hesitation. “I never give it a single thought.”
Which was a lie, of course, because he honestly couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been looking around himself and questioning the unusual things that went on.
It was also true that he and Theo had first begun deliberately investigating familial oddities thanks to their uncle Montgomery’s insisting that a different uncle was actually a Faery lord who’d escaped from the glittering realms below by springing up through the grass.
They’d had no choice but to make a thorough study of Jackson Kilchurn IV, lord of Raventhorpe, just to see if he did anything peculiar.
Carefully, though, because the man was wickedly proficient with a sword and had a look that could freeze a curious lad in his tracks at twenty paces.
It was also true that they had speculated endlessly about a trio of their relatives—including their own perfect dam—thanks to intelligence gained from not only an unholy amount of eavesdropping but a brief look in their father’s locked trunk.
He’d had his mind completely blown at the time by what he’d seen there, so he’d tended not to linger on those memories overmuch.
What he could remember with perfect clarity was the moment he’d known beyond any doubt that things of a magical nature did indeed exist and his uncle Montgomery had only scratched the surface of what was possible.
That moment had arrived on a gloomy, misty morning, a fortnight after his favorite cousin Maryanne had fallen gravely ill and passed away—or so the tale had gone.
He and Theo had been trailing after a company that had included the man who loved her, a company that had carefully slipped out of his uncle’s keep at dawn and traveled directly to a particular spot in a field in the shadow of that same uncle’s hall.
If pleasantries had been exchanged or unremarkable chitchat indulged in, he couldn’t have repeated the same had his life hung in the balance.
He’d been far too busy watching in absolute astonishment as a doorway had simply opened up in the fabric of the world.
If he hadn’t had Theo to lean on, he likely would have simply fallen over from surprise.
More miraculous still had been the sight of Maryanne de Piaget, alive and well, standing on the far side of that shimmering portal.
He’d scarce picked his jaw up off the ground before he’d realized that whilst Maryanne was safely waiting in whatever place she’d been—at the time he’d been torn between calling it Faery or the Future—the man who loved her, Zachary Smith, seemingly hadn’t been able to get himself through that portal to reach her.
He’d never been one to hesitate in the face of overwhelming odds, but he would admit that at the time, the situation had given him pause.
He’d exchanged a quick look with his brother, but before they could act, they’d been pushed aside by a different cousin who had given Zachary a hearty shove across that threshold and into Maryanne’s arms.
If they’d accidentally given that particular cousin a similarly robust shove through that still-ajar doorway, well, that was a subject fraught with difficulties.
It wasn’t as if they’d planned to send Jackson of Raventhorpe tumbling through the centuries whilst not having raised his mainsail himself.
It had been a joint moment of instinctively knowing that action needed to be taken.
He suspected that Jackson Kilchurn V would very much like to dole out a bit of repayment for his subsequent journey to places he hadn’t intended to go, but perhaps ‘twas best to set that aside and continue to let sleeping cousins lie.
What he knew for certain was that that particular moment had been the beginning of his and Theo’s seeking out those sorts of portals, which had naturally led to using the same, which had eventually turned into assisting others in finding their happily ever afters.
That had necessitated buying that monstrosity of a pinboard, hanging it on the wall, and organizing what had become less of an altruistically motivated lark and more of a life’s work.
“You know, we could dye our hair,” Theo said suddenly. “To give ourselves a bit more anonymity.”
Sam dragged his attentions back to his brother. “And deny lassies through the centuries the sight of our golden locks? Have you gone completely mental?”
“It was just a thought.”
“Aye, a terrible one,” Sam said without hesitation.
“You may not remember this, but Derrick Cameron’s lady wife took one look at my glorious golden crown and suggested that I was some sort of Greek god.
I cannot in good conscience deny other discriminating women the opportunity to come to a similar conclusion. ”
“Samantha said that about me,” Theo said with a snort.
“In fact, she said as much to me as she was eyeing tapestries in the V&A last year and I accidentally tripped over her. I apologized, then rushed off before I was forced to agree with her. Not that it matters given that Derrick knows who we are.”
“Derrick thinks we’re eccentric lads with great imaginations and vats of money,” Sam said without hesitation. “Why would he suspect anything else? You don’t use your full name on your books and I’m using Mum’s maiden name on stage.”
“And when you see him in Stratford?”
“I confine my remarks to our health and the weather,” Sam said promptly. “He never says a thing.”
“Sam, he sold our coins for us.”
“Aye, to Uncle Jake,” Sam agreed. “So?”
“So he likely paid attention to our names.” Theo paused and frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose ‘tis possible he was too distracted by the thought of keeping material things in their proper century—on both ends of the trade—to think overmuch on the particulars.”
They exchanged a look. It was the same sort of look they’d been exchanging for as long as Sam could remember.
It was a look that contained the summation of a lifetime’s worth of poking their noses into things they likely should have left alone but hadn’t because life was meant to be lived thoroughly, not put up in a cupboard to be taken down later.