Chapter 4
Four
Sam shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and took a moment to marvel at the miracle of both jeans and pockets.
Less marvelous was the miracle of his automobile that had now become a locked strongbox containing his brother’s lone tweed sport coat, his own gear, and his keys that he’d apparently tossed inside along with the remains of his emergency travel sustenance.
Perfect.
He indulged in a few more curses as he turned and used that traitorous boot lid as a place to rest his backside. Once he was comfortable, he allowed his mind to rest on the one thought that brought him a measure of peace and happiness.
He was going to kill his brother.
He’d been idly contemplating the various methods by which he might accomplish the same on his way north with terrible traffic, annoying road works, and a pair of drivers in very expensive cars who seemed to think they owned the road.
He paused. His honor demanded that he admit he was just such an arse whilst inside the sleek Alfa Romeo he’d purchased with the sole intention of driving it very quickly wherever he could, but perhaps that could be overlooked for the moment.
His transport for the current afternoon was a ubiquitous commuter car of indeterminate color guaranteed to leave him blending in and tutting at those with heavier feet.
That was probably just as well. He might have run over that woman he’d narrowly missed a handful of moments ago and that certainly wouldn’t have started Theo’s week of scribbling off very well.
He took a moment to look around himself and had to admit that when it came to Bradford-Next-the-Stow, Theo hadn’t minimized its charm.
Along with a covered marketplace, the town square boasted a trio of pubs and a handful of shops, all within a brief walk of a lovely little village green surrounded by perfectly preserved stone buildings and a handful of chocolate-box cottages that he suspected had been used as film sets more than once.
And if he were to be completely honest, he’d been there before, though that been three hundred years earlier.
He and Theo had double-teamed a pernicious suitor, helping him into a sturdy collection of expertly tied silken cravats after which they’d helped a charming young heiress into the arms of a highly chivalrous and honorable lad who’d been too bloody shy to make his affections known.
Not much about the place had changed, though he had to admit it was a bit odd to be leaning against a modern automobile and staring across a paved thoroughfare to the tavern where he’d walked in a far different time.
At least the village was currently missing any Claymore-toting Highland lairds, never mind any of his own possibly irritated cousins biding their time for a bit of revenge.
He raised an imaginary glass to his brother for keeping such a low profile in spite of his success, then turned and headed inside the inn.
There too, the location was splendid. He knew the inn had been christened in 1575, though the building had been there for longer than that in various incarnations.
The small antechamber to his right boasted a promising assortment of tables, chairs, and plastic bins.
He dragged out his best imitation of his brother off to engage in literary doings and walked over to the man standing in the midst of it all, engrossed in the papers he was holding.
Sam waited, a polite expression on his face, but the other took no notice of him. He cleared his throat carefully. “Excuse me, erm—”
The man looked at him coolly. “Why?” he asked. “Have you done something you shouldn’t have?”
There was no good place to begin with that, was there? He settled for a conspiratorial smile.
“Well, it is a mystery writer’s conference, what?” he offered with a little chuckle. “Gobs of grist for that mill, I daresay.”
His companion either had no sense of humor or his humors were sadly unbalanced from perhaps a very long day of people wanting his attention.
“Who are you?” he asked crisply.
“TD Piaget,” Sam said, inclining his head slightly. “Terribly sorry to be late.”
“Who?”
Sam settled for a third possibility which was that the man standing there was a bit of a prat. He would have pointed out that his brother’s name was splashed all over a wide selection of flyers stacked in piles on the nearby conference table, but decided there was no point.
“Just a lowly attendee,” he said easily. “I don’t suppose someone could help me briefly with the registration?”
“We’ll see who can be arsed to see to it tomorrow,” the man said, turning back to his papers. “I’m busy now.”
And so he was. Sam was starting to think that maybe his troubles in Stratford would have been less taxing than his current straits, but one mannerless oaf wasn’t going to stop him from being the best version of his brother possible.
He wished his companion a good evening, ignored the name badge with Theo’s pen name printed in bold letters sitting just within reach, and decided he would simply slip unnoticed into whatever gathering chamber was hosting the evening’s festivities and hope for the best.
He’d hardly made it ten paces down the main thoroughfare before he was roughly elbowed aside. He would have protested, but he shut his mouth at the sight of four admittedly stunning women who had stopped in front of him then turned, perhaps to see if they’d done him any damage.
“He’s gorgeous,” said one, looking him over assessingly.
“Eye on the prize, girls,” said another, shooing her companions on. “We’ll take care of this one later.”
Sam refrained from turning tail and bolting because he’d promised Theo he wouldn’t.
He watched the ladies carry on down the passageway, then happily ducked into the first niche he found.
He wasn’t hiding, he was being responsible by taking a moment to see to one last bit of business before putting on an imaginary sport coat and marching as suavely as possible into battle.
He opened his phone and found a single oy, help! from Callum. The best he could do in return was a brief, hold the line, will be there soon.
There was nothing from his sibling, but perhaps Theo had returned early, realized how close he was to breathing his last, and taken refuge in a distant pub where he thought he might successfully hide.
Sam set aside thoughts of murder and mayhem for the moment—he might actually pick up a few new ideas for the same over the next few hours—and abandoned his spot with hardly a flicker of unease.
He made certain the passageway was as free of both ghosts and ruffians as could be reasonably expected, then walked swiftly to where he suspected the evening’s delights might be waiting.
He took a deep breath, then opened the chamber door and slipped inside to survey the field.
It was, unsurprisingly, full of suspicious characters.
He wasn’t one to shy away from the difficult, but he genuinely wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into.
He was absolutely certain every soul there had nefarious plots about how best to do dodgy things with common household items running through their heads, plots they weren’t above taking out for a bit of exercise just to see how they fared.
He immediately identified the hens who’d so cruelly dismissed him not five minutes earlier, then looked over the rest of the gathering to see who else he might need to avoid.
Through either luck or fate, he immediately identified Theo’s literary agent, Francine Collins.
He could hear her crisp consonants from where he stood, which made him want to dive under the nearest table.
She was actually very protective of his brother, but she also had plans for Theo that would have given any medieval garrison captain the cold chills.
World book tours, magazine covers, interviews on any show that would have him; there was an entire list of things Theo absolutely didn’t want to do, for obvious reasons.
No wonder he’d agreed to the trade-off of the current madness.
Sam saw her scanning the chamber, likely looking for misbehaving clients, and decided that he could certainly take another moment or two to get into character.
The last thing he needed was for her to realize who he wasn’t right off which would rubbish the entire exercise.
He spotted a likely corner at the back of the room, sadly in the opposite direction from supper, and wasted no time in getting himself to it without being stopped.
He ducked behind an enormous ficus tree only to find his safe haven already occupied by …
A faery.
Or, rather, what he would have expected a faery to look like if she had just rolled out of her leafy bower to find herself in a different world where nothing looked familiar and she was currently deciding whether to panic or merely be extremely annoyed at the interruption of her nap.
He couldn’t decide if he should make her a bow or offer to take his life in his hands to fetch her something delicious from the buffet.
He suspected he would be doing neither simply because all he could manage at the moment was to stare at her face, surrounded as it was by masses of curly hair that looked as if she’d lost her brush at least a pair of days earlier, and wonder if his uncle Montgomery might have been onto something after all.
She was actually very pretty, though perhaps not in the startling way as were those four birds who’d set him aside as a snack to be consumed later.
In a crowded room he imagined less discriminating lads would have made tracks for other women to slobber over, but to his mind that was all to the good.
He could have hung back a bit, allowed the riff-raff to clear out, then had plenty of room to carefully approach that slight, elfin creature there and simply stare at her lovely self as stupidly as he realized he was doing at present.