Chapter 7 #3
“Is it a suitable foil for my golden locks?” he asked, brushing a few strands of the same back from his face.
She didn’t bother to fight her smile. “The pants aren’t, but a sweater in that color might be.”
“I’ll rely on your good opinion, then, and see if I run across a jumper that suits.” He held out his elbow in a particularly old-fashioned sort of way. “Shall we?”
She took a deep breath, then took his arm.
England was, she had to admit, turning out to be not at all what she had expected.
Fifteen minutes later, she was following TD Piaget into a Victorian building in a very nice London neighborhood that she imagined he’d chosen with care.
If he wore a hat to cover his hair and hid behind sunglasses, she imagined no one would think any of him past identifying him as yet another handsome, well-heeled London lad trying to live his best life in peace.
“I’ll go put the kettle on,” he said, shutting the door and locking it behind him. “Make yourself at home.”
“I can make tea,” she said quickly. She looked up at him. “My mother’s a fan.”
“And mine can’t stand the stuff,” he said with a smile, “so you’ll likely do a better job than I would. Follow me to the kitchens, then.”
Damn it, when would it end? Kitchens? She was going to have to find a smaller notebook with a wristband attached so she could have it always at the ready. She imagined she could fill up an entire one over the next few days with just the things about TD Piaget that seemed stran—
She stopped herself again before she went any further with that. The man wrote about medieval characters. All that terminology had likely seeped into his brain over the years only to come out at unusual times, such as when he might be escorting a fangirl into his kitchens.
She followed him into a very cozy little room, then watched him pull out an electric kettle and two mugs.
“Five minutes,” he promised.
She nodded and watched him go, then took off her backpack and coat and set them on a chair.
She filled the kettle and turned it on, happy to simply stand there and watch it.
It was possible that watching would put the boiling off its game, but she was cold, she was in a foreign country, and she’d had a very strange day so far. A little warmth was very welcome.
And then, like clockwork, the weirdness began anew with a throat clearing itself from behind her.
She peered at the kettle, wondering how in the world it was ventriloquisting itself to a different part of the room, then decided her imagination was, as it occasionally did, running away with her.
Besides, she could hear the shower running.
TD Piaget certainly would have announced his presence if he’d come back to the kitchen.
It was also true that she’d also just heard the slightest of squeaks, but she wasn’t going to turn around and identify the source.
Maybe a little chat later with her host about his possible mouse problem would be enough.
The throat cleared itself again, more imperiously.
The shower also stopped running.
Sadly, those two things were in the wrong order, which left her mind galumping down pathways it was truly not designed to go.
She didn’t want to turn around. In fact, the last thing she wanted to do was turn around.
There were so many other things to hold her attention, like the cute red tea kettle, and the two Tower of London mugs, and a box of tea with Her Majesty’s picture on it holding court there against the backsplash.
It was, unfortunately, the second squeak that did it. Rather, the second squeak, a door shutting in the distance, and another harrumph.
Harriet surrendered, took a deep breath, then turned around.
What she could say for sure was that she recognized the throat clearer.
He was the Mayflower-company-era guy who’d come out of the paranormal oddities shop.
Out was still up for interpretation, but she was in England and she suspected all sorts of oddities were the order of the day.
The man looked down his long, pointed nose at her, then gestured toward a set of cabinet doors hanging there on a wall.
She might have managed to ignore them if one of the doors hadn’t been slightly ajar, revealing the corkboard behind it.
And who knew what sorts of things a writer’s corkboard might find pinned to its mysterious self?
The Puritan gentleman pushed on that door farthest from him, swearing quite briskly as he did so, until he finally managed to wrestle the door open, that time with a more audible squeak of protest. He collapsed back against the still-closed side, his hand over his heart, gasping for breath.
She would have asked him if he needed help, but he was looking pretty theatrical about it all.
That, and she was too shocked by what she was seeing to do anything but stare in horrified fascination.
It wasn’t a university white board filled with professorial scrawls that dared students to decode and decipher what was written there on pain of a failing grade.
It wasn’t even one of those dream boards where people put pictures of places they wanted to visit and spendy cars they wanted to own.
No, what she was looking at was a first-rate serial killer setup.
Dates, names, strings connecting the two and leading to all sorts of other things—
Well, maybe a disorganized serial killer who was determined to outsmart an overzealous detective by mapping out every degree of separation between a victim and their circle of acquaintances, no doubt for very nefarious ends—
She backed up into the counter, clutched the edge of it, and grasped frantically for something to do that wasn’t running off into the afternoon, shrieking like a banshee. She decided a little self-soothing couldn’t go wrong, so she wrapped her arms around herself and held on for dear life.
It was that moment that TD Piaget walked into his kitchen, dressed sensibly in jeans and a sweatshirt, and rubbing a towel over his dripping hair.
He pushed his bangs out of his eyes and froze at the sight of the open board and the Vanna-White-like character gesturing at it as if he thought they might soon want to buy a vowel.
“Damn ye, Fornicator,” said another voice, “what do ye here?”
Harriet made note of the new addition in the person of a different Elizabethan gentleman who had simply appeared out of nowhere, dressed very nicely in an outfit any Shakespearean actor worth his salt would have salivated over.
She heard someone whimper. She was fairly certain that someone had been her.
“That is Wrestling-with-Fornication, you blackguard,” the Puritan said stiffly. He twitched back his cloak and drew a rapier. “En garde, if you have any idea what that means.”
Harriet realized TD Piaget had reached over and taken hold of her hand only after she felt him tugging on her.
“Let’s go.”
But all those strings and names and … well, and the tiny hearts that were scattered everywhere which were a little adorable and somewhat reassuring, but perhaps she was getting ahead of herself.
She looked at TD Piaget who was watching her with wide eyes and wasn’t sure where to start.
She was fairly certain it should be with discussing the corporeal status of one of the gentlemen haunting—er, visiting the kitchens who had just launched into the humming of a tune.
“Would you cease with that off-key caterwauling,” exclaimed the Puritan ghost.
“I am perfectly in tune at every moment,” the Elizabethan ghost said huffily. “Ye’ve no sense of pitch yerself!”
“Now,” TD Piaget insisted. “Whilst we still can.”
She looked at him. “Is that Greensleeves? I can’t tell.”
“You cannot tell, mistress,” the Puritan gentleman said curtly, “because he cannot keep himself to the proper notes!”
Harriet would have agreed, but she was too stunned by the man speaking to her to do anything but look at TD Piaget and wonder if she might need to sit down very soon.
“Let’s go,” he repeated.
“I have to turn the kettle off,” she managed. “Safety first, you know.”
He smiled and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug him, punch him, or hide behind him.
She pulled the kettle off the base, poured out the water just to be safe, then didn’t argue when TD Piaget took her hand again.
She managed to grab her backpack and coat as he pulled her from the kitchen, keeping them both well out of the way of the flashing rapiers.
“I didn’t just see what I just saw,” she said.
“Neither did I,” he said promptly. “What say you to supper?”
“Is that the sound of metal ringing?”
“Who knows?”
“Were those swords?”
“The saints preserve us if they were.” He picked up his duffle bag and ushered her out his front door. “Let’s leave them to sorting things by themselves, shall we?”
She’d rarely heard a better idea. What she did know for certain was that she was going to need to start a new list that contained disembodied perils to avoid not just in Bradford-Next-the-Stow, but absolutely everywhere else in England.
And given the day she’d had, she suspected that list might take up an entire notebook.
She left the building with a man who didn’t look at all nefarious, though he certainly seemed to attract unsettling things: stalkers, ghosts, and wigs that didn’t stay where they were meant to go. She refused to think about the size of notebook she would have to have to do any of that justice.
Mystery writers.
What had she been thinking?