Chapter 8
Eight
Sam walked away from the bar and hoped he would find Harriet where he’d left her.
Hoping he wouldn’t find their table overrun with patrons of a more incorporeal sort was probably asking for too much, but fortunately for his peace of mind and the sanity of his brother’s admirer, there were no specters cluttering up their very worn and charming pub benches.
He set a glass down in front of his companion, then slid in across from her. He had a sip of water, encouraged her to do the same, then sat back and wondered just what the hell he was going to do now.
He wasn’t a complete loss at comforting women.
He had four sisters, after all, and he’d never once failed to hoist a sword in their collective defense.
He refused to revisit the fact that he’d generally been the one who had gotten into as much mischief as possible and his sisters had been the ones to rescue him, but the principle still stood.
The problem was that he could almost hear the wheels turning in Harriet’s lovely head.
If he hadn’t been so damned tired he might have come up with some believable tale, but it was hard to do anything but admit that he’d gone back to Jane Austen’s era to straighten up something that had needed it.
Stumbling out of that gate and almost flattening his lovely shadow hadn’t been in his plans for the day, especially dressed as he had been, but that was in the past where he couldn’t change it.
He had the feeling that the jig was close to being up.
He put on his most soothing smile—it had occasionally worked on his mother, so he’d made a point of keeping it in tip-top condition—and turned it on his guest. Besides, for all he knew, she was still suffering from jetlag.
He’d never experienced the same, remarkably, but that was one of those things he and Theo had sworn they would get around to when they had a chance.
Thirty-one years old and he’d never been on a plane.
Even his sire would have lifted an eyebrow over that.
“What was that?”
He decided there was something to be said for a woman who marched right into the fray. “The ghosts?”
She nodded.
“The flat is haunted.”
“I’ll say.”
He smiled in spite of himself, but suspected that ghosts were only part of what had unnerved her. Perhaps he could do his own bit of marching.
“The pinboard?” he offered.
She nodded and took an unsteady breath. “All those strings, dates, people …”
“Research.”
“Then why are there hearts over some of those names?”
Because those were matches successfully made, was what he should have said but couldn’t.
“Not that they weren’t a little adorable,” she added.
“Thank you,” he said. “It was my idea.”
She frowned. “Who else’s idea would it be?”
Damn it, he was too tired to be careful which was indeed a very dangerous place to be. He attempted a light chuckle. If it sounded more like he was choking, well, it had been that sort of day so far.
“One has to keep track of relationships, doesn’t one?” he said, opting for a diversion. “The play’s the thing and all that.”
“Don’t you mean the book?”
“It feels the same sometimes.”
She had a sip of her water, then set the glass down carefully, as if she fully expected to do it poorly and send it rolling off the table. She nodded, then looked off into the distance, studying it as if she might find answers to her questions there.
Sam wasn’t entirely sure what to do to improve matters.
He considered his mother’s strategy when she was about the work of curing the world’s wounds—food, sleep, something beautiful—but he wasn’t sure how those would set with the woman across from him.
After all, how was it man went about tending a faery who looked as if she’d not only rolled from her leafy bower to find the world a very sorry place indeed, but had looked behind her to find that everything she knew, all her familiar flowers and soft perches and beautiful batteries of snowdrops, had suddenly disappeared and left her with naught but weeds?
He spared a moment to wish for pen and paper to jot that down so he might charge his brother an eye-watering sum to use it in his next book, then forged ahead with the matter at hand.
He had a pale, quietly lovely woman to rescue from the aftermath of unsettling events she never should have been subjected to, so rescue her he would.
Supper interrupted his plans, but perhaps that was all to the good.
If nothing else, it would tick the first item off his mum’s list and perhaps allow Harriet a moment to regroup.
He smiled his thanks at the barmaid who’d brought them their meal so quickly, then looked to find Harriet staring at hers as if she hadn’t a clue where to start.
“Eat, Harriet,” he said soothingly. “Things will look better after a meal.”
She focused on him. “Will they?”
“My mother claims ‘tis so and she always has excellent advice about that sort of thing.”
“Are you a nefarious actor?”
He almost choked on his water. “Me?”
She picked up her fork again and pointed it at him like a sword. “Yes, you,” she said crisply, sounding as if she might be rallying slightly. “Do you engage regularly in nefarious doings?”
He decided abruptly that he really should have dated more before the current moment.
Well, he’d actually dated an enormous number of women, but Rule Number Two said not more than once and he and Theo were nothing if not sticklers for the rules.
Perhaps if he’d broken that rule a time or two, he might have had a better idea what to do in his current circs.
“I’m not,” he managed, “and I don’t.”
He decided he could leave aside skirmishes fought for king, country, and family during the years he’d been squiring for his uncles Jake and Robin.
He could absolutely leave in the past a particularly ugly encounter with ruffians whilst he and Theo had been traveling with their old brother Connor to escort their aunt Abigail and a pair of her daughters to Artane.
He definitely had the scars to prove that last one.
He was also very aware that the current day was not without its share of dangers.
Leaving his very lethal sword languishing under the sofa whilst he was out in the wilds of London with nothing but his fists gave him pause even though he had studied various forms of fighting and he trained with his brother regularly in both modern and medieval forms of warfare.
At the moment, he suddenly felt as if he should have been carrying something heavy and sharp to defend the woman sitting across from him.
He was beginning to understand his father’s opinions about the safety of those in his care in a new and uncomfortable way.
“You know you’re being followed, right?”
He blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “Sorry, what?”
“Followed,” she said distinctly. “You. You are being followed.”
“London’s a busy place,” he managed. It occurred to him suddenly that she knew that because she had been following him.
The thought of her trailing after him as he went about business she absolutely couldn’t get involved in sent chills down his spine.
“Perhaps it would be best,” he began carefully, “to remain with the tour group next time, aye?”
She looked at him blankly. “But you were being followed.”
Sam had absolutely no idea how one went about encouraging a modern woman to listen to him when he commanded her to stay inside.
It was no wonder his sire simply sighed lightly when his mother protested that she knew how to use a sword.
She did, as it happened, but … well, he understood his father’s sighs and indulged in one himself.
He looked at Harriet, rumpled faery that she was, and suspected that he was going to have trouble getting her to remain where he’d left her.
“I’ll keep a weather eye out for us,” he promised.
“Someone else said that today,” she said absently, then she looked at her supper. “Thank you for dinner.”
“Which you haven’t yet eaten.”
“I was waiting for you to react to my news that you were being followed.”
He managed a smile. “I’m sure it was coincidence.” Coincidence, any number of cousins, perhaps a disgruntled villain or two from times past. He hardly dared speculate, so he took a firm hold on his cutlery and nodded encouragingly. “Eat in peace, my lady.”
“You sound like a character from your books.”
If she only knew. He smiled, shrugged, and applied himself to his roast potatoes which were surprisingly decent.
“You aren’t going to tell me anything about what I saw today, are you?”
He stopped with a potato halfway to his mouth, looked at her, then attempted a dodge. “After supper perhaps.”
She scowled at him, then set to her fish and chips with at least diligence if not enthusiasm.
Sam couldn’t say the same thing. If food was before him, he ate it without hesitation.
Perhaps that came from knowing, even as the son of a rich and powerful man, that there might be times when the stores were not so plentiful, so it was best to make culinary hay whilst the sun shone.
If he and his brother had applied that also to investigating things they should have left alone, well, he imagined no one would take the time to remember the follies of his youth.
He finished his meal, then looked at Harriet’s plate to find it wasn’t nearly as razed as he would have hoped. He watched her simply switch plates with him and couldn’t bring himself to argue with her. He did, however, shoot her a look which she answered with a faint smile.
“I had enough, thank you. It was delicious.”
He wasn’t opposed to a snack after supper, so he set to the other half of her meal with a bit less gusto but no less enjoyment. His mother’s cook would have been unreasonably envious of everything he’d eaten, that much he knew.