Chapter 8 #2
He sat back finally and was pleased to see that Harriet looked slightly less unsettled. Food had obviously helped, which left him with only sleep and something beautiful left to see to that night.
“Do you want to know who I saw?”
Perhaps those other items would need to wait a bit longer. He couldn’t begin to express how thoroughly he didn’t want to discuss what she had seen, but he suspected that might be the only way to encourage her to let things lie.
For himself, he had no trouble speculating on who might be trailing after him, beginning with Jackson Kilchurn V and quite possibly ending with Oliver Phillips.
Perhaps he could convince her to limit her investigations to the ghosts in his kitchen.
That would leave only him with the more corporeal souls to elude.
“What I want,” he said, dragging himself back to the present moment, “is for you not to get hurt, which in a general sense means you should keep at your investigations only if I’m there to see to your safety.”
She blinked several times, as if the words made no sense to her. “But why would you do that?”
“Because that is what good men do,” he said seriously.
“Is it?” she asked quietly.
He nodded. “Please allow me to do that for you.”
She looked thoroughly bemused. “My brothers are bossy like you are.”
He realized abruptly that if she was lumping him in with her brothers, he had work yet to do. To what end he had no idea, but he was absolutely certain that a man who’d managed to take a faery out for even the most casual of suppers had certain standards to maintain.
He realized Harriet was holding out a slip of paper. He took it without thinking, opened it, then read the note he’d written to himself and shoved in his coat pocket on his way to his appointment in the past.
“You dropped that.”
“Research,” he said promptly.
“I thought as much.” She considered, then looked at him. “You really do think your kitchen is haunted?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Did you see the ghost in the Puritan getup?”
“I did,” Sam admitted, “but he’s new.”
“He was in front of that paranormal shop in the alley, too.”
“A busy man today.”
“Funny that he seems to be following you, isn’t it?”
Sam smiled a bit sickly, but what was he going to say? He was accustomed to a particular quartet of shades cluttering up the kitchen table, but that they were recruiting new members for their merry band of matchmakers was a bit alarming.
“None of this was on my list, you know.”
“You were going to tell me earlier what was on it,” he said, leaping on the change of conversational topic like, well, himself on a snack after a trying journey to anywhere where modern foods did not linger. “Do women with big hair and high heels find themselves on it?”
She smiled briefly. “Actually no, but they probably should. I was mostly concerned with dodgy vicars, angry gardeners, and ladies who devise schemes while making quiche. I was also hoping to avoid anything to do with mistaken identities, especially when twins are involved.”
He was positively thrilled not to be swallowing at that moment. “Interesting.”
“I also absolutely refuse to believe in anything paranormal.” She looked at him seriously. “That kind of thing is just too farfetched, don’t you think?”
He imagined he wasn’t the best one to ask, mostly because he was who he was and his laptop battery was generally being drained by an Elizabethan relative who watched too many American sitcoms.
“We’re in England,” he offered instead. “Gobs of historical sites with countless lives lived within their walls. Who’s to say what’s been left lingering behind?”
She smiled. “That’s poetic.”
He smiled in return because he couldn’t help himself. She was just so earnest and lovely and willing to soldier on in spite of what he imagined were situations that had to feel a bit overwhelming.
“That, and I’m too old for faery tales,” she said, rearranging her silverware into a tidy pile. She glanced at him. “Ghosts and things seem like they should belong only in that sort of story, don’t you think?”
He shrugged helplessly, then opted for a change of topic. “Is it rude to ask your age?”
“Twenty-eight. You?”
“I turned thirty-one last month.”
“And yet so spry,” she said lightly.
“I know what you thought before,” he grumbled. “Old, creaking, disagreeable. Am I missing anything?”
“Brilliant, gifted, witty,” she corrected. “I don’t remember saying anything to the contrary.”
Sam decided he could most definitely let all those things continue on directly past him and out into the lovely spring twilight. Not having heard the compliments first-hand would make Theo sad and that he simply couldn’t have.
He was, he had to admit, a very good brother.
“Did you always want to be a writer?”
He was also becoming a rather unhappy brother and all of that had to do with developing a hearty dislike of the subterfuge. Fortunately for him, he knew just whom to blame. Or beat on with a sword. Perhaps one right after the other.
“Ah, well,” he said, trying to put on his best Theo imitation and failing badly. “I like taking on new characters. Seeing the world through their eyes and all that.”
“You’re very good at it.”
He tucked that compliment away as yet something else his brother wouldn’t need to hear unless he’d had a terrible time at Ightam Mote. As for anything else, he knew firsthand that Theo’s books were less cut from whole cloth and more dressed up events from their very real adventures.
“Blessed with a good imagination, rather.” He checked his watch, then looked at her. “Shall we try to make the early train?”
“If you like.”
What he was finding he liked was simply sitting with her in a comfortable spot, well-fed and watered, enjoying what in a different moment might be considered a rather decent first date.
“Or perhaps a few more minutes,” he said. He cast about for something to discuss that had nothing to do with ghosts or ruffians or paranormal shenanigans she absolutely wouldn’t want to hear about. “Tell me three skills you’re proud of.”
She considered. “Picking locks, doing magic tricks, and making lists.”
He smiled. “I’ve benefitted from the first and would like to see the other two.”
“I’ll cheat at cards just for you the next time we play poker. What about you? Well, besides the ability to deck yourself out as a Regency gentleman.”
“Don’t think tromping about in those shoes isn’t a skill,” he said archly. “Though it was the loose cobblestone that caught me up, not the heels.”
“Thank you for saving me from broken bones.”
“My pleasure.”
She looked at him expectantly.
“Erm,” he said, wondering what he could possibly say that wouldn’t sound daft. “I don’t have any points on my driving license.”
“Is that a skill?”
He smiled briefly. “I daresay it is. As for the other, I can see ghosts, also pick locks, and get us safely back to the inn.”
He imagined any of the more esoteric skills he’d learned in order to keep himself alive in various times not his own could remain discreetly unmentioned.
She pursed her lips. “I think you’re hedging, but I won’t put the screws to you tonight.”
“Tomorrow is another day,” he agreed. “And perhaps we should prepare for that by heading north. I think what we both could use most is a decent night’s sleep.”
She nodded and excused herself to go to the loo.
Sam watched her go not because he was worried she wouldn’t come back, but because he’d promised her he would get her safely back to Bradford.
Though he fully intended to keep his eyes peeled for stray cousins with mischief on their minds, he was slightly concerned about the lad Harriet had claimed was following him.
He and Theo had run afoul of a few less-savoury types over the centuries, though they generally managed to keep them safely contained in their proper times and places.
He didn’t want to think about the possibility that they’d failed in that without realizing it.
He crawled off his bench as Harriet returned, then picked up their gear and walked with her to the door.
He would keep that weather eye out, make certain Harriet was safely not in the vicinity of anything else unsettling, then have a very serious conversation with his brother about things they’d perhaps been overlooking for too long.
He was beginning to understand his sire’s fixation with keeping his family safe more clearly than he’d ever thought he might.
Unfortunately, translating that to the current century was turning out to be a bit more difficult than he had expected.
Three hours later, he was walking down the passageway to his bedchamber, Harriet at his side, when a door suddenly opened and Francine Collins strode out and planted herself in front of them.
“Where,” she asked crisply, “have you two been?”
“Ah,” he managed.
“I got lost,” Harriet said suddenly. “Mr. Piaget was kind enough to take me to dinner to help me deal with the discomfort.”
Francine paused, then frowned. “A decent display of chivalry, I suppose. At least he’s here in time to prepare for his workshop tomorrow.”
“Workshop?” Sam echoed.
Francine leveled a look at him. “The workshop you’re holding tomorrow morning. You’ll find the particulars on the schedule I sent you two months ago, a schedule I’m certain you have with you. Be early, sir, if you please.”
Sam nodded as if he fully intended to be early, which he would be—to Stratford or London or anywhere that wasn’t a ballroom full of writers expecting him to lead them in some sort of seminar on how to get words down on paper.
He was tempted to check his phone to see if a text had snuck in whilst he’d been otherwise occupied in chatting up the sweet and adorable faery standing next to him, but he did possess some small amount of self-control. He could wait a bit longer.
He smiled politely as Francine made her way back inside her lair, then looked at Harriet. “Workshop?”
“Didn’t you read the schedule?”
“I was distracted by research.”