Chapter 8 #3
She nodded. “Understandable. It’s the workshop on craft.”
“As in a pair of hours spent with glue and paper and colored pencils?” he asked hopefully.
She shot him a look that he knew he fully deserved.
“Writing?” he asked grimly.
“That is what you do, after all.”
“I don’t suppose you’d want to continue to be my assistant for it,” he said, congratulating himself on a stroke of genius.
“To hide behind you or protect you?”
“The latter, assuredly.” He paused. “And if I could be so bold, why don’t you allow me to do that for you from now on.”
“Hide behind me or have me hide behind you?”
He smiled in spite of himself. “Again, the latter, assuredly.”
“Unless harpies are involved.”
“Well,” he allowed, “I might let you defend me then.” He held out his hand. “Shall we seal the deal?”
She looked at him for a moment or two, then put her hand in his. “Deal,” she said, nodding firmly.
He found that he didn’t particularly want to release her hand. He looked at her, sweet faery with outrageous hair that she was, and wondered if it might be too soon to ask her if she’d like to go out on a proper date.
“Comrades in arms?” she added.
He felt his mouth fall open slightly and wondered abruptly if he’d lost all his appeal. “Erm—”
“I mean you are who you are,” she said quickly, shaking his hand again, “and I’m just your lowly assistant.”
“Well—”
“Miss Brewster!”
Harriet pulled her hand away and shoved them both in her pockets as if she’d been guilty of something dire.
“Yes?” Harriet asked uneasily.
Francine Collins reappeared out of nowhere.
Sam would have been—and likely should have been—startled by the woman’s ability to simply arrive without warning, but perhaps she’d made a second career out of sneaking up on her authors to make certain they were busy scribbling instead of traipsing off through the centuries doing things that weren’t scribbling.
“I had a cot established in my chambers,” Francine said in tones a Regency maven couldn’t have matched on her best day. “You will take it and we shall leave our charge to scurry off to his own bedchamber and have a decent night’s rest.”
Harriet nodded immediately and Sam couldn’t blame her, nor could he fault her for the slightly panicked look she sent him over her shoulder as she was escorted inside Francine’s bedchamber. He waited until they had turned to look at him before he made them both a low bow.
“Sleep well, ladies.”
Francine almost smiled at him, he was fairly certain. Harriet did, then shot him another look of slight panic as she was shut inside a spot he imagined would rival Buckingham Palace for security. He let out the breath he realized he’d been holding.
Then realized he might have breathed easily too soon.
“I know.”
He looked in alarm at Francine who had reopened the door. He put on his best ‘twasn’t-me smile, but it landed as it usually landed: badly. He cleared his throat.
“The depth and breadth of your knowledge about many things has always been my lodestar,” he said, inclining his head politely. If he peeked at her briefly to see how that had arrived, who could blame him?
“You’d best hope yours is equal to tomorrow morning,” Francine said before she sent him another warning look and closed her door.
Sam rubbed his hands over his face, then dragged his hands through his hair, but neither provided him with any insights on exactly what the hell he was going to say on the morrow to a roomful of writers who had paid good money to listen to his brother bang on about craft.
He trudged off to his own bedchamber before that thought settled fully on his head and crushed him.
He let himself into his own chamber and found it reassuringly empty, which would at least allow him to sleep without worrying about thugs doing him in whilst he was dreaming of scones with clotted cream.
He tossed his bag on the spare bed so Theo would have to move it, no doubt accompanied by rousing curses, when he arrived in what would no doubt be the middle of the night to find his nest in need of a bit of rearranging.
Assuming he arrived in the middle of the night.
Sam was, as he hardly had to remind himself more than once an hour, going to kill his twin.
If he had to rescue him first, he would, but the end would be the same.
It was better to think about that than worry about the fact that his brother was now twenty-four hours late and Theo was never late.
If they were running behind for their standing lunch date with their sire, it was always his fault, not his brother’s.
He was beginning to worry, and he never worried.
But first things first and that was to figure out how the hell he was going to get through the morning with bollocking up his brother’s twenty-first-century career.
He was decently well-read and he certainly had an affinity for the Bard, but that hardly extended to how one went about writing mysteries.
To say that he was generally surprised by who’d done it was badly understating things.
Then again, he usually found himself too distracted by things calling to him from the kitchens to sit through very many mysteries on telly.
Or perhaps he simply had too many mysteries writ large in his own life to find fictional ones compelling. Who knew?
What he did know was that he was in deep trouble where the morning’s mischief was concerned. What he needed was a writer to … help …
He sat down on his bed with a thump. There were times he was genuinely surprised by how well things worked out for him.
He had a writer right there, didn’t he, and one who might possibly want to help his doddering, possibly pungent self.
Perhaps she could be prevailed upon to give him a few ideas, then, should the unthinkable happen and Theo be late, help him through the gauntlet that he was certain would be a workshop on craft.
And in return, he would do whatever was necessary to see that Theo helped her with her own endeavors.
From a distance, of course, because his brother absolutely wasn’t good enough for her.
In fact, he could volunteer to be their go-between, delivering messages and delicate edibles to her, then returning to beat on his brother and extract more useful details on craft for his favorite lock-picking list maker.
But that would come later. For the moment, he would ask Harriet to help him with details for the morrow, perhaps even the workshop itself, which would leave him with nothing to do but sit back and look aloof and slightly intelligent.
Not too intelligent, of course, because there was no point in giving his brother an impossible ideal to live up to down the road.
He checked his watch, then stretched out on his bed to rest until he thought Theo’s garrison captain of an agent might have drifted off into peaceful slumber.
Then he would throw himself upon the mercy of the Faery court and plead his case.