Chapter 29
Twenty-nine
Harriet stood in front of a bulletin board containing love stories that spanned the ages and came to a decision.
She was going to need more string.
Actually, that was only one of the realizations she’d had already that morning.
She’d woken up in her husband’s arms, happily wished him a very good morning, then left him to arranging a few things in the great wide world of modern London while she’d come into the kitchen and contemplated what to do with herself.
She had thought, all those many days ago when she’d left her home, luggage and dreams in tow, that what she wanted was a small, simple life. Not too many possessions, a bit of travel, maybe a modest career writing mysteries about tabbies and teacups.
She had assumed England might provide her with a taste of one or two of those things, then send her back to Nebraska where she would look for the rest. She would have returned home more seasoned, no doubt, and with a slightly expanded perspective of mysteries and how to write them, but surely nothing paranormal.
Instead, her life had become full of things she’d never thought it would, most notably a gorgeous guy with a killer smile who had a way of pulling her into his arms and holding her so she felt safe and cherished and loved.
She heard the front door open and shut, then corporeal footsteps come swiftly down the hallway into the kitchen, carrying a bit of sunlight with them. She threw herself into her husband’s arms because, well, how could she not?
“I missed you,” she said with a smile.
“And I missed you, which is why I came back so quickly.”
“Where did you go?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said, looking as if he might have had a secret he could hardly stand to keep to himself. “Anything new here?”
“My mother texted me this morning with a tidbit.”
Sam moved to lean back against the stove, pulling her with him and keeping his arms around her. “Is leaning enough, or should I be sitting for this?”
She smiled and shook her head. “It’s nothing nefarious. She was just making a few genealogical connections she thought we’d be interested in. Do you remember Francine Collins?”
“Sounds familiar,” he said, frowning thoughtfully.
She pursed her lips. “Very funny. Anyway, it turns out that my cousin MacKenzie is related to her by way of her father’s third ex-wife. Miss Collins is, if you look at it the right way, Mac’s great-aunt.” She paused. “Maybe a couple of greats. I’m still working that out.”
“Are you close?”
“With Miss Collins?” she asked politely. “I’ve worn her pajamas, so I’d have to say yes.”
“The did look lovely on you,” Sam noted, “but you know I’m talking about your cousin.”
“She’s my best friend, actually.”
“She’ll miss you, then,” Sam said quietly. “We’ll have to have her come visit regularly.”
“I’d like that,” Harriet agreed, then she considered. “She actually did come to London for a couple of weeks every year when we were growing up, but I didn’t pay any attention to it past loathing her for it.”
Sam smiled briefly. “And now here you are.”
“Ironic, right? And here’s some more of that: when she came over every year, guess who she was staying with?”
“If you tell me Francine Collins, I’ll have to find a chair.”
She smiled. “You’ll be fine. I’m guessing, now that I’ve slept in her fanciest pajamas and we have a history together, that I can maybe ask Francine if she was the one to encourage Mac to write her play.”
“She has a play?”
“She’s written a couple, though she actually has a degree in theater performance.”
“She will do more than come visit, then,” Sam said seriously. “We do, after all, know people in Stratford.”
She smiled. “I like being included in your life.”
He took a deep breath. “If I start telling you how much I love having you in that life, I’ll weep. I’ll try to put it in verse later.”
“Poets, playwrights, writers, and actors. I think we have most of the arts covered.”
“Don’t forget music,” Sam said. “And your quartet who’ve already alerted me to the fact that we’re definitely going to need room for a piano for you.”
She shivered and decided that could wait for further discussion at a later time. She closed her eyes and rested her head against Sam’s shoulder for a bit, enjoying the peace and quiet, then she sighed. “I was thinking about something else this morning.”
“My glorious crown?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Well, that too, but also about that list we made at my parents’ cottage that night you almost did Jackson in with your sword.”
He laughed very briefly. “Thank you for that concession to my skill, and what about that list?”
She lifted her head and looked at him seriously. “I’m thinking maybe we missed someone sketchy from the conference.”
“Theo?”
“You’re funny and no, not Theo. We never put down the guy who was in the hallway that night when you confessed your true identity to me.”
“And had to stop myself from throwing myself to my knees right there and begging you to be mine?”
She smiled into his very lovely gray eyes. “You, my lord Samuel, are a hopeless romantic.”
“And you, my lady Harriet, are the most gorgeous fairy ever created,” he said with a smile before he kissed her quite thoroughly for her trouble, then leaned back and looped his arms around her waist. He studied her for a moment or two, then frowned slightly.
“Are you thinking of that git from upstairs at the inn?”
She nodded. “That’s the one.”
Sam looked off into the middle of the kitchen for a moment or two, then at her.
“Well, he completely ignored me—well, when I was pretending to be Theo, even though Theo’s name was splashed over every bloody piece of marketing there, so …
” He shrugged. “’Tis probably nothing but professional jealousy. ”
“Do you think so?”
“Not a thing’ll come of it,” he said confidently. “But we can put him on your list if you like. Later.”
“Later?”
“I went out and had something made for you this morning that you need to see first.” He dug around in one of his pockets, then held out a pair of keys on a ring.
“What are they to?”
He nodded toward the bulletin board. “One of them is to that.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Really?”
“I thought perhaps you might want to see to a few real stories whilst you’re working on your fiction.”
“How did you know?”
He smiled. “Because, my lovely Harriet, you talk in your sleep.”
She laughed. “I do not.”
“You don’t,” he agreed. “I just thought you might be intrigued by plots and schemes and little perfect moments that happen to real people. You don’t have to—”
“No,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the keys. “I’d love to do some research on real people. But you can still put the hearts on matches successfully made.” She looked at the keys, then at him. “Why are there two?”
“One’s to the pinboard,” he said carefully, “and one’s to the safe in the salon where we keep our copies of parish records and such.”
“The motherlode,” she breathed.
He nodded.
“I’ll keep it secret and safe,” she promised.
“I didn’t doubt it,” he said, then he hesitated. “I have something else for you.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Very,” he agreed. He took her hand and pulled her over to the table. He gestured to three envelopes that lay there, then smiled. “You choose.”
She looked at him carefully, then reached out and chose the middle one.
“Open it,” he said, his eyes bright with excitement.
She did, then pulled out plane tickets to Florence. She looked at Sam in surprise. “Really?”
“Gelato,” he said reverently.
“I’ve never actually been to Italy.”
“Neither have I, but I’ve heard tell of its wonders.”
“What’s in the other two envelopes?”
He shrugged. “You can look if you like.”
She opened them one at a time to reveal more plane tickets to both Rome and Venice. She considered, then looked at him. “Hedging your bets?”
“Absolutely. What say you?”
“Can you refund the ones we don’t use?”
“They’re from a budget airline,” he said nonchalantly. “But I imagine Derrick can have them trade us for later dates, if we want.” He shook his head and shivered. “The things he can do should likely frighten us all.”
She considered the tickets, then looked at him. “How will we find our way?”
“You’ll speak Latin and I’ll use the map Oliver gave me this morning. Apparently he and Mairead have been to Florence several times already to gawk at art.”
“It is her era, after all,” Harriet said faintly. “Did Oliver help you with the tickets?”
“Lord Fulbert, rather.”
“I wonder if they have ghosts in Florence.”
“Hopefully just pastries and gelato, but I suppose we’ll see.”
She looked at their tickets, then at him. “We’re supposed to be at the airport in two hours, you know.”
“I know.” He took a deep breath. “Will you hold my hand on the plane?”
“You aren’t afraid,” she stated, on the off chance he was a little nervous.
He chewed on whatever it was he wanted to say for so long that she decided it might be best to just take charge. She leaned up and kissed him.
“I’ve got you,” she promised.
He laughed a little—and a bit uncomfortably—then put his arms around her. “I can’t let Jackson best me in a tally of frequent flier miles, so I’ll bear this manfully.”
“I have the feeling, my love, that once you see the view, I’ll have a hard time getting you back on the ground.”
He froze. “What did you call me?”
“My love,” she said with a smile. “And don’t look at me that way. We’ll miss our flight if we don’t go now.”
He considered. “I suppose they have darkened corners in Florence.”
“I imagine they do.”
“We’re going to find them all and I’m going to reward you properly.” He smiled. “My love.”
She smiled, then followed her ray of sunshine back to their bedroom to toss a few things into a bag.
Ten hours, four gelatos, and a dinner later—ordered in her rusty Italian that she suspected was going to be polished very quickly—she found herself walking with her husband down a lovely side street in a city that was older than he was.
That was, she imagined, going to be more common an occurrence than she’d suspected it might be.
Sam had held her hand on the plane, true, but he’d informed her breathlessly that it wasn’t from terror, it was from a desire for her not to feel ignored as he kept his face pressed against the window and occasionally muttered things she was definitely going to translate very soon.
She suspected, though, that they hadn’t been curses but rather expressions of amazement.
She wished his parents could have seen him.
Then again, with the way he seemed to head home for visits, she just might have the chance to tell them herself.
“Tired yet?”
She looked at him and shook her head with a smile. “Not yet. You?”
“There are gelato shops still offering their wares,” he said solemnly. “I wouldn’t want to rob them of our commerce.”
She wasn’t sure she could possibly eat anything else, but she also wasn’t a medieval lord on vacation so she nodded happily and continued on with him.
“What do you want to do tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sleep late, then open the door and go outside.”
“Where?”
He shrugged. “No idea.”
She put her hand to her throat. “Without a plan?”
He took her face in his hands, smiled, then kissed her. “Yes, my beloved Harriet, without a plan. We’re going to walk out the front door and get lost.”
“Do you really want to say that here?”
“I’ll get us home safely, love. Leave that to me.”
Well, she had before and it had worked out well enough—no, it had worked out better than she could have dreamed up during any of those afternoons when she’d wished for a life that was full of sunlight and laughter and the love of a man who looked at her in a way that said very clearly that he thought she was worth the wait.
She walked out into the middle of a beautiful piazza in a lovely city full of old things and realized her husband wasn’t paying attention to possible icy delights across the way, he was looking at her.
“Glorious fairy from the realms of myth,” he noted.
“Medieval lord’s son with spurs on his heels,” she returned.
He smiled into her eyes. “A love story fit for the world’s stage, aye?”
She couldn’t have agreed more.
She gave her hand to the man in the starring role of her particular play and walked across moon-drenched cobblestones with him.
She wasn’t sure how any of the other acts could possibly top what had happened on stage already, but she was willing to wait and see.