Chapter 4
4
Thursday, 9:12 a.m.
R ain batted against the roof a few feet above Samantha’s head. It wasn’t like Florida rain, which tended to be torrential and generally brief. Rather, it pattered and hesitated, roaring and then whispering as it meandered its way down the long valley. She sat back in the Louis the Fifteenth chair she’d discovered, just listening.
Footsteps thudded up the narrow, unadorned stairs that led to the Canniebrae attic. With a short smile she reached over and flicked off her flashlight. Gray edged in from the small, square window at the front of the long, low-ceilinged room, but here against the wall she knew quite well that she was cloaked in gloom and shadow.
The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs. From where she sat she could see him quite clearly – or his silhouette, anyway – lean and tall, his black hair caressing the collar of his brown leather jacket, and his jeans stuffed into the tops of his old hiking boots. Six-foot two of brilliant, witty, toe-curling English aristocrat. And all of him belonged to her.
Of course the whole ownership thing was a two-way street, and that was what she’d been having the hardest time with. As a cat burglar she succeeded by never becoming entangled in anything – and that included both traps and relationships. But as Rick kept reminding her, she wasn’t a cat burglar any longer. She’d gone directly from free as the wind to becoming engaged. Or it felt that way, at least. The past year had been a whirlwind of blowing debris she’d never seen coming.
“I think you should be aware that if you jump out at me from the dark you may get clocked,” Rick commented.
She snorted. “You aren’t spooked, are you?”
He turned his light in her direction, making her squint as it flashed across her eyes. “My girl lurking in the dark in an old attic with a storm thundering outside? What’s spooky about that?”
“Lower the light, will you?” she returned. “I don’t like being blinded like that. Yes, I know I’m safe here. Not being able to see just makes me jumpy.”
Immediately he lowered the light to her knees and picked his way through centuries of clutter to squat beside her. “I thought you were going to do a floor plan study before you started exploring.”
Evidently Rick was getting to know her methods pretty well. “I was going to, but when I took a peek up here last night I discovered that Rick Addison’s ancestors owned some furniture worth a couple of grand, a painting that looks to be a Joshua Reynolds, and a first edition of Treasure Island. That’s just in the ten square feet around me right now. Aside from that, you brought me up here to meet your family. I’m meeting them. I’m just starting back in the thirteenth century and working my way forward.”
He panned his flashlight around them. “A Joshua Reynolds? Where?”
Not surprised he would focus in on the artwork, she flicked on her own light and pointed it at the opposite wall. “There. Behind the pianoforte.”
As he walked over, tucking his light beneath his chin to free both his hands, he sent her another glance. “There’s a portrait gallery in the long hallway, and a couple of journals from a great-great or two in the library. The attic is where the staff moved the valuables from the west wing back when I was a kid, but it’s mostly for discards.” Carefully he lifted the wrapped canvas from behind the old pianoforte. “With the occasional treasure thrown in, apparently, because I don’t remember this one.”
Untying the twine over the blanket, he peeled back the material. Samantha had already looked, but any opportunity to view a Reynolds painting, especially one that hadn’t seen the light of day in a hundred or more years, was welcome. For a long moment the two of them gazed at the pretty, rosy-cheeked young woman standing in a room draped in deep reds and greens.
“It does look like a Reynolds,” he agreed, shooting an annoyed glance toward the ceiling. “Isn’t there any electricity up here?”
“Nope. We’re living the way your ancestors lived when they were in the attic.”
Rick snorted. “As if my ancestors ever deigned to climb into the attic. Will you help me get this downstairs so we can take a better look at it?”
“Sure. And you might want to mount an expedition in here. It looks like your great-greats collected some nice stuff without realizing what they were doing. There are some damn treasures in here, Brit. And those are the discards.”
They each took an end of the four-foot painting and carried it gingerly down the steep, narrow stairs and into the main part of the house. The power seemed to be out again, and the light wasn’t much better than it had been in the attic. As they reached an upstairs sitting room and set the painting down on a table, a dull grinding roar reverberated through the sprawling building, and then the lights flickered dimly on.
“That generator’s an antique too,” she said, pulling open curtains. Thanks to the gloom outside, it didn’t make much of a difference illumination-wise, but the room felt less closed in.
“Evidently they don’t even bother firing it up unless a guest is here or it’s snowing.” Rick took a seat, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I don’t expect you to catalog all my possessions, you know,” he said after a moment. “That isn’t why we’re here. It isn’t why you’re here.”
Samantha leaned back against the wall beside the window. “I know. I like looking through things. I’ll stop if it makes you uncomfortable or something, but you know I’ll always pick digging through somebody’s attic over a trip to Disneyland.”
Deep blue eyes gazed at her. “I do know that, and no, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I’m aware that there are likely more uncatalogued objects at Canniebrae than any other place I own. This place…isn’t just its monetary value, though.”
Rick hesitating over words was unusual enough that she left the window to sit down beside him. “You haven’t been here in almost twenty years. What’s kept you away?”
“It’s…” He frowned. “It’s slower here, I think,” he said, his gaze wandering the knickknacks on the mantel. “My life has gotten progressively more hurried.”
She leaned against his shoulder. “Am I making you more contemplative? That’s kind of scary.”
That made him smile again. “You make me need to catch my breath. So just give the house as a whole and the land around it at least a once-over, and then you can spend the rest of your time digging through seven centuries of rubbish.”
“Well, considering that we found a diamond necklace in the stable wall at Rawley Park, your ancestors and I clearly have different views of what rubbish is.” Taking his hand, she twined her fingers with his. “Thank you for getting me away from Palm Beach. I will get used to having cameras pointed at me. Just give me a little more time.”
“I don’t particularly like seeing my picture everywhere, either,” Rick admitted, though she wasn’t at all surprised to hear it. “It’s more a balancing act. We give them a little view of us in order to get a little privacy. We’ll figure it out, Samantha. I’m not in any hurry.”
“You, my dear,” she said, leaning in to kiss him and adopting his very suave English accent, “are a very patient man.”
Somebody knocked at the open door, and she looked past Rick to see Yule standing uncomfortably in the doorway. “M’laird, ye have a phone call.”
Rick gave a very quiet sigh. “Did they give a name?”
“Aye. Oh. Tom Donner, m’laird.”
“He probably wants to know if I’ve fled the countryside yet or not,” Samantha commented. “Make sure you tell him I’m having a grand time.”
Pushing to his feet, Rick tugged on her ponytail. “You are having a grand time.” He slowed at the doorway. “I’ll take it in the small office, Yule.”
“Aye, but… Well, the phone cord only reaches as far as the kitchen, m’laird.”
Samantha was fairly certain the veins in Rick’s forehead were standing out about now. “There’s a phone in the office,” he said crisply.
“The wee buttons don’t work.”
“I see. I’ll add that to my list, then.”
Richard was fairly certain he could hear Samantha snickering behind him, but he pretended to ignore it. Considering that this holiday had been his idea, he wasn’t likely to receive any sympathy from her. Moving ahead of the lumbering butler he made his way downstairs into the servants’ hallway and picked up the phone where it rested beside the cradle on a small side table.
“Tom?”
The line crackled as thunder rumbled up the hallway. “Rick? I can barely hear you.”
“Call me back on my cell, then.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up,” Tom’s Texas drawl returned, a note of frustration in his tone. “I’ve been trying your cell for three hours. It keeps saying you’re out of the service area.”
With a scowl Richard pulled the iPhone from his pocket. It was on, and fully charged, but where the service bars generally were wherever he traveled in the world, a small red X blinked balefully at him. “Dammit,” he muttered, pocketing it again. “I’ve been told Balmoral likes to block the cellular signals.”
“Damn royals.”
“You’re not allowed to say that. Only Brits are,” Richard informed him. “What did you need, anyway? I have no idea how long the connection will last.”
“Right. Two things. First, I have the Chicago small press numbers you wanted, though I have no idea why you think being a vanity publisher is so interesting.”
“It’s not for vanity publishing. I told you, print-on-demand is the future of the book industry. If I can find a way to make it both cost effective and profitable, everyone will have to emulate my plan. That will cost them. What’s the second thing?”
“No cell signal, iffy phone lines? How’s Jellicoe? Is she on her way to London yet?”
“There’s also iffy power and no internet. She actually seems quite happy with it so far. It’s only been a day, but she hasn’t tried to reach anyone from her Hole-in-the-Wall gang yet.”
“No internet? Do you want me to fax you the figures?”
That would be nice, if he had a phone line in the office for the existing fax machine. “Hold onto them for another day or two. I’m putting in an order through the London office for some updated equipment. It’s amazing how technology has changed everywhere but here in the last eighteen years.”
“Will do. Let me know when she starts to crack.”
Informing Tom that Samantha had guessed about the lawyer’s dubious predictions and would never admit publicly to disliking it here would only wound the poor lad. “I will. Take care. I’ll call you tomorrow with an update.”
As he hung up, he caught sight of Mrs. Agnes Yule, the house’s cook and wife of the butler, hurrying back to stand over the old wood stove in the adjoining kitchen. Only one working phone and no privacy to boot. This was one situation that was going to have to alter – and quickly.
Before he went to find Samantha again he detoured to the big office to add phone lines and updated phones to his growing list of basic necessities. At his other residences he referred to the place where he conducted most of his business as his office. Even Rawley, where he’d spent most of his child- and adulthood. Not here, though. Perhaps it was because the last time he’d been here, the office had been his father’s. He’d still been in school, not even close to becoming who he was now.
Well, he was Richard damned Addison now, and Richard damned Addison needed internet. Grabbing up the torch, he crawled beneath the old mahogany monstrosity of a desk to see if there were any actual electrical outlets. At the same moment, a low, heavy crash echoed from further down the hallway.
With a frown he backed out from under the desk and got to his feet, then headed in the direction of the sound. A section of rooms on the north side of the castle were long emptied and longer abandoned. If they’d lost part of the roof or a wall, they would have to close that wing, in addition to the already-condemned west wing. This had once been a glorious place. He’d let it go for too long. It was past time to either raze it or repair it.
A door ahead of him thudded closed, and he sped into a run. He pushed the handle down as he reached it, but the heavy oak didn’t budge. Frowning, he put a shoulder against the door and shoved. It gave an inch or so, something very heavy clearly behind it. Taking a few steps back he launched all his weight forward and shoved again. With a heavy scraping sound, the door bumped open and he half fell inside the dark room.
An open window with flapping, tattered curtains let blowing rain spray halfway across the remains of a large bedchamber. The bedframe itself remained, sagging on the window side, while thankfully the mattress was long gone. On the floor, face down, a heavy wardrobe rested against the back of the half-open door.
He sent torchlight into the dim corners and, with some embarrassment, beneath the skeletal bed. Empty. The wind might have blown over the wardrobe, he supposed, especially if the front legs had rotted in the damp weather. Previous to meeting Samantha, that answer likely would have satisfied him. Now, though, he took a moment to estimate where the heavy thing had been before he’d shoved it sideways to get into the room. As best he could tell, it had been up against the wall beside the door.
Well, that didn’t make sense, then. Richard squatted to grab onto the behemoth and haul it onto its side. The front legs were intact. Logically, then, there was no reason he could figure that the wardrobe would have toppled over, and even less why it would have ended up behind the door. The multi-company owner part of him, the businessman who wanted and needed to know how and why everything worked, didn’t like not having an explanation.
“Hmm.”
He whipped to his feet, the torch raised like a weapon. Directly behind him Samantha stepped back, dodging his elbow with that easy fluidity of hers. “Christ,” he muttered. “I forget how quiet you are.”
She sent him a crooked grin. “I’ll try to remember to wear my clompy shoes next time.” She nudged the toe of her Nikes against the wardrobe. “What happened in here? I heard it crash from all the way up in the attic.”
For a moment he debated whether to say he’d knocked it over himself. She delighted in teasing him about supernatural happenings – and honestly since meeting her there had been one or two things that logic couldn’t quite explain. But a wardrobe toppling hardly ranked with the Amityville horror, and she would be all over it like a dog with a bone. Finally, he shrugged. “I figure the wind blew it over. It looks like the pine tree out there broke the window.”
Samantha glanced from the window to the side wall and down to the upended wardrobe. “We should probably board the window up, then,” she said after a moment. “That wardrobe’s nearly three hundred years old.” She stepped around it and crouched. “Let’s get it out of the rain, shall we?”
On the count of three they heaved it back upright and shoved it against the wall. Richard seriously doubted that she was convinced by his interpretation, but even given her tendency to jest about ghosties, an actual thing happening needed a more logical explanation.
Once it was back in place she nudged it experimentally. It didn’t budge. Then she pulled open the double doors – and a mouse jumped out, ran down her leg, over her shoe, and into the shadows beneath the bed. “Hmm,” she said again, not even flinching.
Richard folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the doorframe. “A mouse just ran down your pants, you know.”
“I know.” She gave another loose grin as she finished examining the wardrobe and then closed it up again. “Once I waited in an air duct for so long a rat pooped on my hand. When you have to be still, you have to be still.”
“And here I thought you were all glitter and diamonds.”
She faced him, pulling his arms apart and stepping into the open circle. “That’s the payoff,” she murmured, and leaned up along his body to kiss him. “And the wind didn’t do that.”
For a long moment he occupied himself with kissing her back. She tasted faintly of chocolate; evidently, she’d found the kitchen. “Then what’s your explanation? Your genuine, logical explanation.”
She moved back a little, so she could look him in the eyes. “Logically, I think I don’t know. Yet.”
“I didn’t expect that,” he returned, deciding that today, in Scotland and with the rain outside, her eyes were the color of new leaves. Tilting her chin up with his fingers, he kissed her again, still relishing in the way she now sought him out. For a time, he’d thought he was the only one doing the pursuing.
“Yeah, well, once is an aberration. If it happens again, I’m going straight to blaming the ghost of your old great Grandpa Bob.”
“That would be great Grandpa Macrath,” he corrected. “And he collected fine furniture. I don’t think he would risk scratching it, even in death.”
Something unreadable crossed her expression for a moment, and then she grabbed her fingers into his hair to pull his face down for another kiss. “Let’s go find some more bedchambers to explore,” she whispered.
His cock jumped, even with the mice and dust and cold, flinging drops of rainwater. “I think the master bedchamber is mouse free,” he returned, digging his fingers into the waistband of her jeans. Not putting cameras throughout this big, old castle was quite possibly the most brilliant thing he’d done – not that he’d ever given it much thought in the first place.
“Chicken.”
Richard lifted an eyebrow. “You want your naked arse rolling about in the damp and dust, then?”
She licked his throat in a way that had his eyes rolling back in his head. “I figured it would be your arse on the floor. The…” Samantha trailed off, her muscles beneath his hands tensing as she turned toward the window.
A moment later he heard it as well, the low, rhythmic thrum of blades cutting through the wet air. He started to curse, until he remembered that he’d invited the helicopter’s occupants to join them here. “I am getting tired of people interrupting us before we can even do anything worth interrupting,” he muttered anyway, changing his grip to her hand.
“We can still hide in the attic,” she suggested, and he wasn’t entirely certain she was joking. “I made a clean spot.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. “Fuck.” Then, before she could invent some reason to vanish into the hundred-room castle, he tightened his grip and towed her toward the hallway. “Let’s go meet my family.”
For some reason the old movie The Haunting of Hill House kept running through Samantha’s mind as she and Rick descended the stairs to the main floor of Canniebrae. In particular she recalled the part where Dr. Markway’s wife vanished into the bowels of the house for the duration of the movie. She could totally do that too, pop her head down from the attic once in a while, sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night for snacks.
In fact, there was only one problem with that scenario. First, she’d become accustomed to spending her nights in bed with Rick – both for sex and for the way he made her feel not precisely safe, but…connected. To him, and to the world. That was important to her. It was easy for someone who slipped into places solo, who lived by night, to become disconnected from the world. To see people as nothing more than marks or targets. Her father had fallen into that trap, and the world had become about nothing but what it could give him. The next score, the false feeling of being the only human with a brain in his head, and in the end, it had gotten him caught.
She wrenched her thoughts back to the present, to her reasons for not wanting to meet Rick’s uncle and aunt and cousin. To the reason she was tempted to slip behind the walls and vanish. Because they might not like her. Sure, she could be charming, and she could carry on a conversation with the best of them, and in several languages. But Rick would want her to be herself. She wanted to be herself. Very few people in the world had ever met the real Samantha Elizabeth Jellicoe. She could count them on two fingers, in fact: Rick, and Stoney.
Rick had told them she was an art restorer and now a security and art retrieval expert. All of that was true; she’d been working at an art museum when Stoney had signed her up for the break-in job at Solano Dorado. She was out of the game now. Hell, in a few months she would be getting married. But parts of her still didn’t quite accept that this was anything more than a really awesome dream, even after a year in Rick’s company.
“How long has it been since you’ve met them face-to-face?” she asked, as half a dozen footmen gathered in the foyer, ready for a dash through the rain to the helicopter for luggage.
“Five or six years for my aunt and uncle. Not since my wedding, anyway.”
“Well, it’s nice that you get together whenever you get married, then,” she returned, squinting one eye.
“Samantha,” he said, his tone saying that he didn’t like the comparison.
“What? They’ll be comparing me to Patricia at her best. You know, when her clothes had names and she employed a hair stylist and never carried her own shopping bags.”
“Reggie tried to throw me a divorce party, if that makes you feel any better.” He took a breath. “And no, I didn’t attend. I wasn’t in the mood.”
“Was he being thoughtful, or did he want to throw a party?”
Rick shook his finger at her. “No, you don’t. You figure them out for yourself. Other than a handful of third and fourth cousins, they are my only relations. You decide how you wish to view them.”
“And they’ll be deciding how to view me.” Had she said that out loud? Crap . “I mean, I’ve been a lot of people. Some of them are better than I am.”
“I don’t care which face you decide to show them, my dear,” he said, surprising her to her bones.
“You don’t?”
“No. Just make it one you’re comfortable with, because you’ll have to bring it out and wear it at holidays.”
While she was still digesting that particular morsel, Yule threw open the front door, popped open his black umbrella – brolly – and led the charge out to the helicopter pad. The footmen followed in ragged, kilt-wearing unison. Samantha started forward, reaching for one of the half-dozen brollies left in the coat rack, but Rick held her back.
“We’ll wait here,” he said.
“Strategy?”
“Everything means something,” he returned, echoing one of her favorite sayings. “But this morning, I’d just prefer to stay dry. Plus, they interrupted sex. That does not make me happy.”
She smiled. “I’m cool with that.”
In truth, she was perfectly happy to give herself another few seconds. Hell, she’d begun break-ins that made her less nervous than meeting Rick’s family. This wasn’t the anticipatory kind of tension, either, where the payoff was a great big adrenaline rush and a million dollars. This was just having to be on her best behavior for God knew how long and hoping she survived. And more importantly, that this…thing between her and Rick survived. Because she was pretty sure she wasn’t ready to go back to navigating the world without him.
“Ready?”
Through the open doorway the herd of umbrellas closed on them like angry bats. Samantha squared her shoulders. “Bring it.”