Chapter 5
Samantha put her bag up on the counter and looked at the girl behind the desk.
She had unpacked, watched a bit of television, then spent an hour or two looking over the list of interesting sights Lydia had made her.
She was a little surprised that nothing had appealed to her, but maybe she had eclectic tastes not shared by her hostess.
She had already seen a bit of what York had to offer on her way from the train station.
She had gawked at the York Minster on her way to her hotel—the outside, at least—but she hadn’t been at all tempted by any exhibits on torture through the ages.
She wanted open spaces, no blood, and no crowds.
She wouldn’t have expected York to be so busy so early in the day, but maybe lookers at historical artifacts liked to get an early start.
The girl smiled at her. “How can I help you?”
“I’m trying to decide what to do with my day,” Samantha said. “Do you have any suggestions on what to see? Maybe something out of the way?”
The girl considered. “If you’re keen to get out of the city, you could try Castle Hammond. The earl has very lovely gardens which are open several days a week.”
That sounded promising. She couldn’t say she was a big garden looker, but maybe that was just because she’d never had the chance.
Her forays into tourist-like things had generally been limited to standing in museums and being uncomfortable as she watched her mother bully poor, unsuspecting curators into letting her fondle things not available to the ungloved fingers of the general public.
She had also spent her share of time being excruciatingly embarrassed when her determined parent had brought out the long knives for directors of exhibits who showed a bit of spine.
Maybe gardens would be a breath of fresh air.
“Does the family still live there?” she asked, wondering how that worked. Letting people walk through her house was something she didn’t think she could ever do. Then again, perhaps nobility did whatever it took to keep the lights on.
The girl nodded. “It’s unusual these days, but they do.” She looked behind her counter, then pulled out a brochure and handed it to Samantha. “This should tell you what you need to know to get there. It looks like the house is open today as well.”
Samantha took the brochure, thanked the girl, then walked out of the lobby. The hotel was small but centrally located. She’d already checked room prices and been slightly surprised by how expensive it had been. She supposed she would work it off eventually.
She waited an hour for the bus, having just missed one of them, but that didn’t bother her because it gave her a chance to people watch for a bit.
It was possible that she had spent too much time locked in various back rooms, looking over textiles, but it seemed to her that the people around her had an appalling amount of freedom.
Which, she supposed, she had at the moment as well.
The journey out to the castle was lovely and she felt extremely adventurous deviating from Lydia’s list. That she should find that out of the ordinary probably said more about her than she was comfortable with.
Two hours later, she had finished a tour of the gardens and found herself wishing for at least a hood to pull up over her head to shield herself from the rain.
She supposed it should have occurred to her that there was a reason she’d been almost alone in the gardens except for some guy with green hair that matched his green running shoes, but she’d been too busy concentrating on what she was seeing to pay attention to the weather.
And honestly, she’d been a little unnerved by the green-shoed guy.
He’d had a notebook and obviously been sketching the various specimens of flora and fauna to be found in the earl’s garden, but in spite of the fact that he seemed unobtrusive, she’d been nervous.
Again, too much time allowing her imagination to run wild.
She left Mr. Green Twinkletoes seeking shelter near a hedge and ran back along paths and up to the front door.
She stood under the shelter of an awning and knocked.
A butler-ish-looking sort of man with silver hair opened almost immediately.
He didn’t step aside to let her in, though, which she found to be slightly unnerving.
“May I come in?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, miss,” he intoned. “The house is closed today.”
She blinked in surprise. “Is it?” She would have pulled out the brochure to double-check, but she’d made good use of that hour she’d spent waiting for the bus and was fairly confident she had the whole thing memorized. “But you’re supposed to be open today.”
The butler looked as if he might have liked to say something else, but in the end, apparently discretion won out. He simply shook his head.
“I apologize for the inconvenience,” he said, sounding genuinely sorry. He looked over her head. “I see the bus still waiting to take on passengers. I’ll send someone out to make sure it’s held for you, if you wish to return to town.”
Well, there didn’t seem to be any arguing to be done.
She nodded, then turned and walked out to where the bus was indeed being held apparently thanks to the efforts of the teenager who had sprinted past her to make that happen.
She thanked him on his much slower return trip, then got back on the bus.
She collapsed into a seat with a sigh, then looked out the window at the rain.
She was very grateful she wasn’t going to have to either wait out in the rain or walk back.
There were just some things she wasn’t prepared to do just for the sake of having a look at local culture.
“I heard there was a theft.”
Samantha wasn’t an eavesdropper by nature.
She had learned early in life that when people were talking in whispers, sometimes it was just best not to know what they were discussing.
Unfortunately for her, the ladies behind her obviously had a different idea of what constituted a decent whisper than she did.
“Of what?”
“Lace.”
Well, now that was a different story. Too many years of being on the hunt or being responsible for the care of delicate and valuable textiles had left her with her ears perking up involuntarily whenever that sort of thing was discussed, no matter how quietly.
She put her head down and forced herself to read the bus ticket she was still clutching in her hands, but it was impossible to concentrate when such salacious details were being discussed.
“What sort of lace?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course!”
So could she, really. She gave up pretending to read and started listening in earnest.
Voices were lowered, sort of.
“I heard,” said the first voice, “that it was a piece of Elizabethan lace, stolen right out from under the earl’s nose.”
“No!”
That had been her reaction, too, because the thought was just so shocking. What sort of person would steal Elizabethan lace? And right out from under the earl’s nose? It was appalling.
“’Tis true,” the first woman whispered. “Worth a fortune. I suppose the thieves will try to sell it somewhere, but who’ll buy it?”
“Someone with a fortune, I imagine,” the second woman said in hushed tones of awe. “How’d you hear?”
“My sister’s niece’s flatmate heard it from the woman at the chemist’s who’s the sister-in-law of a woman who belongs to the same garden club as the woman who manages the gift shop at the castle. Very hush-hush, though. Don’t spread it about.”
Samantha frowned slightly. She wasn’t sure how reliable that rumor could possibly be, but it was difficult to deny that something had been up at the castle. Maybe there was some safety in assuming the report was true.
But if it was, she seriously doubted the earl would ever see his precious lace again.
Her mother was forever complaining about those who made it their business to buy and sell antiquities to anyone but serious scholars.
Those who stole the same for profit weren’t even fit to breathe the same air as the rest of them.
As for herself, she could honestly say that despite her education and the years spent dusting her mother’s antiquities, she would be just as happy to never see another piece of anything to curate.
She couldn’t even say she was particularly fond of the Elizabethan era.
The only reason she’d written her thesis on the glories of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century handwork was because it had irked her parents to have her veer from what they’d told her to do.
A tiny rebellion, but one she’d engaged in willingly.
If she’d had her choice, she thought she might have liked to have investigated a few medieval things, but that was probably out of reach now.
She had the feeling the best she could do was simply ignore the whole subject of history and any expertise she might have had in any facet of it and for a change simply be Sam who liked castles and wanted to hide behind the obscurity of house-sitting for absentee employers for the summer.
She wasn’t sure what the alternative was, but she was fairly sure it would require her to do things she wouldn’t want to do.
The ladies behind her moved on to other subjects and she moved on to deciding what her evening should look like. She had to admit she was rather uncomfortable being by herself, but when the alternative was hanging out with Dory, she would take solitude every time.
She happily walked back into her hotel an hour later and flopped down on the bed where she could contemplate the rest of her day.
She looked up at the ceiling for a minute or two, then reached for her bag and fumbled around in it until she found her notebook.
She pulled out Lydia’s list on it and glanced reluctantly at the suggestions for the day, most of which she’d already discarded. The list hadn’t changed.