Chapter 13
There were odd things going on in the world.
Samantha sat at the table with the afternoon sunlight streaming in the window and contemplated the oddities she had been faced with over the past few days.
First was Derrick Cameron himself. He was a chameleon, apparently possessing a fairly substantial collection of personae and the courage to make use of them.
He was CEO of his own company and obviously trusted enough by Lord Epworth to have been given the task of retrieving a matchless piece of lace.
He owned a computer that had lots of things on it that she couldn’t get into, things that looked very suspicious, which only added to his cloak-and-dagger aura.
But the man also believed in time travel, which in her book cast serious doubts on his sanity.
She rested her elbows on the table and considered a few more things.
Take his cousin for instance, and his cousin’s wife.
Robert Cameron was from all reports the Earl of Assynt and looked absolutely like what she would have thought a Scottish lord dressed in a business suit should look like.
His wife, Sunshine, was elegant in a midwifey, herbalisty, I’m-so-happy-with-my-hunk-of-a-Scottish-husband-that-I-can’t-stop-smiling sort of way.
Their son was adorable, their happiness palpable.
And their utter lack of surprise or disbelief over where Derrick had gotten his wound unnerving.
She had watched them get Derrick into bed three days earlier, then listened to Cameron laugh softly over the pajamas Sunny had brought with her.
He had accused his wife genially of keeping extra pairs on hand for emergencies such as the current one, had a kiss on the cheek in response, then the two of them had set to examining Derrick’s shoulder.
Sunny had concocted something, packed the wound, then they had sat down to chat as if there wasn’t a man lying in that bed with a stab wound that definitely should have been seen to by a doctor.
The one thing she could say for Sunny, the former herbalist and current wife of a Scottish laird, was that she seemed very capable.
Her knowledge of herbs, as far as Samantha could tell, was extensive, and her faith in the ability of the body to heal itself with the right help was absolute.
By the time she and Lord Robert had dragged themselves off home later that next morning, Samantha had been a believer herself.
The ensuing three days had fallen into a pattern of sorts.
She had slept and used Derrick’s credit card—the number very thoughtfully provided by Emily who had come once or twice to bring her more clothes—to download several books of dubious scholarly quality to his tablet.
She had ordered room service and thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in mysteries and romances she would have had to hide under her bed at home.
Sunny had come to keep watch over Derrick, spelled by Cameron, and neither of them had seemed to think there was anything strange about that. Samantha had spent her share of time with them, chatting about everything from British football to the weather in Scotland.
She had felt a little disconnected, as if she’d been a statue in the middle of a play going on around her.
The play had been very normal, but she had been the odd man out, the odd man thinking about a man who was lying in a bed, recovering from a stab wound, whose doctor had been an herbalist and his cousin not at all interested in calling the cops.
Very strange.
She had spent her share of time sitting by Derrick’s bedside, wondering if he would ever wake back up. Sunny’s brew that she forced down him as often as possible had seemed to have the side effect of leaving him completely out of it, but she supposed that had been a good thing.
The reality of the rest of her existence was perhaps even harder to swallow.
She had unlocked Derrick’s phone using his unconscious and unresisting thumb and sent another couple of texts, one to Lydia and another to Gavin, assuring them she was all right but that she’d had a little accident and was laid up, conveniently with friends of the original detective inspector from Scotland Yard.
She could hardly believe she was using Derrick’s ploy of fending off the interest of thugs, but she hadn’t known what else to do and she hadn’t really been willing to talk to either Sunny or Lord Robert about it.
It was, after all, a little difficult to discuss the fact that she was the reason Derrick had gone back in time to Elizabethan England and gotten that hole in his shoulder.
So she had stayed where she was and done what she could to be useful because the alternative was going outside, empty-handed, to find herself in the care and feeding of men who would probably kill her if she didn’t produce what they obviously thought she still had.
All of which left her where she was, sitting in a suite at the Ritz, nursemaiding a man who had gotten up earlier that morning and looked as if he might pass out in her arms. How he thought he was going anywhere that day was beyond her.
A soft knock on the room door had her jumping so abruptly that she almost tipped her chair backward.
She put her hand over her heart, got up from the table, and staggered across the floor with the grace of one who had been in bed for three days, suffering from a shoulder wound.
She peered out the peephole, then sighed in relief.
She opened the door and let the adorable Countess of Assynt in as if she had known her all her life. Sunny smiled and shut the door behind her.
“How are you?”
“Freaked out.”
Sunny laughed a little. “I think you’re holding up very well. At least you have a great place to freak out in.”
“There is that,” Samantha agreed. She nodded toward Derrick’s door. “He’s in there.”
“Surly and unpleasant?”
“Both.”
“Then he must be feeling better.”
Samantha shook her head. “I don’t think he is, but he’s determined to be up and about.
I think he’s crazy.” Well, she thought he was crazy about a lot of things, but she wasn’t sure quite how to broach the subject with Sunny.
“I put him back to bed this morning and he’s been there ever since, very quiet. ”
“He’s probably plotting something,” Sunny said wisely.
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Samantha agreed.
But she couldn’t bring herself to even bring up the subject of what Derrick might be plotting, because she was fairly sure Sunny had no idea what that might be. She waved Sunny on to her patient, then took to pacing.
She paused by the window, looked down into the garden, and fortunately for her peace of mind found nothing unusual there.
She didn’t suppose that said anything, but a girl could hope.
She finally sat down at the table because she had nothing else to do.
Unfortunately, that gave her too much opportunity to eavesdrop.
“I feel fine!”
There was a pause. Samantha imagined, judging by the tone of the next statement, that a stern look had been delivered.
“Derrick, you’re being nasty.”
“I feel nasty.”
“You just said you feel fine.”
Swearing ensued.
“You know, I can call a doctor and then you can answer all kinds of questions you don’t want to about what you’ve been doing over the past few days.”
“Sunny, you have no pity.”
“None. Apologize, or I won’t come back.”
Gusty sighing ensued. “I apologize. I was an unmitigated ass.”
“Jerk would have sufficed.”
“People keep using that word when they talk about me.”
“There’s probably a reason for that.”
Samantha snorted before she could stop herself. She turned when she heard Sunny come out of Derrick’s room and pull the door shut behind her.
“Well?” Samantha asked.
Sunny walked over to the table and cast herself down into a chair with a gusty sigh. “He’s on the mend.”
“Painfully.”
“Loudly.” Sunny looked at her. “Are you married?”
“Heavens no,” Samantha said in astonishment. “Not even dating anyone seriously.”
“Well, I’ll tell you now: When they start to snarl, that means they’re on the mend. It’s at about that point that my Florence Nightingale impulses have ceased and I’m happy to limit my tending to tossing them the remote and telling them to get their own damned soup.”
Samantha looked at her, then laughed. She put her hand over her mouth, because she wasn’t sure laughing was an appropriate reaction. Sunny was only looking at her and smiling.
“How in the world did you get mixed up in all this?” she asked, still smiling.
“I have no idea,” Samantha said, honestly. “I was just trying to run away from home.”
“Overbearing parents?”
“Academics,” Samantha clarified. “No offense to academics, of course. Mine are just a little . . . intense.”
“Mine are linguists,” Sunny said, “so I understand where you’re coming from. My sister and I were always foisted off on relatives and Swiss finishing schools when they were busy. What about you?”
“I was locked in a museum.”
Sunny smiled. “Poor girl. Well, you’re out now. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
Now that her employers were revealed to be crooks, her brother had proven to be useless, and she might possibly be facing jail time if Derrick didn’t stop being a jerk, she had no idea what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She looked at Sunny and swallowed uncomfortably.
“I’m not sure. I would just like to sort of disappear.”
“Cottage on the coast? Small garden? Simple husband?”
Samantha smiled. “How did you know?”
“I think we are a lot alike,” Sunny said. “You might be careful what you wish for, though. You never know what you’ll really get.”
“What did you get?”
“Pantyhose,” Sunny said without hesitation. “Well, Scottish rain as well, which I suppose mitigates the horrors of pantyhose.”
Samantha considered. “I can see how it might.”
“Have you ever been to Scotland?”