Chapter 23 #2
She walked downstairs and into his minuscule kitchen.
He had pasta, salad, and a fierce frown waiting for her.
She sat down when he held out her chair for her, then waited until he sat, said grace with a particularly thick Scottish accent, and picked up his fork as if he was seriously considering using it—on her.
She tasted, complimented, then pretended nothing had happened.
Derrick cursed, then plowed through his meal with his usual single-mindedness.
“Well?” he demanded after she’d given him half her dinner and there was nothing left for him to eat.
“LAMDA?” she said casually. “As in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art?”
He grunted.
“Your reviews were good.”
He looked at her in surprise, then scowled at bit more. “Good?” he echoed.
“Amazing.”
“If we’re going to be honest,” he said, “then, yes.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. No wonder the man was so good at changing who he was. He’d obviously had years of practice and gotten, yes, rave reviews while doing it.
She got up and started to clear the table. She was happy to have company to rinse while she washed.
“I’m unclear,” she said at one point, “as to why you don’t act any longer.”
He leaned back against the counter and looked at her. “It’s complicated.”
“Life is.”
He looked heavenward briefly, then back off at something in the kitchen, not where she was.
“I’d done one season with the Royal Shakespeare Company, as you know.
I was set to do Hamlet that next year in a different production when—” He stopped, then took a deep breath.
“That’s the part that’s complicated.” He looked at her. “I was blacklisted.”
She frowned. “Just because you were good?”
“Because my costar wanted someone else for the part and she got him, even though he wasn’t better than I was. In fact, he’d spent quite a few years being not better than I was, which made my getting that particular part all the more painful for him.”
“Who was that?”
He looked at her silently.
She considered, then felt her mouth fall open. “Your brother?”
“Aye, damn him to hell.”
She shook her head, because she was fairly sure she hadn’t just heard what she’d just heard. “Did he study acting as well?”
“We were in the same class.”
“How did you pay for it?”
“We had a small inheritance. I didn’t need to use mine.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Scholarship?”
“Aye.”
She wondered if he realized that when he was rather more emotional than usual, as he was at present, he tended to slip into the native accent, as it were. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised to have listened to him curse in Gaelic.
“Why didn’t you say anything to the director? Or . . .” She shrugged helplessly. “Wasn’t there someone to appeal to?”
“What was I going to say?” he asked. “That someone had spread lies about me and spent so long doing it that no one would have doubted his character or integrity?”
She leaned against the counter, hard. “Your brother again?”
“Aye.” Derrick took a deep breath, then blew it out.
“Whilst I had been concentrating on my art, he’d been ingratiating himself with anyone with a bit of power.
I shudder to think the lengths he went to.
And when Ophelia accused me of things I don’t care to discuss and my own brother agreed with her—with a great show of sadness and regret, admittedly—there was nothing to be done.
The director was complicit, but I had no proof.
I was no one and the director was very powerful.
My career was over, no matter which direction I went in. ”
She considered for a moment or two, then looked at him. “Would you ever act again?”
“I would rather stick hot pins in my eyes.”
Well, she could understand that very well. It was a bit like what she felt about historical textiles.
“I’m so sorry,” she said very quietly. “What did you do then?”
“I went home to Scotland a couple of months before Cameron found himself in hospital,” he said without emotion. “Alistair gave me the task of watching over him and there I’ve been for all these years.”
“Does Lord Robert know about your past?”
Derrick shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised, though I’ve never said anything and he’s never asked me about it. He’s curious by nature, but discreet.”
“Who was the director?”
He looked at her steadily. “Edmund Cooke, husband and lace thief. And no, I haven’t been lying in wait all these years to have revenge on him. I honestly couldn’t care less. If he winds up before a magistrate, it won’t be because I put him there.”
“And Ophelia?”
“Some damned Yank—”
He stopped speaking. She did too, because his tone was so cold and bitter. She knew she shouldn’t have taken it personally, but with the way he’d said it . . .
She took the towel away from him and dried her hands. “Well, I’d better go keep looking through costumes.”
“Samantha.”
“Thanks for lunch—”
He caught her hand. She didn’t want to let him keep hold of her, but she also didn’t want him to let her go. He turned her around, then pulled her into his arms.
“I didn’t mean to say it that way.”
“I think you did.”
“Your place of birth is immaterial.”
“But I’m sure you want a nice Scottish—”
And that was as far as she got, because he kissed her.
She could safely say that Derrick Cameron was good at several things, but he was best at kissing a girl so she knew she’d been kissed.
He finally let her up for air, which she needed rather badly.
“Is this my day to boss you, or your day to boss me?” she asked when she’d caught her breath enough to speak.
“I can’t remember. You take a turn.”
“Kiss me again, then.”
He did, quite thoroughly, until he suddenly stopped.
She looked up into his very green eyes and watched him study her for a moment or two.
Perhaps he had suddenly realized that she had spent more time punching dates in the nose than receiving their advances.
So to speak. He leaned back against the counter, but kept his hands linked behind her back.
She suspected that was his invitation for her to continue to stand in his embrace, so she did.
“Let’s talk numbers,” he said seriously.
“Let’s not.”
“I’d say there’s a zero in there somewhere.”
“Are you talking about men I’ve kissed or men I’ve punched?”
He looked at her, then bent his head and laughed.
She wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her or if that laugh was tinged with the hysteria of a man who had just realized the woman he’d been kissing in his kitchen was a .
. . well, not as experienced as he might have originally thought, but since it was her turn to call the shots, she decided she would.
Call the shots, that was. She pulled away from him and walked away.
“I’m going to go look for sleeves,” she said archly. “You stay here and continue to giggle where I don’t have to listen.”
She stomped off, completely uncaring if he followed her or not.
Well, actually, she did care, so there was something very nice about looking over her shoulder and finding he was following her up the stairs. His hands were clasped behind his back. Maybe he didn’t want them off doing something they shouldn’t.
He stopped her at the door to his green room. “Would you mind if I kissed you again?”
“Are you asking this time?”
“I asked before,” he pointed out.
“I think there were several times you didn’t.”
He slipped his hand under her hair, then bent his head. “Now that you mention it, I suppose that’s true.”
She was actually rather grateful to have a doorframe behind her. It gave her a handy place to lean.
“I don’t date much,” she said, when she could.
“Good.”
“I mean, I haven’t dated much,” she clarified. “A cotillion dance. A few university things. A miserable movie with Theodore Mollineux.”
“He won’t be bothering you again.”
She knew she was too old to feel a little weak in the knees at the sensation of standing in a very handsome man’s arms, but there it was.
“And just what are you going to do about it?” she asked politely.
“I haven’t decided yet. Something commensurate with his gargantuan ego, no doubt. But he will find you singularly unavailable to receive his annoying attentions.”
She felt her smile fade. “Why?”
He looked at her seriously. “Because I like you.”
“Enough to kiss me?”
“That, too.”
“Enough to date me?”
He nodded.
“Why?” she asked, feeling pained.
The look he gave her almost left her a believer.
“Are you serious?” he asked, sounding slightly incredulous.
She nodded.
“I’ll make you a list,” he said. “And whilst I’m about that task, you might decide if you’re interested in dating me.”
“Let me boss you around a bit more, then I’ll decide.”
He smiled, a very small, affectionate smile that finished her off as nothing else could have.
“Very well,” he agreed, “but until you’ve come to your decision about me, perhaps we should get back to work—”
He stopped, but that was because she’d caught him by the front of his shirt and pulled him back to her.
She put her arms around his neck, pulled his head down, and did her best to kiss him as thoroughly as she knew how.
It wasn’t a very good job, she supposed, but perhaps practice would make perfect.
He pulled away sooner than she would have liked, but that was because his phone was ringing.
He pulled it out of his pocket, cursing as he did so.
“They’re going to drive me mad.” He shot her a quick smile.
“Why don’t you go look for sleeves and I’ll satisfy the rabble?
I think they’ll be here in an hour or so. ”
She frowned. “You don’t sound happy about that.”
“I’m not,” he said frankly. “It will get in the way of my master plan of spending the afternoon doing other things besides looking for Elizabethan gear.”
She blushed. He smiled, leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose, then turned her toward the room.
“Sleeves.”