Chapter 23 #3
She tried, really she did. The timing was lousy, she had an ancestor—a would-be ancestor—who was languishing in the Tower of London, and she was almost dating the man who had every intention of springing him from the pokey.
It was insane.
So was the number of times Derrick dropped down onto the couch next to her, put his finger to his lips, and kissed her very quietly while he was involved in conversations with his partners.
She wasn’t sure how many times he pleaded a bad connection, tossed his phone, then laughed a little before he pulled her into his arms and kissed her earnestly, though she thought it might have been several.
She could say with a fair amount of confidence that his couch was very comfortable but that she wasn’t making as much progress in what she was supposed to be doing as she should have.
“Where’re you going?” she asked as he got up from where he’d been sitting next to her on the couch, not looking for costumes.
“To take a cold shower.”
“Are you kidding me?”
He shot her a look. “No, I’m not. The lads will be here in twenty minutes. Do not answer the door. I don’t want you getting carried off by thugs. I’ll be back in ten.”
She sat there surrounded by velvet gowns, detachable sleeves, a ruff that perhaps shouldn’t have been in harm’s way, and a mobcap or two and considered.
She smiled.
She looked up in time to see Derrick poke his head in the door. He smiled at her but said nothing.
“What?” she asked finally.
“Nothing. Just looking.”
“Looking at costumes isn’t going to do any good.”
“I wasn’t looking at costumes.”
She shooed him away. “You’re embarrassing me.”
He looked at her for a moment or two, then walked over to her and pulled her up off the couch and to her feet. He put his arms around her.
“You know, don’t you,” he began matter-of-factly, “that if I keep this up, I won’t be able to concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“What, you don’t want to snog all the way through Elizabethan England?”
“Well,” he began thoughtfully, “what I want and what’s sensible can sometimes be two different things.”
“I agree.”
“You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it.”
She hugged him quickly, then turned him around and gave him a push. “Beat it. I won’t let anyone in.”
He went but shook his head as he did so. She fanned herself with a stray farthingale, then tried to concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing.
It was difficult.
She finally resorted to sitting on the steps and waiting.
Derrick appeared, looked at her, then took a deep breath before he opened the door at the knock.
She watched as Oliver and Peter tumbled in the front door, laden with black bags that looked very suspicious.
They were followed by Rufus, and then by Lord Robert himself.
She got up when she saw him. He started when he saw her do it, then held out his hand to her.
“Please,” he said with a smile, “call me Cameron—which you haven’t done yet—and don’t stand on ceremony. I’m just here as one of the lads.”
She was fully prepared to doubt that, but it turned out that nothing could have been truer.
She hovered on the edge of the group as they sorted through things poured out onto a large square coffee table in the front room.
Derrick was quite obviously the one they all assumed was in charge.
While suggestions were made, it was, in the end, his decision they went with.
She jumped a little when she realized Lord Robert was leaning against the wall alongside her. She looked at him.
“Yes, my lord?” she asked politely.
“Cameron,” he said with an amused smile. “Or is that impossible?”
“I don’t think I could ever call you Cameron,” she said. “My lord.”
“You’ll have to work on that, but perhaps later.” He nodded toward the men discussing their upcoming adventure. “What do you think?”
“I think Elizabethan England is a dangerous place.”
“And I think you’re very sensible. You needn’t go along, you know.”
“He might need me.” She heard the words come out of her mouth, then found she couldn’t take them back. “Derrick, I mean. Though I’m not sure how.”
“You might be surprised.” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Will you be surprised by other things?”
She looked at him and considered who she thought he might be.
She had borrowed Derrick’s tablet on the flight down and made good use of a genealogy program she’d signed him up for on a trial basis.
She had noted the Camerons through the ages, made mental notes of the death dates, then formulated her opinion.
She looked at the man standing next to her.
“Do you have a middle name, my lord?”
He seemed to be fighting his smile. “Did Derrick tell you I did?”
“Derrick said he wasn’t at liberty to divulge any of your secrets, though I believe he told me that when he had his bare feet up on the coffee table in your study.”
“As long as that was all that was bare, I won’t kill him for it,” Cameron said mildly, seeming to be rather satisfied with something. Perhaps that Derrick could keep his mouth shut. “I might have more than one name attached to my poor self, ’tis true.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you care to guess?”
“Francis.”
He only smiled. “Don’t call me Francis.”
“I never would,” she said. “My laird.”
He shook his head wryly. “Somehow, Mistress Samantha, I think you’ll survive this adventure quite well. Even if it does find itself in Elizabethan England.”
“Did Derrick tell you I don’t want to be an historian any longer?”
He shook his head. “He keeps secrets very well. I just have a decent nose for rebellion in the clan, as it were. Your mother’s preferred era is Victorian, yet your study was not. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it.”
Or perhaps not. Samantha looked at him, medieval laird, modern-day laird, and thought that perhaps Derrick had been very fortunate in his luck of the familial draw. She would have commented on that, but Derrick’s phone rang and he held up his hand suddenly.
“It’s Jamie. He may have something else useful for us.”
Samantha had read Jamie’s notes because she’d been the one to organize them in order and summarize them for the boss. She listened to him start a conversation in rapid-fire Gaelic and smiled to herself at the English words thrown in when Gaelic wouldn’t do.
“Do you know Jamie?” Cameron asked.
She shook her head.
“He’s laird of the clan MacLeod down the way from my hall.”
“Has he been laird once,” she asked, in Gaelic, “or twice?”
Cameron laughed a little, then made her a slight bow. “You, Mistress Drummond,” he said, also in Gaelic, “are a match for that lad over there.”
“Thank you, my laird. But don’t tell him I understand him, would you? I think I might like to keep a few secrets of my own.”
“I imagine you would. And you might ask him about a few of his, namely to do with where he and that rascal Jamie go on blokes’ weekends away.”
She frowned, then it dawned on her what he was getting at. “You aren’t serious.”
“Jamie is the original adventurer,” Cameron said with a shrug, “to the endless despair of his wife, who I understand will kill him if he dares take any of their children with him on his jaunts to places and times not his own. Derrick has been his partner in crime for a year now. I haven’t dared ask him too much about his adventures.
” He smiled. “I’d best go see what madness they’re combining. ”
Samantha watched him walk away and realized why it was that he and Sunny hadn’t been all that surprised by Derrick’s shoulder wound. Maybe that wasn’t the first one Derrick had earned on his little weekenders through time.
She leaned heavily against the wall, because she was too restless to sit but too unsettled to stand. She could hardly believe she was listening to the men in front of her plan an assault on the . . . well, on the Tower of London.
But it was her life they were saving, so she couldn’t bring herself to tell them to stop. Not that they would have, perhaps. Derrick was determined.
She shook her head. The Tower of London.
They were absolutely insane.