Chapter 26
Cameron stood on a platform at Waterloo and looked at his watch.
The train was pulling out in twenty minutes and he still hadn’t seen Sunny.
It couldn’t have been because she’d gotten lost. Derrick’s task had been to be fifteen feet away from her at all times and get her safely and anonymously to the station.
He would have called if something had gone awry.
Cameron hadn’t wanted to leave her at the hotel the night before, but sleeping on her couch hadn’t seemed wise.
If nothing else, he had to keep up the appearance of his normal routine.
He hoped it was worth the trouble.
Perhaps Sunny was late because she was weary.
They’d been at the Segraves’ well into the wee hours.
He hadn’t intended to stay so long, but Sunny and Virginia had taken an immediate liking to each other and he’d had the very great pleasure of spending an evening with people he enjoyed.
The temptation to linger had been irresistible.
But now he was where he was and Sunny was late, which led him to speculate on all sorts of things he shouldn’t.
Perhaps it was just his own discomfort that troubled him, discomfort that had everything to do with the disguise Emily had left for him at his hotel.
Obviously, giving her free rein with his wardrobe had been a grave tactical error.
He was dressed in head-to-toe black with what of his hair he could get behind his head in a ponytail. If he hadn’t had sunglasses to hide behind, he would have been drawing attention to himself with a string of vile curses. At least he had a change of clothes in his backpack.
“Sexy,” purred a blond, artistic-looking lad who walked past him and winked.
Cameron blinked, then cursed. Derrick’s chameleon-like abilities were nothing short of unsettling at times. “Where is Sunny?” he demanded.
Derrick only smiled blandly and continued on. “Behind me.”
Cameron looked at the long line of people walking his way and couldn’t see her.
He saw a few older couples, several families, a very handsome redhead, and a jaw-droppingly beautiful brunette with legs that went on forever.
He wasn’t one to look where he shouldn’t, but he had to admit that that last lass was certainly worth admiring—
He felt his mouth fall open.
It was Sunny.
She caught sight of him and stumbled. Cameron would have leaped forward to catch her, but he couldn’t move. All he could do was stand there and gape until she stopped a foot away from him.
“You’re going to catch flies in there if you’re not careful,” she said solemnly.
“Bloody hell,” he wheezed.
She smiled. “Am I late?”
“I don’t know,” he managed. He’d never seen her with her hair straight. He reached out and smoothed his hand down it before he could stop himself. “How’d you do that?”
“I ironed it.” She leaned in close. “I’m in disguise.” She tried to tug her black miniskirt down, but it was hopeless. “Too much?”
“Too little—of the skirt, that is.” He took a deep breath. “I think I might have to find a place to sit down soon.”
“Derrick said I looked hot. What do you think?”
He scowled at her. “I think I’m going to put his eyes out at my earliest opportunity.” He looked at her mouth. “Will I spoil that fiery red lipstick of yours if I kiss you senseless right here and now?”
She smiled at him. “You don’t dare.”
“I most certainly will dare—after you go to the loo and I find the rest of that rot in your purse and throw it out the window.”
“You sound like yourself today,” she said with another smile.
He took her backpack from her, then put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the train door. “Don’t I usually sound like myself?”
“Now and again.”
He put his arm around her waist and pulled her back against him. “Sunny, my love,” he whispered in her ear, “if my medieval lairdly self had seen you in a skirt that short, I would have thought you a demon and immediately tossed you in my dungeon. ”
She put her hand over his. “And then?”
“I would have locked myself in there with you. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Now, move it, wench, before I spend the entire train journey thinking about where in Paris I might find a place to serve the same purpose.”
She smiled at him over her shoulder and walked ahead of him.
He put his hand on the small of her back as they entered the train, glared at every man who looked her over from foot to head—for that was the direction every male on the train with a pulse seemed to take—and finally managed to get her into her seat without doing any damage to anyone.
He found, unsurprisingly, that they were facing an older British couple who looked at Sunny’s skirt—or lack thereof— with horror. He stowed his and Sunny’s gear in the racks, then eased himself down next to her only to face even more intense looks of disapproval.
The ponytail obviously had to go.
He pulled it out, raked his fingers through his hair, then decided that ignoring the couple facing him was the best thing he could do. He turned to Sunny.
“All right,” he said quietly in French, “I think I might manage coherent conversation now. What took you so long?”
“Apart from the fact that Derrick snuck me out through the kitchen like I was a celebrity escaping the press, I’m just not very good at high heels,” she admitted. “I asked Derrick to page you, but he thought you should just stress a bit longer.”
“One day he will go too far.”
“He said you’d say that.”
He muttered a curse under his breath, then sighed as he caught another disapproving glance from their unwanted chaperons. “I had intended to kiss you all the way to France, but I can see that’s out.”
“I have an idea, if you would get me my purse. I don’t think I dare stand up again in this skirt.”
He pulled her purse down for her, waited until she’d found what she wanted, then put it back for her. He sat to find her watching him with a small, affectionate smile.
“What?” he asked, smiling in return.
“I’m just happy to be with you,” she said, looking happy indeed. She hesitated. “Are we safely anonymous?”
“Derrick would have paged me by now were we otherwise.”
“Then we can speak freely, or is French not discreet enough? Should we choose something else?”
He was extraordinarily glad for all the trouble he’d taken to learn more than just modern English. “Spoken like the daughter of linguists. French will suit, I think, because I like to listen to you speak it. We’ll dabble in other things later, if you like.”
“I might.” She tore up strips of paper, then handed him half the stack. “Let’s write down a few get-to-know-you questions. You can consider them questions for the you that wears suits.” She paused. “I’m not sure I know much about your favorite things, in either lifetime.”
“You’re my favorite thing,” he said seriously.
She closed her eyes briefly, then wrote something down and slid it his way.
I love you. Now stop the mushy stuff before I cry and ruin my mascara.
He smiled, then waited until she’d finished with her pen before he wrote down his own set of questions.
He supposed he couldn’t be blamed if they were evenly divided between where her favorite darkened corners were in Paris so he could pull her into them and kiss her, and what sorts of things she liked well enough about Scotland to want to remain there with him for the rest of her life.
Subtlety was not, he supposed, his strong suit.
He considered the direction of his questions for a moment.
They certainly weren’t leading to London, but the truth was a good part of his life was there.
He fiddled with the pen for a minute, then looked at her.
“I want you to tell me about that finishing school first,” he said slowly.
He paused. “And what you think of all this society rubbish.”
She blinked. “Why?”
He considered. He’d actually planned to give her what was in his pocket in a more romantic setting, but perhaps there was no point in waiting.
He wasn’t sure the time was right, but it had bothered him that she’d looked at such loose ends the morning before.
He wanted her to know where his heart was—even if he couldn’t give her the details.
He dug about in his pocket, then set a ring down on the table in front of him.
He studied it for a moment or two, hoping he wasn’t going about what he wanted in a way that was complete bollocks.
He’d sent Gideon de Piaget into fits the day before by forcing him to wait an hour whilst he’d had the ring in question made over in a size that Madelyn had guaranteed would fit Sunny’s right hand.
He put his finger on the ring, then slid it along the table, past Sunny’s questions and his. He left it sitting in front of her.
“I want to know because I don’t want you to agree to something you would loathe,” he said quietly.
“Whether I want it to be so or not, a goodly part of my life is spent as the face of my company. Not necessarily always in London, but unfortunately always in the public eye.” He paused.
“I want to know if it’s something you can endure. ”
She sat very still, simply looking at the ring in front of her for far longer than he was comfortable with. He forced himself not to think about all the ways she could be deciding that his modern life was not to her taste.
She finally took a deep breath. “I learned to greet foreign dignitaries from twenty different countries in their own languages,” she said.
“I can name for you ten generations of all the royal houses of Europe and get all English titles correct on the first try. In my spare time, I learned all the useful plants that grew in the foothills near the campus.” She looked at him then.
“I think I could find lobelia just about anywhere, though I didn’t learn that in Switzerland, necessarily. ”
He bowed his head for a moment, then he shot her a look from under his eyelashes. “You are a truly remarkable woman, Sunshine Phillips.”