Chapter 9
Gwen
Lance’s voice came first. Soft, relaxed, somewhere ahead of me. “Did you have the cottage opened up?”
I kept my eyes closed. The back seat of the Land Rover rocked gently over uneven ground, and my neck ached from the angle I’d been leaning against the window.
The flight crew had been whisked off to a hotel near the airfield—mandatory rest in case they were needed—but our drive had been long enough for me to drift off.
“Just a few rooms, and they dropped off some groceries.” Arthur’s voice, also ahead, also soft. “I called Ethan before we left Lansing.”
I let the words settle without grabbing at them. My brain nudged me to listen, but my body wanted more sleep.
Lance talked about three years ago. Coming out here when nobody knew. Snow. I caught pieces—sleeping in some hall, taking turns to wake up and add another log. The Land Rover bounced over a rut, and I lost a few words, then found them again.
“—roasted marshmallows in the fireplace,” Lance chuckled.
“And the cans of soup over the fire.”
“Your father would have murdered us.”
“If he’d known there had ever been marshmallows in this house, he’d have burned it down.”
They both laughed, and I smiled despite myself.
They were just two men in the front seats of a car, remembering a night they’d spent in a freezing house and finding it funny.
Arthur’s laugh was open and unguarded, and Lance’s was different somehow.
Probably because he wasn’t flirting with anyone or working a room.
He was simply sitting next to his friend.
I wasn’t sure whether Lance had mentioned Arthur when we’d dated.
He’d told stories about so many people, but rarely with faces or names attached.
I usually assumed they were random military or private security guys.
With Lance, everyone seemed like a lifelong friend, but with Arthur, it was obvious they really were.
The car slowed, and gravel crunched under the tires.
“We should wake her,” Lance said.
I shifted, yawned, and made sure I sounded like I was just coming to. “Are we there?”
“We’re pulling up now.” Arthur put the car in park. “Did you get a nap?”
“Yeah.” I blinked and rubbed my eyes.
The headlights lit up an ancient stone facade. Not the tiny little cottage I was expecting. No, this thing was three stories high. I only saw what the car’s lights reached, including tall windows, a heavy front door, and the edge of what might have been a walled garden.
Arthur cut the engine while I tried to make out the shape of the building.
Cottage my ass. It was huge!
The men got out and went around to the trunk.
I climbed out into the cool October night, and my head tilted back.
The air was calm, and the sky was full of stars.
This morning, I’d been in Sam and Antonio’s guest room, worried about my missing laptop and my grandmother’s pearls.
I’d taken photographs of the sword, decided I’d go to Cornwall, and had assumed I’d have a few days to arrange my travel.
Instead, here I was, on English soil, staring up at the same constellations I couldn’t see from my apartment in New York City.
“Are you coming in, or did you want to sleep outside?” asked Lance as he passed me.
“You’re tired.” Arthur closed the trunk and came up behind him. “We got your luggage.”
I followed them across the gravel. When the headlights died, the whole shape of the manor came into focus under the half-moon. A single light glowed behind a ground-floor window. “Is someone else here?”
“No. I asked a neighbor to come by and turn on the heat before we left the States.” Arthur unlocked the door and went in first, punching a code into a security panel by the door. “I didn’t want anyone else to complicate the protection detail.”
The entrance hall had stone floors and an immense staircase of dark wood.
One lamp on a side table cast a gentle light, and its shadows climbed the walls toward a ceiling that disappeared into the darkness above.
The heat may have been on, but the house hadn’t caught up yet—the air was warmer than outside, but still had a chill underneath.
Lance carried my suitcase up the stairs. Arthur turned a deadbolt, reset the security, and waved me after him.
I counted doors as we walked the hallway. Four. Five. Six bedrooms on this floor alone, and the hallway turned a corner where there must have been more.
Arthur opened the door at the end and flicked on an ornate overhead light covered in stained glass. “If the portable oil heater isn’t warm enough for you, let me know, and I’ll fetch some firewood and light a fire.”
“Boy Scout,” said Lance with a chuckle. There it was. The normal Lance, performing for me. Not the one who’d been laughing with Arthur in the car.
I stepped inside, taking in the cream-colored walls with their intricate paneling and two ultra-tall windows. The king-sized bed with a green upholstered headboard almost looked small in the space, even with a sofa along its foot.
“Towels are in the bathroom cabinet,” Arthur said from the doorway. “It should be stocked with anything you need.”
I wandered into the en suite. Another big window with a heavy curtain, a freestanding clawfoot bathtub, and a shower enclosure. I came back into the bedroom, unable to do much more than shake my head. “If this is the cottage, what does the house look like?”
“That’s my father’s fault.” Arthur placed the sword case on the sofa. “He called it Caleborne Cottage, thinking he was being clever and ironic.”
Caleborne. Like Caliburn, the sword King Arthur pulled from the stone in the legends. Most people thought he’d drawn Excalibur, but that was given to him by the Lady of the Lake.
Lance set my bag next to the sword’s case and hugged me. Hugged me! “Get some sleep.”
“Thanks, I will.”
They retreated down the hallway, and I closed the door as another yawn forced its way out of me.
I unpacked what I needed, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and changed into the oversized T-shirt and cotton shorts I slept in. The sheets were crisp and cold when I pulled back the duvet and climbed in.
Cornwall. I was in Cornwall, in a manor house belonging to the excessively wealthy Penn family. I mean, I’d known he was rich after reading the article about him and his company, but this was a whole other level of wealth than I’d expected.
I stared at the ceiling, closed my eyes, and… opened them.
It was quiet. Eerily quiet. The oil heater near the bed clicked a few times, but there were no voices, no footsteps, no nothing.
Did you lock your door?
Did it matter? I apparently had two bodyguards lurking nearby.
But they could be half a mile away and not have left the house.
Good point.
I got up and checked the door, pulling it open a fraction to listen for my shadows. The only noise was clanging, like metal pots being moved around.
My options were simple: Close the door and pretend I was going to sleep, or sneak downstairs and find out what people did at this hour in cottages this big.
I chose the latter.
The stairs creaked under my bare feet, and the heavenly scent of roasting garlic hit me halfway down. It pulled me forward, past a sitting room and a living room, down a short corridor toward a light at the back of the house.
The kitchen opened through a wide archway, and I stopped before I reached it.
Arthur stood at a triple stove. Above it was a brass fume hood that belonged in a restaurant. The kitchen was massive, with stone floors, marble counters, and a gargantuan island with its own cooktop.
He’d changed since the car. He wore a light gray T-shirt, dark joggers, and beige slippers. On the counter beside him sat a tin and a jar, a loaf of crusty bread, and a cutting board with sliced tomatoes on it.
I inched closer, staying tucked around the corner where he couldn’t see me.
He tore off a piece of bread, dipped it into whatever was in the pan in front of him, and put it in his mouth.
His eyes closed. His whole body stilled—shoulders dropping, head tipping back a fraction—and for a few seconds, he was somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Tasting something he’d made, alone in a kitchen at one in the morning, the pleasure of it written across his whole body.
This was the Arthur from the restaurant, telling me about the winery and recommending dishes that would pair well.
Part of me had assumed the recommendations came from money—of course someone that wealthy had eaten his way around the world.
But the way he stood there, quietly savoring every bite, revealed the simple truth: This man was a foodie.
But more than that, he was intelligent. Sharp. My heart beat faster. Arthur was a leader. He was the kind of man silly young women fawned over, when they should have been keeping their wits about them.
A tiny voice in my head whispered, ‘Like Lionel?’
I leaned against the archway, unable to take my eyes off him.
The silly young woman inside of me updated the Arthur from my dream last night with this one.
He wouldn’t have laid me back on the bed right away.
No, he would have taken his time. He would have savored me like he was savoring that bread.
Heat flared in my chest, and I shifted back an inch to be sure I was hidden.
But the floorboard beneath my foot squeaked.
His eyes opened.
Snapped to me.
Shit.
He covered his mouth with the back of his hand, still chewing. His brows knit together. “Is everything all right?”
One second, he was completely lost in a moment. The next, all of his attention was on me and whether I was okay. In my hotel room, he’d taken charge the second he entered. He’d insisted on my protection detail to keep me safe. On the jet, he’d spent thirty minutes on protocol.
“I couldn’t sleep.” I came around the corner into the kitchen, trying to look like I hadn’t been ogling him. “What are you making?”
“Puttanesca.” He tore off another piece of bread, dipped it, and held it out to me.
I took it, popping it into my mouth as he returned to cutting tomatoes. The sauce was warm, deeply garlicky, with a richness underneath that didn’t match anything I saw on the counter. “What’s in this?”
“Anchovies,” he said, as if it should have been obvious. “They add depth.”
“You know…” I covered my mouth and finished chewing. “I thought I didn’t like anchovies.”
“You’ve never had them prepared properly.” He nodded toward the stools at the island. “Have a seat.”
I rounded the island and slid onto one of the leather-topped stools at the breakfast bar.
Arthur killed the far burner and carried the pot and pan over to the island’s cooktop, where he faced me. He turned on the burner, stirred a few times, then retrieved his ingredients.
Recalling what Lance had said about his religious feelings about olive oil, I gestured at the bottle next to him. “Does the oil have the same kind of history as the wine from last night?”
“It’s a single-estate oil from Umbria.” He rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth gave him away.
He was so different here, compared to the man listing his rules on the plane.
He picked up the bottle and turned the label toward me, showing the small Italian print.
He set it down with a care that suggested the bottle had feelings.
“The family’s been producing their oil for five generations. ”
“Lance was right about your opinions.”
He gave a little shrug while he finished slicing the tomatoes. “They don’t have a brand so much as a way of life.”
“You’ve got to respect that.”
“You do.” He added the tomatoes to the pan, and they hit the hot oil with a hiss. Next came capers from the jar, and olives he’d already cut. The pasta water came to a rolling boil, and he dropped spaghetti noodles in without measuring or checking the time.
He cooked like he moved through rooms—certain about where everything was, reaching for things without looking. But there was none of the tension he carried in other spaces. His shoulders sat lower. His jaw was loose.
From somewhere at the back of the house, a door opened and closed. I heard footsteps a few seconds before Lance came through the archway with a frown. But when he spotted me, the frown turned into a smile—one I wouldn’t have realized was forced if I hadn’t watched him shift. “Hey, Gwen.”
“Hey.”
“Perimeter’s clear.” He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the end of the island. “Systems are armed. Front and rear cameras are up, motion sensors on the east and west approaches.”
Arthur nodded, cutting his gaze to the phone on the counter beside him. “I’ve got the monitoring software running.”
“It smells fucking amazing in here.” Lance came around the island and took the stool next to me. He leaned over the breakfast bar and inhaled. “Is that one of Hettie’s recipes?”
“It was her shelf-stable go-to.” Arthur glanced at the sauce, stirring slowly. “At least I’ve got fresh garlic and tomatoes.”
Hettie. Arthur smiled at the pot. Clearly, she was someone important to him. Was she his mother? An ex? And why did I feel like I needed to know? “Who’s Hettie?”