9. Piper and the Bedchamber
Chapter nine
Piper and the Bedchamber
By the time Tristan shows me to "the blue guest suite," my brain feels pleasantly overworked. I’ve had a long day, in fact a hectic long week. I’ll be glad to sleep.
The room is beautiful. High ceilings crossed with ancient beams. A carved four-poster bed draped in soft cream linen. A fire burning quietly in the grate. Fresh flowers on the bedside table.
Someone has already unpacked my suitcase.
"...You unpacked?"
"I had staff take the liberty during our dinner. Mrs. MacLeod is very efficient. You’ll meet her in the morning."
I don't think anyone has unpacked a suitcase for me in my entire life. It's strangely intimate.
"You realize you could have turned me away at the door. A woman claiming to own this castle. You’re very … polite." It’s the only word I can think of at the moment. "My mother would adore you, if she were still alive."
He looks at me. He steps toward the door to go, but pauses, his hand resting lightly on the brass handle.
"I've just realized..."
"What?"
"I believe Mr. Murphy is asleep in the kitchen. He’ll be wanting to sleep here tonight."
"I should probably go rescue him," I say, moving towards the door tiredly.
"Please don't trouble yourself, Piper. I’ll go get him."
"No, I can’t ask you..."
He gives me one of those patient looks that somehow makes arguing seem terribly inefficient.
"I'll bring him up. I'll only be a moment."
Before I can thank him, he's quietly gone. I wander to the window and pull back the heavy curtain.
The moon is full, and the countryside looks silver. Rain continues to drift across the hills, soft enough to blur the landscape into shades of charcoal and silver.
I suddenly see a darker shadow slipping silently across the far wall. Tall. Unnaturally thin. It seems to fold into the darkness and then simply vanish.
I hear the words Welcome home.
Every hair on my arms rises and I let out a nervous laugh.
"Jet lag." That has to be it. New country. Old castle. Too much coffee. Exhaustion.
Still, I’m sure I saw something. Maybe I heard something?
A gentle knock sounds at the door.
"Come in." The door opens.
Tristan walks in with Murphy in his arms, all 70 pounds of him.
Murphy looks thoroughly pleased with himself.
Tristan sets the dog down, and Murphy walks directly to the bed, circles once, then settles onto the rug with a dramatic sigh that suggests he has completed an exhausting diplomatic mission.
Tristan absently brushes a few pale dog hairs from his sleeve. Somehow even that looks dignified.
"Thank you," I say softly. “For getting Murphy, for dinner, for the tour, for not kicking me out…”
Tristan looks from Murphy to me.
"It was no hardship."
For a brief moment, neither of us speaks. Then he inclines his head.
"Sleep well, lass."
"You too."
A flicker of amusement touches his eyes.
He closes the door quietly. Only after the latch clicks into place do I realize something. Somehow he'd managed to make the woman who'd arrived holding paperwork to his home feel welcome. I smile to myself as I begin brushing my hair and changing for bed.
What an extraordinary day.
Last week I was in California, trying to decide on my next project and looking at an empty calendar.
Now I apparently own a Scottish castle. Or at least I own paperwork insisting I do.
I also appear to have acquired one exceedingly polite Scottish lord who lives in said castle, cooks like a Michelin-star chef, carries my dog, and somehow makes pouring tea feel like a royal ceremony and somehow sexy.
I strip and lay down on the bed and laugh quietly. Who on earth raised that man? No. Wrong question. Who raises anyone to be like that anymore?
I've met wealthy people before. Very wealthy people.
Retired hedge fund managers who collected Impressionist paintings.
Old Boston families whose silver had been polished by the same household for generations.
A Manhattan financier who insisted on wearing cufflinks to backyard barbecues.
A trust-fund baby and retired Oxford professor who quoted Shakespeare in normal conversations.
People with old money often carried themselves differently. More ... certain.
Tristan fits somewhere in that world.
Except not quite. It wasn't the manners, the clothing or his accent. It’s something else. He’s authentic and simply is. Maybe that’s what happens when your family lives in the same place for generations.
Kindness has become strangely uncommon. Courtesy even more so. Tristan wears both as naturally as breathing. Maybe that's just Scotland. Maybe that's just old families.
Or maybe he's simply one of those rare people who never learned that the world rewards selfishness more often than generosity.
Maybe Lord Tristan Sinclair is simply the latest chapter in a very old story.
That makes far more sense than anything else. Murphy lets out a sleepy snore. I smile into the darkness. Then there's his dry humor.
Good grief.
I don't think I've ever met someone capable of delivering a perfectly timed joke or jab without changing expression. He'll say something so dry I almost miss it. Then, five seconds later, I'll start laughing all over again.
I roll onto my side, watching the fire.
He's also ridiculously handsome. Unfairly so.
There. I admitted it to absolutely no one except myself and a sleeping Labrador. Murphy opens one eye.
"Don't judge me."
His tail thumps once against the rug.
It isn't just that Tristan is attractive.
I've known attractive men. I've dated attractive men. I’ve slept with attractive men.
One was a venture capitalist who believed weekends were for networking and flirting with other women.
Another spent more time looking at his reflection in restaurant windows than at me.
One memorable disaster referred to my renovation business as "an adorable little hobby." That relationship lasted exactly one day and forty-three minutes.
Tristan isn't like any of them.
Most people interrupt. Or check their phones. Or assume they already know what you're about to say. Or are thinking about their own lives and that they are far more important.
Tristan makes me feel as though every question deserves an honest answer. Even if he occasionally chooses not to give the complete one.
He's hiding something. I know it. He’s not hiding something in a suspicious way, like a man with secrets tucked into desk drawers. It’s more like someone carrying a story too large to tell a stranger on the first day.
Not the sort of secret that makes me wonder if I should leave. The sort that makes me want to know him more.
That's fair. I have stories and secrets I don't tell people on the first day, too.
I take my phone from the nightstand and send a short email to my solicitor in Edinburgh about the situation, promising to call in the morning.
I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for this mess.
Probably involving complicated inheritance law and enough paperwork to flatten a small village.
Outside, the wind rattles softly against the windows.
I switch off the bedside lamp and pull the blankets up higher to my chin. The mattress is impossibly comfortable. Outside, rain whispers against the windows.
Somewhere in the distance, an old clock marks the hour.
I close my eyes.
Tomorrow we'll sort out deeds, trusts, occupancy rights, and whatever bizarre legal tangle this is. Maybe I can cancel the deal?
The last thing I think before sleep finally claims me isn't the castle. It's a pair of calm grey eyes with silver in them. And a man who somehow managed to make an ancient castle feel less overwhelming ... in the space of a single evening.
Beneath his manners, the quiet smile, the impossible calm and beauty and dry humor, I think that Lord Tristan Sinclair is the most interesting man I've ever met.
Somehow, I have the oddest feeling he needed the company just as much as I did.