Roses in Moonlight

  “I don’t think I want to be a part of this.”

  “I imagine you don’t, but I also think you’re safer with me than on your own.”

  “Where’d you learn to fence?”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it. “Here and there.”

  “Most people learn to fence as part of an acting degree.”

  “Most do.”

  “Did you?”

  He rubbed his hands together. “It’s getting late.”

  “And I’m getting under your skin,” she said, feeling rather pleased.

  “Yes, you are.” He nodded toward the bedroom she’d been using. “I think we should sleep for a couple of hours, at least, but no more. I would like to be at the Globe well before dawn and back home before sunrise.”

  “And then what?” she asked lightly. “You go to Castle Hammond and I go either to jail or the graveyard?”

  He looked at her steadily. “We’ll work that out when we get back. But I don’t leave women unprotected, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “How chivalrous.”

  “Up north, we call it honor.”

  That was hard to argue with. It was also hard to argue the ridiculous notion of time travel, but since the man across from her was the only thing that seemed even remotely stable in a world that had suddenly gone absolutely insane, she supposed she would just have to take his word for it. She nodded, because that was the best she could do, collected her backpack and bag, then took herself off to her extremely luxurious bedroom and locked the door behind her. She set everything down on the floor, then looked at what Emily had purchased apparently for her. It was, unsurprisingly enough, all effortlessly chic and not a square inch of it was made of rayon or polyester. Her mother would have had a fit if she’d seen it.

  She checked the door one more time, then decided to just trust that she would wake up still in one piece.

  She left the vase on the dresser.

  • • •

  She woke up in one piece, but still in the dark. She fumbled for the clock and found that it was not quite three A.M. Maybe Derrick had been making noise in the sitting room, determined to hold to his idea of walking along the Thames in the dark. She opted for a robe over her silk pajamas on the off chance he thought it would be better to go looking in the daylight and she might get to go back to bed, then left her room.

  The sitting room was as she’d left it, but his bedroom door was open. She picked up a handful of grapes on her way by the table, then walked quietly over to the open doorway.

  She frowned. Either he had company, or those were moans of pain. She considered, then flicked on the light.

  He was facedown on the floor. She was relieved to find he had at least passed out before he’d had the chance to get his jeans off, though she supposed she shouldn’t have been happy that he was only semiconscious. She hastened over to peer down at him.

  Wow, was the Ritz going to have to replace some carpet.

  She would have panicked completely, but she could see that the blood had come from his shoulder. How that was better, she didn’t know, but she supposed it was. She put her hand on his back and winced. He was burning up.

  It took her several tries before she managed to get him over onto his back. She patted his face, which only made him groan softly. She considered, then slapped him smartly. He sat partway up, cursing as he did so, then looked at her. It took him several blinks before he managed to focus on her. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell back over.

  She knelt down next to his head and suppressed the urge to wring her hands. What in the world was she going to do now? There was no possible way she could call her brother. He would wonder what she was doing in a fancy hotel room with someone she didn’t know, which would lead to all kinds of questions she wasn’t going to want to answer.

  She jumped when she felt Derrick’s hand groping her. He took hold of her arm and looked up at her. His eyes were crossed, but she imagined that in his current condition, it didn’t bother him.

  “Phone,” he rasped. “Sunny.”

  “Who’s Sunny?”

  “Cousin.”

  Well, she had no idea what a cousin could do for him, but since he was trying to get himself into a sitting position she didn’t suppose she could argue. She looked around for his phone, found it, then brought it back and knelt down next to him.

  “On . . .”

  She found the on button, then watched as he fumbled for it and pressed his thumb against the screen. Of course she memorized that. She was a good memorizer, as it happened, and one never knew when a little detail like that would come in handy.

  She found his contacts, then scrolled through them until she found an entry for Sunny.

  A man’s voice answered after only a couple of rings. “I don’t know very many private callers who would dare ring me in the middle of the night. Who’s this?”

  “Um, I’m calling for Derrick Cameron,” Samantha said hesitantly. “There’s been an accident.”

  The reply was brisk and businesslike. “What sort?”

  “He was, ah, stabbed by a sword in the shoulder. He said for me to call Sunny.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Ritz.”

  “Oh, aye, I knew that. Very well, we’ll be there in a few minutes. Is he bleeding heavily?”

  Samantha thought that it was entirely possible that she was currently having the weirdest conversation of her life. And given the things she had experienced over the past three days, that was saying something.

  “Well, the carpet will need to be cleaned,” she said.

  “What sort of sword was it?” the man asked.

  Samantha closed her eyes briefly. “An Elizabethan rapier.”

  There was silence on the other end for a moment or two. “Who are you, lass?”

  “Samantha Drummond.” She paused. “He thought I stole his piece of lace.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, but I was inadvertently carrying it with me.” She paused. “It’s complicated.”

  The man made a noise that was a bit like a snort. “It always is. We’ll be there as quickly as we can.”

  “I think he would appreciate it.”

  She hung up, then simply sat down on the floor next to Derrick and wished she had at least some first-aid skills. She considered putting a pillow under his head but was afraid that might give him a kink in his neck. She settled for a blanket draped over him. No sense in his catching a chill.

  It took longer than she feared for a knock to sound on the door. She jumped up and ran into the other room to open it. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but a couple in jeans with a baby wasn’t it. The man looked her over quickly and efficiently, then held out his hand.

  “Robert Cameron. I’m Derrick’s cousin. This is my wife Sunshine. Sunny, this is Samantha Drummond.”

  Samantha tried not to gape. That was the Countess of Assynt and her husband standing there. Well, coming inside the room, really. She shut the door behind them, then followed them over to Derrick’s bedroom. Robert Cameron then made noises of disapproval as he pulled away the blood-soaked cloth wrapped around Derrick’s arm.

  He muttered something half under his breath that sounded remarkably like Gaelic, only spoken with an accent she had never heard before. He looked up at his wife.

  “Think you can heal this wee fool here?”

  She handed him the baby, then took his place on the floor at Derrick’s side. Samantha looked at Lord Robert.

  “I didn’t realize it was that bad,” she said helplessly. “I mean, the whole thing’s kind of strange, don’t you think? That someone would poke at him with a sword?”

  Lord Robert exchanged a brief glance with his wife, then looked at her with a smile.

  “Strange happenings in the world sometimes, wouldn’t you say?”

  Samantha let out a shaky breath. “After this week, I would have to agree.” She looked at Sunshine Cameron pulling things out of a backpac
k she hadn’t realized she had been wearing, then turned back to her husband. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He shook his head. “Honestly, I think the best thing you could do is just go back to bed. He’ll be fine by the morning. Sleep as long as you like. I’ll keep watch.”

  She studied him. “Are you really the Earl of Assynt?”

  “To my continued surprise, I find that I am.”

  “I was just curious,” she said slowly. “I’m not sure who to trust. I think I trust him”—she nodded at Derrick—“but he’s currently unconscious. But if you’re his cousin . . .”

  He smiled. She couldn’t say he looked exactly like Derrick, but there was obviously a family resemblance. Something about the eyes, maybe.

  “Not to worry, Miss Drummond. You can sleep in peace.”

  She nodded, turned, then turned back slightly. “There’s nothing I can do?”

  The Earl of Assynt shook his head. “I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  She nodded, then walked back to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She wasn’t sure she would sleep, but found that it was impossible to stay awake.

  A man who had lifted a sword to defend her. Another man who had been completely unsurprised to find the first man had been wounded by an Elizabethan sword.

  She wondered just what she’d gotten herself into.

  Chapter 12

  Derrick had never thought he would die on a frozen tundra, but perhaps he deserved it for all the times he had leaned on hapless collectors of antiquities to inspire them to relinquish their goods.

  Or perhaps he was languishing on the burning Sahara. At the moment, he honestly couldn’t tell where he was. He was alternately parched and freezing, so perhaps he’d merely been consigned to a circle of hell he’d never read about.

  And then the voices began.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me if we should take him to the hospital?”

  “Nay, Sunny, I’ll trust the herbs. And you.”

  Derrick tried to frown, but it was too much effort. He was listening to Gaelic, but the cadence was slightly off. He’d learned the mother tongue, of course, because he was a Scot and because it had irritated his father . . .

  He managed a frown then. He hadn’t thought about either of his parents in years. He missed his mother, occasionally, though he never thought of her without wishing that she had been a little more willing to stand up to his father. His father, that arrogant punter, had looked down on everything that smacked of Scotland as if it were less somehow than what was to be found south of the border. Or at least he had when he hadn’t been angling for the job of laird of what was left of the clan Cameron, though that had been merely for the power of it, not for the love of it. Derrick was sure that if he hadn’t had his grandfather there to instill a bit of proper Scottish pride into him, he never would have amounted to anything.

  He drank something at one point that was so bitter, his eyes watered and his tongue took flight. Someone called him a useless woman. He was certain his retort to that nameless, faceless insulter had been brisk and to the point, but before he could recall the words and examine them for their beauty, they slipped away from him.

  Time crawled.

  “He thought you were a thief?”

  “Yes. I can’t really blame him, though. I don’t think he knew anything about me except that I was staying with the Cookes.”

  Derrick pursed his lips, but found they were slightly more numb than he would have liked them to be. That was a Yank speaking there. Her name was there as well, just past where his numb lips resided in a swirling vortex of swords and lace and Roman soldiers stomping through his brain, but it was too much trouble to reach for it. He closed his eyes and sighed.

  A woman laughed lightly. “I’m surprised he didn’t have your entire life history at his fingertips.”

  “It isn’t a very interesting life, and I’m not sure my degrees would have exonerated me.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because they are, unfortunately, in antique textiles.”

  Derrick realized he was listening to Sunny and Samantha. He was rather proud of that feat, actually. He struggled to open his eyes, but that was impossible.

  “Oh, look, he’s awake,” Sunny said cheerfully. “Let’s get some more of that tonic down him.”

  He tried to protest, truly he did. But all opening his mouth earned him was a gallon of Sunny’s worst brew poured down his throat. He swallowed, because he had to, then spat out a few choice curses. Unfortunately, that was all he spat, because that vile liquid was burning its way down his gullet to rest happily in a spot he might have called his belly at any other time. At the moment, his tum felt more like an enormous medieval hearth where there lay roasting half a bloody tree. He gasped out a plea for aid, but only had cackling laughter as a reward.

  He slid into senselessness accompanied by what he was just sure he wasn’t hearing.

  Double, double, toil and trouble.

  He certainly had enough of both.

  • • •

  He woke. It took him several moments to become accustomed to that fact, but it was inescapable. He felt as if he’d been run over, then rolled over by a steamroller, then left there to have sand sprayed over him to mitigate the effects of a good snowfall. He was certain that the snow gritter had concentrated on his eyes alone, because they felt as if they were full of rocks. He would have rubbed them, but he simply didn’t have the strength. He wasn’t a fatalist by nature, but he hoped the next time he was overcome by an Elizabethan sword wound, someone would just do the right thing and put him out of his misery.

  An indeterminate amount of time later, he managed to turn his head to see if anyone was by his bedside, worried about his condition. Well, there was someone sitting by his bedside, but she seemed to be less worried about him than she was about checking her email.

  Not only was she checking her email, she was doing it on his tablet. He would have frowned sternly, but he didn’t want to waste any energy on that. He was saving it up to give her a proper dressing down, but he couldn’t quite remember for what. Then it occurred to him that she was using his tablet.

  “Hey,” he croaked, “how’d you break into that?”

  She didn’t even have the decency to look up, the heartless wench. She only continued to poke at the screen. “Lord Robert gave me the password,” she said absently.

  “How’d he know it?” he rasped.

  “He said you’d ask that.”

  He waited, but she was obviously not going to be divulging anything on her own. “Well?” he demanded.

  “He said to tell you, and I quote, that he has a brain, too, you idiot, and what were you thinking not to call Sunny sooner?”

  Derrick would have snorted, but he thought that might upset the delicate balance he was maintaining between feeling like death and actually dying. He closed his eyes briefly, concentrated on breathing in and out for a bit longer, then attempted speech again.

  “I believe the last bit, but not the first.” He opened his eyes and looked at her again. “How did he get my password?”

  She was watching him solemnly. He wondered how it was that a certain sort of ambient light coming through diaphanous curtains could take a woman’s hair from uninspired brown to a lovely mahogany that sported strands of red here and there. Her face was, he had to admit, less stunning than it was simply lovely, all pale-skinned with a handful of freckles across her nose, as if she hadn’t spent much time in the sun. He imagined that was the case, given that she’d no doubt been putting in her time in some museum or other. Or apparently altering costumes for her father.

  “Your password?” she said absently. “Well, I’m not sure I should tell you how he got it.”

  “I don’t have it written down anywhere,” Derrick said crossly. “What’d he do? Beat it out of me?”

  She only shook her head.

  He tried to sit up, but that left him almost breathless with the aftereffects of what
he supposed had been a colossal fever. He held out his hand. “Give me the tablet.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He shook his hand impatiently at her. “I need it now.”

  She looked at him as if she couldn’t decide whether to hand it over or clunk him over the head with it. Good manners apparently won out because she simply laid it on the bed next to him, got up, and walked out of the room. She shut the door softly behind her.

  He considered. It was possible that he had been too long in the company of thugs and their bad habits had rubbed off on him. It was also possible that he hadn’t dated anyone seriously in several years and that the bad manners of the women he did see casually had, somewhere along the line, begun to seem acceptable.

  Or it was possible that he was just an ass who, judging by the date on his watch, had been completely unconscious for almost three days and had just been rude to his nurse?

  “Miss Drummond,” he croaked loudly.

  She didn’t return, though he honestly hadn’t expected her to. He supposed he was lucky she didn’t open the door and throw a bucket of ice water on him. He forced himself into a sitting position, was rather grateful he hadn’t eaten to have anything to throw up, then continued to sit until the stars stopped swirling around his head. It took a bit, but enough feeling finally returned in his legs that he could sense he was wearing trousers. It was for damned sure that he couldn’t see them at the moment.

  He waited until the waves of nausea receded and his head stopped pounding long enough for him to actually open his eyes and peer at what he was wearing.

  MacLeod plaid. Sunny’s doing, obviously.

  He wondered if Samantha realized the insult that had been paid to his unconscious self, then decided he didn’t care if she did or not. He had been polite to her, because he’d felt bad about misjudging her. Now, what he needed her to do was get him through the gate, lead him to the place where she’d stashed the lace, then come back with him so he could get the lace back to Lord Epworth and the Cookes to Scotland Yard. He had no other use for her than that, no matter what his cousin and that cousin’s wife had dressed him in, no doubt giggling like schoolgirls whilst they’d been about it.