She sank down on the little bench set under the window and looked at the people walking along the street below her, going about their business as if they had every right to. She watched them for a moment or two, then leaned her head back against the side of the window and closed her eyes.
She hadn’t dared think about it before, on the off chance that her plans went awry, but she was in the middle of perpetrating a strategy. It was almost ridiculous to think that at the ripe old age of twenty-six she was trying to figure out a way to cut the old apron strings, but that’s what it boiled down to. It wasn’t that her parents were bad people; they were just . . . difficult. Her older siblings had been a disappointment, so the burden of perfection had always rested on her.
She’d had enough of that, actually.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried over the years to assert her independence. It was true that she was still living in the bedroom she’d grown up in, but she had recently begun to refuse to sleep on a sleeper while accompanying her mother to conferences, insisting instead on a bed of her own.
She paused. All right, so it had been an extra bed in her mother’s room. She had put her foot down about penny loafers. She had gotten her master’s in historical textile preservation with an emphasis on Elizabethan offerings instead of Victorian. And she had begun to insist that her mother pay her for help with exhibitions instead of simply offering her room and board. She knew she should have gotten an apartment long before now, but every time she made noises about moving out, her parents looked as if she’d said she was going to ditch her conservative uniform of tweed and polyester for tie-dye and dreads. What was the last child to do but try to keep the peace?
The truth was, her parents weren’t terrible people. They just always both seemed to need an audience. Unfortunately, unlike her older brother and sister, she’d never managed to get out of the front-row seats, much less the theater.
Until two days earlier, that was.
She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She had cash, a debit card, and a map Lydia had given her earlier that morning with useful places marked in red. Lydia had invited her to take the day and investigate the environs so she would be comfortable when they left her alone in their house for the summer. Life was good.
She jogged down the stairs, feeling remarkably fresh for it still being the middle of the night on the East Coast, and almost ran into Lydia bodily in the entryway.
“Oh,” Samantha said in surprise, “I’m sorry—”
Lydia put her finger to her lips quickly. “You have company,” she whispered. “I think you might escape—”
Or maybe not. The door to the salon opened with a flourish and there stood Theodore IV, ready to set sail for points she didn’t want to know about. She managed to suppress a flinch only because she’d had so much practice.
“Off we go,” he said brightly. “Thank you, Mrs. Cooke, for your hospitality.”
And that was that. Before she could say anything, Samantha was hustled out the door and herded toward a taxi. She balked at that.
“I can’t afford a taxi,” she said firmly.
Dory drew himself up. “As if I would ask you to pay,” he said huffily. “I’m treating today.”
Unless things changed later on, of course. Samantha was half tempted as he got in first to simply jump back, shut the door, and run down the street, but she supposed he would just follow her. She sighed, then climbed into the back of the cab with him. Last time. Honestly.
“Where are we going this morning?” she asked reluctantly.
“The Castle,” he said, checking his phone, “then lunch, then the bridge, then the Discovery Museum.”
Her feet hurt just thinking about it, but she supposed she wouldn’t waste breath saying anything. It would just add to her already unwholesome reputation for fragility.
The thing that surprised her the most as they approached Newcastle’s landmark castle was the fact that the taxi dropped them off on a sidewalk that was immediately adjacent to the steps that led up to an enormous wooden set of doors. She stood on that sidewalk and looked around her in amazement. She had seen her share of pictures of castles, but they’d always been on a bluff, or out in the country. Outside of London and Edinburgh, she’d never truly considered that a modern city might sit around a structure that had been more or less intact since the thirteenth century.
She walked up stairs that had no doubt been walked up hundreds of thousands of times over those eight hundred years and felt something slide down her spine—and that wasn’t Dory Mollineux’s hand. She looked over her shoulder, but there was nothing there.
Weird.
She learned at the entrance that they were going Dutch, which she supposed shouldn’t have surprised her. So much for being treated that day. She pulled out enough money for her own entrance fee, then declined to buy a guidebook when invited to do so by her companion. If he wanted one, he could buy it himself.
They started on the ground floor with the chapel, but Dory didn’t seem to be particularly eager to stay there. In fact, she realized almost immediately that his idea of touring was to walk into a room of any size, nod, then stride on off to the next thing. She hadn’t paid her four pounds to sprint through the entire place, so once they hit the first floor and a room with exhibits, she put her foot down.
“I’m going to read all these,” she announced.
He blew his perfectly highlighted blond locks out of his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous; I’m poor and I’m not going to waste my money on something, then not look it over thoroughly.” She pointed to a bench surrounding a pillar. “Go sit on that if you’re bored.”
He looked at her with a slight frown, as if he couldn’t quite understand why she was forming words that didn’t include of course and whatever you want. He studied her for a moment or two longer, then walked off to sit down. She ignored him and decided to start at one corner of the room and work her way around.
Only the corner of the room she had selected was currently occupied. She looked at the man standing three feet from her and felt a sudden and unaccountable increase of temperature in the room.
All right, so she had seen men before, several of them. She had even gone out with a couple, handpicked by her parents, of course, and possessing pedigrees that would have made any blue blood worth his salt green with envy. There had even, in the long progression of males she had admired from a distance, been a few who had been tall, dark, and handsome.
But she had the feeling that just a glance from the man standing next to her would have sent all those guys off into therapy for years.
He was tall, substantially taller than Dory’s wishful-thinking not-quite six feet. He was wearing jeans, boots, and some sort of T-shirt that sported a sentiment in Middle English she would have translated if she’d had the presence of mind to do so. After all, she’d agreed to Latin and Middle English if her mother laid off her about Scottish Gaelic.
She couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but his hair was dark and his face was, well, flawless was the only word that came to mind. And she knew that his face was flawless because he had turned it toward her and was watching her gape at him.
She quickly turned away and walked toward the nearest case filled with artifacts. She had no idea what she was looking at. She read the words written there but found no meaning in them. She felt as if she’d just come down with a terrible cold, feverish, as if she needed a serious lie-down sooner rather than later.
It made her feel a little silly even thinking that, because she felt as if she were quoting directly from one of those contraband romances her great-aunt Mary had slipped her during high school, buried under balls of tatting thread and musty old patterns included to throw her mother off the scent. But there was no denying that the man standing over there, leaning over a case with his hands clasped behind his back, was absolutely stunning.
“Hurry up, Sammy,” Dory said loudly.
&n
bsp; The annoyance was plain in his voice. She looked over her shoulder to tell him to keep his voice down—and stop calling her that name she loathed—when for the second time in as many minutes, she felt herself stagger in place.
There was a man standing right there next to Dory, a tall, distinguished-looking man with jet-black hair swept artistically back from his forehead. It wasn’t so much that he was wearing full-blown Elizabethan gear, including an enormous ruff, a heavily embroidered doublet, and a velvet cape tossed artistically over one shoulder, or that he was looking at her as if he found her rather lacking. It wasn’t even that she suspected that with only a hint of an invitation, he would break forth into a Shakespearean soliloquy right there in front of her.
It was that she had the feeling, crazy as it might have been, that she was looking at someone who just wasn’t quite of the corporeal world.
She tore her gaze away from him to look at Dory, who was still complaining that she wasn’t going fast enough. She pointed behind him and tried to speak, but realized fairly soon that while her mouth was moving, nothing but garbled babbling was coming out.
And then she watched the Elizabethan type lean over and flick Dory on the ear.
Dory leapt up, looked around him, then frowned fiercely. He looked at her.
“Who did that?” he demanded.
She felt a shiver start at the back of her head and work its way quickly down her back. She had spent her share of time with things of a vintage nature, watched more than her share of ghost-hunter shows, and been sure that the shadows that seemingly moved just out of her line of sight hadn’t been just her bangs tricking her, but she’d never imagined she would actually see—in broad daylight, no less—a . . . well, a ghost.
“Well?” Dory snapped.
She took a deep breath, then pointed at the reenactment guy standing behind him.
Dory looked over his shoulder, but the only other person within ten feet of him was the dark-haired man who had sent her pulse racing. That man glanced at Dory in a way that sent her escort sitting back down without comment. Samantha wasn’t surprised by the dirty look Dory sent her way, but she found herself completely unaffected by it, for a change. She was simply too busy gaping at the Elizabethan ghost standing there, looking down at Dory as if he’d been a bug.
She had to admit that in that, she heartily approved.
“What in the hell are you pointing at?” Dory demanded.
Samantha curled her fingers into her palm and dropped her arm down by her side. “Don’t you see him?”
“See what?”
Well, if he couldn’t see that guy standing right there in all his Renaissance glory, she wasn’t going to waste her breath talking about it.
“Um,” she began.
“You’re jet-lagged,” Dory said briskly, “and I’m done here. Hurry up before I leave you behind.”
She turned back to her exhibit, though she supposed now that she was wallowing in her independence, she would have to do something about the jerk behind her. After all, it wasn’t as if her parents could send her to her room for being rude to him. She was certainly old enough to run her own life.
She was beginning to regret not having come to that conclusion long before now.
She tried to read the exhibit information but couldn’t help surreptitious glances over her shoulder. Those turned out to be not nearly enough. She finally had to turn sideways and watch the spectacle. The man dressed in Elizabethan gear that Dory couldn’t see had apparently only just begun his work. He pestered Dory, tugging on his hair, blowing down the back of his neck, then finally rolling his eyes and delivering a smart cuff to the back of Dory’s head.
She was surprised to watch Dory fall off his bench and go sprawling, but perhaps there were things about ghosts she just didn’t understand. The exertion did seem to affect Mr. Doublet adversely, though. The shade put his hand on the pillar and gasped artistically for breath, but since that wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to from her own father, she didn’t think much of it. Far more interesting was what was left of Master Mollineux.
He crawled to his feet, then whirled around, his face contorted in fury.
“Who did that?”
Samantha opened her mouth to enlighten him, then realized there was nothing to enlighten him about. The man with the ruff flicked the lace at his wrists, sent a thoroughly supercilious look her way, then vanished.
She almost sat down hard enough to break the glass behind her.
Dory stopped turning in circles, no doubt looking for someone to blame, smoothed his hair back from his face, then swept the occupants of the room with a disgusted look and started for the door.
“Ten minutes or I leave you behind,” he threw at her as he left.
Well, if he was going to be that way about it, she just might have to linger for a bit longer than she’d intended to.
She leaned to her right to look around the pillar in the middle of the room, on the off chance that she’d missed something, but no one was there. She supposed she shouldn’t have expected anything else. Not only was she in England, she was in the bowels of a very old castle.
Along with her endless supply of mysteries and romances, her great-aunt Mary had been a connoisseur of all things paranormal. She had instilled a curiosity in Samantha that Samantha was sure would be her undoing at some point. She had just never thought she would have something of her own to report on.
She turned back to the exhibits, but the truth was, her mind just wasn’t on them. She was too tempted to ease over to where she’d seen her spectral rescuer working his magic on her primary tormentor. She glanced over her shoulder again, but there was nothing there to be seen. The only thing left in the room was a gorgeous man who was working his way over to her. She reached for a free brochure to fan herself because she was fairly sure she’d just seen a ghost, not because she was looking at the poster boy for Gorgeous Guys, Inc.
He was a careful reader, that much she could say about him. She was having trouble making sense of what was in front of her, but he didn’t seem to be having the same problem. She didn’t bother to point out to him that he was starting at the wrong end of the bank of display cases, because obviously he didn’t care. She managed to get through two displays—and yes, she was counting—by the time he’d done six and they’d met in the middle. She’d stopped fanning, mostly because the wrinkled piece of paper she held in her hand had simply given out under the strain.
She took a deep breath and looked at the man standing next to her.
He was watching her with a grave expression on his face, as if he waited for something pithy to come out of her mouth.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” was the best she could do.
He seemed to consider. “Why do you ask?”
“Because . . . well, never mind.”
The man looked at her from the most amazing pair of green eyes she had ever seen. She wished suddenly that she’d gone ahead and sprung for that guidebook. At least that might have left her with something else to use to keep herself from perspiring.
“Did one frighten off your escort?”
She looked at him in surprise. “How did you know?”
“It’s a castle,” he said easily. “Nothing should come as a surprise here.”
She would have smiled, but he was a stranger and she didn’t want to look like an easy mark—on the off chance he wanted to steal her wallet, of course. Because she couldn’t quite understand why a man that good-looking would be in the middle of a castle museum. Even more baffling was why he would be talking to her.
“Are you a tourist?” she blurted out before she thought better of it.
He smiled a very small smile that was so charming, she found herself smiling in return.
“No,” he said with consonants so posh he had to have been either very well educated or some sort of upper-crust type, “just a student of history. Had a free day and thought this might be interesting. And you?”
“Ah,” she said.
“I’m just a tourist.”
“And your boyfriend?”
“He isn’t my boyfriend,” she said quickly. “Just someone I know.” She almost added unfortunately, but thought that might have been too much information.
He only lifted his eyebrows briefly, then nodded. “Have a lovely visit,” he said, then he turned and walked away.
Samantha was slightly surprised by the abruptness of his departure, but since that seemed to be the state of affairs with the men in her life during the past half hour, she supposed she couldn’t expect anything else.
She sat down on the bench surrounding the pillar in the middle of the room and tried to regroup. She attempted it until the room filled with foreign-speaking tourists and she realized she wasn’t going to get any serious thinking done.
She managed to get out of the castle and catch a bus back to the Cookes’ without seeing Dory. She could only assume he’d stomped off in a huff and was intending to punish her by his absence.
Lydia answered the door at her knock. “Have a good morning, love?”
“It was interesting,” Samantha said, because there was absolutely no way she was going to talk about what she’d seen. She was almost convinced she’d imagined the whole thing.
Lydia smiled. “You know, Samantha, I was just wondering if you might be up for a little errand tomorrow.”
“Will it require my traveling long distances?” Samantha asked hopefully.
Lydia laughed a little. “Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind nipping down to London and delivering something to a colleague for me. I’d go myself, of course, but Edmund and I start rehearsals soon.” She smiled apologetically. “You know how that goes.”
“I do,” Samantha said, and boy, did she ever. Her father’s stage career had been all consuming for him. Even the university lived in fear of conflicting with his theater schedule.
“There is no hurry, actually, about your arrival,” Lydia said. “I’ll give you a phone number to ring when you reach the city. I hadn’t intended for you to do this, but I thought you might want to—what’s that phrase you have?”