Barefoot in the Dark

by Suzanne Enoch

  “Don’t preach to me,” his cousin returned, grinning loosely. “I spent the night with a woman not my wife.”

  Norway hit him on the arm. “You’re very bad, Reginald.”

  The conversation didn’t look like it was going anywhere good, so Samantha patted the seat beside her. “I hear you want to investigate the west wing. I’m leading an expedition there this morning if you want to join me, Reggie.”

  Rick’s cousin sat down next to her, the Viking on his other side. “Gladly, Dr. Livingston. Shall I pack a tent?”

  “Surely you aren’t going in there, Samantha,” Eerika countered. “It’s dangerous, I hear. And dirty.”

  Somewhere in the past day, this had gone from her being nervous to meet Rick’s family, to doing everything she could to keep herself between them and Rick’s temper. The explanation he gave about not wanting to lose souvenirs kind of worked, but she couldn’t help feeling that there was something else going on here. Samantha put a grin on her face. “I think I’ll manage.”

  “And will you be joining us, Ricky?”

  “I’m the one who owns the gloves and hardhats. So, yes.”

  Lord Rowland and Lady Mercia appeared, both chipper and so, so proper. Maybe Reggie was right, and they were totally annoyed by the way she and Rick were kissing and touching and sleeping together pre-maritally, and they were just too polite to say anything – though Reggie got away with it. If that was because Eerika had a British accent, well, fuck that. Even so, part of her wanted to apologize, to make sure they liked her, but the other half picked up on Rick’s ambivalence about their presence. For the moment she’d go with the latter.

  “If you’re going, then I’m going, Reginald,” the Viking pressed.

  “I thought it was dangerous and dirty,” Samantha commented under her breath, earning her a side-eye from Rick.

  “It’ll be an adventure,” Reggie countered. “Do you have enough hardhats, Ricky?”

  “Only if you stop calling me Ricky. But this place has stood for seven hundred years. I thought we might go into the village this afternoon,” Rick put in. “Take Samantha and Miss Nyland for a late luncheon at The Bonny Lass pub.”

  “You young people do as you will,” Lord Rowland put in. “If the weather holds, Mercia and I will take a stroll in the garden.”

  If Lady Mercia had been wearing a bonnet to go with her conservative, flowered dress, she could have been mistaken for Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. Lord Rowland was suited and tied, even with this being a holiday. All he needed was to substitute a white, ruffled cravat for his thin, blue tie, and he’d be Mr. Bennet. Now they wanted to go for a stroll in the garden. These two couldn’t possibly be as bland as they seemed. That made them a puzzle. She loved a damn puzzle.

  Once they’d all finished breakfast and separated to gear up for the expedition, she snagged a diet coke from the huge, walk-in refrigerator in the kitchen. That was all she needed; as far as exploration, this was all the way over on the tame meter for her. Samantha trudged upstairs to the wide doors leading to the west wing of the house. No wi-fi, iffy antenna TV, and barely any electricity, but they stocked diet Coke at Canniebrae. She didn’t bother with thinking it could be a coincidence; of course Rick had seen to it. For her.

  “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather keep exploring the attic?” he asked, topping the stairs and tossing her a blue construction helmet.

  “Not today.” Sam plopped the hardhat over her hair and faced the heavy, oversized doors. They even had a chain around the handles. And a big-ass lock. “Please tell me you have velociraptors in there.”

  “Why do you keep insisting that I secretly own a real Jurassic zoo?” Rick retorted, pulling a large key from his pocket and working it into the lock.

  “Because it would be awesome.” The locking mechanism squeaked and clicked. Chains rattled as they hit the floor. She shivered a little when the huge double doors moaned open, the sound echoing down a long, dark hallway beyond. “This is awesome,” she revised in a whisper, grinning.

  “Yes, all you require is some darkness, dust, and cobwebs.”

  “Ah, you say the sweetest things. Let’s go, Shaggy.”

  He lifted an eyebrow curved above Caribbean blue eyes. “Which makes you Scooby, you know.”

  “I’m just impressed that you know who the Magical Mystery Machine gang is.”

  Rick leaned against the doorframe. “Of course I—”

  “The Magical what?” Reggie said, as he topped the stairs behind her. Norway walked behind him. She’d donned some sort of high-fashion version of a safari outfit, with boots, scarf, khaki-colored pants, and all. Did the Viking always travel with that get-up, or had she known they were going exploring?

  “It’s a cartoon,” Samantha returned, relieving Reggie of two of the flashlights he carried and handing one to Rick. She looked on as Reggie donned his hardhat and the Viking carefully settled hers over her styled Scandinavian locks. “I’ll go first,” she decided. The west wing was likely the least safe place Reggie and the Viking had ever been. In addition, this was literally right up her alley, as it were. However athletic Rick was and Reggie and Eerika might be, they didn’t spend time navigating dark, treacherous corridors and rooms in search of treasure.

  “Oh, I don’t think so, my dear,” Reggie countered. “I’m all for equal pay and all that, but I’m fairly certain my head is harder than yours.”

  “I wouldn’t wager on that,” Rick murmured as he passed by her, his fingers brushing hers. “I’ll lead. It’s my house.”

  Men. Samantha sighed. “Then for crap’s sake stay close to one wall when you go down the hallway. The center will be weakest.”

  “’For crap’s sake’,” Reggie repeated, humor in his voice. “Delightful.” The Viking giggled.

  Great. Now the Brits would think her gauche or crass and lift their eyebrows at her. “That was my serious voice,” she decided.

  “Ah. Good to know.”

  Whether they’d decided she was a stupid American or not, they at least stayed close against the left wall as they headed down the dark hallway. Most of the doors on either side were shut, and the iffy electricity in the rest of the castle hadn’t made it this far – likely because of water damage to the wiring. Rick and Reggie had evidently played in this area twenty or so years ago, so she assumed it had been fairly sound that recently.

  “What did this?” she asked, panning her flashlight along the top of the wall while her feet squelched over long-ruined carpet of an uncertain dark color. The rest of Rick’s life – with the notable exception of her – was so orderly, that this…mess really didn’t make any sense. She glanced at his shoulders as he walked a few steps in front of her.

  “Time and weather, mostly,” he returned, stopping at the first door on the right-hand side and lowering the latch to shove it open. “No one’s lived in this wing for at least fifty years.”

  The room held a heavy wooden bedframe and a pair of stacked wooden chairs against the wall, with a handful of ruined books by the window and a badly sagging curtain rod with disintegrating green floor-length curtains. “Is the stuff from these rooms what ended up in the attic?” she asked, noting a lighter patch of wall in the shape of a rectangle over the mantelpiece.

  “Yes. The staff had plenty of time to clear out most of the rooms.”

  “Only of the things they knew were valuable,” Reggie commented, heading down the hallway past them. “There were odds and ends of treasure back when we dug through here. Surely some of that remains.”

  “I have no idea, Reg. I didn’t get a chart. Generally scavenging doesn’t come with signposts.”

  That was testy. “You know, the three of us can continue the tour if you need to make that call to Donner,” she injected. Generally she was the one causing the tension; this was…weird.

  “Tom can wait,” Rick said in a cooler tone, and gestured for her to precede him. “I don’t mind being here; I just don’t see the point of it. What are you looki
ng for, Reg?”

  “I want to see our old haunts. Plenty of pleasant memories of grand expeditions. I told you that. No need to raise your hackles.”

  Very few people called Rick on his temper, his decisions, or, well, anything. Being a relative evidently gave Reggie more freedom than being on Addisco’s board of directors. As that occurred to her, Samantha realized that she didn’t like the idea that other people could – dared – talk to him the way she did. “This is all for some lead soldiers?” she asked.

  “It’s about memories, I suppose. Ricky – Rick – isn’t the only one who’s been away from this place for nearly two decades.”

  She heard Rick pull in a breath through his nose. “I hadn’t realized you were so fond of Canniebrae, Reg.”

  “Well, you didn’t bother to ask, did you?”

  This was not good. Tension between family members meant people going away and not coming back. Or people sending other people away with the expectation that they would never cross paths again. She knew that much about families. Stepping forward, she wrapped her arm around Reggie’s. “What do you remember about being here?”

  “I always looked forward to the summer. We would dig for buried treasure and hunt through the old, closed-up rooms for spirits. I do remember we once found an old dagger. I stuck it in my belt, but Ricky insisted that we have it authenticated and dated. It ended up locked away in a display case.”

  “It did not,” Rick returned. “I only told you that, when Uncle Rowland said he didn’t want you walking around with a knife.”

  “You didn’t have to say anything to my father. It was a bloody knife. Not the stone of Scone.”

  Hmm. She’d carried a knife at age twelve. But then she’d learned how to use it, first – and not to shave twigs into a point or carve her initials in wood. No, knives were for unlocking window and cutting wires. According to her father, if you needed it for self-defense during a burglary, then you were an amateur. And she wasn’t an amateur.

  She sent Reggie a sideways glance. “Not to stomp on your you-took-a-knife-twenty-years-ago rant, but that’s all you remember?”

  “I’m not surprised you’d take his side.” Reggie rolled his shoulders. “No. That isn’t all I remember.”

  “Good. Tell me about the treasure hunting, then.”

  “We were children, Reg,” Rick cut in. “And it’s the Highlands. They may not have leprechauns here, but I doubt there’s an old house for three hundred miles that doesn’t have a tale about buried treasure, banshees, and ghosts to go along with it.”

  “We did find the knife. And that old map.” Reginald turned around to pin his cousin with a look. “What happened to that map, anyway?”

  “I have no idea.” Rick lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me that’s your master plan. Find buried treasure? Because if I recall, firstly the map only looked old, and secondly we already searched for the treasure. It was nonsense.”

  “I’m not so certain of that. I say we look.” He jabbed his thumb through a tear in the Victorian-era wallpaper lining the upper half of the wall. “No worrying over damaging an antique.”

  Well, that explained why Reggie had overruled Rick’s suggestion that they avoid the west wing altogether. The good stuff had been removed or was already ruined – unless it lay beneath a floorboard somewhere. So they were tracking lead soldiers, and maybe a treasure map.

  “I have this prickly feeling at the back of my neck,” Reggie drawled, putting a hand on the handle of a closed door, “that some dread woman in gray will be floating in the middle of the old sitting room.” Flashing a grin, he pushed down on the brass handle. “Let’s see, shall we?”

  No floating ghost filled the room, but the rush of cold, damp air made Samantha shiver anyway. “Was it this bad when you were kids?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder as Rick followed them into the tumbled room.

  “Not quite, but close,” he conceded, squatting to pick up a broom handle. “I blame this on my lack of interest in returning here.” Jabbing at the floor in front of him with the stick, he made his way over to the pair of windows. The nearer one had broken out, with a scattering of glass glittering on the hardwood floor and nearly covered by a fine sheet of water.

  Samantha knew the lack of interest in returning to Canniebrae had something to do with the death of Rick’s mom, but he’d never much wanted to talk about it. If he did now, she doubted it would be in front of his cousin and Norway. Ignoring Reggie digging through the mildewed trash surrounding the hearth while Eerika pointed out promising shapes, she stepped across the floor in Rick’s tracks and joined him at the window. Beneath her feet the floor gave with every step; it wouldn’t be long before the entire wing pancaked onto itself and left nothing but a pile of stone and wood.

  “Are you planning to repair this, or tear it down?” she asked, staying back far enough that she wouldn’t grind the glass into the floor with her shoes. Thieves didn’t make noise unnecessarily. Even retired thieves.

  “I haven’t decided yet. I’m inclined to think it’s a total loss, historical-value wise. If that’s so, then tearing it down and beginning again makes more sense.”

  “Christ, Ricky, you just said it’s seven hundred years old.” His cousin continued sorting through broken furniture and what looked like old newspapers. “Tearing it down would give you a stroke.”

  “It might,” Rick agreed. “As I said, I haven’t decided yet.”

  “If you don’t decide soon, Canniebrae will make the decision for you.” Reggie straightened. Wiping his palms on his trousers, he headed for the door. “And I think I’ll pay a visit to the old library before it all falls down around my ears. I’ll show you, Eerika. Used to have a lovely view of the garden.”

  Rick’s fingers caught hers. And then he squeezed. Three times. Then three more times, more slowly. Then three quick again.

  She’d never served in the Navy, but she did know a smattering of Morse code; a few discreet taps or blinks of a flashlight were far less likely to be noticed than whispering or radio traffic. Rick had just signaled her with an S-O-S. Samantha didn’t know why his ship suddenly needed saving, but hell, she could swim.

  Whatever it was had something to do with the old library, she surmised. Squeezing back, she pulled free and gingerly made her way back toward the hallway. With one foot on a firmer section of the floor, she stomped hard with the other. As she expected, the floor disintegrated beneath her shoe. Shifting her weight, she dug her toes into the opening and went down onto her hands and knees, throwing in a surprised shriek for good measure. “Ow!”

  Reggie was closer, but Rick reached her first. “Are you hurt?” he asked, grasping her calf and lifting her foot free of the hole.

  “I said ‘ouch’, didn’t I?” she snapped back, turning to sit on her backside. She wanted to throw him a wink or something, but with Reggie that close she couldn’t risk it. Hopefully Rick realized she was faking – after all, he’d given her the Bat signal in the first place. “Help me up,” she continued, holding a hand out to each of them. Behind the Addison men, Eerika looked annoyed that someone else had their attention. Well, pffffth.

  Together they pulled her to her feet, and she made a show of wincing as her left foot touched the floor. “Damn it. I need some ice and a beer.”

  With a snort, Reggie slid an arm around her waist and guided hers around his shoulder. “That’s very specific.”

  “I’ve got her.”

  “Let Richard have her, my dear,” the Viking supplied.

  For a minute Samantha felt like a dog toy while Rick wrangled her away from his cousin. Evidently whatever help he wanted didn’t go far enough that he meant to allow any other man putting a hand on her – even to help her walk.

  “Fine. You take her; I have more exploring to do.”

  Stifling a sigh, Samantha twisted to look at Reggie. “Are you kidding? I just put my foot through the floor, and you think you and Eerika are going anywhere alone here? Lift my feet.”

  “R
eally?”

  She elevated her left foot toward his hand. “Yes, really. You, big fella. You take the upper parts. Get me out of here.”

  Rick slid his arms around her ribs and took her weight as Reggie put a foot on either side of his hips and headed back toward the main part of the house. “I like the upper parts,” Rick whispered into her hair. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah? You have some ‘splaining to do, Ricky.”

  “Fine. As long as you never – ever – refer to me as Ricky Ricardo again.”

  “Deal.”

  7

  Thursday, 11:53 a.m.

  “Not that I’m complaining about the coddling,” Samantha commented, folding her arms behind her head, “but you know an ice pack isn’t necessary, right? Plus my feet have frostbite already.”

  “Aside from the fact that you could have been hurt, I’m keeping up appearances. But yes, your feet are a menace on a good day.” Setting aside the ice, Richard decided as long as her foot wasn’t actually injured, he might as well have fun with it. Pressing his thumb along the arch of her left foot, Richard began rubbing in slow circles. After a moment she sighed, and the added benefit of seeing goose bumps travel up her bare arms at his touch wasn’t anything to sneeze at, either.

  “So, what didn’t you want Reggie to see?”

  Of course she’d realized that he’d had more in mind than safety. God knew he would much rather have her asking questions than Reginald. “It occurred to me that I didn’t like the idea of my cousin digging for treasure in the ruins of my life.”

  She raised one eyebrow above pretty green eyes. “Really.”

  “Is that so surprising? You know how I like my antiques.” He leaned in, kissing her soft mouth. “And you.”

  Her lips curved. “At least I’m in the top two.”

  Not for a moment did he think she’d forgotten her question, or that he’d answered it to her satisfaction. The fact that she didn’t continue pressing, in fact, actually troubled him. Telling her to let it go, though, would only make it worse. How the hell had he forgotten about that damned map? And why had Reg remembered it? “I would prefer if you stayed out of that wing,” he finally muttered, knowing that wasn’t sufficient. He tightened his grip on her ankle. “The next time this could be real.”