Barefoot in the Dark

by Suzanne Enoch

  So much for catching up to Sam. “Thank you, Yule.”

  “It’s good to have the family back at Canniebrae, m’laird, if I may say so.”

  Richard slowed his exit down the hallway. “I stayed away for too long.”

  “I can see from the improvements ye’re chasing that ye mean to be here more often, now. Would that be accurate?”

  “Depending on our success with internet and electricity, yes. I think so. I hope so.”

  “Fingers crossed then, m’laird,” the butler answered.

  Halfway down the long portrait-lined gallery that bisected the central part of the house, the lights went out again. The hallway had been dim and windowless before, designed that way to protect the artwork, but now pitch blackness settled around him. Richard stopped; too many antique chairs and side tables lurked against the walls for him to risk maneuvering. Instead he dug into his pocket for his phone.

  Something distinctly thumped a few feet behind him. Sliding the phone’s control panel up with his thumb, he tapped the torchlight icon and whipped around. Nothing. He panned left to right, half-expecting Samantha to leap out of the shadows at him. She’d done it before. Still, oil-painted faces, edges of chairs, dimming to black beyond the reach of the tiny light, loomed around him.

  Satisfied he wasn’t about to be assaulted and ignoring the pricking of the hairs at the back of his neck, he resumed his trek toward the rear of the house by weak phone light. He was thirty-four years old, and he was not going to succumb to Samantha’s fantastical imaginings of ghouls and ghost hounds, and he was not going to hurry his steps.

  The far door came into view, and he reached for the handle. As he touched it, another thump sounded, just as close behind him as the previous one. Richard snapped around, his free hand clenched into a fist. Again, nothing. “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, and reached behind him to push open the door. Keeping his front to the black hall and feeling like an idiot the entire time, he backed out into the adjoining hallway.

  Samantha was not going to hear that he’d been spooked. Not ever.

  From the hallway he headed through the sun-filled conservatory and outside down the wide, shallow granite steps that opened into the immense garden. His aunt and uncle sat on the edge of the central fountain, the two of them dwarfed by a godawful Poseidon with water spewing from the conch shell in his hands. Richard had decided long ago that an in-law had gifted the fountain to his Victorian-era relations, because he preferred to think that his own bloodline on both sides had a better eye for true artistry – and certainly a better grasp of good taste.

  “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

  “We’d like you to tell us a bit more about Miss Jellicoe,” his aunt said. “We’re to welcome her into the family, but all we know of her is what we’ve seen in the tabloids or on the telly. Of course no one can believe those things. Or wants to be seen reading or watching them.”

  Strictly speaking, Samantha was none of their business. He was the head of the family, he controlled the title, he owned by far the greatest portion of the wealth. Yet he had asked them here specifically to meet her. He was also keenly aware that aside from Walter Barstone – and perhaps Aubrey Pendleton, who was only a recent addition – she had only him in her life to care about her. They were quite literally her only family, and neither of them were blood relations. She needed more family in her life. Even his, he supposed.

  Blowing out his breath, he took a seat on the bench opposite the two of them. “Her family tree is a bit shady,” he said, measuring his words very carefully despite the fact that he’d gone over this conversation in his head at least a dozen times. Whatever else happened, Samantha was to be protected. “Her father, especially, flirted with the dark side, as she says. She’s a wonder at what she does, and knows more about some of the pieces of my collection than I do.”

  “You’re certain she’s not out to hook a rich husband?” his uncle asked, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. “We adored Patricia after all, and she—”

  “I recall what Patricia did,” Richard interrupted, unwilling to rehash a marriage that had been a disaster from its beginning to its end three years later. “Samantha has her own money, and she would much rather I wasn’t the Marquis of Rawley. She dislikes the spotlight.” Dislike would suffice, though he’d put it closer to the fascinated horror a vampire had for the sun.

  “She seems charming,” Aunt Mercia put in a little hurriedly. “And genuinely interested in Canniebrae. I didn’t recall much of the highwayman legends, but I did direct her to The Bonny Lass. I know they tell stories of it there from time to time, or at least they used to.”

  Richard sat so still for a second, he wasn’t certain he was breathing. She’d found the mystery, damn it all, and she hadn’t mentioned a thing about it to him. And unlike Reg, she had a good chance of figuring it all out.

  “Should I not have sent her into Orrisey, Richard?” his aunt asked, her smile tight.

  “No, that’s fine,” he returned, forcing his teeth to unclench. “She’s fascinated by history, which is why I decided to introduce her to Canniebrae in the first place.”

  “I’ll just come straight out and say it, shall I?” his uncle Rowland fisted his hands, straightening. “I had a solicitor friend do some checking. Miss Jellicoe’s father was a thief, Richard. A fairly notorious one who died in prison. He specialized in art and jewelry, and there was some question about whether he had an accomplice.”

  “I’m aware,” Richard returned, digging in to hold onto his temper. It made sense they would look into Samantha’s past; unless he produced an heir, the Rawley title and all the wealth tied into it would go to Uncle Rowland and his offspring – meaning Reg. So would the remainder of his empire not already allocated to Samantha and to various charities and foundations.

  “Richard, your fiancé’s father was a convicted felon,” Rowland repeated. “They think he had a partner.”

  “I’m aware,” he repeated. He was also aware that the deceased Martin Jellicoe was anything but, and that the father had many fewer scruples than did the daughter.

  “And you still think she isn’t gold-digging? Don’t be naïve, lad. Patricia turned out badly enough. This could be so much worse.”

  The Richard of a year ago would have taken that moment to tell his nearest relations to mind their own fucking business and get out of his house. They knew that, too; he could see it in his uncle’s tight shoulders and his aunt’s desperately sympathetic expression. Luckily for them the Richard of today had seen what a truly dysfunctional family looked like in the Jellicoes, and he had a much better grasp of what true disaster and peril were, in contrast to a bit of awkwardness and discomfort.

  “If you can’t see how much I adore her and how happy she makes me,” he said aloud, “then I can only pity you. She’s mine, and I’m hers. I cannot explain it better than that. So, you can either embrace her, or stay clear of us. You have the next two weeks to decide which it will be.”

  “You have a very long line of titled ancestors on both sides who would not approve.”

  Standing, Richard nodded at his uncle. “Yes, but they’re dead. I’m not. And I love Samantha.”

  At this moment he also wanted to lock her in a closet to keep her from digging into the legend of Will Dawkin and his treasure, and keep her in there until she told him how the hell she’d gotten hold of the tale. He hadn’t told her whose map Reg was after, and he didn’t think Reg would do so, mainly because his cousin wouldn’t want to have to share the treasure if the tales turned out to be true.

  By the time he made his way back through the conservatory, the power had been restored. Even so, he decided to head up to the second floor via the plain rear stairs instead of trudging through the more direct route of the portrait gallery. If the dead relations disapproved of Samantha and were attempting to let him know that, he wasn’t going to make it any easier for them.

  She’d caught a whiff of a story about highwayman treasure, t
hen, and had neglected to mention that to him. Well, he wasn’t going to make digging into it any easier for her, either. He made for the library. Amid the old Shakespeare folios and early editions of Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Browning, and Arthur Conan Doyle he knew there were scattered books on local specters, highwaymen, and Jacobites. One by one he removed seven books that delved into the life of Will Dawkin.

  Under normal circumstances he would have hidden them in the attic, but that space had become Samantha’s base of operations. The cellar was out, because workmen would be crawling all over it in the next couple of days. With the books in his arms he made his way up the hallway and tried to decide which spot in the old, rambling house would be most boring to a woman who lived to dig into trouble.

  Ultimately, he decided on the old dressing room directly connected to the bedchamber they shared, in the bottom box of a stack of well-worn hat boxes. Hats didn’t preserve well, and didn’t carry much value as antiques, and these boxes looked…damp and distinctly uninviting – but not in an obvious way. They’d dumped their suitcases in here already, so hopefully she’d already declared the room boring. There. They’d come to Canniebrae to escape, and for her to meet his relations. Not for Samantha Elizabeth Jellicoe to go digging after some mythological treasure trove. Or for Reg to do it, either.

  Richard paused as he left the dressing room. Where was Reg? He hadn’t gone with Sam and Eerika, he hadn’t been in the library, and he wasn’t in the conservatory or the garden with his parents. If he was back in the damned west wing, the gloves were coming off.

  Striding to the front of the house, Richard leaned over the balcony railing. “Yule! Where’s my cousin?”

  “I dunnae ken, m’laird,” came the answer. “Sorry to say I’ve been going over the shopping list with Mrs. Yule. I’ll get him tracked down for ye.”

  “I’ll be in the west wing,” Richard snapped back.

  They’d chained the door to the wing again for the sake of safety. Samantha could get in if she chose, but then she knew what she was doing. Before he reached the end of the hallway he could make out the chain hanging from one door handle, the lock open. Apparently Reg had some skills of which Richard hadn’t been previously aware.

  Even as he shoved open the door, he couldn’t believe his cousin would resort to thievery to fund his lifestyle. Embezzlement, perhaps, but high-end cat burglary took planning, effort, finesse, and discipline. Reg lacked at least two of those. Since the key remained in his pocket and the lock wasn’t cut, though, someone had picked it.

  “Reg!” he yelled, remembering to keep to one side of the damp hallway as he stomped deeper into the west wing. “If you’ve fallen through the floor I’m bloody well leaving you there!”

  The sound of his voice echoed and flattened, unanswered. The owner of a multi-billion dollar empire, contracts on his desk awaiting his signature, house renovations he hadn’t intended already beginning, and there he was tramping over rotting floors because his idiot cousin wouldn’t give up a childhood dream of finding treasure.

  “Reg!” he bellowed again. “Do not fucking make me track you down!”

  A shadow crossed a doorway toward the end of the hallway, and he moved toward it. Bits of damp plaster thunked onto the ruined carpet around him as the ceiling gave up its life piecemeal, but he mostly ignored the mess as he drew closer.

  After the oddness in the portrait gallery he half-expected the old bedchamber to be empty. Even so, when he turned into the doorway to see nothing but some wooden bed slats and a pile of ruined wallpaper, he stopped short. It hadn’t been a ghost, because there was no such thing. Cursing, he stepped into the room.

  Directly to his left in the far corner, a figure hunched against the floor, digging at the baseboard. For a quarter of a second, he thought perhaps Gollum had moved into the ruins, looking for his Precious. Richard blew out his breath, relieved and pissed off all at the same time. “So you couldn’t even muster a ‘bugger off’ to let me know you weren’t dead?”

  Reg kept prying at the old wood with what looked like a screwdriver. “Bugger off,” he grunted.

  “Too late for that now. You made me come after you. Get off the floor before you fall through it.”

  “I know it’s here, Ricky. This house might be yours now, but it wasn’t when we found the map. It’s half mine, and I want my share.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. I told you, that map was a joke those blokes at the tavern played on the rich lads from the castle, and it’s long gone. Why are you so desperate for this nonsense?”

  “It’s not nonsense, it wasn’t a joke, and you didn’t toss it away. I will find it. If you aren’t interested, I’ll happily claim the entire thing.”

  Richard shut his eyes for a half-dozen heartbeats. “I threw the map in the fireplace the afternoon my mother told me about her cancer,” he stated, keeping his voice as flat as he could manage. “It seemed completely stupid and frivolous in comparison. So even if it had been real, which it wasn’t, it no longer exists. If you want me to apologize for thwarting some plan of yours to recover a few glass beads and call yourself a treasure hunter, then I suppose I’m sorry.”

  His shoulders hunched, then Reg straightened and turned around. “I can’t figure it out,” he said, the screwdriver held low in one hand. “Did you find the gold and just add it to your bank account, or do you like knowing it’s nearby with no one else able to touch it?”

  “Did you hear what I just said? The map has been ashes for nearly twenty years. Whether what it led to was highwayman’s gold or a pile of sticks, there is no way to find it. When the hell did you become so bloody obsessed with it?”

  “When you invited us back here and I realized I have as much claim to it as you do. We found the map. We tracked down the stories. It’s half mine. That’s what annoys you, isn’t it? That you’d have to share. Because that isn’t how you operate these days.”

  Richard looked at his cousin. As children they’d been close, with him less than a year older than Reg. They had adventured together during the summers. Even before the heart attack that had killed his father and left him a millionaire at nineteen, though, they’d drifted well apart. Reg had dipped his toes into racing, only to discover that sponsors were both necessary and required a certain level of decorum and acceptable behavior from those representing their brand. The younger Addison cousin had never liked being told what to do.

  Car sales had come next, and he wasn’t shabby at it or anything, but until this second Richard had never wondered whether Reg was happy doing it. Before he’d met Samantha, words like “happiness” and “satisfaction” where business matters or other people’s personal lives were concerned, had never really occurred to him.

  “Do you want money, Reg?” he asked, setting one hip against the doorjamb. “Are you in over your head or something? Do you want me to write you a check?”

  “Yes, because more than anything else I want to be indebted to you. I want to wake up every morning and have my first thought be ‘thank God for cousin Ricky’. Without cousin Ricky who knows where we’d be?”

  “Then what the fuck do you want?” Richard snapped back. “Because there’s nothing like offering a hand and watching it get bitten off.”

  Reg’s tanning salon hue paled a little. “I want to be Reginald Addison. Not Rick Addison’s cousin, or a member of Rick Addison’s extended family. Highwayman treasure uncovered in the middle of the Scottish Highlands by entrepreneur Reginald Clarke Addison had a damned fine ring to it.” He jabbed the screwdriver hilt-deep into the wall and stomped past Richard, just missing a shoulder shove that he likely didn’t have the guts to risk. “And I don’t believe for a bloody second that you burned that map. You’ve never destroyed anything old or remotely useful. Go on with your tale, but peddle it to someone more gullible than I am.”

  Richard stayed where he was in the doorway of his old bedchamber as Reg cautiously stormed down the rickety hallway. Bloody wonderful. Reg refused to give way despite all e
vidence to the contrary, and now Samantha had her fingers into a nice slice of mystery. Chaos, where he’d wanted a few weeks of peace.

  One thing was damned certain; he was going to have to find a better hiding place for the map.

  10

  Friday, 3:10 p.m.

  “I suppose it’s charming enough,” Eerika said, as Samantha parked MacGyver in front of the stable, “but the second quaintest in the Highlands? That shoe store, for example, doesn’t carry nearly enough variety. Not a Ferragamo or Louboutin in sight. I can’t believe no one here wears at least Vuitton. I refuse to leave my flat without at least one pair. If anyone ever—”

  She kept talking, but Samantha missed part of it as she hopped out of Mac and tossed the keys to Rob. She’d put a layer of mud over the red paint, and that would never do while the laird was in residence. After she retrieved her shopping bag and purse, she glanced back at him. “The three bags in the back are Miss Nyland’s.” Clearly Norway didn’t carry her own bags into a house, and well, she wasn’t going to be a Sherpa today.

  “No worries, Miss Sam. I’ll see ‘em upstairs.”

  “Thanks, Rob.”

  “—really dress up for dinner, don’t you think?” the tall blonde went on, as they met at the back of the jeep and walked up to the house. “The boys will be so impressed. We’ll have to include Lady Mercia, as well. She’ll never forgive us if she comes downstairs in a house dress and we’re dripping in pearls.”

  Samantha had brought a few show-stopper gowns because Rick liked to try to surprise her with outings. Dressing up to go downstairs was totally an English aristocrat thing, and since he was an aristocrat she was willing to do it. Going Evita Peron was okay, too, but not without informing him first. The other guys were on their own. “Sure,” she said, since Eerika seemed to be waiting for a response so she could start talking again.

  “Oh, I knew you’d be a sport about it,” the Viking gushed. “It’ll be our secret. They’ll be so surprised. I can picture it now.”