by Lynn Kurland
Hugh gulped.
Ambrose looked up to see a man swathed in Elizabethan finery sweeping in through the front door. Through being, of course, exactly what he was doing. Apparently he hadn’t been willing to wait for someone of a more corporeal nature to open up for him.
“Perhaps we should have looked harder,” Hugh whispered.
“We did,” Ambrose murmured into his cup. “That one is the necessary lad.”
Hugh sighed as the man flung his cape back over his shoulders and glanced disdainfully over the crowd as if he searched for someone in particular. Or two someones, rather.
He pursed his lips with the vigor of a man who had sucked on a particularly tart lemon, then strode across the floor as if he were performing in a particularly passionate scene. He came to an abrupt halt next to the table and looked down his long, pointed nose at them.
“I am Sir Richard Drummond,” he said, the crispness of his consonants slicing through the air like a finely sharpened blade. “I was told I must meet you here.” He looked around, then lifted an eyebrow as he reached out to swipe a finger across the table. “In this place.”
“I can’t believe this,” Hugh muttered under his breath. “I could have found someone more suitable at Euro Disney.”
Ambrose looked at Hugh in surprise, then had to stifle a laugh. He was inclined to agree, but decided discretion dictated that he refrain. He looked up at their guest. “How kind of you to join us.”
Sir Richard sniffed. “Threats were issued, threats I didn’t have the time or the desire to address properly.”
Ambrose ignored Hugh’s snort and gestured to a chair he conjured up for their guest. “Please sit and take your ease.”
Sir Richard examined the chair for dust, took off his gloves and brushed at it a time or two, then sat down and spread out as if he’d been Henry VIII himself sitting on his throne. “Well,” he drawled, reaching up and drawing a heavy pewter mug from a spot to his right and imbibing heartily, “what did you need me for?” He looked over the rim of his mug. “Costuming ideas? You both look as if you could use a fair bit of aid.”
Ambrose’s hand shot out and grasped Hugh by the forearm almost before the thought to do so occurred to him. Hugh glared at him, then deliberately folded his arms over his chest. Ambrose chose to ignore the fact that his left hand was tucked under his right arm where it might most readily grasp the dagger tucked into his belt. Hugh, as many a foe had found out too late, was ambidextrous. Ambrose turned back to Sir Richard.
“I believe, friend, that our concerns might turn out to rest a little closer to home than you know.”
Sir Richard pursed his lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
“I most certainly do not.”
Ambrose set his cup aside and placed his hands on the table in plain sight. “Then allow me to enlighten you. We’ve a task for you to accomplish—”
“What!” Sir Richard said, drawing himself up haughtily. “Give me a task, you say? You, sir, have overstepped your bounds.”
Ambrose continued without hesitation. “There are two who must be brought together.”
“Who? Are we interbreeding again with McKinnons and MacLeods?” Richard asked, lacing his tone with a heavy layer of disdain. “Oh, yes, that’s right. That’s what you two are, isn’t it?”
Ambrose stopped Hugh before he had even begun to lunge. That gave him something to do besides fling his own sweet self forward. He looked at Richard coolly.
“There is a goodly work for you to do.”
“Unless it requires my presence in Drury Lane, my good man, it is not goodly.”
“Something even more interesting than that,” Ambrose assured him.
“I can’t imagine what.”
“Then allow me to tell you,” Ambrose said pleasantly. “There is a particular lad who needs to meet a certain lassie at a distinct point in time. There will be things that try to get in the way of that.”
“Good sense?” Sir Richard asked politely.
“Your big nose,” Hugh shot back, “poking itself in places it don’t belong whilst ignoring the places it should be poking itself!”
Sir Richard shot him a look of undisguised antipathy, then turned back to Ambrose. “Do tell.”
Ambrose slid a carefully cut piece of parchment across the table and waited until Sir Richard had read it before he spoke.
“There are the particulars for the young woman. On the reverse is a description of the young man. Try not to mistake him for anyone else.”
Sir Richard curled his lip. “I doubt that’s possible, unless he’s up to his usual tricks of disguise.”
“One never knows,” Ambrose conceded. He looked at Sir Richard pointedly. “Fail, and you know what the reward will be.”
Sir Richard looked for the briefest of moments slightly pale, but that passed quickly enough. He tossed both the parchment and his mug into oblivion, then rose. He wrapped his cape around himself and looked down at them coldly.
“I will do what you have requested because it suits me,” he said. “No other reason.”
And with that, he swept out of the pub. Ambrose watched him go and considered the encounter. It hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped nor as poorly as he’d feared. He sat back and reached for his ale. He would, of course, oversee the entire affair as best he could, but there were things he simply wouldn’t be able to control, places he perhaps could have gone but dared not go.
“Does he know?” Hugh asked, his face scrunched up thoughtfully. “What will happen if he fails?”
“Of course he knows.”
“He isn’t happy about it.”
Ambrose looked at him. “He’s an Englishman.” He paused. “Well, at least he’s playing an Englishman as a permanent role.”
“He’s good at it.”
Ambrose smiled. “He certainly would like to be, I imagine. We might have to make certain he’s about his business properly at first, but I daresay with what he has at stake, he won’t shirk his duties.”
Hugh shook his head. “Ambrose, I’ll tell ye plain. I’m happier when things are a bit more removed from where we stand.”
“And speaking of that,” Ambrose said brightly, “shall we return to the Globe and see how our current Drummond is taking these recent tidings we’ve given him?”
“Only if I can fling things at him from the floor.”
“Why not?”
Ten minutes later, Ambrose was standing again in the shadows watching Richard Drummond chew the scenery. He was no longer even attempting to restrain his ego. He was absolutely furious.
Ambrose smiled.
All was as it should be.
Of course, there were the usual things that still concerned him, namely trying to bring together two rather stubborn souls who might not particularly want to be brought together. But in this case, there were things that hung in the balance: lives that depended on the cooperation and, aye, it had to be said, the affection of those two sterling souls. And Richard Drummond knew it as well as anyone else.
Ambrose conjured himself up a comfortable chair. He had the feeling it was going to be a long night.
Chapter 1
Samantha Josephine Drummond set her suitcase upright, lifted her face to the sky, and took a deep breath of freedom.
Well, she was actually only looking at a ceiling and sampling nothing more rarified than the air inside King’s Cross station, but she wasn’t going to complain. She was standing alone in the midst of a crowd and life was very good.
She looked around herself to get her bearings, then glanced reluctantly at the small booklet of instructions in her hand. She supposed the fact that she was holding on to that sort of thing was her own fault. She had a smartphone and knew how to use it, and she was perfectly capable of keeping track of a plane ticket and money for a cab. Unfortunately her parents were stuck in a time warp where she was still twelve and they were eternally in their late thirties and she allow
ed them to keep on with it because it was easier that way.
Or at least she had until her plane had touched down on British soil. Things were going to be different from now on. As soon as she figured out where she was going.
She had another look at the little album in her hands. It had obviously been made by someone with a predilection for grunge-style scrapbooking paper and rubber stamps. At least this one had taken pleasure in her work. Samantha had, over the course of her twenty-six years, been gifted with an appalling number of similar books, though she couldn’t remember any in the past that had been fashioned with such care. She could only imagine the comments that had been made during the crafting of those life aids by the graduate assistants gang-pressed into doing so.
She checked her map, had another look around to make sure she was pointing in the right direction, then took hold of the handle of her suitcase and dragged it along behind her. She wasn’t unused to the number of people she had to weave her way through, but it was a little disconcerting to hear so many other tongues than English. She had to admit she was rather relieved to find her train and get herself into a seat on it with a minimum of fuss.
The train pulled away from the station and she had the oddest sensation of leaving her known life behind. It was even stronger than what she’d felt as her plane had taken off from the States. She’d been to London several times with her parents for various reasons, but this was something else entirely. This was just her on her own. She supposed Newcastle upon Tyne wasn’t the most glamorous spot in England, but it was easy to get to other places from it and it boasted a couple who had been willing to have her come house-sit for them for the summer.
And it was close to Scotland.
It was probably better not to think about that at the moment on the off chance some do-gooder thought she was about to start hyperventilating.
She looked out the window and happily watched the scenery rush by as she contemplated the miracles that had happened to get her where she was at present.
It had been her brother, of all people, to plant the first seed of subversiveness in her head. That was surprising given that she couldn’t say that she and Gavin were particularly close. He had left home when she’d been eight, scampering off to England to study art in London, then fall effortlessly into the cushy job of gallery manager for a woman who had subsequently retired and left him for all intents and purposes as the owner. He was almost as bad as their parents in treating her as if she were a perpetual child, though it wasn’t as though they spent enough time together for him to have any other opinion. Until his last visit home, of course, when he had apparently decided it was time for her to make a few changes to her life.
They had been suffering through yet another miserable Thanksgiving family gathering when he had casually pulled a book out of his stylish leather portfolio. Samantha didn’t really believe in paranormal happenings, but she couldn’t deny that a hush had fallen over the room, as if something monumental was about to happen.
Gavin had started to hand her a book, but her mother had intercepted it before Samantha could touch it. Gavin had frowned, but there was nothing to be done about it. When Louise McKinnon Drummond wanted something, she always got it. Samantha had watched her mother examine the cover of that rather musty old tome on Victorian ivory buttons, then toss it Samantha’s way with an uninterested sniff.
“Already read it,” she had said.
Samantha had thanked Gavin for something new to read, managed to get through the rest of the evening, then carried the book up to her room—on the top floor, of course. She’d shut the door, then sat on her bed for a few minutes, trying to still her rapidly beating heart. She’d finally opened the book and read the note hidden inside the front cover, taped carefully under the dust jacket.
Have clients in Newcastle who need a house sitter every summer. Interested?
She’d felt faint. Gavin was a boor and a cad, true, but he wasn’t an idiot. He had managed to escape their stuffy little East Coast college town, after all, and get himself out of the country. Of course, he’d known full well that he was leaving behind two sisters who would never have his freedom. Well, Sophronia had managed to escape as well, but she was another story entirely. Gavin had known that she, Samantha, had always been and would always be her parents’ last, best hope for the perfect child. Rapunzel had been a world traveler compared to how locked down she’d been her entire life.
Interested?
No, she hadn’t been interested, she’d been breathless. A desperate hope had bloomed inside her that she might finally manage to get out from under her parents’ collective thumbs.
She hadn’t managed it that first summer; she’d been working like a slave for her mother’s latest exhibition of fine Victorian antiquities. But she’d gotten a message to her brother that next Thanksgiving, a note taped to the bottom of the plate sporting canned cranberry sauce their mother wouldn’t have touched if it had been the last thing in the house left to eat. Gavin had sent an email to the appropriate party, winked at her, then helped himself to the rest of the cranberry sauce.
All of which had led her to where she was, watching the train pull into a station she’d never seen before and wondering if she shouldn’t just rip up the pages in her current journal that spelled out every step she was supposed to take during every day of the three months she was to spend in England so she could just do what she wanted to do instead.
She considered, then slipped the book back into her bag. She would rip later, when she could take a penknife to the book and do a proper job of it. It was a pretty journal, so she thought she actually might like to use the rest of it.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder, pulled her suitcase down from overhead, then got off the train and looked around her.
Unfortunately, the first thing that caught her eye was a grinning idiot holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand—cheap ones, she could see that from where she stood—and a sign in the other that read, Samantha Josephine Drummond, your carriage awaits!
She almost turned around and got back onto the train.
She could hardly believe her eyes, though she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Theodore Alexander Mollineux IV, the fly in her ointment, the suspicious substance in her soup, the annoying insect that kept buzzing around her loudly without really making the commitment to land. She’d heard he planned a summer internship in England and she’d been told it would be in Newcastle, but she had clung to the hope that he would forget she was going to be within shouting distance.
She supposed, looking at it with a jaundiced eye, that he hadn’t come to England merely to intern. Given what she knew of his family and hers, he had likely been assigned the task of not only keeping an eye on her but convincing her to marry him. Her father thought he was just the sort of young man to take her in hand and show her who was boss, and his father thought she was just the sort of young woman who needed a bit of bossing.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
Never mind that she’d only managed to dredge up the courage to decide that in the spring. She’d been plotting for weeks how her life would change once she was on her own. Planes and trains had only been the beginning of what she was sure would be an adventure she would never forget.
And with any luck, she would be telling her parents all about it via email while she lived happily in a very small house in a coastal fishing village where access to the Internet was limited to satellite cards.
But first she had to get past the test that was awaiting her there on the platform. She closed her eyes briefly, then stepped away from the train and walked over to the man she would ditch as soon as humanly possible. More difficult was to avoid Dory’s questing lips, but she managed that as well.
“Let’s not,” she demurred.
“Oh, you may have a point there,” he said, in an affected British accent that she was sure he thought displayed his blue blood to its best advantage. “When in Jolly Olde England, do as the
natives do, eh?”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed quickly. She traded him her suitcase for the sign—which she murmured appreciatively over before rolling it up and stuffing it in the first garbage can she saw—and the flowers, which she didn’t bother to smell. They were carnations, which made her sneeze. She’d been actively avoiding dating Dory Mollineux and his carnations for almost a year. She would be, she had to admit, damned if she was going to find herself saddled with him now that she was so close to freedom.
“We’ll take a taxi,” he announced. “We could have walked if you were a bit less fragile, but your parents made me promise not to let you overtax yourself.”
“My parents?” she echoed.
“The Cookes are wonderful people,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’m sure you’ll get along famously.”
Samantha managed to keep from gritting her teeth because she had a lifetime of practice. She was not fragile; she was frustrated by her current life situation. She was also hardly able to believe that she was listening to Dory talk about her employers. The only way he would have known anything about them was if he had visited them to relate heaven only knew what sort of personal details about her. She imagined he had a list and that her parents had been the authors of it. The only thing she could hope for was that her brother had taken the trouble to tell the Cookes to reserve judgment until they met her. They had been willing to hire her, so perhaps that told her everything she needed to know.
She let Dory carry on the conversation because it was easier that way. Besides, he was very fond of the sound of his own voice, and since he was an expert on every subject and not shy about discussing those subjects, there was much to be fond of.
It was unfortunate, actually. He was extremely handsome, in a Top-Sider, khaki-trousered, blond-highlighted-hair sort of way. She was half surprised he didn’t wear a knitted V-neck vest and carry an old-fashioned cheerleader megaphone. His undergrad degree was in international relations, he had a law degree from Georgetown, and never used either of them. She wasn’t quite sure what he did except attend symposiums on various topics ranging from politics to musicology. He was the youngest son of the dean of the college of humanities at the small, exclusive university where her parents both taught, which she supposed was enough for them.
