Barefoot in the Dark

by Suzanne Enoch

  Richard sank backward, freeing one hand to shove the old, overstuffed chair out of the way so he could lie flat on his back, drawing her up along his body as he did so. No, she wasn’t anyone he should have ended up with. She wasn’t anyone he even should have met. But they had met, and she was never, ever, getting away from him.

  “Miss Sam, I have the torches ye… Oh, I beg yer pardon, m’laird.” Yule came to an almost comical halt in the doorway.

  With her typical grace Samantha rolled to her feet and walked up to the butler. “No pardon to beg, Yule,” she said smoothly, taking a flashlight and experimentally flipping it on. “The door was open.”

  Because he didn’t wish to remain lying flat on his back in the drawing room, Richard hauled himself upright, as well. If nothing else, Sam Jellicoe was a damned good reason for him to stay in shape. “What she said,” he echoed. “Though I did just notice some smoke stains on the ceiling. Do we have a flu problem?”

  “Aye. I’ll have Freddie look at the fireplace again in the morning. We’ve had mice lodging in there; could be they’ve made another nest.”

  Samantha scowled. “So that’s not roast venison I’m smelling?”

  The butler grinned, then swiftly cleared his throat and flattened his expression again. “That is indeed roast venison. His lairdship said we’re to serve at seven o’clock, if that’s acceptable.”

  “Very acceptable.”

  So once again she’d begun winning over his staff, leaving him a distant second, and more or less at her mercy. By now, Richard was accustomed to it. “Do you want company in the attic, or do you prefer to prowl alone?” he asked her.

  “Alone, m’laird?” Yule took up, looking uncomfortable again.

  “You’ll find that Miss Sam can more or less take care of herself, Yule,” he returned, and faced Samantha again. “You have your phone?”

  She patted the back pocket of her jeans. “Yep. And you’re number one on my speed dial.”

  “I’d better be. I’ll be in the downstairs office, checking on the internet connection.”

  “Internet?” Yule repeated, falling in behind him. “We have a fax machine. I’m afraid cellular service is questionable, though. We think it’s interference from Balmoral.”

  Resisting the urge to send a glance back at his adrenaline-junkie betrothed, he edged sideways to let the butler draw even with him. “Why the trepidation about her going anywhere alone?”

  “I… Canniebrae is an old pile, m’laird. It’s only a matter of time until the west wing slides down into the loch. Part of a chimney in one of the east wing bedchambers collapsed just last month. As ye know, this place is something of a labyrinth, anyway.”

  Splendid. Samantha had already called the place Dracula’s castle, and that was without any of the old stories to clutter things up. “More than likely Miss Sam will be asking you to regale her with the old ghost stories.”

  “I understand. She’ll hear nothing of spirits from me, m’laird. I’ll tell the rest of the staff, as well.”

  That would work – for about five minutes. Richard shook his head. “No, if she asks, tell her. Just please make clear to her which parts of the house are supposedly haunted, and which parts are actually dangerous.”

  “Aye, m’laird. I’ll see to it.”

  He’d decided on the largest of the castle’s three offices, and the light switch on the wall actually worked. After taking an emergency torch from Yule, Richard sent the butler on his way. Warning Samantha of danger likely wouldn’t dissuade her from going anywhere, but she could at least take some precautions. It made sense she’d want to begin with the attic, since the staff had moved all the west wing’s valuables there once the structure became unsafe. The artworks and antiques would keep her interest, and all told the house boasted an obscene number of them scattered throughout the house.

  He also meant to take her out hiking and riding, and to introduce her to fly fishing. That was what one did in the Highlands, after all. Yes, he might have preferred a location with wi-fi and more access to…well, to the world, but this would be the first time they had really had any time just to be together. No murders, no thefts, no cat burgling. Just fly fishing, seeing the sights, and long, uninterrupted nights of sex.

  The lights flickered and went out again. Taking his seat at the desk, Richard turned on the torch and rested it on its butt so that it lit up the ceiling. Sex and ghosties, he amended to himself, taking a piece of paper from what had once been his father’s desk and beginning a list of what Canniebrae required to bring the old pile into the twenty-first century. Or at least the twentieth.

  4

  Thursday, 9:12 a.m.

  Rain batted against the roof a few feet above Samantha’s head. It wasn’t like Florida rain, which tended to be torrential and generally brief. Rather, it pattered and hesitated, roaring and then whispering as it meandered its way down the long valley. She sat back in the Louis the Fifteenth chair she’d discovered, just listening.

  Footsteps thudded up the narrow, unadorned stairs that led to the Canniebrae attic. With a short smile she reached over and flicked off her flashlight. Gray edged in from the small, square window at the front of the long, low-ceilinged room, but here against the wall she knew quite well that she was cloaked in gloom and shadow.

  The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs. From where she sat she could see him quite clearly – or his silhouette, anyway – lean and tall, his black hair caressing the collar of his brown leather jacket, and his jeans stuffed into the tops of his old hiking boots. Six-foot two of brilliant, witty, toe-curling English aristocrat. And all of him belonged to her.

  Of course the whole ownership thing was a two-way street, and that was what she’d been having the hardest time with. As a cat burglar she succeeded by never becoming entangled in anything – and that included both traps and relationships. But as Rick kept reminding her, she wasn’t a cat burglar any longer. She’d gone directly from free as the wind to becoming engaged. Or it felt that way, at least. The past year had been a whirlwind of blowing debris she’d never seen coming.

  “I think you should be aware that if you jump out at me from the dark you may get clocked,” Rick commented.

  She snorted. “You aren’t spooked, are you?”

  He turned his light in her direction, making her squint as it flashed across her eyes. “My girl lurking in the dark in an old attic with a storm thundering outside? What’s spooky about that?”

  “Lower the light, will you?” she returned. “I don’t like being blinded like that. Yes, I know I’m safe here. Not being able to see just makes me jumpy.”

  Immediately he lowered the light to her knees and picked his way through centuries of clutter to squat beside her. “I thought you were going to do a floor plan study before you started exploring.”

  Evidently Rick was getting to know her methods pretty well. “I was going to, but when I took a peek up here last night I discovered that Rick Addison’s ancestors owned some furniture worth a couple of grand, a painting that looks to be a Joshua Reynolds, and a first edition of Treasure Island. That’s just in the ten square feet around me right now. Aside from that, you brought me up here to meet your family. I’m meeting them. I’m just starting back in the thirteenth century and working my way forward.”

  He panned his flashlight around them. “A Joshua Reynolds? Where?”

  Not surprised he would focus in on the artwork, she flicked on her own light and pointed it at the opposite wall. “There. Behind the pianoforte.”

  As he walked over, tucking his light beneath his chin to free both his hands, he sent her another glance. “There’s a portrait gallery in the long hallway, and a couple of journals from a great-great or two in the library. The attic is where the staff moved the valuables from the west wing back when I was a kid, but it’s mostly for discards.” Carefully he lifted the wrapped canvas from behind the old pianoforte. “With the occasional treasure thrown in, apparently, because I don’t remember this o
ne.”

  Untying the twine over the blanket, he peeled back the material. Samantha had already looked, but any opportunity to view a Reynolds painting, especially one that hadn’t seen the light of day in a hundred or more years, was welcome. For a long moment the two of them gazed at the pretty, rosy-cheeked young woman standing in a room draped in deep reds and greens.

  “It does look like a Reynolds,” he agreed, shooting an annoyed glance toward the ceiling. “Isn’t there any electricity up here?”

  “Nope. We’re living the way your ancestors lived when they were in the attic.”

  Rick snorted. “As if my ancestors ever deigned to climb into the attic. Will you help me get this downstairs so we can take a better look at it?”

  “Sure. And you might want to mount an expedition in here. It looks like your great-greats collected some nice stuff without realizing what they were doing. There are some damn treasures in here, Brit. And those are the discards.”

  They each took an end of the four-foot painting and carried it gingerly down the steep, narrow stairs and into the main part of the house. The power seemed to be out again, and the light wasn’t much better than it had been in the attic. As they reached an upstairs sitting room and set the painting down on a table, a dull grinding roar reverberated through the sprawling building, and then the lights flickered dimly on.

  “That generator’s an antique too,” she said, pulling open curtains. Thanks to the gloom outside, it didn’t make much of a difference illumination-wise, but the room felt less closed in.

  “Evidently they don’t even bother firing it up unless a guest is here or it’s snowing.” Rick took a seat, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I don’t expect you to catalog all my possessions, you know,” he said after a moment. “That isn’t why we’re here. It isn’t why you’re here.”

  Samantha leaned back against the wall beside the window. “I know. I like looking through things. I’ll stop if it makes you uncomfortable or something, but you know I’ll always pick digging through somebody’s attic over a trip to Disneyland.”

  Deep blue eyes gazed at her. “I do know that, and no, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I’m aware that there are likely more uncatalogued objects at Canniebrae than any other place I own. This place…isn’t just its monetary value, though.”

  Rick hesitating over words was unusual enough that she left the window to sit down beside him. “You haven’t been here in almost twenty years. What’s kept you away?”

  “It’s…” He frowned. “It’s slower here, I think,” he said, his gaze wandering the knickknacks on the mantel. “My life has gotten progressively more hurried.”

  She leaned against his shoulder. “Am I making you more contemplative? That’s kind of scary.”

  That made him smile again. “You make me need to catch my breath. So just give the house as a whole and the land around it at least a once-over, and then you can spend the rest of your time digging through seven centuries of rubbish.”

  “Well, considering that we found a diamond necklace in the stable wall at Rawley Park, your ancestors and I clearly have different views of what rubbish is.” Taking his hand, she twined her fingers with his. “Thank you for getting me away from Palm Beach. I will get used to having cameras pointed at me. Just give me a little more time.”

  “I don’t particularly like seeing my picture everywhere, either,” Rick admitted, though she wasn’t at all surprised to hear it. “It’s more a balancing act. We give them a little view of us in order to get a little privacy. We’ll figure it out, Samantha. I’m not in any hurry.”

  “You, my dear,” she said, leaning in to kiss him and adopting his very suave English accent, “are a very patient man.”

  Somebody knocked at the open door, and she looked past Rick to see Yule standing uncomfortably in the doorway. “M’laird, ye have a phone call.”

  Rick gave a very quiet sigh. “Did they give a name?”

  “Aye. Oh. Tom Donner, m’laird.”

  “He probably wants to know if I’ve fled the countryside yet or not,” Samantha commented. “Make sure you tell him I’m having a grand time.”

  Pushing to his feet, Rick tugged on her ponytail. “You are having a grand time.” He slowed at the doorway. “I’ll take it in the small office, Yule.”

  “Aye, but… Well, the phone cord only reaches as far as the kitchen, m’laird.”

  Samantha was fairly certain the veins in Rick’s forehead were standing out about now. “There’s a phone in the office,” he said crisply.

  “The wee buttons don’t work.”

  “I see. I’ll add that to my list, then.”

  Richard was fairly certain he could hear Samantha snickering behind him, but he pretended to ignore it. Considering that this holiday had been his idea, he wasn’t likely to receive any sympathy from her. Moving ahead of the lumbering butler he made his way downstairs into the servants’ hallway and picked up the phone where it rested beside the cradle on a small side table.

  “Tom?”

  The line crackled as thunder rumbled up the hallway. “Rick? I can barely hear you.”

  “Call me back on my cell, then.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up,” Tom’s Texas drawl returned, a note of frustration in his tone. “I’ve been trying your cell for three hours. It keeps saying you’re out of the service area.”

  With a scowl Richard pulled the iPhone from his pocket. It was on, and fully charged, but where the service bars generally were wherever he traveled in the world, a small red X blinked balefully at him. “Dammit,” he muttered, pocketing it again. “I’ve been told Balmoral likes to block the cellular signals.”

  “Damn royals.”

  “You’re not allowed to say that. Only Brits are,” Richard informed him. “What did you need, anyway? I have no idea how long the connection will last.”

  “Right. Two things. First, I have the Chicago small press numbers you wanted, though I have no idea why you think being a vanity publisher is so interesting.”

  “It’s not for vanity publishing. I told you, print-on-demand is the future of the book industry. If I can find a way to make it both cost effective and profitable, everyone will have to emulate my plan. That will cost them. What’s the second thing?”

  “No cell signal, iffy phone lines? How’s Jellicoe? Is she on her way to London yet?”

  “There’s also iffy power and no internet. She actually seems quite happy with it so far. It’s only been a day, but she hasn’t tried to reach anyone from her Hole-in-the-Wall gang yet.”

  “No internet? Do you want me to fax you the figures?”

  That would be nice, if he had a phone line in the office for the existing fax machine. “Hold onto them for another day or two. I’m putting in an order through the London office for some updated equipment. It’s amazing how technology has changed everywhere but here in the last eighteen years.”

  “Will do. Let me know when she starts to crack.”

  Informing Tom that Samantha had guessed about the lawyer’s dubious predictions and would never admit publicly to disliking it here would only wound the poor lad. “I will. Take care. I’ll call you tomorrow with an update.”

  As he hung up, he caught sight of Mrs. Agnes Yule, the house’s cook and wife of the butler, hurrying back to stand over the old wood stove in the adjoining kitchen. Only one working phone and no privacy to boot. This was one situation that was going to have to alter – and quickly.

  Before he went to find Samantha again he detoured to the big office to add phone lines and updated phones to his growing list of basic necessities. At his other residences he referred to the place where he conducted most of his business as his office. Even Rawley, where he’d spent most of his child- and adulthood. Not here, though. Perhaps it was because the last time he’d been here, the office had been his father’s. He’d still been in school, not even close to becoming who he was now.

  Well, he was Richard damned Addison now, and Richard damned Addison nee
ded internet. Grabbing up the torch, he crawled beneath the old mahogany monstrosity of a desk to see if there were any actual electrical outlets. At the same moment, a low, heavy crash echoed from further down the hallway.

  With a frown he backed out from under the desk and got to his feet, then headed in the direction of the sound. A section of rooms on the north side of the castle were long emptied and longer abandoned. If they’d lost part of the roof or a wall, they would have to close that wing, in addition to the already-condemned west wing. This had once been a glorious place. He’d let it go for too long. It was past time to either raze it or repair it.

  A door ahead of him thudded closed, and he sped into a run. He pushed the handle down as he reached it, but the heavy oak didn’t budge. Frowning, he put a shoulder against the door and shoved. It gave an inch or so, something very heavy clearly behind it. Taking a few steps back he launched all his weight forward and shoved again. With a heavy scraping sound, the door bumped open and he half fell inside the dark room.

  An open window with flapping, tattered curtains let blowing rain spray halfway across the remains of a large bedchamber. The bedframe itself remained, sagging on the window side, while thankfully the mattress was long gone. On the floor, face down, a heavy wardrobe rested against the back of the half-open door.

  He sent torchlight into the dim corners and, with some embarrassment, beneath the skeletal bed. Empty. The wind might have blown over the wardrobe, he supposed, especially if the front legs had rotted in the damp weather. Previous to meeting Samantha, that answer likely would have satisfied him. Now, though, he took a moment to estimate where the heavy thing had been before he’d shoved it sideways to get into the room. As best he could tell, it had been up against the wall beside the door.

  Well, that didn’t make sense, then. Richard squatted to grab onto the behemoth and haul it onto its side. The front legs were intact. Logically, then, there was no reason he could figure that the wardrobe would have toppled over, and even less why it would have ended up behind the door. The multi-company owner part of him, the businessman who wanted and needed to know how and why everything worked, didn’t like not having an explanation.