Barefoot in the Dark

by Suzanne Enoch

  Before Eerika could suggest a sisterly bonding ritual involving shoes and crumpets or something, Samantha backed into the morning room, then turned and dashed through the connecting door into the downstairs sun room, and from there up the side of the house to the servants’ stairs. Somewhere behind her she could swear the woman was still talking.

  Just for the hell of it she clambered onto the railing to ascend the last few feet to the second floor, then did a front flip to land in a crouch at the edge of the hallway. It couldn’t hurt to keep her skills sharp, plus Norway had her wound up like a crocodile at dinner time. A little adrenaline release kept her from having to bang her head against the wall.

  She straightened to see Rick standing outside his office door, gazing at her. That wasn’t good. It wasn’t that she was trying to hide a flip or two from him; what bugged her was that she hadn’t realized he was there. Damn, she really was slipping. Time to put in some practice runs.

  “That’s a little hard on the furniture, don’t you think?” he commented, folding his arms over his chest.

  Hmm. “The classic 1950’s revival oak servants’ stair railing?” she returned, strolling toward him. “I don’t think so. What’s up?”

  He continued to watch her levelly as she approached. “How was shopping?”

  “Loud. I mean, I can carry on a conversation with just about anybody, but I think the Viking might be a cyborg. I could barely get a word in. I finally stopped trying. The weird thing is, I still don’t know anything about her except that she wants to be on TV.” The hairs on her arms lifted as she spoke, and she stopped just out of his reach. Rick was stewing about something. She could see it in his direct gaze, in his still expression.

  “Nothing else at all?” he countered, in the same flat tone he’d been using since she appeared Olympics style.

  “Well, I know she went after Reggie specifically, and that she was kind of mercenary about it, and I know she likes not just nice things, but really nice things. She knows way more about purses than I ever want to learn, which makes sense since she’s a professional shopper. But nothing about her family, and nothing more specific about her past than that she’s always lived in the good part of London.” Samantha tilted her head. “And what have you been up to?”

  “Just the usual. Defending your character to my aunt and uncle, popping in on Reg prying off baseboards in the west wing, offering him money to stop destroying my house and having him fling it back at me while he called me selfish.”

  That stopped her. “You offered your cousin money to leave your stuff alone?”

  “I tried to talk to him, but he wasn’t interested. The offer came next, because the fact is I won’t have him digging through my things. He and everyone else here will leave them be. Is that clear?”

  Ah, so that’s where they were. “Aunt Mercia blabbed about the highwayman lore chat we had, eh? So is the attic still okay, or is that hands off, too?”

  He lowered his chin a little. “Attic’s fine.”

  “Then I’m going to drop off my shopping bag and then go look for a John Singer Sargent. Or maybe a Monet. Back later. Bye.” She walked off toward the master bedchamber. “Hey, just FYI, I think someone shoved a stick up your ass. You might want to get that looked at.”

  A half dozen second later his office door slammed with a thud that reverberated up and down the entire floor. Well, crap. He knew she wasn’t good at the arguing thing, but issuing imperial decrees wasn’t going to make her bow. He could have asked her directly what she knew about Will Dawkin, and she probably – probably – would have answered him directly.

  Instead he’d gotten all “you shall not pass,” when he could have just explained what he was being so touchy about. Now she’d forgotten to tell him that Eerika wanted to play high-style dress up for dinner. Then again, if he preferred to deliver commands instead of ask questions, that was the result.

  She popped by their shared room to drop off her new handbag, then snagged a flashlight and went up into the attic again. It ran the whole length of the middle and east wing of the house, dipping low in some places, narrowing and dead-ending in others, with walls and doors separating one section from another. She’d begun at the front middle because it was nearest the stairs and the Gainsborough had almost immediately caught her eye, but there was plenty more to look through.

  Rick knew she’d asked about the highwayman, but he was okay with her scouring the attic. That meant either the map Reggie was after wasn’t in the attic, or it was hidden well enough that Rick figured she would never find it. That possibility made this kind of an irresistible challenge.

  Even better, she wasn’t going behind his back to find it – as long as she confined her search to the attic.

  Now he knew where she’d been sorting through things up here, so it made sense to relocate as far from that point as she could manage. First, though, both to satisfy her own curiosity and because even the attic over the abandoned west wing was still technically in-bounds, she shoved a Louis XIV bureau out of the way and tried the door separating that part of the attic from where she’d been working.

  It was locked, of course, so she crouched down, held the flashlight cradled between her shoulder and her neck, and pulled the lockpick from her pocket. The lock was the big brass pirate jail kind, and with one twist and two bumps she had the thing open.

  “Ta da,” she muttered, straightening to drop the flashlight back into her left hand.

  The door was swollen and wedged into the frame, and so she put her shoulder and hip to it and shoved. The screech it made as it scraped open raised the hairs on the back of her neck. In the old days that kind of noise would have cut her career short and sent her straight to the slam without passing go.

  A second later she was glad she’d hung on so tightly to the door, because the floor just beyond it wasn’t there. “Jesus.” She crouched in the doorway, looking down to see a waterlogged drawing or sitting room directly beneath her. The closed west wing had a second, unchained entrance then – though she wouldn’t recommend anybody take that first step. It was a long way down.

  The attic continued after that seven-foot-wide opening in the floor. None of it looked awesomely safe over there, and if not for the old trunk and crate she could see in the far corner, she would have shut and locked the barrier door again. But at the moment the trunk and the crate were treasures, an unknown separated from her by a hole in the floor and thirty more feet of uncertain footing beyond that.

  Widely-spaced rafter beams continued above her head and on down to the end of the attic. They looked fairly sturdy, but with all the leaks below she could bet that some of them were rotted. The slightest touch would turn them into goopy sawdust.

  Huh. If this had been an actual paying gig she probably would have rope with her, along with gloves and maybe even a saw so she could remove a timber upright or two and make herself a bridge over the opening. This entire house, though, or at least the majority of it that wasn’t already ruined, was a historical treasure. Dismantling the good bits made her feel icky.

  And when she thought about it, the rest of the attic over the ruined wing had been emptied out. Something about those two containers had made them unworthy of rescue. For all she knew, they were both empty.

  Or they’d been left until last because they were heavy, and the floor of the attic had fallen out before they could be moved. Both of those scenarios made sense, damn it all. Frowning, Samantha dug her fingers into the wrecked edge of the floor in front of her. With the exposure to cold and wet for who knew how long it flaked away like stale crackers. Chances were, if she jumped across she’d go right through the floor on the other side.

  Dusting her hands off, she straightened. Old, pre-Rick Sam might have risked it, and this Sam was tempted, but neither Sam was stupid. She knew Canniebrae’s staff had moved all the shit the family wanted to keep and put it in the sound part of the attic. Those boxes, then, weren’t anything anybody particularly cared about. “Ergo, Sam won’t
be playing the part of crash test dummy today,” she murmured, taking a step backward to clear the doorway.

  She was being totally sensible, but of course she was the only one who knew that. Just like if Rick would tell her why he wanted everybody to stay away from the Will Dawkin business, she would probably drop it. But whatever it was, he’d lumped her in with his cousin and decided they weren’t worthy of his secrets. And he definitely had a secret.

  Leaning out over the hole in the floor, she reached for the door handle. At the same time she heard the top stair creak behind her. Samantha took a breath, lifted her back leg for counterbalance, and grabbed onto the door. At least whoever it was wouldn’t be able to throw her through the hole, that way.

  “Don’t you dare,” Rick snapped.

  She shifted her grip on the handle and continued dragging the ill-fitting door back into place. It took a lot of hauling and that high-pitched squeaking, but with a last heave she got it shut again. That done, she locked it and shoved the chest of drawers back in front of the door.

  Only then did she turn around. “Don’t I dare what?” she asked, shaking damp dust and cobwebs off the front of her shirt.

  “Don’t you dare go into that part of the attic,” he returned, his tone lowering. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Hence me standing on this side of the door, dude. Anything else you want to forbid me from doing, my lord? Jumping off the roof? Running myself over with the jeep? Oh, I know – you should dare me not to stab myself in the face.”

  “That’s enough, Samantha.” His face was shadowed, but she could hear the sharp, hard annoyance in his voice. “You were at least thinking of making that jump, unless you already did it.”

  “Of course I thought about it. Then I decided, all on my own, that it would be a stupid risk. There’s nothing you wanted to keep over there, because if it was something you valued, it wouldn’t still be over there.” She folded her arms, ticked off enough at his trying to order her around that she didn’t feel like changing the subject. “So, anything else you want to accuse me of? I know something’s got you all clenched up, sport.”

  “I am not all clenched up. Is it too much to ask that you stop rattling doors you have no business walking through?”

  “And which doors are those? The one with the non-existent highwayman treasure that’s so made up you have a stroke any time somebody mentions it? My question, Mr. Uppity, is why it’s any of your business.”

  “You have—”

  “Nope. You give me a straight answer or you back the fuck off, Rick. I love you. But you do not employ me, and you do not own me.”

  “A simple ‘leave it be’ won’t do, then?” he retorted. “Not even if I add a ‘for my sake’?”

  “Maybe if you’d led with that. I guess now you just have to hope I don’t find anything, and that if I do, I decide to keep it to myself instead of going to your cousin.”

  That last part was probably mean and unnecessary, because the odds of her turning info over to Reggie instead of Rick, if she shared at all, were pretty tiny. Infinitesimal. But crap. If he wanted her to take things on faith, he was going to have to give her some credit for not being an idiot. Today he didn’t seem to be inclined to do that.

  His shoulders rose and fell. “Do your bloody worst, then. Chase your tail, cat burglar. You won’t find anything.”

  Wow. That, she hadn’t expected. An actual challenge for her to find something – which made her wonder if maybe there was nothing to find, after all. Except that even the way Rick dismissed the whole thing made her think otherwise. Anyway, now it was game on.

  Rick stomped back down the attic stairs. “Hey,” she called, before he could clomp out of earshot, “The Viking wants the girls to dress up for dinner. Really dress up. It’s a stupid surprise for the guys, I think, but I know since Patricia you don’t like shenanigans pulled on you in public.”

  The footsteps paused, then resumed. “I love you too, by the way,” drifted up to her.

  Cool. She hadn’t wrecked that, anyway. The whole fighting and still staying together thing still felt weird, and she had no idea if she was doing it right. But yay, one point for her, she guessed.

  Richard checked his Rolex as he shrugged into a dark-gray formal tuxedo jacket. He dressed for business dinners all the time, and for charity events and the occasional high-end auction. He hadn’t formally dressed for the express purpose of sitting at his own table with his own family, though, for years. The rare Christmas in London, though he made an effort to be elsewhere when that time came around.

  Tonight he would likely have dressed in jeans, a jacket, and an open-collar dress shirt, and that was only for the sake of his old-fashioned aunt and uncle. The heads-up from Samantha had altered that. Because while he didn’t give a damn if Eerika Nyland wanted to pretend this was a royal dinner, he wasn’t going to dress shabbily when Sam meant to do otherwise.

  Looking down, he straightened a few things and made another attempt to tie the long laces of his shoes. Perhaps he should have opted for his standard tuxedo, but this wasn’t New York or London. This was the Scottish Highlands.

  It all might have had to do with the fact that he was still annoyed as hell with Samantha, because as he reviewed their conversation it almost felt like she’d maneuvered their argument in order to give her a way to delve into Will Dawkin’s supposed treasure, when he’d been trying to prevent that very thing. Now, though, the gloves were off. He couldn’t risk moving the map now because she would be watching for any clue. What he could do, though, was distract her.

  Once he got rid of his relations, he could sweep her off to Rawley Park and hopefully find some new acquisition that required her expertise. They were more likely to be discovered by the paparazzi there, but Rawley did have some high, sturdy stone walls, and top-of-the-line security. More importantly, it wasn’t Canniebrae.

  Of all the reasons he hadn’t wanted to return here, it figured that a decades-old rumor of treasure he’d nearly forgotten about would be what tripped him up. He should have known better.

  Finally satisfied that everything was where it was supposed to be, he went down the hall to his office. A couple of cable coils were stacked in one corner, which seemed rather optimistic given that the bulldozer hadn’t yet arrived from Inverness. Regardless, he meant to drag Canniebrae into the twenty-first century by the end of the month.

  He’d dressed early to avoid crossing Samantha’s path, and he spent the next hour in his office finalizing his revisions and signing off on two other deals that he would mail off tomorrow. In the morning he was going to have to visit The Bonny Lass for their internet so he could email his contract changes to Tom. Finally, he sat back. This afternoon Samantha had made him angry enough to spit nails. There she’d stood, in the actual doorway of the place he’d asked – well, ordered – everyone to avoid, and the argument had ended with the two of them agreeing that she could do whatever the hell she wanted.

  For Christ’s sake, he made deals for a living, and she’d danced around him like a cheetah with a sloth. He could curse her stubbornness and her cleverness and her damned curiosity, but they were the very things that had drawn him to her in the first place.

  Reg he could turn aside, or buy off if need be, but Samantha required a much more cautious approach. He wanted her in his life. He needed her there. She’d opened what he’d already considered a very large world into a completely new dimension where the sun shined brighter and the shadows looked darker than he had ever realized. Samantha stood at the center of the whirlwind, where all he could do was hold on for dear life and hope he didn’t burn up on re-entry.

  The dinner gong sounded from the depths of the house, the signal for the diners to gather in the parlor that adjoined the formal dining room. Ignoring the evening chill traveling up his legs, he headed down the stairs and up the main hallway.

  As he stepped into the parlor the opposite door opened. Samantha glided into the room, and his brain stopped working.

  H
e had no idea where in hell she’d gotten the dress she wore, but damn. Emerald green silk topped with spaghetti straps and flowing from a gathered waist into a flowing, calf-length skirt with a slit up the left thigh. Green beads flowed diagonally across the material like a glitter of shooting stars, and she wore matching green three-inch heels. With her auburn hair swept up by silver combs and one of the delicate silver chains he’d given her glinting at the base of her throat, she would have drawn attention among empresses and kings. The sight made his mouth dry and his cock sit up and take notice – which could be tricky considering what he was wearing.

  She canted her body a little bit sideways to him as he crossed the room to her, which reminded him that they were arguing, and she of course would already have picked out three escape routes if need be. “Wow,” he said aloud, taking her in all over again.

  “Does that mean you’re being nice now?” she asked, her own gaze sweeping down to his feet and up to his face.

  “It means I thought we’d resolved that you would attempt to find the unfindable, and I would attempt to thwart you at every turn.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re my nemesis now?”

  “That depends on whether nemeses are permitted to have sex and hold hands on occasion.”

  “Like I’m going to disagree with that while you’re wearing a kilt,” she returned, amusement in her voice. “Because you, despite being stubborn as frack, are the most awesome boyfriend ever.” She leaned in. “Are you wearing underwear?”

  “What’s the saying? If I were wearing anything under it, it would be a skirt? It’s not a skirt.”

  Samantha grinned, reached out to flick his boar’s hair sporran. “This outfit’s gonna have to travel with us from now on.”

  “Just don’t call me Jamie Fraser. Or Braveheart.”

  “I’m not making any promises.” With her heels on, the top of her head came to just above his nose, so it didn’t take much effort for him to lower his head and reach her upturned mouth. Yes, they remained at odds, but she did have quite a reasonable streak right alongside the stubborn one. It was entirely possible that she would wake in the morning and decide to drop the entire treasure chase. He would definitely do his damnedest to convince her of other ways to keep the two of them occupied.