by Lynn Kurland
“You know, I am, actually,” Ewan said, rising with a smile. “Thank you for thinking of me.”
Derrick looked at her. “Help me not kill him.”
Ewan put his hand over his heart. “I’m here to run security for you and this is the thanks I get?”
“I’m sure you’ve already eaten,” Derrick said shortly. “Go secure.”
Ewan looked at her and made her a little bow. “He has spoken and I must obey. I’ll try to sit next to you at dinner.”
Samantha watched him go, then looked at Derrick. “Is he always like that?”
“Sometimes he’s much worse. Let’s go throw ourselves on the mercy of Madame Gies, then we’ll see where we are.”
Samantha was certain she wouldn’t stay awake through lunch, but she managed it in spite of herself. And once she thought she might like to have another nap, Derrick looked at her.
“We need to figure a few things out,” he said seriously.
“Like what?”
He thanked Madame Gies for lunch, then took Samantha’s hand and led her from the kitchen. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“We need to talk about those two lads, the one who broke into your hotel room and the other who was waiting outside—”
“What?” she squeaked.
He shook his head. “They’re too far away to be a bother. But they are the ones who were following you from York. Well, from Newcastle, actually.”
“I think I need to sit down.”
“We’ll go invade Cameron’s study. Come on.”
She let him pull her up the stairs because that was better than asking him to carry her, which she was very tempted to do. He led her into something that belonged in a castle, which she supposed was appropriate, and put her within collapsing range of a couch, which she appreciated. Then he sat down on the couch with her and looked at her seriously.
“I don’t think those two were after the lace.”
“What were they after?”
“Something you still have.”
“But I don’t have anything,” she managed. “Just what Emily bought me—or, you, rather—and my messenger bag. There’s nothing left in that.”
“Well, they think there’s something left somewhere. Gems, apparently, given that jewels are what they deal in.”
She felt her mouth fall open. “I’m being chased by jewel thieves? You can’t be serious.”
He shrugged. “You don’t have the lace anymore, yet your room was broken into last night while you were in it.”
“And while I wasn’t.”
He went very still. “What?”
“When I came back from a walk, I found my door open.” She took a deep breath. “I thought it was just the maid.”
“What had you carried with you on your outing?”
“My bag.” She looked at him. “It’s in my room. I usually never go anywhere without it, but I didn’t think I needed to be that careful here.” She considered. “Should I go get it?”
“If you don’t mind.”
She thought perhaps the trip would help her calm her racing heart, but it didn’t do a thing for her. She was still trying to catch her breath as she sat back down next to Derrick and handed him her purse.
“Have at it.”
“Anything personal in there?”
“Well, of course there’s personal stuff,” she said with a snort, then realized what he was getting at. “No feminine protection items, if that’s what you’re talking about.”
“Thank heavens. May I?”
“Feel free.”
He pulled things out of her bag and laid them out: wallet, envelope from Lord Epworth, sunglasses, key to her room—
“Oops,” she said.
“They’ll manage to get another,” he said. He frowned at the very normal and ordinary items there, then took her bag and upended it.
A handkerchief came out of one of her unzipped hidden pockets after a fair bit of shaking. Samantha blinked in surprise.
“What in the world is that?”
He peered at it, then reached out and picked it up. It was tied up like a little hobo bundle, which he then gingerly untied. He peeled back the corners, then looked at the small linen packet it revealed. He looked at her.
“What do you think?”
“Too small to be a bomb.”
He smiled briefly, then set it down on the table. He pulled out a pocketknife.
“Are you supposed to have one of those?” she asked.
“Don’t tell.”
She would have smiled, but she was actually slightly unnerved to find that she had again been used as a courier without her knowledge.
Derrick carefully slit open one end of the small linen package, tipped it, then jumped a little as a handful of gems spilled out into his hand.
She squeaked.
Derrick poured the gems onto the coffee table and simply stared at them. He looked at her.
“What do you think?”
She took the handkerchief the little packet had been wrapped in and looked at it. “Sixteenth-century bobbin lace. It’s new.”
“It’s not very clean.”
“I mean, it’s not vintage,” she said. She looked at him. “We’re looking at a piece of Elizabethan lace that hasn’t been around for four hundred years. It’s new.”
He blinked. “You think it was planted on you when we were fetching the lace?”
“I don’t know what else to think.” She shrugged helplessly. “It’s not like I’ve dumped out my bag since then. I was too busy stuffing things into it.” She spread the lace out carefully. She could hardly believe she was examining yet another piece of Elizabethan textile, much less one that was antique, but not antique. She sighed. “It’s not clean, no, but it’s also not showing any age spots. And yes, it’s worn a little on this edge here and it’s been repaired here, but on the whole, it’s in very good condition.” She looked at him. “New.”
“I’ll be damned.” He shook his head. “I wonder why?”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “There’s no way those guys last night could possibly have known I had that. Is there?”
He looked into the empty hearth for a moment or two, then reached for her purse and looked at it. He finally turned it inside out. He looked at her. “Do you mind if get a little more friendly?”
“With my bag?”
“That, too.”
She blinked, then smiled. “You’re crazy. And yes, go ahead.”
He looked in the pockets, then ran his fingers over the lining.
And he stopped.
He reached for his knife, then looked at her. “Mind?”
“No,” she said, feeling a little breathless.
He unpicked stitches she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been looking for them. She felt her mouth fall open as he pulled out a small plastic bag of gems.
“Well, this is interesting.”
“Damn that Lydia Cooke.”
He laughed a little. “That’s a pretty big assumption.”
“That bag never leaves my person,” she said. “The only time I’ve been without it is in Newcastle.” She looked at him. “Jet lag, you know.”
“Understandable.” He set the bag down on the coffee table next to the other loose gems. “Notice anything interesting?”
She looked at both collections, then frowned. “Well, apart from the fact that I’m seeing double is the fact that I’m seeing double.”
He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “I’d have to dig out a jeweler’s loupe, but I imagine those are quite similar sets of stones.”
“What?” she said in surprise.
He started to answer, but his phone beeped at him. Samantha watched him read a text, then put his phone away.
“Oliver and Peter are here. We’ll set up in Cameron’s office downstairs. Lots of comfy chairs and secure lines for Internet surfing. I’ll build a fire and we’ll do a bit of researching.”
“What are we going
to do with the loose stones?”
“Oh, I’ll just shove them in a pocket.”
“Better check for holes first.”
He looked at her and smiled. “You know, you’re fairly funny for a textile historian.”
“Did you expect me to only be able to talk about bobbins and patterns?”
He shook his head, then took the linen, the handkerchief, and the small plastic bag full of gems and shoved it all in her bag he’d turned back outside out. He scooped up the loose gems, then stood and put them in his pocket. She gaped at him.
“You just shoved a fortune in gems in your pocket.”
“A fortune, do you think?”
“Well, the lace alone is very valuable—”
“Which is why it’s in your purse.” He put his pocketknife into a different pocket, then held out his hand for her. “Let’s go.”
“You’re crazy.”
He pulled her to her feet. “Sometimes I worry that I am.”
She let him lead her out of the study and partway down the stairs before she had to say something.
“You can’t just leave those stones loose.”
He smiled. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
She sighed. “I really don’t want to be an historian any longer.”
“But you can’t seem to keep away from it.”
“It keeps finding me,” she said defensively. “It isn’t as if I asked someone to plant priceless gems on me.”
“Twice, apparently.”
She looked up at him. “Are you trying to be helpful here?”
He smiled. When he smiled, she wanted to run. Admittedly, the man was just too handsome for her peace of mind, but that had been easier to ignore when she didn’t like him. But when he smiled at her as if he actually thought she wasn’t completely intolerable, it was very bad.
“Detour through the kitchen for a container,” he said, pulling her that way once they’d reached the bottom of the stairs. “So, does it really bother you to be pulled back into something you don’t want to do?”
“A little.”
“You’re very good at it, if that makes it any easier.”
She sighed, then looked up at him. “This is the last thing I investigate.”
“Ah, an investigative historian.” He shot her a smile. “Sexy.”
She felt her mouth fall open. “What happened to you? You’re so . . . happy.”
He laughed a little. “We are looking at a large fortune in Elizabethan gems and you have a piece of new but old lace and no one to claim it. What’s not to be happy about?”
She supposed he had a point.
She just hoped he didn’t pay a very steep price for that giddiness. She hoped she didn’t pay a price for the same. She had gone to Ambleside, sure that her adventures with thugs were over. Now, though, she had been drawn back into the thick of things, against her will and better judgment.
Though she had to admit, if she was going to be thrown into craziness, she couldn’t think of anyone better to be there with than the man walking next to her, humming something that sounded remarkably like a battle dirge.
Chapter 20
Derrick walked into Cameron’s downstairs office to the usual confusion that accompanied a collection of his lads setting up shop.
He had to shake his head briefly over the possessive term. They were his, he supposed, given that they worked for the company he now owned. They were loyal and seemed to enjoy their work, but whether that was because of the company or him, he couldn’t say.
How they had all come to be involved in that company was, he had to admit, perhaps slightly random. Oliver had rescued him and Cameron both one night along a deserted side street in London. Cameron had invited him to come in for an interview. Oliver’s unflinching expression during the hearing of a private investigator’s report of his entire life had earned him both a job and trust. Peter had come a bit later, a lad with a particular set of skills and a willingness to use them.
Their expertise in antiques, his and theirs, had come by working for Cameron for so long. It could be safely said that Robert Cameron had an uncanny knack for rooting out things that were staggeringly valuable. The lads enjoyed that part, but Derrick was sure it was the spy bit that they loved the most. He trusted them implicitly.
But they did tend to make a bit of a mess with their cables and cords and high-tech intrusion sweeping devices.
Oliver looked at Peter from where he had opened his laptop right in the middle of Cameron’s desk, his preferred place to roost. “Clear?”
“Still working on it,” Peter said, his head bent over his own laptop.
Samantha leaned closer to him. “Why are you bothering out here in the wilds of Scotland?” she asked.
“Thugs are everywhere,” Peter said absently.
“Cynic,” Oliver stated.
Peter only grunted and continued with his work.
“Where’s Rufus?” Derrick asked politely.
“On the way to London, leading our thugs on a merry chase,” Oliver said. “He’s a couple of hours out still.”
Derrick frowned. “Then how did you get here?”
“Rented a car, mate,” Oliver said. “You didn’t expect us to take the train, did you?”
He wouldn’t have been surprised, but then again, he’d been quite surprised several times over the past few days so perhaps he wasn’t one to judge. It had been one of those weeks.
“But,” Samantha said slowly, “won’t bad guys trace you from your credit card?”
Oliver lifted an eyebrow. “We’re ghosts, miss. That, and Peter had to have something to do on the drive north.”
She looked at Derrick with a frown. “What does he mean?”
Derrick shrugged. “Paperwork problems. Happens all the time.”
“You hacked into a rental car company’s system to erase paperwork?” Samantha asked uneasily.
“Not to worry,” Peter said, still peering at his screen. “Car’ll be back in Inverness with a bow on the bonnet by tomorrow night. They’ll never know.”
Samantha frowned thoughtfully, then leaned closer to him. “Is this what you do?” she asked. “This kind of thing? For tracking down antiques?”
“We’re a full-service operation,” Oliver said.
“Except for cleaning,” Peter said. “We don’t pick up cleaning.”
Derrick pursed his lips. “I think before we go any further, introductions are in order. Samantha, that’s Oliver, who doesn’t know when to shut up, and Peter, who is very shy around girls. You’ve already met Rufus, who isn’t here. Lads, this is Miss Samantha Drummond, who didn’t steal a very valuable piece of Elizabethan lace but unbeknownst to her seems to have picked up another freeloader.”
“Do we get to see?” Oliver asked. “Just curious.”
Derrick looked at Samantha. “Why don’t you show them what you found in the lining of your purse.”
Bless the girl, she didn’t hesitate. She simply walked over to the desk and deposited the bag of stones next to Oliver’s computer. Oliver looked at Peter.
“Clear yet?”
“Done,” Peter said, setting aside his laptop. “What’ve you got there?” He walked over to peer at the pile on the desk, then let out a low whistle. He pulled a jeweler’s loupe out of a pocket and set it alongside Oliver.
Derrick stood back and watched the pair do the other thing they did best, which was to appreciate things that cost vats of money.
Oliver sat back, considered, then looked at him. “Not modern.”
Derrick only lifted an eyebrow and said nothing.
Oliver frowned and went back to his study. Derrick waited for a bit, then finally cleared his throat.
“Five,” he suggested.
“Bollocks,” Oliver said with a snort. “Ten or none.”
Derrick waited until Peter had finished his perusal, then looked at his chief hacker. “Well?”
“Twenty,” Peter said firmly. “Not a penny less.”
>
“Twenty what?” Samantha asked.
Peter glanced at her only as quickly as good manners dictated. He was, for all his swaggering, all thumbs when it came to the opposite sex. “Twenty million quid,” he said. He shot Derrick a look. “Just a guess.”
“What do you think, boss?” Oliver said.
“I haven’t had a chance to look,” Derrick said. He looked at Samantha. “Want to go first?”
“Oh,” she said, hesitating, “I don’t know anything about gems.”
“Derrick will give you the lecture,” Oliver said. “Boring unsuspecting lassies is what he does best, but boring them with lectures about the various methods of cutting gems over the centuries is what he likes the most.”
Derrick rolled his eyes. “I have no preference.”
Oliver tsk-tsked him. “Shouldn’t lie. It’s bad for you.” He shifted. “Here, Miss Drummond—”
“Samantha.”
Oliver smiled. “Samantha. You take my chair while you’re looking. And Derrick can indeed give you a lecture that would leave you begging him to stop, but perhaps today I’ll give you the quicker one. It’s all about the cut. Well, quality helps as well, but the cut’s the thing. These would be worth more if they’d been in an original setting—and that setting had been either perfectly preserved or repaired flawlessly—but they’re worth plenty as is.”
Derrick had his own look after Samantha had finished, then looked at Peter.
“Fifty.”
“Well, you are the expert,” Peter said seriously.
Samantha shook her head. “Fifty million pounds?”
Derrick shrugged. “There are a lot of them and that’s just a guess. It isn’t so much what they’re worth as what someone would be willing to pay for them. There is that certain je ne sais quoi that comes with owning something from the past, so unless we were to find the right sort of lad or lassie to pull out the bank draft, I might be grossly overestimating the value.” He shrugged. “I’d have to think about a buyer or two in order to be more accurate.” He scooped the stones back up into the bag, then nodded toward the fire. “Let’s go poke around online for a bit. Oliver, do you have another tablet handy for Samantha?”
“Always. Samantha, let me set you up.”
Derrick left her in good hands, though he had to admit there was something about how happy Oliver looked to be helping her that set his teeth on edge. It didn’t help that Oliver waggled his eyebrows at him as he was seeing Samantha seated.