“Is that where you sword-wielding types keep them?”
“Behind the hand-tailored Italian suits,” he said. “As it happens.”
She sighed deeply. “What do you want to do?”
“Run away with you to Paris and live in a little garret where I will write poetry and you will sketch or hammer or whatever it is you decide you want to do, though your drawing is breathtaking.”
She smiled. “Really?”
“Really what?” he asked. “Do I want to run away with you? Aye. Do I want to write poetry? Nay, I’d rather just lie in thesun, drink expensive wine, and look at you whilst you’re arting. And aye, your art is glorious. Do I think you’d agree to any of it? I’m afraid to ask.”
She wondered if he would notice if she took her napkin and fanned herself a bit. She was fairly sure she was blushing.
He set his cup down, leaned over, and looked at her. “May I?”
“May you what?”
“If you need to ask, lass, I have obviously not been living up to my reputation as a desirable and rakish recluse.”
She looked up at him. “I’m not interested in your reputation.”
“You just want me because I have a terrible habit of pulling you out of medieval dungeons—”
He stopped speaking. That was likely because she had leaned over and kissed him.
And she’d thought seeing the numbers 1387 had rocked her world.
If he pulled her to her feet and made, as he might have said, a proper job of the business, she didn’t argue. She didn’t have the energy to and, truthfully, she didn’t want to.
The girls from London had no idea what they were missing.
She decided quite a while later that she was absolutely not going to rush down to the pub to tell any of them who might be setting up camp there. She also didn’t take it personally when Nathaniel asked her very politely if he could indulge in a bit of a swoon on her couch. She tucked him in, then watched him fall asleep almost instantly. She wasn’t offended, because as lovely as it was to have him awake, she had business that he didn’t need to be a part of.
She watched him for a moment or two and came to a decision. He was exhausted, but that wasn’t the worst part about it. He was so enmeshed in what was happening to him, so completely at its mercy, she was half afraid he would never have the luxury of stepping back far enough to see what was really going on.
She, however, did.
She made a decision, left him a note, then dressed as sensibly as she could. If she’d gone to the local charity shop that morning after Mrs. McCreedy’s and found herself somethingthat might have passed in a different day for normal women’s clothing, well, she did like to be prepared.
She looked at the copies on her kitchen table, traced the MacLeod line until she found the appropriate number, then felt something shift as surely as if she’d opened a door. She looked quickly at Nathaniel, but he was still sleeping peacefully.
She was going to leave him there without telling him what she was planning because she had no other choice. She needed to find out what was going on without involving Nathaniel in it, and not just out of a desire to save him trouble. If she alerted him to what she was thinking, he might do things differently from his normal pattern, then change things in a way neither of them could predict.
There was something odd going on. Once was unusual. The same series of events happening exactly the same way twice in a row was a startling coincidence. But having them potentially happen a third time?
That was a pattern.
She let herself silently out the front door, unearthed the very small go bag she’d put there earlier, and wished she had even a fraction of Bertie Wordsworth’s skills.
Well, what she had was enough.
She would make do.
Chapter 24
Nathanielwashed up the dishes partly because he’d made a habit of it after the first time he’d been unexpectedly gone and come home to things rotting in his sink but mostly because it gave him something to do with his hands besides wring the neck of the woman sitting out on his deck.
He looked around for something else to do, then decided on making coffee. He did it slowly because he needed some time to think. It was one thing for his life to affect just himself, to be looking over his shoulder to protect nothing but his own sweet neck, to have no one to think about but himself in a place where survival depended solely on his own skills. It was another thing entirely to be responsible for someone else.
