The business side had the name of Grant’s garage, then nothing more than the shop number and John’s cell number under it with just his first name.
Odd.
She turned it over and found an address written there in a rather lovely hand, all things considered. Then again, he was a lord’s son. She imagined his education had been extensive and consisted of quite a bit more than just swordplay.
She shook her head. She hadn’t considered that part of his life. Was he as skilled as his brother?
Did she care?
She wasn’t sure she could bear to even begin to think about that.
She put the card into her bag, shut it purposefully, then concentrated on the lovely English countryside passing by her, countryside that was full of farmland, the occasional groupings of oasts, and not a single castle for miles.
Thankfully.
Chapter 4
J
ohn
cursed his way to London.
It was perhaps the first time in what seemed at the moment to be an exceptionally long life that he found himself grateful for all the languages he’d taken the time to learn—or been forced to learn by his father. He’d started his current tour of curses in tatty old English, worked his way through French, German, Italian, then ventured into Portuguese and Russian. The last gave him a bit of a headache, so he’d turned to things a bit more familiar like Old English and Norman French.
And the Latin he’d conjugated during mass every morning of his first nineteen years of life to keep himself awake.
That hadn’t but gotten him to the M25 where he unfortunately needed the foul language the most. He usually had enough patience to negotiate morning traffic, but he wasn’t at his best presently. He settled for news on the radio and a deliberate and purposeful dredging up of the last of his reserves of patience.
Damn that Tess Alexander.
He knew his present discomfort wasn’t
entirely
her fault, but a decent bit of it was and he was fully prepared to blame her for it. If she hadn’t come into his shop, if she hadn’t blown a tyre, if she hadn’t with every breath she took left him dazzled and distracted . . . well, actually it
was
entirely her fault that he was affected.
He paused, then blew his hair out of his eyes. To be entirely fair, he could have done something besides follow her so closely that morning. He’d known it was her car, which should have left him whipping his own car about and taking a different route north. By nay, he’d had to follow her, then he’d had to help her, then he’d done the most irrational thing of all by giving her one of his cards and telling her to come find him.
And then he’d touched her hand and been lost.
He cursed feebly, because that was now all he could manage. He was daft, that was it. He’d suffered a momentary weakness, but he might not pay for it too dearly. Perhaps she wouldn’t use his card, which would save him from more discomfort. He would make sure to duck out the back when she came into his shop in the village, which would finish the tale once and for all.
A pity the memory of the feel of her hand in his was something he couldn’t seem to put behind him.
He snapped back to himself just before he plowed into the car in front of him, then forced himself to concentrate on what he should have been doing in the first place, which was driving.
It took him almost two hours to get into the city, which he supposed was better than it would have been if he’d been using just his feet. He pulled into the car park of the studio, leaned his head back against the seat and let out his breath slowly.
Truly, he loathed London.
If he hadn’t had business there that he enjoyed, he never would have ventured into its innards again. There were too many people, too much noise, too much confusion. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed it as a lad, either, though he was the first to admit things had changed a bit over the years. His dislike of the place, however, had remained steady.
It was comforting somehow that some things didn’t change.
He pushed himself out of his car and went to fetch his guitar out of the boot. He reached in and started to shove aside the mail he’d tossed atop the case that morning, then sighed and reached for it. No sense in not at least seeing what sort of rubbish his new shop was entitling him to.
He tossed aside the junk mailings, then froze with a thin letter in his hands.
His suddenly unsteady hands, as it happened.
He recognized the handwriting, though he’d only seen it a few times. There was no return address, but that didn’t surprise him. There was only one way to get hold of the writer of the letter and that wasn’t through the Royal Mail.
He blew out his breath, then opened the letter, steeling himself for all sorts of things he wouldn’t care to read. The scrawl there was as illegible as it always had been.
John,
Thought you’d be interested in this bloke Ian MacLeod’s contact info. He’s Cameron’s cousin by marriage and specializes in swords and that sort of rot.
Cheers,
Oliver
John leaned—gingerly, of course—against the fender of his car. Well, he might have sat down, but since he’d done it so carefully, perhaps no one would notice how unsteady beneath him his knees had suddenly become.
Something untoward was at work in his life.
If he’d been a more superstitious sort of lad, he might have thought Fate was stalking him. First a woman who had spent her academic life wallowing in the Middle Ages, then an unexpected note from a man he hadn’t talked to in months. He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about why he’d become acquainted with Oliver, but perhaps there was no harm in it now there was no danger of his falling upon his arse from undue stress over the memory.
He had, a year or so into his current life, found himself a bit more strapped financially than he had supposed he might be, which had necessitated the relinquishing of a bit of his inheritance. He’d heard tell of a group, Cameron Antiquities, that specialized in very discreet purchases and sales of, ah, antiquities. Since that was what he’d had to sell, he’d made contact, then eventually made a friend of sorts of Oliver who had been the go-between between him and Robert Cameron. He’d preferred to keep his anonymity for his own reasons—and Cameron had been a Scot, which had been yet another reason to keep his distance—so he’d simply dealt with Oliver as the occasion arose.
Oliver had never asked him where he’d come by his apparently never-ending stash of medieval gold coins and he hadn’t volunteered the information. He’d simply wanted his assets converted into modern sterling as quickly and discreetly as possible, and Oliver had obliged.
Obviously, Oliver had been thinking a bit more diligently about why John had come by his inheritance than John had feared he might.
Ordinarily, John would have done as he always did when dealing with nosy souls; he would have immediately severed all contact with Oliver and left him to his ruminations. But something stopped him. It wasn’t that he still had a decent amount of medieval gold stashed in a safe-deposit box in Zurich, or that he’d had a nagging suspicion that at some point in the future, he might actually want to have a brief chat with Robert Cameron over a pint.
He supposed it was that he had found, beyond reason, something of a friend who treated the unacknowledged oddities of his past without so much as a lifting of an eyebrow.
Which was a maudlin bit of business that should have had him taking something firm to his forehead until good sense returned. He scowled. ’Twas obviously a weakness brought on by a bit too much contact with a certain wench. All the more reason to hope he never saw
her
again.
He looked again at Ian MacLeod’s phone number. He’d heard of him, of course, because when one had a Claymore hiding in one’s closet, hearing about others with that sort of preference seemed to come along with the territory—even if he did his best to keep it a secret. Well, a Claymore and two medieval swords of varying adornment but equally superior quality.
His two concessions to the past he never thought about.
He’d also heard rumors about Ian MacLeod’s cousin, who was reputedly the laird of a particular branch of the clan MacLeod loitering in the Highlands, though he couldn’t bring the blighter’s given name to mind at the moment.
It was odd how the name MacLeod continued to come up when he didn’t expect it. He’d been able to ignore it easily enough in the past, but to be reminded of it now by virtue of a reference to Ian MacLeod? When he was doing his damndest to avoid a woman who knew all about a time period he was doing
his
damndest to forget?
He folded the letter up and shoved it in his pocket. He didn’t have time to think about it at the moment. He imagined he wouldn’t have the occasion to think about it later. He would probably keep the information for purely academic reasons, but it would be a cold day in hell before he used it.
Surely.
He pulled his guitar out of the boot of his car, then took himself and his shaking knees into the studio. At least here he wouldn’t be faced with things he didn’t like. He had developed a reputation through a very fortuitous chain of events as a respectable studio musician. He’d done quite a bit of recording in Scotland; eventually word had spread and he’d found himself in London more often than not. In fact, that was one of the reasons he’d looked for a business to buy in the south. Finding Grant’s shop had been a marvelous stroke of good fortune.
Or so he’d thought.
Now, as he found himself faced with his past thanks to two different souls, he was beginning to think his purchase of that shop could be credited to a less savory source. Perhaps he should have stayed in Scotland or decamped for somewhere completely different, like the Colonies. Or perhaps Germany where he could have actually gotten his Vanquish out of first gear on a regular basis.
And to think he’d actually given Tess Alexander his business card with his mobile number scrawled on it in his own hand.
He was, again, daft.
He walked inside, grateful for the rush of warmth that would do his unpleasantly cold hands some good. Janet, the receptionist, smiled when she saw him.
“You’re early,” she noted. “As usual.”
“Just trying to keep Kenneth from sacking me,” John said easily.
She laughed. “He would never do that. Too many people bothering him for your time.” She nodded to her left. “The main studio’s empty and waiting for you.”
“I appreciate that,” he said.
“Coffee?”
He grimaced. “Can’t stand the stuff,” he said, which was what he said every time she offered him some. He started to walk away, then turned back. “I might be having a guest this afternoon.”
“What’s her name?” Janet asked, her eyes twinkling.
He pursed his lips. “Why should it be a she?”
“Because you have a very long list of would-be groupies who all happen to be female. Who am I looking for?”
“A neighbor,” he said as casually as possible. “Tess Alexander is her name. I’m not sure she’ll bother, but you never know.”
“I’ll watch for her,” she said easily.
He nodded his thanks, snagged a bottle of water from the kitchen, then made his way to the studio. He found himself a comfortable chair, pulled out the music he’d been charged with playing, then tuned his guitar and prepared to warm up a bit.
Unbidden and certainly unwelcome memories of his past washed over him without warning. Commanding them to leave him be was useless. It had been, he could admit with all frankness, that sort of day.
Playing the guitar hadn’t been the first job he’d had after leaving home; that had been mucking out stables. His skill with horses and, truth be told, his inordinate fondness for them had earned him room and board for a pair of months until he’d gotten on his feet a bit and been able to look for something that paid better. It had been listening to modern music whilst about his work that had given him the idea that perhaps he might make a go of that sort of thing.
A year, two different stables, and a restaurant dishwashing job or two later—he hadn’t dared convert any of his gold at that point—he’d had a guitar and himself in Edinburgh at the same time. He’d performed at the Festival for a lark that first time, absolutely clueless as to who might have been in the audience. After all, what had it mattered? He’d given himself a year to see what another world was like before he’d fully intended to return to his own, wiser, more seasoned, and ready to settle down into the rather pedestrian life of a lord’s fourth son. He’d had no intention of loitering about in present-day England to see who might have wanted his musical services.
He deftly circumvented the memories of a particular fortnight that had left him realizing he was rather more wedded to the present day than he’d anticipated he might be.