Page 4 of Savage Blooms
“Down,” Finley barked, with such authority that Adam almost obeyed himself. “Down, now! You should be ashamed of yourself, jumping on guests. Go on back to the house. And no tearing up the garden in this rain, you hear me?”
The dog shook its head, jangling its heavy leather collar and splattering Adam’s jeans with mud, then trotted off with a spring in its step.
“Sorry about him,” Finley said, shoving open the front door. “He’s just a big dumb baby, but I thought I raised him better than that. Come inside and warm your bones.”
Finley strolled through a wood-paneled antechamber that was as big as Adam’s apartment back home, his shoes trailing damp prints over flagstones that turned to hardwood as they approached the grand staircase. Adam marveled at the feat of woodworking, like a twisting mahogany dragon that curved in on itself to create alanding before stretching into the darkness above. The space was not opulently decorated, and might even have been considered rustic by McMansion standards, but every detail Adam could see, from the mother-of-pearl inlaid coffee table to the gigantic oil landscape paintings hung on the walls, belied money so old most people probably forgot where it originally came from. There were landscape paintings missing from the walls, however, and open spaces on mantles where intricate clocks or jewelry boxes might have previously been displayed, suggesting that even the wealthiest old families needed to buoy themselves through hard times with selling off treasures.
“The lord’s a bit eccentric, fair warning.” Finley sloughed off his coat and hung it on an iron hook, then held out his hand for Adam and Nicola’s jackets. “No need to stand on ceremony, however. Just mind your manners and your host will be more than happy to tell you about Arabella, I’m sure.”
Nicola shot Adam a wary look, but Adam just gave her shoulder a squeeze and kept walking. Being invited right in was strange, sure, but rich people were weird, and Scotland had a different hospitality culture than America did, and most importantly, this may be the only opportunity he ever had to get his answers. Finley seemed relatively harmless, and Adam could probably fight him off if he needed to. Hell, Nicola probably could if she needed to. She was short, but she had a low center of gravity and she fought very, very dirty.
The pair followed Finley down a dim hallway, past a small parlor and into the home’s formal library. A merry fire, tantalizing despite the somewhat unsettling circumstances, blazed in a walk-in fireplace flanked by carvings of leaping hares. The room was painted sage green and paneled in dark wood, trimmed with wallpaper bearing tiny white flowers and vines. One wall had been turned into a gallery of framed photographs and little postcards, and there were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the opposite wall. A well-loved cognac leather couch beckoned, along with a bar cart topped with a sweating bucket of ice and a decanter of brown liquor.
A woman stood gazing into the fireplace, sipping from a cut-crystal glass.
“Finley,” she said in a throaty alto, not bothering to turn to face any of them, “who have you found?”
“Friends, I hope,” Finley said. “This is Adam and Nicola, sir. They were down at the pub asking about Arabella.”
At that, the woman turned around, a strange gleam in her dark eyes. She was wearing jodhpurs, and a green tweed vest over a white blouse and riding boots. Her thick hair was crow-black, offsetting her pale skin, and she wore it half-up, half-down in a practical style.
“That’s the lord?” Nicola whispered to Adam. “She looks like a grad student.”
The lord didn’t look like any grad student Adam had ever encountered, but he had majored in graphic design,and Nicola had a degree in literature, which tended to attract a much more theatrical type of person.
“Arabella?” the lord echoed, taking her time while giving Adam a once-over. It didn’t feel quite like being sized up or quite like being leered at, both of which would have at least been familiar. It felt more like she was committing every detail of him to memory, which was somehow more discomfiting. “Do you mean Arabella Kirkfoyle?”
“Yes,” Adam said, relief rushing through him. He had half convinced himself there was no one left alive who might remember that name. No one to answer his questions, and no one to give him closure. “I know this may sound strange, but I’m here on a sort of… pilgrimage? My grandfather was very important to me, and he died last year, but I actually don’t know that much about his life. I know he spent his younger years traveling, and he used to tell me stories about this place. Craigmar, I mean. But I never knew where in Scotland it was. Recently, I found this…”
Adam reached inside his vest and retrieved the letter. It never left his person during the day, and he slept with it within arm’s reach at night.
“It’s a letter from my grandfather, addressed to this house, made out to Arabella Kirkfoyle. I thought if she were still living here, she might be able to tell me more about who my grandfather was.”
Adam swallowed hard, embarrassment rising in hischeeks. He felt as though he had shared far too many intimate details, but also that he hadn’t shared enough for his story to make sense.
“You came all the way out here for that?” the lord asked. “Quite the quest.”
“I guess I, uh, don’t have a lot else going on at the moment.”
The lord of the manor walked right up to Adam, enveloping him with the scent of peaty whisky and her iris perfume. She wore a somewhat worse for wear clan badge pinned to her chest, displaying her family’s emblem and motto. It was a leaping hare encircled with iron into which the words “vivere militare est” were carved.
“May I?” she asked, holding her hand out for the letter. Adam wanted to deny her – this was one of the only clues to his grandfather’s life that Adam had left – but she spoke with such effortless command. Like she was asking Adam to hand her one of her own possessions that he had simply been tasked with minding. And she looked right at him with those black eyes, blacker than any eyes Adam had ever seen, never once wavering.
“It’s very delicate,” he said, trying to find the courage to tell her no.
“Precious things often are,” she said, the whisper of a smile touching her lips. Between the day-drinking and the jodhpurs and the antiquated formal title, Adam had assumed she was much older than him. But now, up close, he saw that she was thirty at the oldest, perhaps not even that. Sheand Finley might have been siblings, if it weren’t for their obvious difference in social station and the way the lord’s complexion, alarmingly pale and latticed with thin blue veins, clashed with Finley’s healthy, olive-toned skin. “I just want to take a look. I’ll give it right back, I promise.”
Adam took a deep breath, then placed the letter into her waiting palm.
The lord made a humming sound in her throat, like she wasverypleased with him indeed. Adam’s stomach tightened, with arousal or with some other more fearful kind of anticipation. It was hard to say.
“Please have a seat, both of you,” she said, sweeping a hand towards the couch. “Would you like a drink? You must be hungry from the road. I can have Finley heat up the venison pie from last night, or tea and scones if you want something lighter?”
“Oh no,” Adam said. “We’re all right—”
“Tea and scones sound fab,” Nicola said, plopping down on the couch. She didn’t look exactly at ease, but she was good at making herself at home in strange situations. Finley slipped from the room and Adam sat down next to Nicola, eyeing a collection of very old and very complicated-looking board games stacked tidily in the middle of the coffee table.
“How did you come into possession of this?” the lord asked, unfolding the letter and holding it up to the firelight. Adam’s heart leapt into his throat, but she didn’t toss the note into the flames, just studied the script witha curious furrow between her brows. “Did someone give it to you?”
