A Midsummer Night's Romp (4 page)

“That and because it's what we all do,” she said, her eyes back on the group of TV folk.

I watched them with her for a moment before commenting, “I've seen a TV show about some people who salt sites in order to fool people. You don't think that Roger . . . ?”

“No, I can't accuse Roger of doing that.” Daria gave a little shrug. “Not that I think he wouldn't if it had occurred to him, but luckily, his mind doesn't usually run to deviousness like that. Hey, isn't that the baron's brother? I heard he broke his leg falling off a cliff in Turkey. If that's him, then I shall certainly volunteer to push his wheelchair around the dig site. Mmrowr.”

“I thought you were married,” I said with a smile before turning to look where she had nodded.

“Married, but not dead. Damn, but he's a fine, fine sight.”

The producer, Roger d'Aspry, stood with a man who sat on a bright blue motorized scooter. I couldn't see
much of the man until I moved to the side a couple of steps, and then it took me a moment to be able to speak. “Wow.”

“Glad I'm not the only one to have that reaction. I wonder if he needs help bathing.”

With an effort, I managed to drag my eyes from the man on the scooter to look askance at Daria.

She giggled, and nudged me with her elbow. “Don't tell me you wouldn't offer to help him bathe if he asked you.”

Unbidden, my eyes returned to the man who was at that moment swinging a leg in a bright pink cast with Velcro straps around it so he could get to his feet. He towered over Roger, which meant he must have been well over six feet, with impressively broad shoulders, the tops of which were brushed by straight dark brown hair. His skin was the color of milky coffee, and although he was in profile to me, I could see he had a softly squared chin. All that, combined with a natural grace evident despite his having to clunk around in a walking cast, meant he really was worth looking at.

But I was not in the market for a romantic entanglement, I reminded myself. I had a job to do, an important job, and nothing could distract me from that.

“I don't know that I'd offer to give him a bath,” I said slowly, trying hard to pretend that I wasn't, at that moment, thinking a number of lascivious thoughts, “but I certainly wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers.”

It was Daria's turn to stare at me.

“Sorry. Idiom. Might be too American to be known here.”

She made a face. “Hardly. Our version is ‘I wouldn't kick him out of bed for farting.' Yours is nicer.”

“What's he doing here?” I asked, unable to quell my
curiosity. “Just making sure no one harms the castle grounds?”

“Far from it—he has a degree in archaeology, although evidently he didn't pursue it. He's here to lend a hand, so far as he can, or so I gather from what Sue said about him. Frankly, I don't care why he's interested in helping. I'm just happy he is.”

There was a note of sly cunning in her voice that I chose to ignore, telling myself that what Daria did in private was her own business.

Besides, this man was way out of my league, and that was good as far as I was concerned. Men who looked like him not only had giant egos; they also had to beat women away with a stick. Big, gawky women like me probably didn't even enter his sphere of notice, not that I'd want to be noticed by a handsome egomaniac. “I suppose I should go see to unpacking the rest of my stuff. I dashed out before I finished because I was so excited. Oh, speaking of excited—I was told that I should be at a staff meeting this afternoon. Do you know exactly when it is?”

“After lunch.” Daria hadn't taken her eyes off Roger and the baron's brother, who were slowly meandering toward the line of RVs. “I think I'll just go over to Roger and say hello, and remind him that I've worked with him before.”

“Subtle,” I called after her, smiling at her thumbs-up gesture in response.

T
he smile stayed with me until I reached the tent that had been assigned to me. The archaeology folk's temporary housing consisted of standard camping fare—orange and white domelike tents with little screened windows, and a large matching screened opening with an inner flap for privacy—while the film team were arrayed in fancy RVs bearing the name of the network.

I was in the middle of unpacking the borrowed photography equipment, trying hard to remember which lens went with which camera, when noises of an altercation seeped through from my next-door neighbor.

I peeked out the door to eye the tent next to me. It bulged and rocked in an alarming manner. Unlike my tent, though, this one resembled an orange and white hippopotamus with its butt in the air, and its front end wallowing in the water. Worse were the noises coming from it.

“Gran, no, that's not helping! You're pulling my hair.” That was a very young-sounding American woman's voice.

“Well then, what about this?” answered a much more dignified, definitely British older woman's voice.

A side of the tent bulged outward.

“Ack! No! Balls, now the other end is going!”

There was a metallic snap, and gently, as if it were a giant orange and white butterfly alighting on a flower, the far end of the tent wafted to the ground, leaving beneath it two squirming forms.

I stood outside the now collapsed tent, hesitating before asking, “Hello? Hi! I'm Lorina, your neighbor to the south. I can't help but notice that your tent appears to have deflated. Is everything all right in there?”

The squirming stopped for a few seconds.

“Oh, hi, Lorina. I'm Cressy. Cressida, really, but everyone calls me Cressy. And we're fine, Gran and me, that is. Gran and I? Whichever, we're fine, but the tent is totes sucktastic.”

“Perhaps the lady might unzip the door to allow us out?” came a gentle voice.

“I'd be happy to, Mrs. . . . er . . . Cressy's gran, but I'm afraid I don't see a zipper.” I pulled up a long length of flaccid tent hunting for it. “Are you sure it was closed?”

“Gran's name is Salma Raintree, and yes, we're sure. We were trying it out to see how much light would be let in with the door closed. But then I tripped, and fell into the side of it, and broke one of the thingies that goes around making the curved part, and then Gran tried to help me put it back together, and my hair got caught when we snapped the rod together, and then I got a charley horse in my leg, and I couldn't get it straight, and Gran said I should walk the charley horse off, but my hair was still stuck to the rod, so I couldn't, and then I
had to wee, so Gran said we should just take the rod out of the little pocket it sits in, and then it just all went horribly wrong.”

“You don't have to explain any more,” I interrupted, laughing despite the note of desperation in Cressida's voice. I dug around in more of the tenting, searching for the collapsed entrance. “I can see that it just went downhill from there. Are you still attached to the tent rib?”

“Not anymore,” came Cressy's sad reply.

It took five minutes, but at last I extricated both Cressy and Salma from the remains of their temporary prison. Cressy emerged red-faced from the exertion, her T-shirt rumpled, and her shorts creased and grubby. She was an inch or so taller than me, which had to put her at six feet, with butt-length straight brown hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Despite her experience with the tent, she grinned at me, quite cheerful as she stuck out a hand. “Hi, again.”

“Hello,” I said, shaking her hand, then glancing down at my hand in dismay.

“Oh, sorry, I should have warned you that my hands are sticky.” She held up a pair of hands that were grubby in the extreme. “Had a candy bar in my pocket, and I forgot about it, and it melted all over. It ran down my outer leg, but I licked it up. You wouldn't happen to know where the bathroom is, would you?”

I refrained from commenting about the dubious act of licking chocolate off one's own leg, and confined myself to pointing at the barn, where I'd been told that the production company had set up not only a row of portable toilets but makeshift showers for the use of the dig crew.

“It really wasn't her fault,” Salma said, brushing herself off to stand beside me, watching as Cressy galloped off in that way that only long-legged, six-foot-tall teenage girls can. “Cressida meant well, but she's at that
awkward stage where her mind doesn't quite realize where her limbs are.”

“I went through that phase,” I said with a bit of a grimace. “I was forever falling down stairs, or tripping over my own big feet. Luckily, it stopped by the time I went off to college.”

“Cressida is only seventeen, so I suspect she has a few more years before mind and body are one.” Salma frowned at the tent. “I don't trust this contraption.”

We both eyed the remains. Salma was what I thought of as a Miss Marple sort of Englishwoman—early sixties with a beautiful complexion, perfectly styled white hair, and gentle blue eyes surrounded by a mass of tiny lines that bespoke character. She wasn't the least bit rumpled despite the tent experience.

“The tent does look like it's a goner,” I said. “But maybe it can be repaired?”

She sighed. “I have an uncomfortable feeling that it can.”

I couldn't help but give her a doubtful look. “Perhaps there's somewhere else you can stay if life in the tent would be too hard—”

“Oh, no, no,” she interrupted gently. “I wouldn't dream of discommoding anyone. Really, I'm just happy to spend the time with Cressida, since my daughter seldom allows her to visit this country.”

“And is Cressy a fan of archaeology?” I asked, amazed at a grandmother who would tolerate roughing it for a month just to be near her grandchild.

“Not really, no. Her father is, though. She's here to see him, and I'm here to keep an eye on Cressy, and enjoy her company. And there is the fact that my husband was a historian, so I have a fondness for all things historical.”

“That really is dedication to want to stay in a tent for
a month,” I said with a nod toward the blob of fallen fabric.

She sighed. “Yes, I will admit that I hadn't anticipated this accident. I cannot help but worry about the structural stability of the mechanism now that it's been . . .”

“Mauled?” I asked.

“Compromised,” she corrected with another of those Miss Marple smiles, the one that made me think of having tea with shortbread cookies.

I reminded myself that her problem wasn't mine to fix, and that I had more than enough on my plate without worrying about whether the tent was going to give way onto the nice old lady.

Which is why it surprised me to hear myself offer, “If you like, we can swap tents. I did a lot of camping when I was a child, so I'm used to tents being a bit temperamental. There's no reason you shouldn't have a stable structure.”

“That's very sweet of you, but I couldn't think of putting you to such trouble.”

“What trouble?” Cressy asked, galloping up to us with another of her blinding grins. “You're talking about me, aren't you? I'm such a trial.”

I couldn't help but giggle a little at the sorrowful way she said the last sentence. “I doubt if that's true at all. I offered to let your grandmother and you have use of my tent, since it appears to be hale and hearty. I'm sure I could beat your tent into submission, or as much as would be needed for me to stay in it for a week or so while I document the dig.”

“You're a journalist?” Cressida asked, scrunching up her nose as she looked over at my tent. Her scrunch faded as a pensive look swept over her face. “That's really nice of you, but my dad would kill me if he thought
I broke a tent and then dumped it on someone else. He's always telling me that I have to own my problems. Oh, I know!”

Her expression changed in a flash to one of jubilant triumph. “Gran can have your tent, because she's old and my dad said she looks like she'd break into a million pieces if a big wind blew.”

“Cressida,” Salma objected.

Cressy patted her grandmother on the arm. “He meant that nicely.”

“I'm sure he did, but regardless—”

“You wouldn't really mind if Gran had your tent, would you? I'll move your stuff to our tent, and her stuff to yours, so no one will have to lift a finger. That way I won't worry about Gran, and yet I'll still have to suffer with our tent, so no one can say I'm taking advantage of you, right?”

I hesitated for a few seconds, trying to think of a polite way to tell her that I'd prefer being on my own—it was very difficult being the instrument of justice if one had a seventeen-year-old stumbling over one's plots and connivings.

But at that moment, I looked at Cressy, and caught the hint of uncertainty in her eyes, a painful awareness that I all too well remembered from my own awkward teenage years. She was trying to put a brave face on it, but it was evident that if I refused, she'd take it as a personal comment about rooming with her, rather than my own desire to be alone.

“That sounds like a lovely idea, as long as you don't mind sharing the tent with an old fuddy-duddy like me.”

“Cool!” she said, giving me a grin. “You're not old at all, and if you fuddy-duddy, I'll simply go bother Gran in her tent, and Gunner won't be able to say boo about it, right?”

“Gunner?” I asked, confused.

“He's my dad,” she said, tossing a cheerful smile over her shoulder before she dived into the collapsed tent and began hauling out their luggage. “He was a mistake like me.”

“Cressida,” Salma objected, giving me a little shake of the head. “Just because you have taken advantage of Miss . . . ?”

“Liddell. But do please call me Lorina.”

“Such a pretty name. Just because you have taken advantage of Lorina's generous nature does not mean you must blight her with irrelevant details of your life.”

“She's a journalist, Gran. She lives for those sorts of things. Don't you, Lorina?”

“Absolutely,” I said, ignoring the twinge of guilt at the fact that this innocent young woman had taken my lie to heart. “I love talking to people about their lives. But I'm also going to be very busy—”

“See?” Cressy threw herself under the wad of deflated tent, and emerged with two suitcases. “It'll be just fine, Gran. Lorina's cool, and I promise to not bother her, and Gunner can't say I wasn't being nice, and everyone is happy!”

There are just some people that it's very hard to get through to, and Cressy was clearly one of their crowd. So in the end I helped her transfer Salma's belongings to my tent, and mine to the grass between the tents while we struggled to resurrect that structure. After an hour of swearing, sweating, and seeking assistance from two passing diggers, we finally got the tent resurrected, fortified by a judicious use of duct tape.

“Good as new,” Cressy announced when I stood back with our two helpers to admire our handiwork. “Dibs the bed in the back. I know you'll probably want the one nearest the door so you can go potty in the middle of the night.”

“Cressida!” Salma said on a horrified gasp.

“What?” Cressy paused at the door, shooting her grandma a puzzled look. “I don't see why you're wearing that ‘Oh my god, I can't believe what Cressida has said now' face when I didn't say anything wrong.”

“You implied that Lorina has a bladder that can't make it through the night, and that, my dear, is insulting.”

“It also happens to be true,” I intervened with a smile at Cressy, who sighed in relief, and plunged into the tent to arrange her air mattress and belongings.

Salma looked vaguely distressed. “Regardless, Cressida should learn when things should be spoken, and when they should be confined only to thought.”

I tossed in my suitcase and shoved the bag with the extra camera equipment next to my air mattress, which Cressy was thoughtfully inflating for me. “Don't worry about it. I'm not in the least bit offended. . . . Oh, hello.”

The woman who leaned her head into the tent was one of the diggers. I wasn't quite sure of her name, but thought it was Florence. “I've been asked to tell you that Roger would like you to go to his caravan. He said something about wanting to discuss a project with you.”

“Project? What project?” I sat back on my heels. “Oh no! It's the Roman reenactments, isn't it? Look, I'm as willing to help out as the next person, but I have a gag reflex, and if I see people barfing, I'm going to barf, too, Florence.”

“Fidencia,” she corrected, and gave me a scornful look. “I'm afraid I don't know why Roger wants you for a project when there are so many more qualified people, but he asked me to bring you to him. If you are ill, I suggest you visit the doctor.”

“I'm not sick. I just meant . . . oh, never mind.” I sighed and got to my feet, doubling over to exit through
the doorway, and hurrying out to follow Fidencia. “Just shove my things out of the way if they bother you, Cressy. I'll be back later to finish unpacking.”

I found Fidencia a few tents down the line, speaking rapidly into a walkie-talkie.

“—don't know what happened to the potable water, but it's not my problem, and I resent you treating me like I'm a lowly production assistant. I have better things to do with my time than to run around worrying about water for Roger.”

“Roger,” came a staticky reply.

“That's what I just said!” She slapped one hand on her leg in an irritated manner.

“Sorry, I got caught up in tent drama,” I apologized softly.

“I know you did. I was saying ‘Roger' in acknowledgment,” said the person on the other end of the radio.

“Oh. Well, that's just confusing. Stop it,” Fidencia said before punching a button on the radio and attaching it to her belt. “Evidently I am to play nursemaid amongst other indignities. Are you ready? This way.”