A Midsummer Night's Romp (6 page)

I was beaten, and I knew it. “I see. Well, if you feel that way—”

“I do. Gunner has all the qualifications to bring you up to speed on the dig, and will start this evening. I'm sure you'll have no trouble making yourself available to him for that.”

“Er . . .” I had planned to “accidentally” run into Paul that evening.

“We'll film you while he teaches you the ways of the dirt—nice turn of phrase, that; I'll have to give it to Sue for the narration—which will show the audience just what it is the archaeologists do, and why they do it.”

“Well, I suppose—”

“Of course, you are encouraged to ask questions that
our audience might ask, and I have no doubt that you'll also want to participate in some of the reenactments that we have scheduled.”

“If I have time,” I said weakly. “Books take a lot of work, you know.”

“Must remember to add slaves to that list. I think we'll try for your first piece to the camera this afternoon when we officially open the dig. Just some basic information, nothing too complicated.” He beamed at me just like he'd done me the biggest favor in the world.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying desperately to find a way out of this scenario, but failing miserably. “I guess I could do that. But I do have a lot of work to do on my own, what with all the pictures to take, and the . . . er . . .” I struggled for something that sounded journalistic. “All of the interviews to be conducted.”

“That's why this opportunity is so perfect for you!” He whapped me gently on the arm. “Gunner can help you out! Any extra time you spend away from your work to be with him will be more than offset by the information he'll be able to give you. It'll be wonderful for you, because not only does he know his potatoes, archaeologically speaking, but he's also the brother of a baron. Your readers will eat that up with a spoon and ask for seconds.”

“Yes, of course it will be wonderful for the book.” My smile was wan at best.

“Smart girl,” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder in a way that had me wincing. He pulled out a walkie-talkie, and shoved it at me. “I knew I could count on you to be a team player. We'll let you have one of these so we can alert you when we want to do a piece for the camera. Channel four is Gunner's channel. Two is dig personnel. Three is production team—don't use that channel except in emergencies. And of course, I am on channel one. Now, I must go see what the geophys people are up to.”

“Geo . . . what?”

“Geophys. Stands for geophysics. They're the folks who use the machines to look into the earth and find our Roman remains. It looks like they're out doing their shtick already, and they know full well we need to film them for the intro. . . .”

He hurried off, leaving me staring glumly at a walkie-talkie. What the hell had I just gotten myself into?

“H
ello, my lovely one. Any luck selling my brother the baron to Hollywood?”

The smiling face of Alice, Gunner's new sister-in-law, broke into a laugh before making a little moue. “I wish. Hollywood doesn't seem to be interested in his fabulous spy books, which is just stupid beyond words, given that they are such fabulous best sellers. Plus Elliott's books are much better than a lot of what makes it into movies these days. How's your foot? You're staying off it, aren't you?”

“Yes, Mum,” he said, making a face of his own at her.

She laughed again, the picture of her on the videoconferencing software glitching for a moment before it settled down. “Sorry, Gunner, I didn't mean to mother you, but as your mom is in Africa, I figured it was up to me as second lady in command to make sure you're OK.”

“You're the first lady in command in my book,” he
said gallantly, never above a little light flirtation with Alice.

The screen suddenly jerked, and Alice disappeared to be replaced by Elliott, his look so pointed that it was quite clear even from halfway across the world. “Still trying to seduce my wife, Gunner?”

“Only when you're not around,” he said smoothly. “Besides, I have to have something to look forward to. It's been so quiet around here with you two gallivanting all over the States. Book tour going all right?”

Elliott shrugged. “I suppose so, although I'm not best suited to this life. I'd much rather be home. Is everything there all right? You're not having any trouble keeping the tourists away from the tower?”

“No, it's suitably fenced off. No one but the dig crew will have access to it, and they have all sorts of insurance, so if a falling brick hits one of them on the head, it won't be our fault.”

Elliott made a face, and absently rubbed his shoulder where he'd broken a bone by being hit by one of the bricks falling from the decrepit tower himself a few months before. “I'd rather we not have any more accidents. How is the archaeology going?”

“All right so far.” Gunner gave his brother a rundown of the details of the show, adding, “They've asked me to be a presenter, and do an on-air thing with some neophyte. They'll film me explaining how the dig process works, that sort of thing.”

“You? I thought you were just going to dig when the cast comes off your leg.”

Gunner shrugged one shoulder. “The producer seems to think that a nonprofessional will reach the viewing audience better than an academic.”

“Better you than me,” Elliott said with a sour look that made Gunner smile.

“That's because you're an introvert. Extroverts like me enjoy such things, not to mention having a zillion brothers and sisters around us.”

“It only seems like a zillion when you're all together,” Alice said in the background, pushing Elliott a little to the side. “It must be nice to have the castle to yourself while they're all out doing vacations and whatnot.”

“To be honest, it's a bit lonely,” Gunner admitted. He'd been battling a sense of loss with his siblings scattered hither and yon on various trips and visits to other family members, or off at assorted universities.

He even missed his mother, who had taken the two youngest boys on her annual trek to Kenya to check up on the charities she endowed there.

“It's damned quiet here,” Gunner said apropos of those thoughts. “Just the tourists twice a week, and the dig crew, and they're all housed down by the old barn and stables.”

“Alice and I will be home in a week; I'm sure you'll survive just fine until then what with all your nascent TV stardom.”

“I don't think there's much stardom to be had with an archaeology show, but the money they're paying the family to use the grounds will make it all worth it.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” Elliott agreed. “And stop fussing. You'll have the cast off soon, though, and then you can go back to work.”

“My boss has me booked to go to Venice in October—until then, I'll be kicking around here.”

“Lucky bastard,” Elliott said with affection. “How many people find themselves taken to glamorous places like Venice to do their jobs?”

Gunner grinned. “Glamour doesn't enter into it; it's damned hard work climbing all over those abandoned factories documenting them, as you well know.”

“Yes, but it doesn't make me any less envious of a job where all you have to do is snap a few photos.”

“‘Architectural forensic photographer' is the official title, thank you very much. Anyway, did you and Alice get any time away from your book tour to enjoy your belated honeymoon?”

The talk turned purely familial as the two men spent another ten minutes hashing over various estate issues that Gunner had been handling while his brother Dixon, who normally handled such things, was off taking a much-needed vacation. Or at least he was handling things until Elliott returned from his three-week American book tour. Once the video call ended, Gunner hobbled around the residential section of the castle, his fiberglass walking boot echoing loudly down the wood-paneled hallways, making him very aware of his isolation.

He settled down in the small, dark library, propping his leg up on an ottoman. He picked up a book, but it wasn't the words on the page that he saw. His mind went to the soft feel of the woman he'd run down as she sat on his legs, one of her breasts pressed enticingly against his chest, the warm curve of her hip nicely solid under his arm. He'd been honest when he told her that he favored curves, not understanding why so many women felt it necessary to starve themselves into thinness that seemed to him to be borderline creepy. He'd seen enough survivors of famine, pestilence, and war in his life to keep him from seeking skeletal qualities in a female companion.

“Lorina,” he said aloud, savoring her name on his lips. She was a substantial woman, close to six feet tall, which was another point in her favor. At six feet three, he didn't like women who were so small that they gave him a crick in his neck when he kissed them. And he very much liked kissing women—he also liked holding them, and
touching their breasts, and stroking his hands up their long, long legs. . . .

He had to stop himself from mentally stripping Lorina, guessing she would not be one of the women who easily tumbled into his bed. Long experience had taught him to quickly assess who was after him for his supposed wealth and relationship to the Ainslie family, and although he wasn't above indulging himself when so offered, of late he had begun to feel there was something important missing in his fleeting relationships.

“Damn Elliott,” he said aloud as an orange cat wandered into the room, looked around, and leaped onto his legs, kneading his thigh briefly before curling up on his lap. Absently, he stroked the cat while glaring out of the small paneled window. “He had to go and get married, Captain, and live happily ever after with a charming woman who makes him laugh, and stay in bed half the day until he emerges with a besotted look plastered all over his face, and now it's made me feel like things are lacking in my own life. They aren't, though. You see that, don't you? I'm not the marrying type. Elliott is. I'm a free spirit. I like women, and they like me, and we both understand that although we can enjoy each other for some time, it's not going to be permanent. I come and go like the wind, without any responsibilities. Elliott's the one with those, and he can have them. I'm as free as a bird.”

His words sounded odd, hollow almost, as if he was trying to convince himself or the cat, Captain Wedderburn. He felt vaguely uncomfortable at the thought that maybe there was more to life than flitting around doing whatever he liked without any strings attached to anyone but his mother, his siblings, and his child. “Although even my time with Cressy is limited to visits every other year, and weekly video chats. No, Captain, I'm as free as they come.”

That's the way I like it,
he thought to himself, and pushed away the idea that perhaps lack of responsibility wasn't as attractive as it had been in the past.

“Lorina,” he repeated, thinking again of her warmth. “She's a Yank, I think. Or Canadian. I should find out, don't you think? It's only proper to treat visitors to our fair isle with politeness and interest. She's smart, too. The producer said she's a journalist, and that takes a certain amount of brains. I like brains in a woman.” In fact, he liked much of what he saw in Lorina, from the freckles all over her face and arms, right down to the shapely ass that was visible when she had pushed herself off his lap. And her legs—dear god, her legs! “The one odd thing about her is that she doesn't act like any journalist I've ever met. Curious, eh?”

He slammed shut the book, making the cat look up in surprise. “Sorry, Captain, you're going to have to move. I think it only right to go check on how things are going with the television crew. Yes, I was just there an hour ago, but they may need something, and with Dixon off in the Bahamas, it's only right that I'm there to help out as much as I can. No, don't say it. I know I just discounted Lorina because she's most likely not the type interested in a harmless fling, but I've changed my mind. A man can do that without untoward comments from his family, can't he? Besides, I could be all wrong about Lorina. It's best not to guess about people when you don't know them well, and I sense a bit of a mystery about her. You know how I love mysteries.”

The cat shot Gunner a dirty look when he rose and thumped his way out of the room, down the stairs, and through the kitchen to the small anteroom where his rented scooter was parked. It was a Tuesday, one of the two days a week that Ainslie Castle was open to the public, and it had been his habit the last few weeks to be on
hand to greet the groups. It took the edge off his loneliness to chat with the tourists, but today, with the arrival of the TV crew, he had better things to do.

And a delicious woman to ogle.

“It wouldn't hurt to apologize to her again. Perhaps I can figure why she doesn't appear like any other journalists I've met. It could be because she's American,” he mused as the scooter bumped its way past the outbuildings, and around the section of the castle that the family called the tower but was actually a crumbled heap of brick, slate tiles, broken glass, and broken mortar. He double-checked that the temporary fencing was secure, and continued on toward the stables, waving and smiling at the few tourists who recognized him. “Maybe I should talk to that Roger fellow and tell him that I want him to pair me up with Lorina rather than whoever he was going to assign. That way I can not only enjoy her, and her legs, and freckles, and all the other parts of her that I'd have to be blind not to admire, but in the process figure out what it is about her that's striking me as a bit different.”

He was mentally forming a request for just that when he arrived at the production company's row of caravans. No one was present. He pointed his scooter toward the barn that had been set up for the dig team's use, and was rewarded with the sound of voices.

“—you know, we anticipate this show to be the big hit of summer. More than a hundred archaeology clubs will be participating with their own digs in conjunction with this show, and along with the chats and interviews that we'll be presenting online, we should have record-high viewer numbers. But it all rests on you, our brilliant team of archaeologists. You've all been handpicked to take part in this project, and I know you will throw all your energy into ensuring that we have top-notch work done.”

There was a smattering of applause. Gunner stopped
his scooter at one of the big double doors, open to show the interior of the barn. The side with a drain had been hastily partitioned into temporary showers, while the other side was set up with several long tables and chairs. Around those, about forty people were arranged in varying degrees of comfort. Standing on a chair was the blond woman who Gunner remembered was the director. She turned to Roger, and said, “That's it from me. I believe Roger has a few words to add?”

“Just a couple,” Roger answered in a loud voice, the top of his head shiny with sweat. He surveyed them all with a brilliant smile. “I know you're all champing at the bit to get working, but I want to remind everyone that this is a team effort, and that only by pulling together will we reach the pinnacle. So get out there and dig like the wind, but also remember that there will be millions of viewers who will be watching your every move with fascinated eyes, and it's up to you to show them just how exciting history can be!”

There was a bit more applause.

“And now let's have a quick rundown of the schedule for the next two days. Len, can you bring the whiteboard? Ah, excellent. Now, I shall take you through here point by point to make sure we are all on the same boat. So to speak. The geophysics team will commence scanning the garden to the south of the fallen tower promptly at noon. The film crew will be filming them, and Sue will be recording appropriate explanations of how the geophys business works. At four, Paul and Sue and I will put our heads together and decide on where to put the first trenches, and by five the minidiggers will be moved into place and the trenches opened. That's when you lot come into play. We'll usually have a dinner break at seven, but due to the late start today, we plan on digging until nine. Now, let's go through the shots we expect to take. . . .”

“That man sure does like to hear himself talk,” a voice said behind Gunner.

He turned with a smile, wondering for what seemed like the thousandth time how his genes had produced such a miracle as Cressy.

“Gran says he's some important dude, though, so I have to be nice to . . . holy Gorgonzola and beans!”

“Holy Gorgonzola?” he repeated, wondering if it was some new Internet-speak that he had missed.

“He's gorgeous,” she said, then slapped her hand over her face and turned bright red. “Ohmigosh, I didn't just say that, did I? Out loud? So you could hear it?”