He smiled. “I’m actually very good at that sort of thing. Just not about discussing what bothers me.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything, really. Not if it bothers you.”
He studied her for a moment or two. “Do you want to know?”
“I find, actually, that I do.” She looked at him seriously. “How weird is that?”
“Thank you,” he said dryly.
She smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry.” She hesitated, tapping her pencil against her notebook for a moment or two, then looked at him. “I don’t date much.”
“So you don’t know the usual dance, is that it?”
She shook her head slowly.
He considered. “Would you like to come sit here next to me?”
She considered as well, then nodded. “I think I would.”
“Then please do.”
She left her books on the table, then walked around it to sit down next to him. She looked up at him. “What now?”
“We could hold hands.”
“Will you divulge details if we do?”
“I would anyway, but it might make me feel better whilst I’m about it.”
She smiled. “You aren’t serious.”
He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I think it would, but I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to do.”
“Hmmm,” she said. “Holding hands with a very handsome man in a castle that I think is mostly original, in front of a fire big enough to roast a good part of an entire cow, while I listen to him tell me his secrets? I think I like it.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “You didn’t mention the Vanquish.”
She shrugged. “It’s what you drive, not who you are.”
He closed his eyes, because it was either that or get himself in all kinds of trouble. He held out his hand, was rather too relieved for his peace of mind when she put hers into it, then propped his feet back up on Cameron’s table. He held Samantha’s hand in both his, suppressed the urge to flee—the woman was going to drive him crazy long before he managed to get a handle on what, if anything, he felt for her—then took a deep breath.
“I didn’t grow up here precisely,” he said. “My parents had a house on the estate, because my father was the second cousin twice removed of the laird, Alistair. My mother wasn’t fond of being here but my father never would have moved away. He loathed Scotland, as it happened, but I think he always assumed that one day he would take the title for himself.”
“Really?” she asked, sounding surprised.
“Well, Alistair had no children, so I suppose it was a logical assumption.”
“Hmmm,” she said thoughtfully. “But you said Lord Robert was Alistair’s heir.”
So he had, he supposed. “It’s complicated.”
“Hmmm,” was all she said. “So, if your father disliked Scotland so much, why did he want the title?”
Derrick shrugged. “The power of it, I suppose, or the prestige. The Cameron fortune was fairly substantial at the time. I wouldn’t begin to speculate what the current laird has done with it. He has a gift for making money and finding old things.”
She laughed a little. “You know, I keep thinking he’s on the verge of drawing a sword—” She shut her mouth with a snap, stared into the fire, then looked up at him. “But that’s impossible. I mean, he was born in this century, right?”
He looked at her then, but he just simply couldn’t bring himself to answer.
Her mouth fell open. She gaped at him for a minute or two, then shut her mouth with a snap. “I’ll think about that later. I have seen some pretty crazy things over here, but . . . well, back to you and yours. Your father wanted to stay and your mother didn’t. What happened?”
“They stayed, my mother complained endlessly, and my father repaid her with disdain.” He listened to the words come out of his mouth and wondered how he could be so nonchalant about details that had grieved him for so much of his youth. “They were killed in a car accident when I was twelve.”
Her hand in his flinched. “Oh, Derrick, I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “It was a blessing in disguise, actually. We came to the keep to be watched over by my grandfather—”
“We?”
He looked at her. “I have an older brother, older by a year. I suppose we were a bit more like twins, though I’ll always maintain he’s much uglier than I am.”