were the usual things that still concerned him, namely trying to bring together two rather stubborn souls who might not particularly want to be brought together. But in this case, there were things that hung in the balance: lives that depended on the cooperation and, aye, it had to be said, the affection of those two sterling souls. And Richard Drummond knew it as well as anyone else.
Ambrose conjured himself up a comfortable chair. He had the feeling it was going to be a long night.
Chapter 1
Samantha Josephine Drummond set her suitcase upright, lifted her face to the sky, and took a deep breath of freedom.
Well, she was actually only looking at a ceiling and sampling nothing more rarified than the air inside King’s Cross station, but she wasn’t going to complain. She was standing alone in the midst of a crowd and life was very good.
She looked around herself to get her bearings, then glanced reluctantly at the small booklet of instructions in her hand. She supposed the fact that she was holding on to that sort of thing was her own fault. She had a smartphone and knew how to use it, and she was perfectly capable of keeping track of a plane ticket and money for a cab. Unfortunately her parents were stuck in a time warp where she was still twelve and they were eternally in their late thirties and she allowed them to keep on with it because it was easier that way.
Or at least she had until her plane had touched down on British soil. Things were going to be different from now on. As soon as she figured out where she was going.
She had another look at the little album in her hands. It had obviously been made by someone with a predilection for grunge-style scrapbooking paper and rubber stamps. At least this one had taken pleasure in her work. Samantha had, over the course of her twenty-six years, been gifted with an appalling number of similar books, though she couldn’t remember any in the past that had been fashioned with such care. She could only imagine the comments that had been made during the crafting of those life aids by the graduate assistants gang-pressed into doing so.
She checked her map, had another look around to make sure she was pointing in the right direction, then took hold of the handle of her suitcase and dragged it along behind her. She wasn’t unused to the number of people she had to weave her way through, but it was a little disconcerting to hear so many other tongues than English. She had to admit she was rather relieved to find her train and get herself into a seat on it with a minimum of fuss.
The train pulled away from the station and she had the oddest sensation of leaving her known life behind. It was even stronger than what she’d felt as her plane had taken off from the States. She’d been to London several times with her parents for various reasons, but this was something else entirely. This was just her on her own. She supposed Newcastle upon Tyne wasn’t the most glamorous spot in England, but it was easy to get to other places from it and it boasted a couple who had been willing to have her come house-sit for them for the summer.
And it was close to Scotland.
It was probably better not to think about that at the moment on the off chance some do-gooder thought she was about to start hyperventilating.
She looked out the window and happily watched the scenery rush by as she contemplated the miracles that had happened to get her where she was at present.
It had been her brother, of all people, to plant the first seed of subversiveness in her head. That was surprising given that she couldn’t say that she and Gavin were particularly close. He had left home when she’d been eight, scampering off to England to study art in London, then fall effortlessly into the cushy job of gallery manager for a woman who had subsequently retired and left him for all intents and purposes as the owner. He was almost as bad as their parents in treating her as if she were a perpetual child, though it wasn’t as though they spent enough time together for him to have any other opinion. Until his last visit home, of course, when he had apparently decided it was time for her to make