blamed on jet lag, or would she have to come up with a more drastic malady to excuse her bad behavior? It was excruciating in the extreme to have to listen to Dory continue to tell her details about the Cookes that she was quite certain Mrs. Cooke would have preferred to reveal herself—quite possibly somewhere besides the sidewalk.
“You know, Mr. Mollineux, Miss Drummond looks suddenly quite tired,” Mrs. Cooke said, reaching for Samantha’s suitcase. “Perhaps she could use a bit of a lie-down, yes?”
“Well,” Dory began doubtfully.
Samantha found herself and her suitcase drawn inside the house and Dory forced to step back down onto the sidewalk by the apparently unintimidatable Lydia Cooke.
“It is a long journey from the States,” she said easily. “I think she would enjoy a lunch date much more tomorrow.” She looked over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t you, Samantha?”
Samantha wasn’t about to spurn the rescue. “Definitely.”
“And so it’s settled,” Mrs. Cooke said brightly.
“But I have an agenda already planned out,” Dory complained. “I don’t like to get off track.”
“Then perhaps today’s schedule could be set aside as a fallback plan should something else fall through in the future. Do you need to have a taxi called—no, there’s one right there waiting for you, Mr. Mollineux. À bientôt!”
And with that, she shut the door, paused, then turned and smiled.
“You didn’t mind that, did you?”
Samantha tried not to look as pathetically grateful as she felt. “Not a bit.”
“Well, some lads working to impress a girl tend to become a little trying,” Mrs. Cooke said. “I doubt I dampened his spirits for long. I’ll show you to your room, then you can either have that promised lie-down or a tour of the house.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cooke.”
She laughed. “It’s Lydia, of course. There’s no call for formality. And I’ll call you Samantha, if you don’t mind. A lovely name. Very substantial and powerful.”
Samantha felt neither at the moment, but she wasn’t going to argue. She picked up her suitcase and followed Lydia up two flights of stairs to a room that resembled every artist’s garret she had ever seen depicted in any romantic movie. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was charming and comfortingly free of either her parents or any preppy interlopers.
“The bath is across the hall,” Lydia said. “Once you’ve freshened up, come downstairs and I’ll show you around.”
Samantha thanked her, then waited until she’d shut the door before collapsing on the bed with a happy sigh. She had made it. Against all odds, she had escaped. It was a miracle.
She allowed herself approximately five minutes to simply sit and breathe before she looked around to see what her summer was going to include. She was sitting on a bed that ran north and south in a room where the window was east and the door west. There was no closet or armoire, but she didn’t have all that many clothes so she would make do with the pegs on the wall and the very tall, thin dresser tucked into a corner. There was a useful lamp on a table next to the bed and a rug under her feet. She couldn’t ask for anything more.
She put her suitcase on the bed, dug around for her toothbrush, then considered her bag. She never went anywhere without it, ever, but that was simply because she’d grown accustomed to having her life tucked inside it. At the moment, it contained all her money, her passport, and her personal notebook. She didn’t suppose anyone would care about it, but she slid it under the bed all the same, used the bathroom, then descended the creaking sets of stairs to the ground floor.
Lydia was in the kitchen, making tea. Samantha joined her at the table and indulged with hardly a pucker. She wasn’t much for tea, but when in England . . .
“Your brother says your degrees are in textiles,” Lydia said without preamble. “Interesting choice.”
“I wasn’t given much choice,” Samantha admitted. “My mother is—”
“Louise Theodosia McKinnon,” Lydia said with a smile. “Yes, I know—and not just from your brother. She has an amazing reputation here in England. The Victorian era is her specialty, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Samantha admitted. “I came this close to being called Fanny.”
Lydia laughed, a sound that was so kind and gentle, Samantha had to smile as well. “No doubt. So, you were lured into the fascinating world of antiques but chose Renaissance England for your master’s. Any reason for it?”
“Rebellion,” Samantha said before she could stop herself.
And if her