Roses in Moonlight Read Free Page B

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 a few changes to her life.
    They had been suffering through yet another miserable Thanksgiving family gathering when he had casually pulled a book out of his stylish leather portfolio. Samantha didn’t really believe in paranormal happenings, but she couldn’t deny that a hush had fallen over the room, as if something monumental was about to happen.
    Gavin had started to hand her a book, but her mother had intercepted it before Samantha could touch it. Gavin had frowned, but there was nothing to be done about it. When Louise McKinnon Drummond wanted something, she always got it. Samantha had watched her mother examine the cover of that rather musty old tome on Victorian ivory buttons, then toss it Samantha’s way with an uninterested sniff.
    “Already read it,” she had said.
    Samantha had thanked Gavin for something new to read, managed to get through the rest of the evening, then carried the book up to her room—on the top floor, of course. She’d shut the door, then sat on her bed for a few minutes, trying to still her rapidly beating heart. She’d finally opened the book and read the note hidden inside the front cover, taped carefully under the dust jacket.
    Have clients in Newcastle who need a house sitter