Chapter 3

Imogen stood on the sidewalk of the Royal Mile and was grateful for the awning above her head. She was less grateful for the rather expensive raincoat she’d bought before she left that had obviously spent time with someone familiar with puffy fabric paint.

She took a moment to attempt to identify the culprit. She had been recently staying with her sister the shrink, crashing on her couch because she had only needed a place for a couple of weeks. Given that those two weeks had turned into a couple of months, maybe it was Barbara behind the assault as retaliation for that extended stay. Then again, it could have been Pristine, she who had sent Imogen on that endless series of visits to remote and terrifying airports. Prissy was well versed in both retaliation and all things crafty and had had both the motive and time to get creative with Imogen’s outerwear.

Maybe in the end it didn’t matter because regardless of who was responsible, she was still the one walking around with I’m available and her cell phone number written in florescent pink on the back of her coat. It had only taken three overly friendly gentlemen patting her on her phone number and asking her, do I really need to ring you when you’re right there, ducks, for her to realize what had happened.

She’d retreated to a bathroom to try to scrape off the offending advertisement, but succeeded only in putting a hole in the fabric. The upside was, she had felt absolutely guilt-free about buying a cashmere scarf to wrap around her derriere. The downside was that when the rain had started up with enthusiasm, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to wrap her scarf around anything but her neck. In the end she was, as she had discovered just a moment ago, still available.

She could only wish all her reasoning faculties were likewise at the ready because then she would have had the good sense to stay at her hotel, watch some television, and survive the day. That’s what Tilly had planned for her. She’d considered, then realized that for a girl who’d never seen anything older than a few Old West ghost towns, the chance to see a real, live Scottish castle was too good to put off. Even the simple pleasure of walking on slick cobblestones in a medieval city was worth the effort of venturing out into the rain.

She pulled a damp piece of paper out of her coat pocket and squinted at it. It was a map Tilly had left for her with the location of her hotel marked in red. Tilly had also included a handful of red Xs marking the locations of interesting shops. It was tempting to check them off the list one by one, but maybe that could wait for another day or two. As long as she could eventually find her way back to her room, she thought she could allow herself to simply take the day and see where her feet led her.

She folded the paper back up and stuffed it back in her pocket, tucked her cashmere plaid scarf more securely into the neck of her raincoat, then left the security of the shop’s awning. She’d been starting to get cranky looks from the proprietor anyway. She supposed she couldn’t blame him given that her scarf had come from across the street.

Maybe the castle was the best place to start. At least she could hike up there and get all the work of walking uphill out of her way before she decided on anything else.

She tried not to think about that being a metaphor for her life, but it was hard to avoid. Being the youngest of five children born to overachieving parents had been alternately exhausting and terrifying. She had to admit that one of the things that had been appealing about crossing that big blue ocean had been the chance to get some distance from her family. It was hard to be the ordinary brown bunny in a gaggle of white, impressive bunnies with big job descriptions and even larger bank accounts. Her dream career definitely didn’t fit in with what her parents wished for her. It was a wonder they let her in the house for Thanksgiving, really.

After all, what use were degrees in history and eighteenth-century French poetry? Worse still, how could she sleep at night knowing she had abandoned her PhD before she’d really nailed down exactly what Further Studies in Humanities might mean? That hadn’t been her fault—well, it had been her fault. The truth was, she didn’t want to be a mogul, she didn’t want to be a professional, and she didn’t want to toss and turn at night until she’d obtained tenure at a university up to her parents’ snuff.

She’d wanted to make movies. While her siblings had been pretending to argue cases before the Supreme Court and make gazillions taking over companies and selling off the pieces, she’d been scribbling out screenplays and working on storyboards. Everything she’d done, all the classes she’d taken, even her degrees had been either to potentially further her yet-to-be-obtained career or to throw her parents off the scent of what she really wanted to do with her life.

And then, that miracle of getting to take over her roommate’s job as an assistant’s assistant to the set designer on an obscure indie film shoot.

She hadn’t dared tell anyone in her family about either the leaving of school or the taking of a job with pay so low she could have made twice as much working fast food. The family had discovered her deviation from the plan eventually, but by then, she’d been on her second shoot and she had gained enough courage to at least ditch her apartment and sublet something else under a fake name so they couldn’t find her.

Her family was complicated.

That had been four years ago. Since then, she’d been repeatedly told it was time to break free of the dastardly clutches of bringing stories to life on film and get on with her father’s plans that she at least put her foot to the tenure path. As appealing as that might have sounded to someone else, she couldn’t bring herself to even consider it. The film bug had bitten her and the infection had taken up permanent residence.

She owned nothing that couldn’t fit into her two suitcases and wee rucksack that were now parked safely back in her hotel room. One day she would acquire stuff. For the moment, all she wanted was to be able to pack for travel to potentially exotic shooting locales in less than half an hour.

She made it almost all the way to the castle before she finally had to give up trying to go uphill any longer. That and she was getting really tired of the comments her coat was eliciting. She backed herself up against a soggy wall and looked for the closest shop. It was past time she solved her coat problem. If it meant shelling out money for something new, so be it.

She looked around her, but apparently she had left the numerous stores selling all kinds of tartan products behind. All that seemed to be left were places that were pricier and less touristy. She pushed away from the wall and started back down to where she thought she might be able to afford something, then felt her feet come to a stop. She frowned, then looked at the shops she was standing in front of. Lovely, but nothing that called to her.

Apparently she was looking in the wrong direction.

She knew that as surely as if someone had spoken the words to her. She turned slowly and looked across the street.

Curiosities in Plaid.

She shivered in spite of herself, then gave herself a good shake. It was just a store. She looked both ways, realizing she was looking to the left first when she should have been looking to the right, then realizing there was no car traffic where she was so it was all moot anyway. She took a deep breath to calm the babbling in her head, then walked across the street and stopped in front of the shop. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, but maybe that was from the contact with rather lovely cashmere. It couldn’t be from anything more, well, odd. She didn’t believe in ghosts or spooky things, never mind that it was what she’d come to the UK to look for. That was film; this was reality.

Unfortunately touching the door was another experience in weird. She knew she hadn’t been there before, but she felt as though she’d made that motion an endless number of times.

Maybe she was going to need that nap sooner rather than later.

She pushed the door open and walked into controlled chaos. There wasn’t an inch of floor, wall, or ceiling that hadn’t been used to either prop up or hang something. Curiosities, indeed.

Imogen wandered around, having assured the saleswoman that she would ask if she needed aid, until she realized she wasn’t the only shopper in the store. Stranger still, she recognized the other person there, who definitely wasn’t Tilly come to check on her.

It was that woman from the train. The one with the dangerous shoes.

She did a double take, but her eyes were definitely not deceiving her. The woman was intently studying a collection of vintage-looking bottles, so Imogen took the opportunity to slink off somewhere else and avoid an encounter with potential nobility.

“Coffee?”

She looked at the shop’s owner holding out a cup and saucer. Imogen accepted it without thinking and had downed an enormous mouthful before she thought to ask if it contained anything poisonous. After all, she was in a strange store in a foreign country where she was having all sorts of bizarre experiences. Who knew what sorts of things she might find in the bottom of her cup? Given the events of the last ten minutes, she wouldn’t have been surprised by anything.

She felt instantly better, which she appreciated. She took the spoon and stirred, only then realizing that stirring wasn’t exactly possible with whatever was occupying the bottom half of the cup. She pulled the spoon out and looked at the sludge clinging to it with the tenacity of sentient goo that didn’t want to go back into the drink, as it were.

“Here, let me take that for you.”

She looked at the woman standing next to her. That wasn’t a witch, was it? She looked a little unconventional, but that could have been simply her own faulty judgment being affected by really lousy coffee and jet lag. Then again, maybe it was something else. She was tempted to go back outside the shop and make sure she hadn’t misread the sign. She was beginning to think she’d walked into a store full of hexes and potions.

“Thank you,” she managed, handing the little woman her cup.

“My Great-Gran taught me how to make that,” the proprietress said with a smile. “She wasn’t a very good maker of brews, but that’s a tale better left for a different time.”

Imogen agreed that was wise. Her quota of weird was already starting to feel pretty full. She thanked the woman for the drink, then wandered around the shop because that seemed like a reasonable thing to do. The goods on the shelves were unusual, to be sure, but nothing that leaped out at her. She browsed for a bit longer, then thanked the proprietress for the cup of coffee and escaped before the woman offered her anything else undrinkable—

Only to run bodily into someone standing right outside the door.

It was the woman from the train.

Imogen held out her hands to steady her. “I’m so sorry,” she managed.

The woman waved aside her words. “Nothing to apologize for, of course,” she said. “Looking for something inside?”

“Actually, I’m looking for medieval—” Imogen stopped herself once she realized there was really no good reason to be telling a complete stranger what she was up to. “Why do you ask?”

The woman drew her coat up around her chin. “I have a keep full of treasures.”

“A keep?”

“A castle,” the woman said impatiently, then took a deep breath. “A castle.”

“Wow,” Imogen said. “That must be amazing.”

“Well, ’tis less amazing than it might otherwise be when the tax lads come visiting, but those are the perils of living in any age, I suppose.”

Imogen smiled before she thought better of it. “I imagine that’s the case.”

“I’m Heather,” the woman said, extending her hand. “Mistress of Haemesburgh.”

Mistress? Imogen had to believe that at some point she would get used to the way people were talking to her, but she didn’t hold out any hope for it any time soon.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with your friend yesterday,” Heather continued. “I don’t usually put myself forward this way, but if you’re decorating a movie set, I have a few things you might be interested in.”

Imogen could hardly believe her ears. She could also almost not believe that the woman in front of her was for real. She was elegant, true, and stunning, but what if she was just pretending to be nobility? Imogen was fairly confident in her ability to spot a nut from across the room, but she was in a foreign country and she was seriously sleep deprived. Her radar might be malfunctioning and who knew where that might lead?

“I have a car and a driver, if that eases you any,” the woman continued, as if she’d read Imogen’s mind. “I’m the chief of a tiny little clan, you see, and one must keep up appearances. ’Tis more of a courtesy title than anything else, but I wear it with pride.”

“Ah—”

“Or, if you prefer, you can take the train.” Heather, the reputed mistress of Haemesburgh, pulled out a business card and held it out. “We have a website, of course, with directions. I have a very fine chef and a small tea shop, if you want to come for an early luncheon. Aye, take the train and come in the morning. I’ll have a tour planned out for you when you arrive.”

Imogen looked at the card in her hand. It looked legit and Heather of Haemesburgh certainly looked the part of a castle owner. Maybe Fate had decided she’d suffered through enough crappy jobs and deserved a metaphysical raise of sorts. She might be holding the ticket to that in her hand. It would be ridiculous to pass up an opportunity for a private tour of a castle full of history.

“Thank you,” she said, putting her shoulders back and attempting what she hoped was a professional, confident smile. “This is very kind.”

The woman nodded slightly. “Happy to be of use, of course. Tomorrow, then?”

Imogen managed to nod, then watched the woman walk away. Heather was wearing very sensible boots, though they were obviously very expensive. Maybe she managed to avoid filling the tax man’s pockets more successfully than she let on.

Perhaps it was time to call it a morning. Imogen checked her map and headed back to her hotel, deciding she would stop for some sort of takeout on the way. She had things to digest, things that would be better considered after a serious nap.

There was something about that woman that bothered her, though she didn’t know where to even begin to identify it. Maybe it was that of all the people she could have tripped over on the train north, she’d tripped over a real, live specimen of nobility. More amazing still that the woman had a castle, stuff inside that castle, and a willingness to have both be examined. It was almost too good to be true, but Imogen had made a commitment while landing on a grassy farmer’s field, sure she would die in the process, that she was going to become an optimist. It was time to put up or shut up.

She pulled her coat more closely around herself and continued on her way.