Page 3 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)

CHAPTER TWO

Adam

Adam dutifully followed behind Finley’s banged-up Volkswagen in the rental car, trundling slower and slower as the road narrowed and the rain came down with more dogged determination.

It was astonishing how quickly the sky could open up out here.

Finley hadn’t been lying about the single-track road, it was hardly wide enough for one car, unpaved and uneven, and Adam saw no other way to accommodate the comings and goings of other motorists than to pull entirely off the road.

“How far do you think it is?” Nicola asked, peering to see through the rain.

Adam was following so close behind Finley that he could see the way the other man tapped rhythmically at the steering wheel with his thumb, how he glanced up into the rear-view from time to time to make sure they were still following.

“No telling,” Adam said. He had searched for Craigmar endlessly in the last few months, but the house wasn’t listed on any public maps, and when it appeared in sparse newspaper articles, no address or photos were included.

It was likely the owner didn’t want Craigmar to be found, which wasn’t totally unheard of as far as misanthropic wealthy families went.

It would be nearly impossible to find, his grandfather had told him once, what felt like eons ago. Adam had been ten years old, begging for one more story and up way past his bedtime. But if anyone could do it, it would be you.

“We’ve been driving for fifteen minutes,” Nicola said, peering out the window as gorse bushes and scrubby trees rolled past. “Is that what ‘a few miles down the road’ means to a Scot?”

She nibbled her lip, a surefire sign she was nervous.

“Are you all right with this?” Adam asked. “If you start to feel weird, we can always leave.”

“I’d rather deal with whatever’s out in the hills than watch you pout the whole flight back to America because you didn’t find what you were looking for,” Nicola said, swiping on a bit of chapstick and fluffing her bangs in the passenger mirror. “Besides, the weirdo in the Volkswagen is hot.”

“A hot guy can still bury you under his floorboards,” Adam said. “And he’s not hot enough to be worth dying for.”

Nicola snorted. “Sure, like you don’t have eyes. Anyway, you’re my travel guide, remember? I go wherever you go.”

Adam’s heart clenched. He had spent as much of his college tenure as possible studying abroad or, at the very least, partying abroad on school holidays.

He had somehow been to five countries in two years, funded entirely by scholarships or his total willingness to live on rice and beans so he could afford drop-of-a-hat plane tickets.

Nicola was relying on his traveling expertise to steer them in the right direction, and he didn’t want to frighten her by worrying.

Suddenly, Finley turned left, disappearing behind an overgrown hedge dotted with bloody berries. Adam swerved to follow, swearing under his breath, and then Nicola let out an awestruck gasp.

A huge structure loomed above them at the end of a gravel drive, three stories of wind-lashed gray stone.

Every white-framed window in the mammoth structure was dark, and the multiple chimneys atop the peaked roofline were heavily shadowed by the cloud-shrouded sun.

The house was situated at the peak of a rolling hill, and as Adam pulled to a stop outside the large wooden front door, he saw that it overlooked a long, cleared grazing green dotted with sheep.

The green stretched all the way to the hazy ocean coast at what, in that moment, truly felt like the edge of the world.

Adam stepped out of the car, struck silent by the grandeur of the landscape.

Twisted trees edged up against the grazing lawn, as though the wilderness was straining to spill onto the cleared land and re-wild it by force.

Even in the haze of rain, Adam could see that the estate must sprawl for acres and acres.

Somehow, it was bigger and more beautiful than even his feverish child’s brain had imagined.

Nicola’s boots crunched in the gravel as she pulled her hood up against the rain and peered up to see the tip-top of the house, which seemed to pierce the sky with its Gothic peaks.

Some of the masonry had started to crumble, the hedges and flowering plants that lined the drive were scraggly, and the ironwork plate over the door that read Craigmar was corroded with age, but it was all still undeniably beautiful.

“Lovely old behemoth, isn’t she?” Finley asked, striding over with his hands tucked in his pockets. “Let’s get indoors before you catch cold. The lord of the manor will be happy to see you both, I’d wager. We don’t get many guests all the way out here.”

“Lord of the manor?” Adam echoed, falling into step behind Finley. He was aware that things like lords existed, especially out in the Scottish countryside, but it still felt like something better suited to one of Nicola’s storybooks.

“Don’t worry,” Finley said, tossing Adam a grin over his shoulder as he approached the massive oak door. “She barely bites.”

Before Adam had any time to figure out what that meant, a huge, waterlogged deerhound appeared from behind a hedge, trotting towards Nicola with alarming speed. It let out a curious whine, its red tongue lolling out between gleaming teeth, and Nicola stumbled back a few paces.

“Smoo!” Finley said. “Who let you free? You’re absolutely soaked.”

“She’s afraid of dogs,” Adam said quickly as he stepped between Nicola and the hound. Its coat was the same gray color as a clotted storm cloud. The dog reared up on its hind legs in excitement and Adam, astonished by its size, stumbled back a few paces too. “Send it away.”

“Down,” Finley barked, with such authority that Adam almost obeyed himself. “Down, now! You should be ashamed of yourself, jumping on guests. Go on back to the house. And no tearing up the garden in this rain, you hear me?”

The dog shook its head, jangling its heavy leather collar and splattering Adam’s jeans with mud, then trotted off with a spring in its step.

“Sorry about him,” Finley said, shoving open the front door. “He’s just a big dumb baby, but I thought I raised him better than that. Come inside and warm your bones.”

Finley strolled through a wood-paneled antechamber that was as big as Adam’s apartment back home, his shoes trailing damp prints over flagstones that turned to hardwood as they approached the grand staircase.

Adam marveled at the feat of woodworking, like a twisting mahogany dragon that curved in on itself to create a landing before stretching into the darkness above.

The space was not opulently decorated, and might even have been considered rustic by McMansion standards, but every detail Adam could see, from the mother-of-pearl inlaid coffee table to the gigantic oil landscape paintings hung on the walls, belied money so old most people probably forgot where it originally came from.

There were landscape paintings missing from the walls, however, and open spaces on mantles where intricate clocks or jewelry boxes might have previously been displayed, suggesting that even the wealthiest old families needed to buoy themselves through hard times with selling off treasures.

“The lord’s a bit eccentric, fair warning.” Finley sloughed off his coat and hung it on an iron hook, then held out his hand for Adam and Nicola’s jackets. “No need to stand on ceremony, however. Just mind your manners and your host will be more than happy to tell you about Arabella, I’m sure.”

Nicola shot Adam a wary look, but Adam just gave her shoulder a squeeze and kept walking.

Being invited right in was strange, sure, but rich people were weird, and Scotland had a different hospitality culture than America did, and most importantly, this may be the only opportunity he ever had to get his answers.

Finley seemed relatively harmless, and Adam could probably fight him off if he needed to.

Hell, Nicola probably could if she needed to.

She was short, but she had a low center of gravity and she fought very, very dirty.

The pair followed Finley down a dim hallway, past a small parlor and into the home’s formal library.

A merry fire, tantalizing despite the somewhat unsettling circumstances, blazed in a walk-in fireplace flanked by carvings of leaping hares.

The room was painted sage green and paneled in dark wood, trimmed with wallpaper bearing tiny white flowers and vines.

One wall had been turned into a gallery of framed photographs and little postcards, and there were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the opposite wall.

A well-loved cognac leather couch beckoned, along with a bar cart topped with a sweating bucket of ice and a decanter of brown liquor.

A woman stood gazing into the fireplace, sipping from a cut-crystal glass.

“Finley,” she said in a throaty alto, not bothering to turn to face any of them, “who have you found?”

“Friends, I hope,” Finley said. “This is Adam and Nicola, sir. They were down at the pub asking about Arabella.”

At that, the woman turned around, a strange gleam in her dark eyes. She was wearing jodhpurs, and a green tweed vest over a white blouse and riding boots. Her thick hair was crow-black, offsetting her pale skin, and she wore it half-up, half-down in a practical style.

“That’s the lord?” Nicola whispered to Adam. “She looks like a grad student.”

The lord didn’t look like any grad student Adam had ever encountered, but he had majored in graphic design, and Nicola had a degree in literature, which tended to attract a much more theatrical type of person.