Page 63 of Riding High

Now there was a question she didn’t want to answer.Ignoring Mick, she forced herself to look at Troyden.‘I am so sorry,’ she quietly stated.‘I wasn’t thinking.I’ll pay for it to be fixed or put together, or whatever they need to do.’

And how much would that cost?A thousand pounds?Two?Ten?How would she raise that much cash?

Troyden looked at the pieces and pushed a breast plate to the side with his foot.‘If I had a dollar for every time this thing fell apart… I really should move it.’

‘You really should, Grandpa,’ Gemma told him, looking serious.‘Besides, Elspeth doesn’t like this one either.She says you should put it in the attic.And that the man who wore the other one wasn’t nice at all.’

Instead of telling Gemma not to talk nonsense, Troyden tipped his head to the side.‘Really?Did she tell you who he was?’

‘Someone from a long time ago,’ Gemma replied.‘Elspeth says he speaks with a funny voice.But Elspeth isn’t good at talking either, because she called the man a “night”.She’s confusing sometimes.’

Troyden smiled.‘He speaks with a funny accent because the man who wore it came from Germany.And he was a knight, someone who protected the king, and they wore this to save themselves from being stabbed by long spears.And by all accounts, no, he wasn’t a nice man.’

Nobody but Eden seemed surprised to hear that Gemma spoke to a ghost and that her information seemed startlingly accurate.Come on, this had to be a set-up, right?They were pulling a prank on her.Because, hell, everyone knew that there wasn’t any scientific, definitive proof that ghosts existed.

‘I didn’t know you still talked to Elspeth, Gemma,’ Mick said, sounding a little too nonchalant for someone whose career was based on science.

‘Not that much anymore,’ she said, shrugging.‘She’s been busy.’

With what, Eden wanted to scream.What the hell did ghosts do that took up time?Mick put her hand on Gemma’s shoulder.‘Go get some lunch, guys.’she said.

Eden watched the kids scamper away, trying to make sense of the last five minutes.Her uncle didn’t seem to be mad about the armour toppling over, and nobody was fazed that the second youngest member of their family had the occasional conversation with a spirit.

She looked at the dismembered suit of armour and bit down hard on her lip.‘I’m so sorry, Troyden.I’ll pay to have it fixed.’It was armour.Surely it could be fixed, right?It was, after all, built to take knocks.

Mick wrinkled her nose.‘Sixteen something, E.That’s four hundred years of history scattered on the floor.’

Oh, Jesus.She felt awful.Eden dropped to her haunches and picked up a piece of the breastplate, surprised it wasn’t heavier.She reached for another piece and looked up when Justin cleared his throat.She caught his grimace.‘The restorer said that if anything happened to it again, he wouldn’t put it back together again.He wasn’t going to condone such ill treatment of a museum-quality piece.’

Ah, come on!Seriously?

‘You guys are such pricks,’ Jed said, moving to stand next to her.

Justin shot him a grin.‘Sure.But teasing her is fun.’

She was being teased?Jed reached down, curled his arm around her bicep and gently lifted her to her feet.He sent her a small smile as he stroked her from shoulder to her hand.He linked his fingers with hers and squeezed.

‘It’s a copy, Eden.Troyden had it commissioned about thirty years ago and moved the original suit of armour into storage.’He nudged a piece with his foot.‘This dude has been shot with paper-pea guns, had cricket balls tossed at his head, has been knocked down more times than we can count.He can be put back together in ten minutes.’

So she hadn’t destroyed a vital piece of the country’s cultural heritage?‘So you were all in on the joke?’she asked, unsure.

‘Oh, E, teasing is our love language,’ Mick told her.

‘Yeah, they are jerks,’ Jed muttered, glowering at his siblings.‘A lot of what you see in the house, the treasures, are fakes?—’

‘Copies of the original, to be accurate,’ Troyden interjected.‘I only make copies when I own the real thing.’

Right, she was having difficulty following their conversation.The suit of armour was a fake?The house was full of copies?‘Butwhy?Why wouldn’t you want to look at the originals?’

‘Oh, I regularly do,’ Troyden assured her, ‘but in the safety of my undisclosed, super safe warehouse-museum.’He looked around and smiled.‘But this is a family home, and I had a choice between allowing my kids, and grandkids, to run free without worrying about breaking anything or making them tiptoe around the house.A good thing I did, because Alistair broke a copy of a Ming vase because he wasn’t looking where he was going, and Jedson smacked a cricket ball through the window and split the canvas of the Monet copy in the library.’

He owned a Monet?Holy shit!Jed snorted.‘You made me pay for the restoration of the fake painting,’ he muttered, still sounding annoyed.

‘Because I told you, at least twenty times, to play away from the house, and you insisted on playing outside my study window,’ Troyden retorted.He looked at his daughter.‘And I don’t know why you are smirking, Michaela.If I recall, you carved your initials into the leg of the fake Chippendale desk in your bedroom.’

Mick’s smile quickly faded and she sighed.‘If it makes you feel any better, Liam fingerpainted his bedroom walls the day before yesterday, and Gemma broke the clasp of my Elsa Schiaparelli necklace while playing dress up.’

‘I’m so glad you are raising yourself,’ Troyden told her, chuckling.