Ashes to Ashes

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Eric put the letter and the will in his desk and headed for the kitchen. “It’s late. You must be hungry.”

  “Starved. But first… . “Rebecca detoured through the bedroom, noting that Eric had a king-sized bed, and found the bathroom. Compared to the basic fixtures at Dun Iain it was a Cecil B. DeMille set. The lights spaced along the top of the mirror made haloes in her slightly dazed eyes. She wet a tissue, mopped at a crumb of mascara, threw it away. The wad of tissue missed the wastebasket and landed under the rim of the cabinet. When she bent to retrieve it her fingers touched something metallic and cold, a tube of flame red lipstick.

  She visualized the woman with the bold red lips, a lobbyist from the Capitol downtown, or a corporate lawyer every bit as smooth as Eric himself. Cool and collected in her pin-striped suit, but an animal clawing at him as he… . Rebecca put the lipstick in a drawer and the tissue into the basket, and grimaced at herself. Her flushed reflection grimaced back.

  A rhythmic tapping issued from the kitchen. Eric had shed his coat, vest and tie, rolled up his sleeves, and was chopping vegetables. The red and greens of peppers and broccoli shone brightly amid glass, chrome and leather. Rebecca, feeling as if she’d been magically transported from 1890 to 2001, stopped in the living room to survey the bookshelves.

  Geological specimens shared space with best-sellers, a collection of the classics, and books on popular physics and train journeys through India. The magazines— The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic— were slightly crumpled; they were for reading, not decoration. Nothing changed Rebecca’s impression of Eric as a man determined to improve himself.

  On the desk was the only photograph, a tiny, unfocused picture of a woman and a child. Rebecca held it to the light.

  The woman was about sixty, her hair pulled away from her face in a ringleted perm of the late fifties. Her eyes were dark smudges made even larger by the weary circles under them. But her mouth was a thin line of tenacity. She was a fighter. And so was the child. His hair was a caterpillar-like crewcut above his small, somber face. Even at the age of five or six his black eyes had been burnished with intelligence and a certain sad perception.

  “Find anything?” Eric called.

  “It’s lovely. Awful posh. And no ghosts— what a treat.”

  He glanced up at her from beneath his brows. She wasn’t sure he’d ever believed her account of the lavender-scented entity in the pantry. There was no reason to make him even more skeptical of her common sense by telling him what Brian had said about James.

  She went on, “This is you and your grandmother?”

  “Yes. She was quite a woman to raise me alone. She always pushed me to make something of myself.”

  “So I see.” Above the desk was a copy of MacKay’s British Antiques. No wonder Eric knew the inventories so well. Rebecca pulled the book off the shelf and flipped through it. A photograph of a Chippendale secretary like the one at Dun Iain was marked by an envelope whose return address read “Sotheby’s, New York”. Sotheby’s, the classy antiques dealer.

  Eric’s arms came around her from behind and she jumped. “Now what?” he murmured into her hair. “Oh. I wrote them to check on some of Campbell’s valuations. And to see if the mazer was on the market. Outside chance, I’ll admit, and sure enough they’d never heard of it. But if they did know its whereabouts, and I retrieved it for you, you’d have spoiled your surprise, wouldn’t you?”

  “We already know I’m too curious for my own good.” She couldn’t tell whether the undertone of irritation in his voice was genuine or pretend. Ray had had a knack for playing with irritation, as if she couldn’t be trusted with the real thing. “Isn’t that above and beyond the call of your duty? I thought Warren was making inquiries about the mazer.”

  “He has his channels, I have mine.”

  So Eric wanted to show off by finding the mazer. To make up, no doubt, for the galling fact that Michael’s valuations were correct… . Eric took the envelope from Rebecca’s hand, replaced it in the book, turned her around and kissed her. Her senses flared like sparklers in the July dusk. She wheezed, “Can I help?”

  “Cook, or look for the mazer?” He laughed and released her. “Neither. Just relax.” He went back to work, and in a moment the delectable odors of onion and soy sauce filled the room. Rebecca consoled herself by finding the silverware and setting the glass-topped table in its alcove by the window. “Technically we should be having plum wine,” said Eric, producing a bottle from the refrigerator. “But you just can’t beat champagne for a special occasion.” The cork popped. He poured, sipped, nodded and handed the glass to her.

  The food was delicious. The champagne bubbled in Rebecca’s head with prismatic sprays of sensuality. Was there anything Eric did, she wondered as she chased the last grains of rice around her plate, that he didn’t do well? When he pulled her away from the sink, wrested the dishcloth from her hands, and led her to the sumptuous leather couch, she settled down happily for a demonstration of yet another of his skills.

  How much more comfortable the couch was than the seat of the car, she thought. It invited licentious activity. Then she didn’t think at all, but floated on sensation as she’d float on music, the song her body sang leaving her more intoxicated than the champagne ever could.

  She curled against him, one of his arms across her knees, the other supporting her shoulders. Her hand splayed inside his shirt against the scratch and silk of his chest. The hem of her dress rode two thirds of the way up her thigh. Eric’s hand was even higher, his ring sliding over taut nylon, making its slow but resolute course toward what her brothers would have called home base. Her lips felt delightfully bruised.

  Rebecca groped after her wits. Not that she wanted her wits, but it didn’t seem right to abandon them at the side of the road like unloved kittens. The ring and the hand stopped at the lace-trimmed edge of her teddy.

  “Would you like to change clothes?” Eric asked. His voice was now brushed velvet, slightly husky.

  So was hers. “I didn’t bring anything else.”

  “There’s a robe on the back of the bathroom door.”

  With her lips Rebecca traced the tense line of his jaw. All she had to do was go to the other room, undress, and put on the robe. He would take the robe off, hold her, and make love to her. She could cling to him and make stupid little vocalizations into his shoulder. She was guaranteed one complete orbit of the rarth and side trips to the moon and Venus as well.

  Bubbles of champagne and sensuality spattered across her mind like raindrops across her face. Then it would be morning. In the cold light of dawn he’d drive her back to Dun Iain. Back to reality, and Michael Campbell’s mocking gaze.

  She didn’t move. His fingers began tapping gently but impatiently at the angle where her hip met her thigh.

  Eric’s masculinity flared around his armor like the corona around an eclipse. When the barriers were down he’d incinerate her, as Zeus did some hapless mortal— not Europa, not Danae, she’d have to look it up.

  If the barriers came down. She wanted to hold that part of him that was the child in the picture and tell him it was all right. But the man he was now didn’t need her to tell him anything. Even in the most intimate of moments he was perfectly capable of remaining so slick she’d slide off him.

  She didn’t move. She was still in his arms, but she was no longer touching him. The song she’d been singing thinned and died into a sour resonance in the back of her mind. His armor was so brightly polished it reflected odd, evasive shapes. She might never be able to see inside.

  Items listed in the inventories were missing. James hadn’t liked Eric anymore, there at the end. A letter from Sotheby’s marked a page in MacKay… . Just once, Rebecca demanded of herself, can’t you trust someone?

  She couldn’t see his face; her face was buried in his throat, her nostrils filled with his salt and spice scent. His hand clenched on her teddy, twisted, and released it to retreat down her thigh. Beneath her hand
s his breath slowed and deepened, the tension ebbed from his body, his skin cooled.

  That’s all? But men were mortally insulted at being thwarted— especially at such a moment.

  Rebecca looked up. He was gazing not at her but at the window across the room. With his hair tousled across his forehead he seemed almost vulnerable. Tired. Certainly disappointed. He would hit her not with anger, then, but with sarcasm. No fair, she pleaded silently, to talk about wasting the concert tickets, the fancy dinners, the bottle of champagne.

  He exhaled, pulled the hem of her dress to her knee, and stroked her hair back from her face. His eyes were the black cairngorms she remembered from that first night, a hint of smoke drifting in their depths.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being pulled in so many different directions right now. I’ve been leading you on all this time, I know.”

  “Then continue to lead me on. I’m enjoying it.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “After the first of January, after all the sound and fury at Dun Iain is over, would you like to come on a cruise with me?”

  She stared. “Do what?”

  “Come on a cruise with me. The Caribbean in January. A vacation after all your hard work. My treat, of course.”

  She relaxed against him. Thank God for Eric’s self-control, for his almost frightening maturity. If his hand had taken the plunge she’d have been Jell-O; he could have carried her into the bedroom like Rhett Butler. And would probably have thrown out his back, halting the proceedings in an even more embarrassing manner.

  A cruise. That might work. After she’d survived the ghosts, the artifacts, the maudlin music of a set of pipes. After her damned suspicious nature had burned itself out for lack of fuel. They could have that brief, intense encounter after all, made nice and tidy by a beginning when the ship sailed and an end when it docked. She’d bring fire-fighting equipment and grappling hooks, just to be prepared. “Why yes,” she said. “Let’s try that.”

  “It’s a date, Rebecca.” Eric levered her off his lap. “Would you like to go home now? You can stay, if you like.” He held his hands to the side— see, I’m unarmed and not dangerous.

  “Dun Iain? Home?” She laughed wanly. “It’s the closest thing to a home I have right now, isn’t it? Yes, I would, please.”

  He put on his burgundy jacket, helped her collect her coat and shoes, and walked her down to the car. It was after one AM. Even so they were in traffic almost all the way to Putnam. They sat not talking, quiet music emanating from the speakers, Eric driving with one hand and holding her hand with the other. Passing headlights swooped out of the darkness like flak, burst and died. Rebecca slumped, aching, tied in knots of unrelieved desire. The pain would eventually dull. It always had before.

  The drive was a tree-lined tunnel. At its end every light in the castle blazed. No cars were in the parking area beside the Toyota and the Nova. So much for her fantasies about Michael and the mail carrier. Unless the woman had been and gone. Well, he was a grown man. He could manage his own affairs. Rebecca clambered wearily from the car.

  “The lights were on like this the night your room was vandalized?” Eric eyed the ranks of glowing windows. “I’d better come in with you.”

  Rebecca unlocked the door and pushed it open. Her steps on the flagstones sounded like gunshots. “Michael?”

  A sudden pounding shattered the silence. She whirled around. Eric was staring at the storeroom door. “Hello!” said Michael’s voice. “Would you mind terribly unlockin’ the door?”

  “What the hell?” asked Eric. He tried the knob.

  “Use the key,” Michael called.

  “It’s not in the lock.”

  “Then look for it!”

  It took Rebecca only moments to find the key, lying in a rim of shadow just where the white marble of the sarcophagus met the gray stone of the floor. She thrust it into the lock and threw the door open.

  Michael leaned against a packing crate, two cans of Moosehead, his notebook, a crowbar, and a heavy screwdriver beside him. Other crates stood open, their lids strewn all the way back into the shadows where the ceiling curved toward the floor. “Welcome home,” he said to Rebecca. “I was afraid you’d no be back the night.” He inspected her up and down and added, “You’re a wee bit peelie-wally.”

  “Peelie-wally?” asked Eric.

  Michael’s eye shifted to him, taking in the absence of vest, coat and tie. “Thin and pale, like a plucked chicken,” he explained. Something in his expression glinted not so much with amusement as with a furtive satisfaction.

  Eric turned one way, rolling his eyes upward. Rebecca turned the other, looking down at the floor, smothering a grin and a groan. The turkey, that was exactly how she felt. But if it was none of his business what she had done this evening, it was none of his business what she hadn’t. “What on earth are you doing? Did you open all those boxes?”

  Michael closed his spiral notebook and tucked a pencil into the wire. “It’s a fair cop. Caught me workin’.”

  “At this hour?” Eric asked.

  Michael yawned. “I was goin’ to quit hours ago, mind you. But the door slammed and locked itself. Or at least I never heard anyone there.”

  “Here we go again,” said Rebecca. “Every light in the house is on. Human or supernatural malefactors?”

  Eric scoffed, “You could’ve locked the door and scooted the key underneath it. It was just over there.”

  “Oh aye, I was right keen on spendin’ the night in the lumber room.” “You could’ve used that stone to smash the lock.”

  He was pointing at a three-foot high piece of sandstone whose surface rushed with carvings of hunters on horseback. Michael’s face suffused with horror. He stepped back and patted the artifact protectively. “This is a Pictish sculptured stone, I’ll have you know. Resembles the one at Aberlemno. And look at that one there.”

  Oh my, Rebecca thought. She followed him like a child following the Pied Piper. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Roman milestone, probably from Hadrian’s wall. See?” His forefinger traced the inscription. “’Imp Caesar Hadrianius Leg III’. Third legion.”

  Eric, still in the doorway, hiked back his jacket, stuck his hands in his pockets, and rattled his change.

  “John must’ve bought oot some grave robber’s entire store,” continued Michael. “Look— a bronze figurine, a stone bowl, and Samian ware from Gaul. Legionary Tupperware, eh?”

  Rebecca picked up the smooth red-slipped bowl. It had come from France to Britain and now here, over the miles and the centuries. It thrummed very faintly next to her skin, transmitting some inchoate memory of the other hands that had held it.

  “A glass flask for oil.” Michael indicated a small tissue-wrapped object. “Very rare. And here… . “Another stone, carved in a faint image of a seated woman. “An altar. ‘Deo Sancto Juno Caelestis.’”

  “Look!” Rebecca called to Eric. “Isn’t it great?” He smiled faintly, his eyes glazed. Whether at the flood of information or at a Scot speaking Latin Rebecca couldn’t tell. She turned back to Michael. “’Juno Caelestis’. That means Brigante territory. What’s the provenance?”

  “That’s just it.” Michael dropped the lid of a case with a thud and turned to Eric, scowling. “Your bleedin’ inventories dinna have Sweet Fanny Adams aboot this lot. They’re taken oot o’ context. It’s criminal!”

  “They’re not my inventories,” retorted Eric.

  Michael gesticulated. “Forbes should be hanged for scarperin’ wi’ these things. They’re soddin’ useless the noo!”

  “He’s already dead,” said Eric. “Has it occurred to you… .”

  Rebecca started toward him. Michael jogged her elbow, pulling her back. “Just look at this.”

  He put into her hands a metal casket about the size of a loaf of bread. The silver trimming was tarnished, but bits of enamel showed faintly through the dust. An inscription ran along the rim of the lid. She held the casket up to the light and squin
ted. “James Graham, Earl of Montrose. Michael, you don’t mean this is the man’s heart!”

  “I told you it was here,” he replied. “The one thing I do have provenance for. Open it up and take a keek.”

  “Bloody hell I will!” Rebecca thrust the casket at him so quickly he almost fumbled it. She dusted her hands. “The last thing I want to look at is someone’s mummified heart. Especially when you consider how it left his body!”

  Michael grinned. “Dinna get the wind up. You dinna have tae look. Noo if John really had Mary’s severed head around here somewhere… .”

  “Is he always this gruesome?” asked Eric.

  Rebecca retreated toward the door. “Not really. Pardon him his enthusiasms, will you? Most of them are mine, too.” And to Michael, as he stood unrepentant, holding the casket, “No wonder you didn’t hear anyone lock the door. You wouldn’t have heard a brass band. You’ve made quite a dent in the pile, haven’t you?”

  “Well, since I was locked in… . “His eyes slid slyly away from hers. He wrapped the casket with a cloth and tucked it into a box.

  No wonder he’d wanted her to go away. But Rebecca didn’t have enough energy for a real head of rage. With Michael rage was wasted effort. “You’ve been in here every night I’ve been gone, haven’t you? Trying to get all the goodies for yourself.”

  “For the museum,” Michael corrected. “It’s my job.”

  “If you say that one more time, I’ll scream!”

  Eric smiled at Rebecca and Michael both like a teacher at slow pupils. “Has it occurred to you that someone could’ve been out here looting the entire house?”

  Rebecca sagged. Michael swore, charged past her and ran up the stairs. They went through the house, from the room beneath the platform on down, Michael at point, Eric and Rebecca following warily behind. Nothing was gone. Nothing was moved. Darnley sat impassively washing his face on the bed on the fifth floor, the impression of Elspeth’s body beside him.

  One glimpse of the cat and Eric sidled back downstairs. “You lucked out this time,” he told Michael when they regained the entry.