Pathetic kid, he’d once called her. “She might be pregnant, Eric. Is the baby Steve’s? Or is it yours?”
Michael muttered an outraged four-letter word. Eric took a step backward. It was hard to tell in the ocher firelight, but Rebecca thought sure he’d paled. “She what?”
No wonder Heather had been out so late last night. He’d gone to her when Rebecca had thrown him over. She felt queasy. “For God’s sakes, Eric, you should know the laws about statutory rape.”
“Oh, it wasn’t rape, I assure you. She’s a sweet little thing. I’d never hurt her. It’s just as well she ate the food tonight. She won’t know a thing about— about this.”
“And what about the child?” Rebecca demanded.
His brows rose with indignation. “It’ll have everything I never had. What do you think I am, anyway?”
“I take it,” said Michael, “you dinna want an answer to that.”
The fire popped. Eric’s dark slacks and jacket didn’t reflect the light. His eyes did, black gemstones faceted with flame on the surface, not in the depths. The depths were as cold as the draft from Elspeth’s window. “You,” he said to Michael. “I could’ve worked a deal with you, bought you off, couldn’t I?”
“No,” growled Michael, but Rebecca felt him shudder.
She groped for topics of conversation— oh, for half of Scheherazade’s tales. “Is the mazer really destroyed?”
“No. A collector has it. It’s quite safe.”
Even now that was a relief. From the corner of her eye Rebecca saw the box where Mary’s rosary and prayer book lay. He wouldn’t feel anything for them either. “Why, Eric? Why?”
“It’s all Dorothy’s fault. She had to take things, just a few little things, enough to raise James’s suspicions. And that idiot Steve, taking the mausoleum key, setting that fire. And you.” His eyes blazed and Rebecca had to stop herself from shrinking back. “I tried to scare you away, I tried to get your moronic boyfriend to take you away. The plan was faultless, not a hole in it, until you came along and started asking questions.”
“You didn’t have to hurt Ray like that… . “He’s right, Rebecca told herself. I forced him into this corner. His little financial caper, his life’s justification, hadn’t included murder. Or had it? “I wasn’t here when you pushed James down the stairs. No wonder Darnley scares you so much, he saw you, didn’t he? Every time you see the cat your guilty conscience twinges.”
“James was going to change his will,” Eric explained, his rationality more chilling than any draft. “He had no business doing that to me. Dorothy made him suspicious of me, the fool woman.”
“You weren’t surprised when Peter found that new will,” Rebecca went doggedly on, “because Dorothy heard us talking about it and warned you.”
Eric shook his head as though bothered by a stinging insect. “You’re too damn smart, Rebecca.”
Michael said scornfully, “Ah, a woman wi’ no intelligence is like a sandwich wi’ no fillin’, there’s no point to the eatin’.”
“Thank you,” said Rebecca toward Michael’s frosty profile. Half his mouth smiled at her, the other half stayed crimped shut. Eric’s brows tightened. He swung the light around the room, objects quailing in its brilliance, as if he’d heard something. But nothing was there.
Keep him talking, Rebecca told herself. “So you were just using me.”
“Not really. There’s no harm in some mutual pleasure, and you were available.” She winced at that. Eric went on, “I had to keep on good terms with you to get reports of what was happening here. But it wasn’t work. We had some good times, if not quite as many as I’d intended. You could’ve had your cruise, you know. You didn’t have to give that up.”
“That would’ve been the cap to your scheme, wouldn’t it? Taking me on a cruise paid for by the goods stolen out from under my nose!”
He grinned, his uneven teeth flashing. “You wouldn’t have known that. And you would’ve benefited. Nothing stimulates the libido like success.”
Rebecca grimaced, wanting to hate him. All she felt was pity for that charming, handsome, sick face. Beside her Michael’s infuriated expression moderated to curiosity and his head went up as if he, too, heard something. The cat, maybe, prowling downstairs. Eric was afraid of cats. Darnley, Rebecca thought, trying to project telepathically, here kitty, kitty.
The scent of lavender hung heavy on the air. Eric glanced at his watch, the light of the spotlight dipping and swaying and sending the shadows fleeing. “Tell me. What were you two doing in the mausoleum tonight?”
As one, Michael and Rebecca stiffened. Their hands clenched together. Neither said a word.
“Something was hidden in there?” Again Eric grinned, slowly, a wolf scenting its prey. “Now that’s a thought. Did old John hide his treasure in the mausoleum? I’ll have to look. Later. It’s a shame you two aren’t asleep like you were supposed to be. It would have made things much easier.”
Michael stared ahead, scowling. She could, Rebecca thought, try pleading with Eric, but that wouldn’t make any difference. Did it matter if she died with the last shreds of her self-respect intact? Yes, it did.
Her mind stuttered. She wasn’t going to die. Impossible. No way… . Now she heard something. Not the light thump of the cat, but the clump of boots on stone. Steve? No, anyone he’d bring would come in shouting. James? James! she screamed silently. Don’t let him get away with another murder! Help us, James!
Three more steps, far down in the house, then three more. Bloody great tackety boots. Michael glanced at her, brows arched. His eyes went abstract. He, too, was calling for help.
“Let’s go on downstairs,” said Eric, with a tight, pained grimace, “and get this over with. Come on.” He gestured with light and gun.
Michael stood firm. Rebecca didn’t move. James! she shouted, projecting the shout from her mind into whatever passed for another dimension in Dun Iain. James! Come up the stairs! Please!
James started up the stairs. Each step was sharp and clear, cutting through the moan of the wind. Eric darted a quick glance over his shoulder. “Great! You two, get back in there.” Michael and Rebecca, pushed at the point of the gun, retreated toward the storerooms. “In there.” Eric shooed them up the narrow stairway beneath the platform.
Footsteps pealed through the house. Michael dragged Rebecca up the steps to the little room. She stumbled and he caught her just as the door slammed behind them. They hung onto each other, knit as snugly as they could get clothed and standing up. “And I thought you were a terrorist,” Rebecca croaked into his shoulder. “Some terrorist you are, intimidated by a gun.”
“Dinna be daft,” he replied. “What I am is terrified.”
“That makes two of us.”
The room smelled of decay, which, at the moment, suited Rebecca considerably better than lavender. The windows rattled in the force of the wind. A draft fanned her hot cheeks, sucking the warmth from them. She clutched Michael, wondering incoherently if she was going to crack his ribs, asking herself if it really mattered anyway.
The wind cried as though it wanted inside. Rebecca heard no other sound except the quick, steady beat of Michael’s heart against her ear. For a long moment that was enough.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Michael and Rebecca untangled themselves. She pulled one of the flashlights from her pocket, pattered down the steps and checked the door. “It’s locked, but the key’s still in it.”
“We’re on the wrong side,” Michael returned. He produced his own flashlight and swept its feeble beam around the room. Nothing was there but the plank floor, the lathe ceiling and the trapdoor, and four walls, each with its window as blank as an aristocrat’s monocle.
“Maybe Steve’s bringing back help… ” Rebecca began as she climbed back up the stairs, and cut herself off. Steve no longer counted. “How long will it take Eric to search the house and realize no one’s there?”
Michael threw up the sash of a window and leaned
out. The beam of his light was consumed by snow-spangled darkness. A gust of wind blew his hair back from his face and curled Rebecca’s toes. “We’re proper experts at searchin’ the house. For him, fifteen minutes. Twenty at the most. We have tae be oot o’ here by then.”
“Sure,” Rebecca said stoutly, even as she thought, and if we’re not? She inhaled the cold draft that stirred the clammy, slightly rotten air of the room. Eric wasn’t going to kill them. They wouldn’t let him. “You can say ‘I told you so’ if you like.”
Michael extricated himself from the window and slammed it shut. “Because I’ve been tellin’ you a’ along he was up tae something? No, gloatin’ over you widna help; I wish I’d been dead wrong.” He tilted his head and his flashlight and considered the trapdoor. “I’ll have tae go ower the roof and try tae open a window.”
“The slate’s glazed with ice,” Rebecca protested. “You’ll fall!”
He lowered his eyes to hers. His face was as uncompromising as the basalt upon which Edinburgh Castle had stood for a millennium. “If I’m goin’ tae die, it’ll be on my own terms.”
Rebecca forced down the lump in her throat. “If you fall I’m coming after you. You won’t get away from me that easily.”
“I hope not.” Michael’s cold hand cupped her cheek, soothing the ache in her jaw. For just a moment the ice blue of his eyes melted. Then he said, “Let’s get tae it.” Tucking his flashlight into the sleeve of his sweatshirt, he climbed the ladder to the ceiling and heaved on the trap door. It flew open with a creak and a crash lost in the keening of the wind.
Rebecca frowned, visualizing the plan of the house. “Michael, wait. Elspeth’s window in the ballroom— it’s next to one of the turrets, right?”
“Right.” He clung to the ladder, looking down at her, the light of the flashlight in his sleeve pooling on the ceiling.
She waved her hand at the window across from the one he’d opened. “It’s below that window. It’s a tall one, above my head. You wouldn’t have to go onto the slates at all.”
“Her window’s open, is it? I could hang onto the sill o’ this one and get my foot into the gap at the top o’ the other.” Michael slammed the door and jumped from the ladder. He opened the sash and shone his light downward.
It’s also a sheer drop all the way to the parking area, Rebecca thought. “Three, four feet of wall between the sill of this window and the top of the other? I could do it, but your extra inches would make a difference.”
A gulf of blackness opened beyond the window, the ground so far down that its covering of snow reflected only implications of their lights. Rebecca fought down a wave of vertigo. Michael stood up, squared his shoulders, and stuffed his flashlight into his pocket. His voice was thin but firm. “Colin took me up the Buchaille Etive Mor in February. I’m no bad at scramblin’ ower ice the noo, although one o’ his nylon belayin’ ropes widna come amiss.”
Nylon, Rebecca thought. A nylon rope… . She laid her flashlight on the floor and started pulling off her shoes, her shadow dancing grotesquely on the far wall. “A rope. I’m wearing silk longjohns. Light but strong.”
Michael stared. “What?”
“Tights. If you stretch them out toe to toe they’d make a kind of a rope. Better than nothing.” Her socks followed her shoes to the floor. She unbuckled her belt and ripped open the zipper of her jeans.
Michael’s teeth flashed in a delighted grin, as much at her impromptu strip-tease, no doubt, as at her suggestion. He did a precise about face and considered her shadow instead of her person. “Only you’d be wearin’ tights and socks together. Have you been that cold, then?”
“Yow,” exclaimed Rebecca, dumping her jeans and peeling herself out of the silk. She broke out in gooseflesh. “I’m that cold now.”
His back shook with a laugh. She threw the now limply snaky garment at him and scrambled back into her jeans. “There. Tie yourself a mountaineer’s knot that would make Colin proud.”
“I hope I’ll have a chance tae tell him aboot it.”
“With suitable embellishments,” added Rebecca drily, tying her shoes.
“No, lass, nae time for embellishments.” He made a loop in one leg of the material and draped it beneath his arms. “Sorry, Phil.” He drove his foot through the bottom pane of glass in the window. It fell tinkling into oblivion. Michael tied the ankle of the other silk leg through the empty panel, around the thick wooden frame of the window. “There. That’ll help, psychologically at the least. If I can get that window open far enough I’ll slip oot o’ the bowline— the loop— and into the room. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Rebecca. She didn’t add, if Elspeth doesn’t slam her window on you. But she was much more frightened of Elspeth’s great-grandson and his nasty little gun. Michael sat on the windowsill, one leg outside, one inside. Rebecca knelt, clasped the makeshift rope near its knot on the window sash and held her flashlight poised. He looked down and winced.
Her mind burped and words spilled from her tongue. “Michael, what were you and Colin going to do with the money you brought back?”
His eyes glazed. “Noo?”
“Now.”
“We wanted tae buy property. I thought if I saved my salary— and if something valuable fell into my lap… . “He grimaced and plunged on, “Colin didna ken that. He’d be right ashamed o’ me if he did.”
“That’s why you were saving the clippings about fire-bombed houses?”
“We hoped the estate agent in London could get damaged property on the cheap. But neither o’ us had a mind tae set those fires, or tae thank the yobbos who’ve been doin’ it. They’re livin’ in the wrong century. Economic power, that’s what it’s on aboot the day.”
“So the bit about Arabs… .”
“The last time I was in Harrod’s the prices were in Saudi rials as well as pounds.” Michael clasped the back of her neck, pulling her face to his. “Property. Land. A bit o’ the Auld Sod. A’ right?”
“All right,” she laughed. “Sorry.”
His cold lips landed a kiss on the corner of her mouth. Then he was gone. His hands flexed on the windowsill. The strip of silk tightened. Rebecca braced herself inside, one hand clenched on the straining knot, the other holding the flashlight pointed out and down. The wind whipped her hair, bits of ice stung her face. Her lungs burned; she realized she was holding her breath. The top of Michael’s head was a dark splotch, his elongated body splayed against the pale wall. The bubble of light around him appeared deceptively substantial against the encroaching dark. He stretched. Rebecca felt her lips move, “In manus tuas Domine… ”
Michael’s hands disappeared. The strip of cloth jerked and the window creaked. From below, as if from the bottom of a well, came a sliding crash and a thud. Rebecca leaned farther over the sill. He wasn’t there. The nylon loop swung wildly in the wind. The ballroom window stood open.
The wood beneath her knees bucked. With a silly grin Rebecca fell back into the room— he was all right, he was inside. She untied the ridiculous pseudo rope and closed the window. The door opened. “Rebecca!”
She catapulted down the stairs and into Michael’s arms. His shirt was cold, his face felt like marble, but his eyes blazed with triumph. He shut the door and locked it. “We’ve got him the noo. Come on.”
They crept into the ballroom. The fire had subsided into glowing embers; the central portion of the room shimmered with diluted orange light while the shadows in the corners shifted like deep water. Michael handed her the poker, whispering, “You’re nae too squeamish tae use this on him, are you?”
“Don’t be daft. If I can get the drop on him he’ll see stars.”
Michael nodded approvingly. “Good. Find yourself something tae throw, something that’ll make muckle noise but that’s no valuable.”
“Got it,” Rebecca replied. Michael turned off the flashlight. She tiptoed toward the end of the room to the right of the main stairway, he faded into the shadows on the left. As he passed the corner
of the fireplace there was a scrape of metal against brick. Good God, had he taken the claymore? It wasn’t even sharp. It was heavy, though.
Footsteps. Again Rebecca couldn’t tell which staircase. If Eric came up the back stairs, as he had before, he’d unlock the door and discover them gone. But she’d used up every profane expression she knew. She thrust her hand into the first box she came to and found a Toby jug. It was fairly valuable, but not so much so as her life.
A movement pricked the corner of her eye, the sway of a long skirt, shadow sketched on twilight, trailing lavender. Light steps glided across the floor. Elspeth, no, don’t warn him!
Eric stood at the top of the main staircase, the dazzling light in his hand glancing off a picture frame here and a vase there. He’d heard something, or maybe felt something, and he knew he wasn’t alone. But the brightness of his light obliterated firelight and shadow equally, streaking the room with undiscerning black and white. The steps stopped, the suggestion of a skirt vanished, but the lavender lingered, clogging Rebecca’s nostrils.
Eric started across the room, his steps cautious, his light circling like a spotlight at a Hollywood premiere. Rebecca huddled behind a love seat, her knuckles white on the poker, the ceramic jug trembling in her other hand. The light struck the wall above her hiding place, making the shadow in which she crouched even thicker.
Ghostly fabric brushed her back and she bit her lip. No, I won’t let you scare me into jumping up. No.
A thump. Once again a tiny head peered down on her, its butterscotch and white fur clearly defined. Eric’s steps stopped. The cat turned, its eyes gold in the light, and a low rumbling hiss emanated from his throat.
Another thump as Darnley leaped to the floor. Rebecca flattened herself against the floorboards and peered beneath the love seat. Just beyond its legs, festooned with swags of dust, she could see four paws braced in front of a pair of loafers. The loafers took a step backward.
Dust swirled into her face, spurting away from a print made by an invisible foot. Rebecca laid down the poker and suffocated her mouth and nose to keep herself from sneezing. Her mind was emitting little puffs of smoke so tangible she was afraid Eric would see them wafting wraithlike through the firelight. He’s handicapped by holding the gun and the flashlight both, she thought. If I throw the jug— no, if he’s looking at the cat he’ll see me, he’ll probably start shooting, wait until he turns.
Ashes to Ashes Page 38
