Everyone was noting that Alasdair was, in however awkward a fashion, hers. Maybe she’d come to terms with that concept herself some day—and with its corollary, that she was his. Jean had only recently come to terms with the concept of selling history like a commodity. But then, if it came to a choice between marketing and oblivion, she’d have to choose marketing. “Too many of these places are no more than white elephants. I can’t fault Macquarrie for hoping Ferniebank will be a money-making facility, even if it means exploiting all the publicity about Rosslyn Chapel—that bestseller claiming that Mary Magdalen was buried there, for a while, at least.”
“Ferniebank Chapel was built by the Sinclairs as well,” said Rebecca, “and dedicated to Saint Mary—the virgin, not the Magdalen, I bet—near the same time and in the same style as Rosslyn, which was dedicated to Saint Matthew, not that anyone remembers that.”
“Except for Rosslyn being bigger and in better shape,” Michael said.
“And for Ferniebank having a perfectly genuine fourteenth-century clarsach instead of a collection of hare-brained, half-baked, off-the-wall legends. Just the sort of legends,” Jean added with a shameless grin, “that are my stock in trade.”
“Just the sort of legends that give historians and curators like us the cold shivers,” said Michael, “but they go down well with the consumer.”
A man wearing a green apron high as a cummerbund came strolling across the garden. If Michael had been standing up, the publican would have been a head shorter and twice as wide. His genial face had nothing in common with Logan’s saturnine features and Minty Rutherford’s stony elegance. An interesting cast of characters, Jean thought, here in Stanelaw.
He handed Michael a pint glass brimming with a foam-flecked dark liquid that wasn’t Coca-Cola. “There you are. Well done.”
“Cheers.” Michael took a deep drink. “Aah. My compliments to the brewer.”
“Jean,” said Rebecca, “this is Noel Brimberry. Noel, Jean Fairbairn. She’ll be staying at Ferniebank for the next couple of weeks.”
“Good to meet you,” Jean said, secretly delighted. The man not only looked like a hobbit, he had a hobbit name. She was surprised the pub wasn’t named the Green Dragon or the Prancing Pony after one of Tolkien’s fictional inns, but then, Brimberry had probably bought it as a going concern, Sinclair attribution and all. The expected influx of tourists would be gratified either way.
“You’ll be Mr. Cameron’s wife, then,” said Brimberry, his plump cheeks puffing up in a smile so broad his eyes disappeared.
“Ah, no, we’re not . . .” Jean saw Michael’s blue eyes dancing, and Rebecca’s pink lips crinkled with a suppressed grin. To heck with it. She finished, “I’m sure we’ll be in for a meal and music.”
“And right welcome you’ll be. Good job we’ve got Protect and Survive’s top man here. A former police detective with a grand reputation, is he? With all that’s on, both good and bad, he’ll be finding work enough. A shame about the clarsach going missing, as well as . . .” Several people walked in the gateway and headed for the back door, probably following the seductive odor of garlic and baking bread—pizza, perhaps. “No rest for the weary. Leastways, none for those tugging our forelocks for a living.” Brimberry scuttled toward the newcomers.
Beside the cast of characters in Jean’s program book, she jotted down the hint of social friction. “What was he going to say, a shame about Angus’s disappearance?”
“Everyone seems to think that Angus will find his way back to the stable,” said Rebecca. “At least, no one’s assuming there’s foul play involved.”
“Yet,” Michael added ominously. “Although I’m hearing that he goes walkabout every now and then. It wasn’t Minty reported him missing, but his council colleagues.” He drank again, and wiped his mouth. “I reckon Noel was saying a shame about the Ferniebank caretaker.”
Ah. Yes. With a shudder that bracketed horror and sympathy, Jean said, “I heard about that, too. Gave me one of your shivers. Was he a local man?”
“Oh aye. Wallace Rutherford, Angus’s uncle.”
“And no indication of foul play there, either?” Except for Alasdair’s I’m not so sure, Jean added to herself.
Rebecca shook her head. “People were shocked about him dropping dead the week after Helen Elliot dropped dead—she was Noel’s mother-in-law, lived at Ferniebank Farm across from the castle. Neither death’s suspicious, no.”
“These things come in threes,” cautioned Michael.
“Not necessarily,” Rebecca told him.
Amen to that, Jean thought.
“Wallace died,” Michael summarized. “The castle closed down, then the sale and the consent for alteration went through, and Alasdair arrived. And that’s where we’re standing now.”
Chapter Four
Jean glanced at her watch. “Except I’m sitting here instead of standing there. It’s already past five.”
“We’re expecting tonight’s guests at the B&B.” Rebecca piled her crockery on the tea tray. With one last swallow, Michael added his glass to the collection.
A faint gurgling came from the pram. Jean smiled again on the wriggling baby, who was now as bright-eyed as her parents, then wrinkled her nose. Linda was leaving a bit of a vapor trail. But then, that’s what the gurgling signified, a request for nutritional and hygienic assistance.
Their chairs scraped on the concrete. Rebecca gathered up a bag patterned with Kelly green Loch Ness monsters, a baby gift from Jean. “Michael’s parents put us on to the Reiver’s Rest. The owner went off to Canada for a family wedding.”
“Which was not scheduled for the convenience of people in the hospitality trade,” said Jean.
“Good job all round,” Michael added, collecting his bagpipes. “We’re outwith Auld Reekie during the Festival and turning a few bob from renting our own place. I’m driving into the National Museum twice a week and the rest of the time we’re working via internet, phone, and fax.”
“And Noel’s daughter Zoe helps with the cooking and cleaning at the B&B.” Rebecca stowed the bag beneath the pram and wheeled toward the gate.
When Jean opened her car, Dougie let out an inquisitive mew, the feline equivalent of, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
“Bring Alasdair round for a meal,” Michael instructed Jean. “It’s well past time we were making the man’s acquaintance.”
“I warned him about y’all, but he still says he’s looking forward to meeting you.” Jean slid in behind the wheel and called through the open window, “See you soon!”
She squeezed her vehicle between cars parked haphazardly at the sides of the road and picked up speed at the edge of town, where the road curved up a hill. Then she tapped the brakes. Behind a lichen-encrusted stone wall rose a similarly lichen-encrusted church, its slate roof sagging with age. The square, stumpy tower and slits of windows testified to the way this building had served as a physical sanctuary as well as a spiritual one. But then, neither Scot nor Sassenach had hesitated to burn down a church with the congregation inside, an act that surely merited a special place in Hell. Depending on how you defined Hell. Much of the conflict in the Borders stemmed from religious conflict, Catholic against Protestant, Protestant against other Protestants.
The road lay empty in the afternoon sunshine, a gray-black ribbon between the fields on her right and the trees concealing the river on her left. Jean stopped the car.
The church seemed deserted, doors shut, windows blank. But a notice board out front was freshly painted, reading: “The Church of Scotland. Rev Janet Wilkins, present incumbent. Church open by appointment—contact Mrs. Rutherford at Glebe House. Services every Sunday at 12 noon.” So there was some divine life left in the old shell yet.
From the cemetery in front of the church rose polished granite headstones inlaid with gilded letters, very recent burials, if not as recent as the one closest to the road, a long pile of wilted flowers extending from the vertical of wooden plank. Jean couldn’t m
ake out the name painted on the temporary marker, but she could guess. This was the grave of the luckless caretaker. Not far away lay a second grave with a temporary marker, a few days older—the flowers were well on their way to mulch. Mrs. Elliot, no doubt.
Shaking her head at these intimations of mortality, Jean accelerated past a grove of trees, then braked again in front of a handsome stone mansion. Since its dormers and gables didn’t rise to the full excess of Scots Baronial, the place had likely been built when Victoria was a slip of a lass. A small sign on the front gate read: “Glebe House.” Casa Rutherford, in other words. Jean wondered whether she’d get points at Minty’s tea for knowing that a glebe was land that paid rent to a church. Assuming Minty carried on with the tea.
Jean coasted on by, noting the police car parked in the driveway next to a no-nonsense Range Rover. A movement in the bay window fronting the house might be a woman in tweed and leather, or it might not . . . Jean wrenched at the steering wheel to keep from driving into the weed-filled ditch between the road and the wall enclosing the lawn. When she looked back, every little pane of the mullioned window met her gaze blandly.
Behind the house, in the place that might once have been taken by a barn, stood a contemporary timber and glass Euro-insipid building. A large but still tasteful signboard, reading “Cookery at the Glebe” rose beside a second drive. The Rutherfords had not been strapped for the money to invest in their cooking school, then, even before de-accessioning a property.
Onwards, then, over the last half-mile to Ferniebank. Which wasn’t going to be as peaceful as Jean had intended. As for Alasdair’s intentions, professional or personal, she probably didn’t need to fill him in on the question of the missing councillor or the case of the stolen clarsach. And the unfortunate incident of the caretaker was already on his mind. Forewarned was forearmed, she told herself, a concept that applied to relationships as well as to crimes, ghosts, and Borders warfare.
A farmstead appeared on her right, complete with hillside pasture dotted with black and white cows. Here the sign was a simple painted shingle wired to the fence: “Ferniebank Farm.”
The trees on her left opened ranks and shed some of their thick undergrowth. Ash, rowan, alder, oak, birch, willow, hazel—she knew them by reputation, if not personally. Their long shadows reached down to a sparkle that was the River Teviot, then suddenly were enclosed by another stone wall of such antiquity that the one around the church might just as well have been made of Legos. This one stood eight feet in height and was topped by jagged stones, here and there clumsily cemented into place. Above the stone teeth rose the dark gray walls, parapets, and chimneys of Ferniebank Castle, even on this sunny August afternoon exuding the grim chill of long winters and longer warfare.
Jean took the left turn through the narrow gateway with care. Alasdair’s Renault and a mini-bus sat in the gravel-paved courtyard defined by the perimeter wall, the castle’s sheer facade, and a low structure roofed with corrugated metal. It sported the plate-glass window and door of the ticket office and shop, while a second door was marked “Toilet,” and a third was blank. Park benches and some potted plants proclaimed a welcome that dashed itself futilely against the forbidding face of the castle.
Jean saw the archway of the main door gaping atop a flight of wooden steps, and the glass in the irregularly spaced and unevenly sized windows shimmering with distorted reflections. What she didn’t see was the cozy caretaker’s cottage she’d been anticipating. Maybe it lay farther down the slope leading to the river, along a path that disappeared into the trees. Through dappled shadow, Jean could just make out more gray walls.
She pulled in beside the bus. Its side was painted with the words “Mystic Scotland” written in lavish imitation-Celtic script. Was Ciara Macquarrie here as well as Keith Bell? Fine. The more the merrier, she told herself briskly as she climbed out of the car. She’d put on her reporter’s fedora and get in some work before the castle closed at seven-thirty. Before she and Alasdair were left alone together.
First she had to get everything stowed in . . . The cottage. There it was, not a free-standing building at all but a flat tucked into the lower left corner of the castle. Its modern wooden door, gleaming with white paint, and its two modern windows, hung with lace curtains, seemed to huddle together, compressed by the bulk of the keep looming beside and above.
Now that, she had not anticipated. That, Alasdair hadn’t bothered to mention to her either. Eating, talking, sleeping with darkness gathered just on the other side of the wall, ghosts eavesdropping on intimacies as though envious of warm flesh.
Get a grip. The castle was, and had always been, a place of refuge. She and Alasdair had dealt with ghosts before. Ghosts were emotional videos, without awareness or even the will toward awareness. Alasdair was treating her with respect by not thinking this was something she should be warned about. What accessories did she need to set the scene, anyway? A Jacuzzi shaped like a champagne glass, like in the tacky honeymoon hotels by Niagara Falls? Give her—give them both—historical truth as the strongest foundation for stories personal or public.
Jean opened the back door of the car and reached for the cooler. A breeze made the leafy branches above her plunge and rustle and brushed cool kisses across her cheekbones. Crows, the corbies of many a grim Scottish tale, called from the stained black slate of the castle roof.
Alasdair stepped out of the shop.
His solid, compact body stood to attention, head thrown back, as though he was a scout listening for voices and watching for movements in a building under siege. How odd he looked wearing not his detective’s uniform of suit and tie but canvas pants and a light sweater over an open-collared shirt. How odd that he’d stand there turned away from her. The man had eyes in the back of his head and could hear a needle falling into a haystack. He had to know she was there.
He turned around. Oh yes, Jean thought, her heart dropping like a cannonball. He knew she was there. He’d been steeling himself to face her. His eyebrows were drawn so tightly together a vertical crease ran between them. His blue eyes were glints of sea-ice. His mouth was tightly closed, crushing the elegant curve of his lips. She’d tasted those lips, and knew them to be supple and sure.
Jean straightened, bracing herself. Maybe she should ask for a cigarette and a blindfold.
Alasdair raised his hand toward her, palm open, and then closed it into a fist that fell heavy as a battle-axe back to his side. “Jean,” he said.
“Alasdair,” she replied.
Behind his back, in the main doorway of the castle, appeared two people. The cadaverous young man with the long dishwater brown hair, the stooped shoulders, and the somber, sallow face was dressed in a polo shirt and khakis. The camera bag he carried over his shoulder made him list to one side.
The woman with the dazzling smile had that gorgeous British complexion, all soft fair skin and rosy cheeks. She might have been plump, but it was hard to tell—her flowing skirt and top of many colors made her look like a piñata, an effect enhanced by the scarf holding back her mop of red curls. Keith Bell and Ciara Macquarrie, no doubt. Quite the odd couple.
Jean tentatively returned Ciara’s jolly wave and looked again at Alasdair. What?
His body jerked as though a steel-tipped arrow had just pierced the armor between his shoulder blades. His voice was rough. “I didn’t know it was her buying the place. I didn’t know she’d be coming here. Not ’til you said her name on the phone.”
“Who? Ciara Macquarrie? Why . . .”
His gaze was steady, uncompromising, sparing nothing. “Oh aye. Ciara Macquarrie. My ex-wife.”
Chapter Five
Jean didn’t feel as though she’d been punched in the stomach. She didn’t feel as though the rug had been pulled out from under her. She didn’t feel anything at all. From some remote place, Death Valley probably, she watched herself watching Ciara stroll across the courtyard. Keith Bell slouched along behind, appearing more like her shadow than her companion.
/> A farm tractor rumbled down the road outside the gate, startling the crows on the battlements into harsh complaints. An ache in Jean’s chest nagged her into breathing. Shuddering, she inhaled. And her thoughts plummeted downward and shattered against the jagged stone of fact.
Alasdair was in full lead-shielded, locked-down mode, his face less expressive than the stark facade of Ferniebank. But she could read the set of his broad shoulders all too well. She herself had pared away his defenses, bit by bit, leaving him vulnerable to this surprise attack. Once she had gotten the vapors at the thought of Brad perhaps talking to Alasdair on the phone. Now here was Alasdair having to introduce woman past to woman present. He and Ciara made such an odd couple that Keith and Ciara looked like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.
The dratted woman was grinning as though this unfortunately not-likely-to-be-brief encounter was the best joke she’d heard in years. She’d known Alasdair was here. She was enjoying the heck out of surprising him. . . .
No. She wasn’t gloating. What she was doing was extending her hand toward Jean. “Jean Fairbairn, I presume. Ciara Macquarrie. I’m your predecessor with this po-faced specimen here”—she nodded toward Alasdair, who took a short step backwards—“or so I’m hearing from my local contacts. No worries, though. I come in peace.”
Jean managed to lift a paw, allow Ciara to clasp it, and drop it back down to her side. The woman’s hand was soft and rather damp. Around her hung the thankfully faint aroma of one of those perfumes—lotus, patchouli, gardenia—that was a molecule shy of bug spray.
“Hi.” Keith had a surprisingly deep voice considering the circumference of his neck. “We talked on the phone.”
Jean opened her mouth but nothing came out. She could see herself reflected in his aviator-style glasses like in twin mirrors, her eyes and her mouth both wide, dark blotches.
“Poor lamb, she’s had a bit of a shock,” Ciara said to Keith. With a toss of her head that set her dangling earrings to tinkling as gaily as wind chimes, she shooed him toward the path that ran from the parking area to the river. The lilt of her voice drifted back into the courtyard. “If we come back after nightfall we’ll see the ghost walking from the castle down to the chapel, trailing her shroud behind her like the wedding gown she refused to wear. Could you not feel the disturbance on the upper floor, where she died?”
The Burning Glass Page 4
