CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Taylor watched the green fields roll by, surprised by their verdancy, considering it was so late in the year. Wintertime, but at sea level, the constant wet kept things lush. The villages along the way were charming, even the smallest, poorest close elegant in its barrenness. She was surprised by the cypress trees, which were so reminiscent of the Italian countryside she loved. The beautiful trees brought up fond memories, memories Memphis seemed determined to ruin with his inopportunely timed interruptions. She’d forgotten what a blue jay he could be. Of course, after being trapped in silence for the past month, most of the people close to her had grown quiet as well. She had to remember that. He was simply being friendly.
“You’ll be pleased to know the weather will be fine tomorrow. A brief storm tonight, some snow, but nothing you won’t be able to handle. It might liven up a bit later in the week. You did pack your warm boots….
“May I get you some more tea? The trolley should be coming back through any moment….
“You’re much too thin, you need a proper fattening up. Cook will be thrilled to have a project. She gets terribly dejected when my parents decide to spend the holidays away….”
And finally, “Are you ignoring me on purpose, or have you simply lapsed into a travel coma?”
She mentally shook herself. She was being awfully rude.
She held up a finger to make him wait a minute, then retrieved her laptop from her bag. If they were going to have a conversation, it was easier and quicker for her to type.
She opened to a blank page in Word and typed her answer.
Not ignoring. Just used to quiet. Sorry. Where are we now?
“Just north of York.”
The trolley arrived again, momentarily saving her from more conversation. She was full of tea, accepted a glass of wine instead. Outside, the clouds turned from white to gray, and small bits of blue tried to peek through. The vistas were changing, growing wider, with more farmland visible. The landscape was dotted with the cotton of lambs.
With the alcohol on board, things became easier. She dropped her walls a bit and allowed herself to enjoy the ride. She and Memphis settled into a comfortable rhythm of chatter and writing. She watched his blue eyes light up when he saw something outside the train windows he thought she should know about. He was full of stories and memories.
“See the cathedral at Durham? One of Britain’s most famous serial killers is housed in the prison here….
“We call this the Angel of the North….
“This is still the Thames, all the way up in Newcastle, famous for their bridges. The Tweed River is at the border between England and Scotland….”
They chugged past an undulating concert hall that looked like a roly-poly, one of the insects Taylor had treasured as a child. She’d combed the ground for them, picked them up with her grubby hands, thrilled to watch them curl into tiny balls that made them impervious to her incessant poking.
Trees that looked like miniature Italian Stone pines puffed their tops into umbrella shapes—yet another reminder of her time in Italy. She wondered whether the conquerors brought them or if they migrated naturally.
A murder of crows stood watch in a field. She imagined their caws, overlaid with the delicate notes of the fine songbirds in Nashville. They’d gathered in the branches at the Snow White’s house, their Siren call pulling her in, where the Pretender lay in wait for her…
God, she had to stop flashing back like this. It was disturbing in the extreme, this inability to divorce the most mundane sights and sounds from the shooting.
She had the most absurd thought, which pulled her back to the present. She knew it would make Memphis laugh. She hoped his mirth would be catching.
Do the crows have a British accent?
“What?”
The crows. The animals in general. Do they have some sort of accent, like you do?
“I haven’t an accent. Besides, I would think it’s the American animals with the inflections, don’t you? A drawl here, a twang there. It’s all the Queen’s English, after all.”
They shared a smile, then were quiet for a bit.
The sun was growing low in the sky. She burrowed into her jacket, suddenly chilled. She was here, she was committed to getting all the way back to herself. So why did she have such a sense of foreboding about the whole venture?
Memphis caught her shiver. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, gently taking her hand. She let him, she was chilled, and the warmth felt good.
She knew exactly what he meant. The shooting. The Pretender. Her fall from grace. Her life falling apart before everyone’s eyes.
Not really. There’s no more to tell. It’s over. I just need to let it go. I’m trying, so hard, to let it go. Why don’t you tell me about your case instead? I’ll live vicariously through you.
He stared into her eyes for a few moments, as if trying to ascertain if she was trying to get him to push harder, or if she really wanted him to back away and distract her. Apparently deciding on the latter, he filled her in.
“All right, then. At best, we have a trio of girls who’ve run away, joined a cult or some such nonsense. At worst, we’ll start finding bodies. The pattern is quite evident, and the victimology is coming together nicely. They all attended different schools, didn’t work together, but all three had gone to a ‘church’ over on the East End. For one it was in her neighborhood, for the others, a tube ride. Out of their way.
“They call it a church, but they don’t ascribe to any God I’ve ever heard of. It’s run by a very charismatic young man who is known as Urq. His father is quite rich. I think he’s probably a schizophrenic, but seems to be much beloved amongst his flock.
“It’s probably a serial, but if that were the case, I’d expect to see bodies by now. I just don’t have a handle on it yet. Give me a stabbing in a Mayfair pub any day.”
You should talk to Baldwin. He might have an idea of how to approach it. He’s good at that sort of thing.
The moment she turned the screen around and saw Memphis’s eyebrow rise in response, she realized how it must look. She pulled the computer back and tried again.
I didn’t mean it like that. You and I, we’re the same. We understand crime. We understand how criminals think. But serial killers have a different mind-set, and Baldwin knows them. Their motivations aren’t the same. I keep telling him he needs to write a book, something that investigators like us can use as a handbook of sorts.
Memphis drummed his fingers on the table. “I might just do that. Speak with him, that is. I’m not above asking for help when lives are at stake. Because something isn’t right with this case. I just can’t put my finger—Oh, look.”
Memphis directed her gaze to the window, and the North Sea appeared, rough and choppy even in the relatively calm weather. Taylor could swear she smelled the salt in the air.
“We’re getting close now,” he said.
And then suddenly they were in Edinburgh, the Waverly station welcoming in its homely concreteness. They disembarked, her legs wobbly on the pavement, the wine adding to her discomfiture, like she was trying to balance atop a very angry rocking chair.
Memphis took her arm and tucked it into the crook of his elbow, holding her upright. She was suddenly exhausted. It was just morning in Nashville, but the time difference, the overnight flight, the wine, the stress of being with Memphis, waiting for the next volley of flirtations, all of it was catching up to her.
Memphis used one hand to wrangle Taylor’s bag and the other to steer her around to the stairs. They were met at the bottom by a homely man, mid-thirties, hair longer than his collar and swept back with some sort of gel. He stood in front of a battered Range Rover. Memphis introduced him as Jacques, who promptly showered Taylor in a transformative smile showing hugely white Chiclet teeth that had to be dentures, and spoke a few flowery sentences in rapid French that she translated to “Welcome, I’m your driver, if there’s anything you need let me know.�
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“Merci,” she managed to say, in a pretty little croak, which earned her another heavenly smile. She watched him turn to open the door, noticed the small lump under his arm. Driver and bodyguard? Why in the world would Memphis have an armed driver? It wouldn’t be unheard of among public figures and high royals, but it seemed like overkill. Memphis was New Scotland Yard, after all. Another of the strange things she would get to ask him about eventually.
She climbed into the back of the truck, happy they weren’t in a fancy car, but again struck by the similarities to her mother’s escapades. Traveling all over Europe, chauffeured by servants. Hypocrisy had its claws in Taylor’s back.
As they pulled out of Waverly and started the trek out of Edinburgh, Taylor was struck by the differences, and the similarities, to her Tennessee hometown. On the surface it was so different: Nashville was slower, a languorous little hamlet in comparison to the hustle and bustle of Edinburgh. Constant slowing at roundabouts and signs that needed a moment’s mental translations, dual carriageways and pull-offs for takeaway curry and crisps, tiny one-laned streets that gave way to superhighways: these were all foreign.
But the trees, and the hills, the smiles and the sense of purpose, all reminded her of home.
She knew Memphis was watching her. Watching her take measure of her surroundings. Imagining her driving these roads, shopping in these stores, eating in these restaurants. Hoping she liked what she saw.
Fitting in.
She was never so glad to be mute as this moment. Her voice would have betrayed her.
She saw water up ahead, a wide river. The bridge looked like the Golden Gate, with a huge railroad trestle off to the right.
“We’re fording the Firth of Forth now,” Memphis said.
Say that three times fast.
He laughed.
“Live here long enough and it becomes second nature.”
The thought brought her up short. Is that was she was doing? Testing the waters to see which parts of her were comfortable with Scotland, and all that it held, and which weren’t? Riding along in the car with Memphis by her side instead of Baldwin, and not minding?
The car was warm, and she was suddenly exhausted. Before she could delve too deeply into those thoughts, her eyes closed of their own volition, and she fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Memphis watched Taylor sleep. She was an angel in repose, cheeks rosily flushed, her mouth slightly open. He wanted to take his thumb and run it along the bottom of her lip, just where it was full to the point of spilling over. He had to sit on his hand to stop the urge. He wanted to wake her and watch those mismatched gray eyes focus fully on him, the pupils dilating in welcome. He wanted to crawl into her hair and pull it around him like a blanket. He wanted to shower her with roses, whisper words that would make her laugh. He wanted to feel her skin warm to his touch. The thought of taking her to his bed, flushed with desire, nearly drove him mad.
God, he wanted to rut with her until his balls ached.
He hadn’t felt so strongly about a woman since he met Evan, and being forced to compare the two, to seek out the sameness and the differences, almost made him ill. He was certainly not over Evan. Her death left a gaping hole inside him. The only thing that seemed to fill in the edges was thoughts of Taylor. Having her so near was intoxicating.
But to win her away from her chap was proving more difficult than he ever expected. He hoped that showing her how accommodating he could be, how much freedom she would have with him, no pressure, no fighting, would show her it wouldn’t be so bad being the wife of a viscount. He hoped that her outings with his friend Maddee would help Taylor find herself again.
He knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way. Taylor wasn’t his to take. If he could whip out a knife and cut her away from the uptight Fed, that would make life easier. Or he could just give up, find someone else. Maddee had been encouraging him to find another, more suitable woman for months, ever since he came back from his trip to the States heart-struck.
He’d gotten the feeling that Maddee would like for him to move on with her, but that would never happen. Not only was she married to one of his oldest friends, she wasn’t his type. Too dark-complected, too brash and forward. Too American. She’d made a move on him once at a party in Inverness, before Evan’s death. They’d been seated around a formal dining table and he’d felt a small, creeping hand slide up his leg and settle onto his cock. Maddee, resplendent in a low-cut emerald dress, kept up her conversation with the gentleman on her right while she fondled Memphis.
At first he was too surprised to stop her, and for a moment, he gave in to the pleasure of her illicit dexterity, but a quick glance across the table at his lovely bride had finished the matter. He’d delicately removed her hand and they’d never spoken of it.
That lapse didn’t diminish her abilities as a doctor, nor as a friend. Since then, she’d kept her physical distance, and their friendship continued unabated.
She’d been with him when he got the news about Evan.
Maddee and Roland had come up to London that day, were staying at his flat in Chelsea. The three of them went shopping, saw a show. Went to dinner. And all the while, Evan had been dead, her car plunged into the icy waters, the baby…
Oh, he had to stop this. Evan was gone. Gone forever. He wasn’t to blame. He knew that. Maddee had reassured him, over and over, that he wasn’t to blame. But he carried the guilt with him anyway. If he hadn’t left her alone…
Taylor shifted a bit in her sleep, pulling Memphis back to the now, and he glanced out the window to see they were at the Killicrankie roundabout, which exited to the grounds of the estate.
He roused Taylor from her slumber. She came awake immediately, eyes wide and distant.
“Nightmare?” he asked.
She cleared her throat and whispered, “Yes.” Honest and simple, which made him feel more connected to her than before. If she wouldn’t let him in, he didn’t have a chance; by admitting her fears, showing him her weakness, she was opening the door a bit.
She yawned and her jaw cracked. She opened her ever-present notebook to a fresh page.
Where are we?
“Almost there. We’ve just taken the roundabout into Dulsie.”
She looked around and smiled, and he could tell she was charmed. The farmland turned into rolling hills of heather, then a sudden forest, huge fir trees placed so closely together that getting a hand between the trunks would be a challenge. When things spread out a bit, larches, transplanted sequoias, oak, birch and aspen abounded.
The road twisted into the woods for thirteen miles before it opened into a glen, tucked into the base of the mountains, with a small loch that fed the burns throughout the estate. The entry was stone, forty feet high, a massive archway with steel gates that could be closed against entrants.
A chicken, flushed from the heather on the side of the road, burst across the drive. Taylor giggled. Memphis did his best not to cringe at the sound; it wasn’t the open, carefree laugh he was used to hearing from her.
It’s huge. I’ve never seen such a big chicken.
“They’re Buff Orpingtons. Free-range, at that. Heavenly eating.”
The car drove on, the span of three more heartbeats. He watched her face as the house came into view, almost laughed aloud at the surprise he saw there. She turned to him, eyes shining in delight, and he simply placed his arm around her shoulder and squeezed.
“Welcome home,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Taylor knew her jaw was on the floor, but she couldn’t help herself. Memphis had assured her that the house in Scotland was “a cobwebby old thing.” Impossible to heat. That’s what she’d quoted Sam, too, thinking he was telling at least part of the truth. He’d always downplayed his status in the aristocracy, and she’d felt a connection to him because of that—the desire to make it on your own, to alter your past, to force your parents’ aspirations away and lead your own life, free of the encumbrances
that came with wealth.
What a lying sack of shit he was. Freaking viscount.
The “house” was a full-fledged castle, right out of her wildest imagination. Complete with towers and turrets and crenellations, and what used to be a moat, now filled with grass and gravel. There was even a portcullis, topped with leering gargoyles. It was almost as if Memphis had a checklist and was mining about in her head, looking for all the things she dreamed about as a girl, then making sure they were incorporated into his home. The exterior was whitewashed stucco instead of stone, with dark brown timbers and a gray slate roof that gave it the look of a Tudor mansion mated with a French château. It was monstrous.
Just how big is this place?
He scuffed his foot in the gravel of the forecourt like a little boy, obviously uncomfortable. She knew the British didn’t approach things like size and luxury the way Americans did.
“Well, you know, Dulsie Castle is no bigger than most country houses of this period. We’ve added on this century, a public tearoom and expanded banquet hall, so it can be used for tours and weddings and such. And the grounds are extensive. There’s a great deal of sport round here, history, that lot. People come caravanning, or stay in the village below.”
Come on. Spill.
He ducked his head, she didn’t know if it was shame or sheer pleasure in surprising her. “It’s not that large, truly. We only have seventeen bedrooms.”
She did some mental calculating based on her own parents’ home, with its six bedrooms and eight baths, and came up with something in the range of about 50,000 square feet. She tried to be nonchalant.
I can see why it would be hard to heat.
Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Collection, Volume 2 Page 104
