A Novel Seduction

by Gwyn Cready

  He was already starting to work through the creative issues with shooting Cairnpapple in his head. Would there be enough light? Could he go wide-angle or even three-sixty? Cara’s appearance had occurred during a full moon. Would it be better to shoot it at night?

  The conductor was making his way down the rows, letting the passengers know they were reaching the last stop before Edinburgh.

  Axel opened Kiltlander, trying to remember where he’d left off. Then he remembered why he’d stopped reading. Not only had Jemmie seemed capable of powers beyond those of an everyday mortal, it had dawned on Axel that there was no way this story was going to end happily. No matter how much in love Jemmie and Cara were, they belonged to two different worlds. Axel believed in magic to a point, but the same magic that had drawn them together was sure to pull Cara back to her rightful place, just as Jemmie would be pulled to his. Axel was in no mood to have his heart broken. His cell phone buzzed, reminding him he needed to get a draft of something to Black soon. Hell.

  The conductor stopped next to Axel, smiling at what he assumed to be a happy young couple and jingling the change in his pocket.

  “I heard,” Axel said. “We’ll be ready.”

  “’Bout forty minutes by my watch,” the conductor said as the train lurched. He looked at Axel and nodded. “Bit of a rough patch. It’ll smooth out before we get there.”

  “I hope.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  M8 Motorway, Scotland

  The magnificent hill of Edinburgh proper had given way to the gentle rises of the outlying suburbs as the rental car made its journey west. Ellery had never been to Edinburgh before and regretted that her career seemed to bring her within an arm’s length of so many good things without actually delivering them.

  Axel checked the rear view before gliding into the next lane. She felt as if she’d been pushed off the edge of a steep cliff and was tumbling in slow motion to the ground. He was here in the car with her—and as always, unerringly polite—but she knew their relationship had changed. She hadn’t wanted him back in her life, and now she didn’t want him to leave. No wonder he’d had it with her.

  But surely, after all the time they’d spent in each other’s hearts and each other’s hair, he couldn’t have picked now to say good-bye. She refused to believe it was over.

  “Have you ever been to Edinburgh?” she asked hesitantly.

  He chuckled, turning the wheel a degree to follow the road’s curve. “Yes. Once. For a crazy week the summer after my junior year of college. We were backpacking across Europe and decided on a whim to attend the Fringe Festival. Let me tell you, Edinburgh is a town that knows how to party. I should show you the pictures sometime.”

  She wondered who the “we” had been, though she’d bite her tongue before she’d ask. She also wondered at Axel’s pronunciation of the city’s name. “Say it again.”

  “What?”

  “Edinburgh.” She knew enough to know it wasn’t pronounced like “Pittsburgh,” with a hard “g” at the end. She’d always said “Edinboro,” putting a “burro” at the end, but Axel’s pronunciation was something even more.

  “Edinburgh,” he said, making the “boro” into a “burr” with a rolled “r” and the tiniest bit of an “uh” at the end, like a vocal subscript to the rest of the word.

  “Oh,” she said, inexplicably delighted. She didn’t know he could roll his “r’s”—or that he knew what was evidently the preferred Scottish pronunciation.

  “My dad was a Scot, remember. ‘Dammit, Ax,’ ” Axel said in a blowsy Scots voice, “‘ye don’t call it “Pittsburg.” John Forbes named the place, and the man was from Dunfermline, for the love of Jesus. It’s pronounced “Pittsburrah.” ’”

  Ellery laughed. “I wish I’d known your father.”

  “He was quite a character.”

  She looked at her phone and shifted.

  “Thinking of calling Black?” Axel asked.

  “Maybe. It’s too early there yet.” How did he read her mind? If she had a different take on the article or wasn’t going to write it at all, this would be the time to tell her boss.

  “Today’s the last chance to catch him before Monday.”

  “I know. I have his cell phone number.”

  The motorway was busy, and they fell into silence as Axel wove his way through the unfamiliar car brands and the odd, foreshortened British lorries.

  “Lark and Ives, huh?” he said when the road cleared. “Impressive.”

  He’d said this in an upbeat tone, graciously trying to show that his harsh words on the train were now water under the bridge. Nonetheless, she felt her ears start to buzz.

  “Yep. It’s pretty cool just to be asked to interview.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you’d make a great publisher. Steinberg’s a prick. They’ll never choose him.”

  “Right, because no pricks ever get to be publisher.”

  They both laughed, and for the first time since the night before, Ellery felt a little better.

  “I think it’s great you’re going after what you want,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

  “Like you,” she said.

  “Like me. Right.”

  Yep, each of them pursuing a dream that would leave them with four hundred miles separating them. Couldn’t be better.

  After a quarter hour of driving past hedge-trimmed homes, parks and big-box stores, Axel made a turn off the main highway and the countryside spread out before them. This was starting to look like the land of Jemmie Forster.

  Axel fumbled with the printed directions, and Ellery took them from his hand. “Hotel first?” she asked. “Or sociologist? What do you prefer?”

  “You know I’d never miss a nooner with a sociologist if I have the choice.”

  Ellery rang the professor, a Dr. Albrecht, who not only was indeed ready to see them but was just about to put on tea and asked if they would like to join her.

  With a nod from Axel, Ellery agreed, adding to him after she hung up, “Does tea include food?” Her stomach was growling so much, she sounded like one of Jemmie’s hunting dogs.

  “God, I hope so. I could use a big English fry-up.”

  “It’s almost noon. I doubt she’s going to be offering you breakfast.”

  “You underestimate my ability to inspire.”

  Ellery might underestimate his ability in a number of areas, but she knew with utter certainty that was not one of them.

  They drove past the heart of the town to where the houses were replaced by cottages and fields scattered with sheep. November, railing against the coming winter, had pulled a sunny, warm day out of her quiver, and the gentle hills gave a decent illusion of green.

  “There!”

  “What?” He slowed the car.

  “There’s a sign for Cairnpapple. Look! And there it is.”

  “Shall we?” He was already turning into the small car park at the base of the hill. At the far end sat an industrial-looking Quonset hut with a sign that read, VISITORS’ CENTER CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.

  “Just screams Neolithic, doesn’t it?” Axel parked and they emerged. The field that led to the hill appeared to be part of some farm, for the grass was dotted with dairy cows, and several of them lowed, irritated at the intrusion.

  Feeling a frisson of excitement, Ellery approached the stairs leading to the rise. This was where Jemmie had first met Cara, and for a reason she couldn’t explain, she was as nervous as if she were about to meet Nabokov or Hemingway. She’d never fallen so deeply into a book before. It was like the story kept one hand on her heart and the other on her gut and alternated which one it would squeeze. In the part she’d been reading on the train, Jemmie and Cara were confronting the possible end of their relationship as Jemmie led her back to Cairnpapple so that she might return to the life she’d left behind.

  Axel was already snapping pictures. As always, he turned and snapped one of her, and she flushed.

  She walked to the bot
tom of the stone steps dug into the side of this squat, almost flat-topped hill and looked up. There were perhaps a couple hundred paces between her and the highest point, which was supposedly the tallest thing for miles. At the top, a grass-covered burial mound marked the summit. It was not visible from where she stood, but she knew it was there because she’d seen it as they drove up. Moreover, she carried two different descriptions of it in her head: one from Cara as she arrived, panicked to find herself in a world she didn’t recognize; and one from Jemmie as he led her back, heartsick at having to say good-bye.

  When Ellery’s train had pulled into Edinburgh’s station and she’d closed the book, Jemmie and Cara had been within sight of the place. Ellery didn’t know what choice Cara would make or even if she’d have a choice. There was no guarantee that the magic of the place would allow her to go in the opposite direction.

  Poor Jemmie. He’d be devastated to lose her.

  Ellery remembered Ginger’s words: “There’s more to a happily-ever-after than ‘happy,’ and you’ve just got to get there on your own.”

  Well, the women had certainly been right about the other parts of the book. That had, in fact, been a very fine spanking. She felt warmth spread across her face.

  “Red cheeks,” Axel said. “A sign of the devil within. At least, that’s what my dad used to say.”

  Cara’s red cheeks had been caused by a different sort of devil, and she hadn’t spoken to Jemmie for two days after it had happened.

  “I, um…”

  “Going up?”

  He wanted her in some of the shots. He always liked people in his pictures to give what he was shooting human scale.

  “Yeah. Sure.” She hurried up the path to the clicks of his shutter.

  She reached the long, flat summit and saw the mound, rising like a wide nipple from the hill below. The mound had to be ten feet tall and fifty feet across. A gravel-topped ridge surrounded the base. In a wider circle sat a line of stone, and beyond that a grass-lined ditch perhaps six feet deep was visible. Whatever rituals had been performed here had been massive, indeed.

  But Ellery could feel none of the power of the place, which distressed her. In the distance was the town, crossed with vehicle-lined streets, and the motorway beyond that. She could see the smokestacks of a factory, several water towers and, when she turned in the other direction, a cell tower that bisected the sky.

  Whatever magic Cara had felt when Jemmie scooped her off the ground at their first meeting was missing for Ellery. She felt such a rush of self-pity for this absence, she turned and started back, running directly into Axel.

  “Whoa,” he said, catching her so she didn’t fall. “What’s up?”

  “I’m going to wait in the car. Take your time.” She hurried down to the parking lot and plopped onto the passenger seat, betrayed by an excitement that now felt silly and unworthy. The ancient current was something only true lovers felt.

  Well, if that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.

  She picked up the phone. She’d put this off long enough. She needed to come clean with Carlton Purdy.

  He answered on the first ring. “My goodness, you’re up with the songbirds.”

  “I’m in the U.K.”

  “On the Irving interview?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She cringed, knowing what would come next.

  “Talk away, sister.”

  “Do you think the board would be very disappointed if my next article was on something else? You know, the requirements of commercial magazines sometimes mean that writers—”

  “Oh, gosh, of course not. Don’t sound so glum. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to tell me it’s on Stephen King, are you?” He laughed.

  “Stephen King?”

  “Sorry. It’s a bit of an inside joke here. The publisher before me pitched the board the idea of doing an issue each year on genre writing. He wanted to have Stephen King be a guest editor. It was the only board meeting where the publisher was asked to step outside. We still call getting fired ‘getting Kinged’ around here. What’s the article going to be about?”

  “Um…” Her mind was a blank. She could hardly say romance novels now. “Let’s say the impact evolving forms of writing have on readers.”

  He made a snoring noise. “Sorry, I fell asleep. Time to jump ship, darling. Well, it’s too bad about Irving, but the board will have your DeLillo piece to chew on. Is that all you were worried about?”

  “Ah… yes.”

  “Tally-ho, then.”

  “Tally-ho.” Ellery ended the call more depressed than she’d started it. She couldn’t write the article as Black wanted it. Her chances of landing that spot at Lark & Ives would be reduced to zero.

  Axel opened the driver’s door and swung into his seat. “You’re sure you’re okay?” He leaned into the back to drop his camera into his bag.

  “Yes. Listen, I’m going to tell Black I can’t write this.”

  “Seriously?” He started the car.

  “Axel, a literary critic and her discovery of romance novels? I’ll be a punch line.”

  He sighed. “El, I understand why you don’t want to do this, but I really think if you just wrote the damned thing you’d do a fantastic job. Black thinks you have the power to change readers’ minds. So do I. Lark & Ives will see that.”

  “I appreciate you saying that. I do, really. But I just have to handle it my way, okay?”

  “Of course.” He dropped the clutch and hit the gas, leaving only the disapproving rumble of gravel to fill the silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Thistle Bed & Breakfast, Bathgate, Scotland

  “Romance novels are artifacts,” Dr. Albrecht said, her iron-gray bob framing incisive blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. “They capture and document the evolving mind-set of late-twentieth-century and early-twenty-first-century vimen.” The diminutive German scholar, perched on a stool in her equally diminutive kitchen, was chopping vegetables for pea soup with the ferocity of a battling Highlander.

  “Exactly,” Ellery said, carefully dodging the carrot shrapnel. “They’re not literature.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Axel and Ellery had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, but Axel said he’d spotted a barn on the property that had looked particularly interesting—“Afternoon light,” he’d called as he exited the car—though she’d had the sense a wish to be alone was more his motivation.

  She’d seen the look on his face when she told him the news. Dammit, why did she value his opinion so highly? But her decision wasn’t going to stop her from doing the interview with Dr. Albrecht. The way she looked at it, the sociologist had some interesting things to say, and Ellery was a reporter. She could always give another writer her notes. Besides, she was starving.

  “So you think they are literature?” Ellery said, grabbing a stray carrot.

  “I suppose if vun vuz going to eliminate them from the hallowed world of literature, it would be for their overused plot drivers; the central conceit of characters overcoming impossible odds to fall in love; and happy endings—”

  “Exactly.”

  “—in vhich case you’d have to eliminate Chaucer, Jane Austen, Dorothy Sayers, and half of Charles Dickens as vell.”

  “But wait,” Ellery said, thrown for a loop, “what about the sex?”

  “You’re right. Toss out Shakespeare, Toni Morrison and Philip Roth too.”

  “But—”

  “The characteristics you identify vith good literature—unadorned, complex prose, dark themes, moral ambiguity—are constructs of the twentieth century. And,” she added with a sly smile in Ellery’s direction, “very male-driven.”

  Ellery frowned. No, that’s not right. “Shakespeare was dark.”

  Dr. Albrecht waved her hand. “Shakespeare could do anything. That’s like basing expectations for your nephew’s soccer league on David Beckham.”

  Sociology, literature, soup and soccer. A real Renaissa
nce woman here.

  Dr. Albrecht used the side of the knife to bulldoze the mountain of vegetables into a waiting bowl. She reached for a bag of onions.

  “That’s going to be a lot of soup,” Ellery said, darting her hand in to grab another nibble. She was strongly hoping the eating part of the day would begin soon.

  “I’m expecting a lot of people.”

  “Ah. But you have to admit, some romances aren’t very well written.”

  “Some literary novels aren’t very vell written. A lot of them, in fact. Or have you had a different experience?”

  Ellery flushed. Scads of books came across her desk for review every week that could be described as nothing short of dreadful. “I-I-”

  “I encourage my students to agree on vhat defines a good novel before they begin to pass judgment. About the only thing they can all agree on is that the story should capture ‘true’ human experience. Now, admittedly it’s been a long time since I vuz a young girl, Miss Sharpe, but as far as I know, falling in love still falls under that umbrella.”

  Ellery thought of Jemmie and Cara in sight of that hill. She thought of all the times she had turned to find herself in the sights of Axel’s lens, his eyes twinkling as he caught her unaware. She wanted to believe Dr. Albrecht, but the woman who had battled her way almost to the top of the literary journalism world just couldn’t.

  “But is it worthy of a novel?” Ellery asked.

  “If people read it and love it and find true human experience reflected back from the pages, who’s to say vhat is and isn’t vurthy?”

  “It’s just…” Try as she might, Ellery couldn’t formulate an argument to counter that. “I guess I never thought about it that way.”

  “Most don’t.”

  Dr. Albrecht was nearly halfway through the onions before Ellery recalled her manners. “Hey, what am I thinking? Let me help. I can help chop.”