Shadows in Scarlet

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Suffused with laughter, Carrie shooed Amanda into the bedroom. Where she shut the door and stood listening as Carrie turned at bay. “Yes, she’s just fine. Her stays are pretty tight, you know. The heat and—and everything. She’s taking a shower before she checks over the house. It’s past closing time.”

  Amanda couldn’t hear Cynthia’s words, just the sound of her voice in duet with Wayne’s.

  “Wayne,” said Carrie, her own voice retreating, “let me walk out to the parking lot with you. You’re certainly brave to come to work with that sprained ankle.”

  Moments later a door slammed. Giving thanks for a friend like Carrie, Amanda crept out and listened. The house was silent. She felt like she hadn’t breathed all day. She stripped off her clothes, dumped them on the bed, and stood breathing deeply. If James wanted to materialize and ogle her again, more power to him. She couldn’t blame the moth for being attracted to the flame.

  She showered, dressed in blessed loose cotton, and found her clipboard. By the time she’d done the gardens and returned to the house her batteries were running low.

  It’d been a relief to tell Carrie about James, yes. But she’d have to deal with Wayne and the bogus engagement tomorrow, and the dreaded Cynthia Monday. And while the very thought of James not only tickled her curiosity but her erogenous zones, she might never be able to deal with him again.

  And if he did come back? Well, she told herself, carpe diem and all that.

  In the entrance hall Amanda looked at the reconstruction. It was hideously empty, a shell inside a husk, a mockery of a human face. James had been alive. Then, between one second and the next, a bullet had stopped his heart and he was—if not dead, then reduced to his minimum. I want my sword. Amanda touched the box containing the scabbard as though she could touch the evocative bend in its length. No matter what she did for him—no matter what she did with him—he’d never live again.

  She turned off the lights, went upstairs, and stood in front of Sally’s portrait. The Armstrongs hadn’t had to leave that night. The British had moved out the next day. “But Daddy had to protect you, didn’t he?” Amanda said aloud. “Not from James or even Archibald. From yourself. Do I ever know the feeling.”

  Sally’s painted features remained static. Shrugging, Amanda went downstairs and scooted Wayne’s chair back against the wall. There was one of Helen’s cameras on the floor. She’d probably given it to Wayne to hold. No surprise he’d forgotten to give it back. But Helen would probably be at Cynthia’s lunch and admiration society Monday. The Grant project.

  Not one item in the house had been moved. Good. Amanda would give James a broken glass—he had little left besides passion, both good and bad—but she hoped his unstable temper wouldn’t trash some priceless artifact. Carrie might humor her ghostly fancies, but no one else would.

  Amanda fed both Lafayette and herself. Two microwaved burritos and the evening news, though, were a poor substitute for what she really wanted. She could see herself and James cuddled up in several yards of tartan wool, exchanging post-coital nuzzlings and tidbits of eighteenth-century history.

  Might as well set the scene. She put on a CD of Greatest Hits of 1777, which James would think was contemporary music. He wouldn’t make appalling puns on the title of Bach’s “Air on a G String.” She’d tell him the musicians were in the next room. Not that he’d care—people of his class weren’t inhibited by the presence of servants.

  Lafayette went for his evening sortie. Amanda sat down at her computer and sent an e-mail query to Preservation Imaging, Ltd, “Do you have a phone number for Lady Norah Grant?” Then she pulled up her thesis, rearranged the paragraphs and tried different words from the thesaurus. The phone didn’t ring. Thank goodness Wayne had the decency to lie low. She’d feel better about him if just once he’d stand up to his mother. But then, she was hardly standing up to Cynthia herself.

  The CD stopped. In the ensuing silence Lafayette’s return through the cat flap sounded like the report of a pistol. Amanda broke the record for the sitting high jump. But the cat calmly made himself at home on the chair. According to the feline early warning system, then, James was nowhere in the vicinity.

  At last Amanda went to bed. She turned the blanket back and sprawled on the sheet, trying to resolve James’s scarlet coat and blue-green kilt from the darkness. But the shadows remained shadows. James didn’t come.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Amanda awoke suddenly from an uneasy sleep. A brushing sensation, like teasing fingertips, traced the inside of her leg from ankle to thigh. “James?”

  He wasn’t there. Neither was the cat. She peered groggily at the thin light of dawn edging the window blinds. The breeze from the windows and the fan was chilly and she sat up, groping for the sheets. They were compressed into a semicircle by her side. The mattress sagged, as though someone was sitting on the edge of the bed. “James?” She reached out.

  The mattress rose back into place. The covers loosened. If his disembodied presence had been there, if she hadn’t sensed some lingering figment of a dream, he was gone now.

  Amanda dredged herself from the bed and dressed in the day’s designated straightjacket. Lafayette was waiting for her in the kitchen, his nose wrinkled suspiciously. She let him sniff her hand, passed inspection, and fed him his breakfast. She was just heading toward the computer when she heard the back door buzzer.

  Wayne’s solid shape was silhouetted in the window. So much for checking her e-mail. Amanda turned off the alarms and opened the door. “Good morning, Wayne.”

  “Hi, Amanda. I thought I should get here a little early, just to—to… .” His hands wrung the shape from his wig, as though trying to squeeze out words. “Are you feeling better?”

  “I’m fine. Come on in.” Amanda went around unlocking doors, opening windows, turning on lights, while Wayne limped at her heels. “How’s your ankle?”

  “Almost well. Mother wanted me to bring the cane again—it was her grandfather’s, he was a bank president.” He took a deep breath and started over. “Mrs. Benedetto heard footsteps at night. But you told me there wasn’t anyone else. So who made the steps?”

  “Maybe a peeping tom,” Amanda replied. “I hope he got an eyeful. It wasn’t anyone I invited, that’s for sure.” Which was only the truth up to a point—she hadn’t invited James originally, but she sure was now.

  Wayne frowned, then smoothed his face into a grimace that he apparently meant to be a smile. “I’m sorry about my mom. I know she comes on pretty strong, but she means well.”

  “By practically announcing our engagement? Without bothering to ask if we even liked each other?”

  “I love you, Amanda.”

  She turned on the lights above the display. No, it wasn’t the plasticine lips of the reconstruction that had said those words. She glanced around. Wayne’s eyes bulged with sincerity. His wig was starting to look like road kill.

  “I know how you feel,” she said. “But love has to be a two-way street, doesn’t it? And you’re going the wrong way down a one-way …” She almost said “dead end,” but a one-way dead end was where James was stalled. “I’m sorry. Although I don’t see why I should keep apologizing because my feelings aren’t what you want them to be.”

  “My feelings aren’t what you want, either,” he said truculently.

  “No kidding.” Amanda tried again. “If I’d realized your mother was off on the wrong track about—about us, I could have set the record straight. But it never occurred to me that anyone could possibly think …” Don’t kick the man when he’s down. “Either you tell her the truth or I will. This is beyond embarrassing.”

  “Well it’s damned embarrassing for me, too.”

  The Chinese vase on the sideboard behind Wayne’s back rose into the air and headed straight for his head. Amanda stared. James was back. But what did he think he was doing with that vase—protecting her from poor feckless Wayne? James! The vase circled back, making a perfect landing.

  Wayne
turned around to see what Amanda was looking at. “What is it? A mouse?”

  “Ah—I’m not sure.”

  “Lafayette needs to get his rear in gear. Why else do we bother to feed him?”

  Amanda didn’t answer that. She skimmed around Wayne and opened the front door. For once she wasn’t greeted by a blast of sun. The morning was cloudy, still, and damp. Wayne stepped out onto the porch beside her, cramming his wig onto his head. She tried to smooth it into shape, so at least he didn’t look like a possum was nesting on his scalp.

  “Amanda?”

  “Yes, Wayne?”

  “Just friends?”

  “Just friends,” she told him. “Take it or leave it.”

  He started back into the house. “My ankle hurts. I’ll go sit in the library like I did yesterday. Can you… ?”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  He limped away, favoring his left foot. Amanda looked toward the front gate and was glad to see Carrie hurrying along the walk.

  “How’s it going?” she called.

  “Same as usual,” replied Amanda. “Hot weather, stubborn Wayne.”

  Carrie glanced into the house. “And your other admirer?”

  “I haven’t seen him since Friday, but he’s around. I wish … Hey, Helen left one of her cameras here yesterday. If I actually got a picture of him, would you believe me?”

  “A photo isn’t exactly proof—there’re double exposures and other kinds of trick photography, but …” Carrie shook her head. “Who’s being stubborn? Sure, if you get a reasonable picture I’ll suspend disbelief.”

  “It’s a deal.” Amanda nodded firmly, even as she told herself a photo of crushed bedclothes or a vase floating in mid-air wasn’t going to do it. And what was she going to tell James? “Hold still, I’m going to take your picture?” Assuming, of course, he ever reappeared with enough physical form to photograph. With enough physical form for anything else, for that matter.

  “Here they come,” said Carrie, and waved a greeting to a troupe of children liberated from Sunday school for a historical trek.

  The day passed from normality to tedium. Wayne sat in the library and received homage from the sightseers, leaving Carrie, Amanda, Roy, and the other interpreters to navigate the stairs. Amanda kept a sharp eye out, but saw no more levitating crockery. Clouds covered the sun, a sudden flurry of raindrops drummed on the roof, the clouds cleared and the sun came out. The air was so thick Amanda felt she could cut it with a knife. And not just because of the weather.

  At closing time Carrie reminded her of Cynthia’s lunch tomorrow. “Excuse me,” she amended. “Little luncheon.”

  “A command performance,” said Amanda. “I’ll be there.”

  She locked the front door and, steeling herself, went into the library. No one was there. From the kitchen window she saw Wayne and Roy halfway to the parking lot, Roy slowing his stride to Wayne’s uneven pace. The archaeological students joined the procession and silence fell over Melrose.

  A piece of paper lay on the kitchen table, Amanda’s name at the top. It wasn’t in graceful eighteenth-century script but twentieth-first-century scribble. “Don’t forget Mother’s lunch tomorrow. I promise to behave myself. I can’t make any promises for her, but I’ll see if I can get her to back off. Love, Anthony Wayne Chancellor.”

  Crumpling the paper, Amanda pitched it toward the garbage can. Just “I’ll see if I can get her to back off,” not, “I’ll tell her the truth.” But then, the truth was pretty subjective right now.

  Amanda showered and changed, then made her inspection tour. She fed Lafayette and petted him for a few moments, telling him, “Never mind what Wayne said. You’re an important interpreter yourself.” The cat offered her a supercilious smirk and proceeded to wash his face.

  She finally got to her e-mail, only to find that her query to Preservation Imaging had bounced back with a “we’re out of the office for the weekend” message. Tomorrow, then.

  Amanda scanned her collection of frozen dinners and instead finished off the pie. She set Helen’s camera to low light—the last thing she needed to do was shoot the flash at James. Besides, while he might be reflected in a mirror he might not necessarily show up on film.

  The room went suddenly cold. Lafayette, forgetting his dignity, scrambled out the flap. Amanda spun around. When James materialized in the bedroom door she was looking right at him—one moment he wasn’t there, the next he was. Her mind hiccuped, even now rejecting the evidence of her eyes. But her senses high-dived into acceptance, sending a flush to her cheeks and leaving her stomach hollow.

  James’s face was puzzled, almost resentful, as though he, too, didn’t quite believe he was there. He gazed up at the fan and the ceiling light, then looked into the darkened bedroom. Amanda lifted the camera, snapped the shutter, wound the film, snapped and wound again.

  James turned toward her. She whisked the camera behind her back, and from there eased it onto the desk. But he refused to notice it, just as he refused to notice the computer or the microwave or even the light bulbs. He would lose masculine points, Amanda told herself, admitting he didn’t know something. Her father and her brother would rather drive for miles the wrong way than ask directions.

  “Amanda,” James said, but his puzzlement didn’t quite relax into a smile.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” she blurted.

  “I would not leave you, Sweeting. Your temper is most amiable, and your manner of the greatest civility. Your beauty leaves me giddy. I hold you in the very highest esteem… .” His voice died away. Maybe he couldn’t remember his lines.

  But James wasn’t putting any moves on her now. His eyes were uncertain, not quite focussed. His body, looking solid enough when it first appeared, now wavered against the doorway. He half-turned into the bedroom, as though he was reluctant to let Amanda see his face.

  He couldn’t have picked a better way to draw her closer. She stepped toward him. “James? What’s wrong?” Like she didn’t know. A broken glass, a flying vase—he must be up to his neck in more frustration than she’d ever felt.

  “I very much fear that nothing is right,” he said. “This is Melrose Hall, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not the Melrose Hall I know. Sally and her father are gone. My regiment is gone, and I alone remain. I am undone.”

  Amanda tried to touch his shoulder, but her uplifted hand met thin air.

  “My head is filled by the scent of roses. I know by that most delectable scent I am near the summerhouse, but it is night and my eyes are shrouded by darkness. Archibald is waiting for me, I know, waiting cloaked in shadow like some evil creature of the underworld sent by Hades himself to summon me to that river from which no traveler returns.”

  “You did return,” she said gently.

  “So it seems. If the past is but a dream, then this—this present is nightmare, confounding my senses.” He thinned almost to nothingness, then solidified. His eyes fixed on Amanda’s face like a beacon at the end of a long, dark tunnel. “You, my sweet, serve as Eurydice to my Orpheus, serve as Demeter searching for her lost daughter, braving hell itself to bring me again to—to what?”

  “Your home?” she prompted. “Your sword? Revenge?”

  He glanced down at the empty scabbard, stroking it with his fingertips. The gesture reminded Amanda of the sensation that had waked her up this morning. “My sword is at Dundreggan, you say?”

  “Well, it was. I’ll find out for you.”

  “And if you find it to be there, at Dundreggan, across the seas from this—this beknighted land, how can you bring it to me, or better still, me to it, so that I may … No, I cannot rest, not until I have my revenge upon the serpent in my bosom, my cousin Archibald.”

  “Maybe I can get you home to Scotland,” Amanda said carefully, trying not to introduce such concepts as boxes and bones. “Or maybe I could get your sword shipped over here for temporary display. For what that’s worth. As for Archibald, he’s
been—gone for a long time. You’re not going to get any personal satisfaction from him, although you can go right ahead and imagine him roasting in hell.”

  “So then.” James had faded out as she talked. Now she could see the doorframe through his body.

  Amanda raised both hands, trying to pull him back. “But I can publish the truth about Archibald and the summerhouse at night and—and everything—so that the world will know what really happened. Would that help?”

  The scarlet coat, the multi-colored kilt, the shine of silver materialized beneath Amanda’s hands. This time she could feel an itch in each palm and a tickle on her fingers, which became actual pressure as James leaned toward her. His eyes glowed hotly. “If you could publish the story of his perfidy, so that my name is remembered and remarked upon by all those of quality in the Island of Britain, why then, Madame, you would have my deepest gratitude.”

  “Do you want me to say anything about Isabel?”

  “Isabel turned against me, there’s a stab to my heart, a mortal wound if ever there was one. This facile temper of the beauteous sex… .” Briefly his face contorted and his teeth glinted between his lips in a spasm of pain and anger. His left hand tightened on the scabbard, his right made a fist and punched at the doorframe but made only a dull thunk.

  “Or we can let that go,” Amanda told him hastily. She knew for certain what rewards Archibald had earned from his shot in the dark, but it might be better if James only suspected. There was no proof Isabel and Archibald had been an item before James’s death. “I’m sorry about Isabel.”

  Beneath her hands his body was opaque, almost firm. “It was a warm evening when I went to the summerhouse among the sweet scent of roses, to think upon Isabel’s latest letter. As if with intent to console me, Sally came to me there. The American lasses have learned to be bold, I think, though not, of course, so bold as the London …” He shook his head. “I beg your pardon, Amanda.”