Shadows in Scarlet

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Nothing.

  Lafayette hopped onto the bed and proceeded to lick himself down. Amanda pulled out a needlepoint project that she’d intended for her mother two Christmases ago. She stitched away and channel-surfed at the same time. Letterman’s and Leno’s jokes weren’t particularly funny, especially those dealing with the harder edges of romance. An affair with a ghost might eliminate some of the hazards of intimacy, but only the physical ones… . She stabbed her finger so deeply she drew blood.

  The night was hot and silent. Lafayette dozed. Amanda turned off the television and the lights and went to bed, where she twitched so restlessly the cat got up and left.

  So much for the best-laid plans of man—and woman—to get laid, she thought with an apology to Burns. She’d try one more thing. “James,” she said aloud, “James, when you’re with me you’re strong again.”

  The reflection of the outside floodlights filled the bedroom with a pale glow. An icy breath of air made her sit slowly upright. Her skin prickled. The hairs on her head rose. Her T-shirt billowed in the draft and then stilled as the cold ebbed.

  James stood beside the bed, neither lighted nor shadowed, a shape and a gleam of scarlet. “Hush, Sweeting, would you wake the neighboring houses?”

  All she had to do was appeal to his ego. Duh. “There aren’t any neighboring houses.”

  He grinned, eyes twinkling, and unbuckled his shoulder belt.

  Yes! Amanda’s heart leaped, sending blood blazing into more than her face. She reached for him. In a smooth pirouette he evaded her. Fine, she was up for a strip show.

  His shoulder belt and scabbard clanked, and the buttons on his coat flashed and jingled. His waistcoat and neck cloth fell silently, like white ghosts. James dropped his sporran onto the shoulder belt. A quick two-step and he was rid of his shoes and hose. Holding Amanda’s eyes with his own, he unbuckled the belt that clasped his kilt around his waist and tossed the length of wool onto her feet. The phantom fabric tickled her toes.

  His white shirt, its hem at mid-thigh, seemed no paler than his skin. Than his ephemeral flesh. But it sure looked like real flesh now. She was in meltdown. She peeled off her T-shirt and opened her arms. “James, I love you, I want you.”

  “Why speak of love, when its demonstration is so greatly to be desired?”

  Yes!

  His weight, heavier than she’d expected, pressed her back against the pillow. His body was solid beneath the cloth of the shirt and his lips eager against hers. His breath was scented with whiskey, sharp and smoky. His tail of hair spun through her fingers.

  In one deft movement he scooped the shirt away and she lay naked against his naked chest. Against her fiery skin his seemed cool and dry. “My own,” he whispered. “My sweet.” His hands stroked her body, insistent, no longer either subtle or delicate.

  She caressed his shoulders, his chest, his flanks—nothing metaphysical about him now, he was there, was he ever there, skin taut over muscle and bone, substantial bones, not the empty mocking shells that lay in the box in the next room. She pulled his head down to her breast, guiding his mouth—“There, yes.”

  And again he was pressing her into the pillow. They were wrestling, she realized, each trying to out-maneuver the other. So let him get on top, no problem… . He was between her thighs, hard against the damp heat of her flesh. Okay, okay, the foreplay had started the night he’d kissed her hand—a quickie was fine if it was intense enough and if she got any more intense she was going to explode—which was the general idea, although the process of getting there was half the battle—not that this was a battle, not really.

  She grasped the firm double mound of his buttocks and wrapped herself around him, remembering his joke about sword and sheath… . In one thrust he was inside her to the hilt.

  She gasped—good thing she’d been turned on for days, well lubricated by her own fantasies. The sensation rolled like an ocean wave through her body and broke over her fingers and toes and the crown of her head. He existed. He was real. She planted one heel against the bed and the other against his calf and hurried to catch up. Oh yeah oh yeah.

  The bed was creaking. Her own voice was making funny little sub-vocal squeaks and sighs. He was a swordsman all right, he didn’t need Stirling steel to make his point—his face above hers was a bas-relief against the darkness, half turned aside, eyes closed, teeth gritted, concentrated into life—the barriers of time and death thinned, broke, and disappeared.

  His hand knotted in her hair, pulling her head back so sharply her scalp stung. “Ow!” She tried to twist away, but not to lose either the rhythm or the crest of the sensation.

  His body pinned hers and pulled away and pinned it again and hung there, shuddering. Her muscles spasmed in reply—yes! The flash point was like a pistol shot in the dark, sudden, bright, and then gone.

  Amanda exhaled shakily into the air above James’s head. So that was it. For something she’d wanted so badly it’d sure gone by fast. Time dilation, maybe. But what a ride. Yes.

  James sprawled on top of her, weighing no more than a heavy blanket, his fingers splayed against her scalp and his cheek tickling hers. “Amanda,” he whispered. “My sweet, my own, you have made me strong again.”

  “Seems the least I could do,” she croaked. It wasn’t like she hadn’t gotten anything out of the deal. In a minute or two, once she had some saliva back in her mouth, she’d ask him about his life and times—what did he really think of the Jacobite cause, how many servants did they have at Dundreggan, who had he met in the salons of Edinburgh. And after awhile she’d teach him a few things about leisurely lovemaking.

  He raised his head. She could see the fan blades rotating through his features. “You are mine, Amanda. Mine… .” And on a sigh of words and whiskey he vanished.

  She hadn’t even had time to deflect his words with a joke about possession being nine-tenths of the law. “James?”

  No reply.

  Her arms flopped down to the bed, empty. So, she asked herself, did you ever think even for one minute he was going to turn out to be a sensitive new age guy?

  For a long time she lay wallowing in sweat and sentiment, every perception of the last—five minutes?—looping round and round in her mind. She’d actually told him she’d loved him, hadn’t she? Well, there were worse words for a man to hear on his deathbed.

  Her scalp ached and she rubbed at it. No, he hadn’t pulled out a handful of hair. As rough sex went that tug was fairly minor, she supposed. It hadn’t spoiled the excitement of the moment. Not that she’d allow it to happen again, given the chance… .

  There wouldn’t be any more chances. James had gotten what he wanted. At least, of all the things he wanted sex had been the easiest for her to provide. She still had to get him home, back to his sword, and tell his story. Revealing the truth was the only justice, the only revenge, he was ever going to get. She owed him that much for aiding and abetting her fantasy. “I promise,” she said into the darkness.

  He was gone.

  Her skin was getting clammy. She sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. No need to do much mopping up—she might just as well have had a particularly vivid erotic dream.

  She groped among the covers pleated at the foot of the bed, then over the edge onto the rag rug beneath. She didn’t find so much as a button. Even now she had no physical evidence James was anything more than a figment of her imagination.

  Imaginary or otherwise, she told herself, he really was history now. Compelling, fascinating history, but history nonetheless. He was a footnote, not part of the main text of her life. Maybe it was time for her to be brutally honest and admit that that was just as well.

  Putting her T-shirt back on, Amanda turned off the light and collapsed back onto the pillow. She was so wrung out she should’ve dropped off like a rock. But no. Her body was wrung out. Her mind was wound tight. She dozed and woke and dozed again, and at last simply forced herself to stay in the bed until her alarm rang and Lafayette looked in the bedroom d
oor, his whiskers at full disgruntled droop.

  Groaning, she stood up, showered, dressed, and fed the cat. Her own toast and coffee cleared away a few cobwebs. She finished packing. On her way out the door she leaned over and stroked the packing case. Good-bye, James. Thanks for the adventure.

  Even though she wasn’t officially working, still the morning seemed to go by on fast forward. The further away Amanda got from her coffee the more dazed she became, ambushed by both sleep and memory, until it was a surprise to look out Sally’s window and see a long white limousine drive up to the back of the house. She glanced at her watch. It was five minutes to two.

  She hurried down the stairs and handed over the clipboard of office. “It’s not as though I won’t be back next week. And Roy and the others know all the ropes.”

  “A lot of trouble can come up in a week,” said Jeff, who was playing both Page and temporary caretaker.

  Vicky, Sally’s standin, elbowed his ribs reprovingly. “We’ll keep an eye on things, don’t worry.”

  “And I’ll keep an eye on them,” said Roy from the front door.

  “I tried to shove my own stuff out of the way,” Amanda told Jeff, “but move things around as you want. I really appreciate …”

  Two tour groups arrived simultaneously at the front door while a third descended the stairs. A couple of children running for the outside door knocked into the display. Vicky seized the reproduction head before it rolled. Amanda’s exit was anything but graceful.

  She hurried into her apartment, pitched a couple of last-minute items into her suitcase, stuffed a paperback into her purse, and patted Lafayette’s sleek fur. “Be a good little guy while I’m gone.”

  He opened an eye and flicked an ear—like I appreciate being patronized any more than you do?

  “Amanda!” Wayne, the fly in the ointment, yelled from outside the bedroom window.

  “Come give me a hand already!” she yelled back.

  The lid of James’s crate was still ajar. She set the screws in their holes and twisted them in tightly. Wayne bustled in the door. “Here’s your plane ticket, unless you want me to keep it for you.”

  “Thank you.” She slipped the ticket into her purse.

  “Is that the body? ‘There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever Scotland’?”

  Whoa, a literary reference. “That’s the point, isn’t it? We’re taking him back to his own field.”

  Wayne hoisted the crate. “Come on. The driver’s waiting.”

  Amanda put the screwdriver in her suitcase, slammed the lid, and locked the locks. “How did I get into this?” she said with a laugh.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Wayne told her.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said in the same tone. “It was your mother’s.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Wayne was dead serious. “My mother.”

  “Well, yeah. Not that it matters now.”

  “I tried to tell her what you wanted me to tell her, but I just couldn’t get it out.”

  “So you didn’t want to acknowledge the truth yourself.”

  “No, not …” Wayne put the crate down again.

  “And she wouldn’t listen anyway. I know, I know, she’s a control freak. Let’s go.”

  “Hey, you’re getting a really nice trip out of this. You could show a little appreciation.”

  That attitude was all she needed. “I’m grateful. What I’m not, is for sale.”

  “You hate me because of my mother.”

  “I don’t hate either one of you. Geez, Wayne… . Listen, I’m tired, you’re tense, let’s not get into it, not now.”

  “You think I’m a spoiled little rich kid, don’t you? Come on, admit it.” He hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands into his pockets. His lower lip started to protrude. “You think I’m a Mama’s boy.”

  “Well, sometimes you damn well act like it,” Amanda heard herself say. “You sure you don’t have a stamp on your butt saying, ‘Property of Cynthia Chancellor’?”

  He stared at her.

  Take a wild shot and hit the bulls-eye. Shit. “Wayne… .”

  “Fine. Forget it. Forget everything.” He pulled his plane ticket out of his pocket, wadded it up, stuffed it back in. He turned on his heel and stamped off down the hallway. The door slammed. An engine started up.

  Amanda ran to the window. The limo glided up the drive and disappeared into the parking lot, headed for the main road. The turkey!

  She banged her head against the window frame. It was her own fault. All this time and she had to tell him off now. The trip, her promise to James, her job, it was all running like water through her fingers… . No. Sometimes James had been no more substantial than water, and yet she’d stiffened him up very nicely. Which was one reason she was so damnably spaced out now.

  The trip was still valid on its own terms, if not on Wayne’s. She picked up the telephone. “Carrie, it’s me. I’m sorry, but I need you to drop everything and get out here to Melrose.”

  “What?”

  “Wayne just trashed his plane ticket and drove off in a snit. Well, in a limo. I need you to drive me to the airport.”

  “You’re going without him?”

  “Hell, yes. I’m out of here.”

  “Then so am I. Be right there.”

  “Thanks, Carrie, I owe you.”

  Roy tapped lightly on the open door. “Ah—the limousine just drove away.”

  “Wayne decided not to go,” Amanda told him. “Help me get this stuff out to the parking lot, please.”

  “Sure.” Roy hauled the wooden crate while Amanda, her purse and carry-on bag slung like James’s belt diagonally across her chest, dragged her suitcase with one hand and clutched the camera bag with the other. “Does this mean Lady C. will be on the warpath?” Roy asked.

  “Hey, I’m following orders like a good little soldier. I doubt if Wayne has enough guts to repeat to her what I said to him.” No need to go into details. “She’s going to be after his scalp, not mine.”

  “Wayne who?” said Roy, setting the crate down on the curb. “Never heard of him.”

  If Carrie didn’t break the speed limit getting out to Melrose, she at least stretched it a bit. Amanda threw her things and the crate into the car and they zoomed off. All the way into Richmond she gabbled incoherently about Wayne and Cynthia, until at last Carrie said, “I imagine Cynthia will be plenty upset with Wayne. Even if he does tell her what you said, she’ll see it as his problem, not hers. You just take it easy and enjoy your trip.”

  “Take it easy? Cool, calm, and collected moi?”

  “Bon voyage.” Carrie stopped the car in front of the terminal. Before she had time to think about what she was doing Amanda had rented a luggage cart for James’s crate and the camera bag and was standing in the checkin line, forcing herself not to look over her shoulder.

  When she finally made it to the counter she checked the crate through to Inverness, Scotland, explaining, “Archaeological artifacts. Bones, that sort of thing.”

  Expressionlessly, the agent clicked at her keyboard and applied labels. Amanda’s suitcase and the box disappeared into the bowels of the airport. Two plane changes. This is no time to lose my luggage, folks… .

  “Here you go,” said the agent, “First Class all the way.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Next time,” she said, “why don’t you use the First Class checkin, the lines are shorter.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” Hoping she didn’t look as dazed as she felt, Amanda turned away. Why did Cynthia have to be so damned generous and efficient and everything—she made it impossible to get past irritation into outright loathing. First Class. All right!

  Half an hour until boarding. Amanda told herself she had no reason to act like The Fugitive. If she was lucky, Wayne would spend enough time sulking before going home she could make a clean getaway. If not, if Wayne and/or Cynthia showed up in the next few minutes, she’d just have to go with the original plan, th
at was all.

  The last thing she wanted was to go with the original plan. She lurked in a gift shop, checking out the lurid covers of paperback novels, T-shirts, and “Souvenir of Virginia” bric-a-brac.

  Halfway to the next Ice Age her flight was announced. Flashing her boarding pass, Amanda cut into the front of the line and almost ran down the jetway into the plastic-flavored air of the 737. Her seat was next to a window. Wayne’s empty aisle seat made a good privacy fence.

  She watched her fellow passengers struggle past, carrying so much junk they looked like refugees from a war zone. Bumps and thumps resounded beneath her feet. The luggage was coming on board, suitcases, golf clubs, cardboard boxes. A wooden crate.

  The flight attendant offered Amanda some orange juice. First she sipped, then, realizing how thirsty she was, she gulped. The seat was good. The juice was good. Life was good, all because of a man who was dead.

  The engines began to drone. The plane vibrated, moving away from the gate. She watched the terminal building diminish, and the landscape spin, and finally the jet poised itself like a cat ready to leap and sped down the runway into the air.

  They couldn’t catch her now. She was away free.

  She’d thrown caution to the winds twice in the last twenty-four hours. Funny how exhilarating it was not to be cautious. Funny what a relief it was to know recklessness was behind her. You can only dodge a bullet so many times, she thought. Even the swashbuckling James had learned that.

  Telling herself she didn’t have to be any more cynical than was absolutely necessary, Amanda settled back and let herself drift into memory, physical and otherwise.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Amanda’s purse, carry-on, and the camera bag had been heavy enough in Richmond. By the time she’d lugged them through mile-long concourses in Newark and Glasgow—the latter at what seemed like two a.m. but which turned out to be seven—they’d shape-shifted into bags of bricks. Good old Wayne, always there when you didn’t need him, never there when you did.