Wow, a night’s sleep. Between James and the airplane, she’d forgotten what that was. Jet lag, sex lag—funny, though, how those sweaty and exhilarating minutes already seemed way in the past, like something she’d read about, not actually done. And it wasn’t that they’d left her exactly mellow, either… . This time her head fell forward. She staggered to her feet.
The afternoon stretched ahead of her like a long road, bedtime only a distant glow on the horizon. One step at a time, she told herself, and opened the camera bag. No way her fuzzy brain would be able to work the video camera. She took the still camera and went back downstairs, glancing again at the three portraits. The eternal triangle.
She was only putting off the day of reckoning, she told herself. Sooner or later she was going to have to meet the James exposed in the family papers. The scoundrel—charming, of course. The rogue—lovable, ditto. Archibald’s version would hardly be impartial, but still she was going to have to cut James some slack. Maybe more than some. And yet his ghost wasn’t the man he’d been, was it?
Amanda went out the front door and took pictures of the castle, of the view, of the masons at work. Cynthia would want a soundtrack for the film—a piper piping a lament, or a voice singing the Gaelic song James had quoted, assuming Amanda could find it.
A gate in the interior wall led into the rose garden. She was headed in that direction when Irene looked out the door. She uttered a string of diphthongs of which Amanda understood only her own name and the word, “telephone.”
Suddenly she was wide awake. What? Cynthia couldn’t leave her alone long enough to do her job? It wasn’t her fault Wayne had bailed at the last minute.
Irene went into the house and came back carrying a phone. Amanda sat down on a stone bench beside the garden gate, squared her shoulders and pressed the phone to her ear. “Amanda Witham.”
“Hi! It’s Carrie!”
“Carrie?” Whew.
“I hope I figured it right and it’s two pm over there and not two am.”
“You’re right. I just had a delicious lunch with Norah. You wouldn’t believe this place. It’s absolutely gorgeous. And cool.”
“I have no doubt,” Carrie said dryly. “Pardon me while I rev up my air conditioner and admire the view of the water cooler.”
“I’m already taking pictures,” Amanda assured her. “I’m glad it’s you. I thought it was the dragon lady. Who was dead wrong about Dundreggan being run down, by the way.”
“I haven’t heard a cheep from Cynthia or from Wayne, either. And I’m not going to rattle their cage. I’m calling about the robbery.”
“Robbery?”
“Someone opened the Lucite box holding James’s scabbard and took it.”
“James’s scabbard?”
“Roy noticed it was gone after you left yesterday afternoon. He swears someone was in the entrance hall the entire time, but they couldn’t have covered it every minute.”
Amanda frowned. She’d left yesterday afternoon, not last month. “A bunch of people were milling around right before I left. And I asked Roy to carry the bones out to the parking lot, so he wasn’t there. Shit.”
“The police were all over the place, even stopped a school bus that was leaving. Bill Hewitt came out at closing time, but I guess Cynthia’s grapevine broke down, because she didn’t. Bill’s going to call her this morning. Talk about being caught in your own trap—her publicity stunts may have attracted a dishonest collector.”
The cold stone of the seat was anesthetizing Amanda’s rear end. “You’re doing more than just letting me know, aren’t you?”
For a long moment the line echoed hollowly. Then Carrie said, “Well, I sure haven’t told anyone else this, Amanda, and I apologize right up front for the way my mind works, but I couldn’t help but wonder… .”
“Whether I grabbed the scabbard on my way out?”
“You might have asked yourself whether James would want his sword without its scabbard.”
“Yeah, well, I did ask myself that.” Amanda re-thought her answer. James touched the scabbard the way he touched her, and for just about the same reason. It, and the sword, and she herself took him back to the time he was strong. The vulnerability she found so attractive he found deeply disturbing.
Carrie couldn’t bring herself to ask the obvious. Amanda could. “What about James? He would have had just enough time to move the scabbard from the display in the entrance hall to the packing case before I shut the lid. I’ll go look. And if I find it?”
“You’d better start thinking up some good explanations, preferably ones that don’t involve supernatural intervention.”
“I don’t suppose I can just bring the scabbard back with me and stuff it beneath a bush so the cops will think it was there all along.” The chill of the stone radiated up her spine, pinching her shoulders. “I’ll call you back, Carrie. Thanks.”
“Good luck.”
Amanda pressed the button on the telephone, wondering whether Carrie meant good luck, I hope you find it, or good luck, I hope you don’t?
Like it mattered now? Either way, it was too late. She got up, rubbed the cramped muscles in her behind, and limped into the house. Not knowing where the telephone belonged, she left it on a chest in the lower hall next to a vase of iris and roses.
She went upstairs again, telling herself that back home people paid good money for stair climbing machines. She got the screwdriver and went back down.
The great hall was silent. Dust motes danced in bars of sunlight that stretched diagonally down from the high windows. The sword glittered. Amanda pulled the crate away from the display case, knelt down on the planks of the floor, and with a squeal of rending wood unscrewed the screws and pried open the lid.
One edge of the layer of foam was wrinkled. She lifted it. The scabbard lay snugged along the side of the box, the oval badge repeating the oval shape of the skull, the words “Stand Fast” a caption to the empty eyes.
She must have heard it knock against the bone when she’d taken the box out of the car. The scabbard had probably been knocking against bone all the way across the Atlantic, but the skull wasn’t damaged. The bone was firm and chalky cool to her fingertips. She already knew James was hard-headed. Stand fast.
“Well thank you very much!” she said, and gave the crate an impatient push. Who the hell did James think he was? Or, more to the point, who did he think she was, screwing her around like this? And after she’d happily helped him do it literally, too!
She could still hear his voice, like a wisp of velvet, murmuring “You are mine, Amanda.” Only now instead of shrugging away those words she cringed. She’d known something was going to go wrong, but it sure didn’t have to go wrong this soon. Or to this extent.
Amanda picked up the scabbard and tucked the foam back around the bones. Still kneeling, she held it up to the sword. Oh yes, if there hadn’t been a kink in the weathered steel the two would have fit perfectly. Like her body had fit his, briefly, but not so perfectly after all.
“You’ve seen the sword, then, lassie,” said a voice like a wisp of velvet. “Goes wi’ yon scabbard, does it?”
Amanda spun around so fast she almost dislocated her neck. Three feet from her eyes stood a pair of athletic shoes and wool socks. Above them extended a well-worn and very nicely shaped pair of blue jeans. Over the jeans hung a fisherman’s knit sweater, arms akimbo. Above the sweater a young, handsome face, topped by tousled auburn hair, looked down at her. His eyes were blue-gray. His smile was boyish and sophisticated at once.
She knew those eyes and that smile, knew them intimately, and yet they weren’t the same. The bones of this man’s face had been beaten from different steel. They’d been tempered two centuries longer. This man’s slender hips and broad shoulders were refined by shadows.
Amanda sat down hard on the floor, the scabbard across her lap. She might as well be wearing Sally’s stays for all the air that was making it into her chest. “You,” she stated, jabbing the air
with her forefinger. “You are Malcolm Grant.”
One of his eyebrows lifted warily upward, as though her next move would be to hand him a subpoena. “I’d best be ownin’ the truth of the matter, then. Aye, I’m Malcolm Grant. And you’re the lassie from America. You’re no what I expected.”
He extended his hand. Amanda watched herself take it. He both shook her hand and pulled her to her feet still clutching the scabbard in her left hand. His palm was warm beneath a superficial coolness and his grip was firm. He smelled of fresh air. His blue-gray eyes were clear, not at all smoky. They shone like searchlights focused on her face.
“No,” she said, “you’re not what I expected either.” She managed to let go of his hand and step back.
The scabbard wrenched itself out of her fingers. She made a grab for it, but it clattered to the floor. The noise was loud and brash, bouncing back from the high ceiling.
It lay at Malcolm’s feet. He tilted his head in appraisal. “That’s a challenge, is it? You’re throwin’ doon the scabbard instead o’ the gauntlet?”
But all Amanda could do was stare, for once completely out of answers.
Chapter Eighteen
Malcolm looked from the scabbard to Amanda’s face and grinned.
She blinked, reminded herself to breathe, and rebooted her brain. The first command that came up into her mind was, don’t let either of these guys get to you!
Yeah, well, it was too late for that, wasn’t it? Picking up the scabbard she said as lightly as she could, “I sure don’t have much of a future in historic preservation if I throw artifacts around, do I? I shouldn’t even be handling this without gloves.”
“Let’s put it awa’, then, like proper historical preservationists.” Malcolm lifted the lid of the display case, carefully holding the glass by its wooden frame.
Amanda placed the scabbard in the space between the sword and the plaque with James’s name. The dull, pitted metal with its ungainly kink seemed sad next to the burnished elegance of the blade. But then, it had had a lot harder trek to the present day.
No way in hell could she explain to the Grants that the scabbard wasn’t supposed be here, that it should still be in its Lucite box in the entrance hall at Melrose. Like she couldn’t explain that she hadn’t dropped it, it’d thrown itself down. She shot a wary glance at the wooden crate, remembering James’s words: I want revenge.
“A shame the scabbard’s a bit crumpled,” said Malcolm, lowering the lid of the case. “Mind you, Calum could straighten it at his wee smiddy, but I reckon it’s best to preserve it as it is.”
Amanda slipped into academic mode. “The repair work would leave scars. The contrast between the two speaks volumes about time, decay, and conservation.”
“And the standard display model for a sword is unsheathed and parallel with its scabbard.”
“Yes.” So Malcolm was more than a pretty face and a ready tongue, he was preservationally competent. But then, someone—Norah, Duncan—had already said Malcolm was working on conservation plans for Dundreggan. Good for him.
He turned toward the crate. “That’s himself, is it? May I?”
Amanda waved her hand—go for it.
Kneeling on one knee, Malcolm rolled back the layer of foam. His fingertips traced the jaw hinge and cheekbone. His palm swept back over the arch of the skull as though brushing hair from the face of a child. His hands, Amanda saw, were long and lean, moving with a sensitivity only a man with a lot of self-assurance could afford to show.
Amanda closed her eyes. This isn’t happening, either.
His smooth baritone murmured, “So you’ve come hame, then, for auld lang syne. But you never kent the delights o’ Burns, did you? Puir beggar, what a shame to die so young and so far awa’.”
Yes, it is. And she was going to have to deal with it. Amanda opened her eyes. Malcolm was still kneeling beside the crate, his left forearm braced on his upraised thigh, his right hand resting on the wooden rim. “Cynthia didn’t need to strong arm you into giving a blood sample for DNA tests,” she said. “The resemblance is amazing.”
He looked from the nested bones up to her face. “It is?”
“The miniature,” she said quickly. “The miniature portrait Cynthia bought in London. It’s copied from that portrait in the stairwell, isn’t it?”
“Oh aye, but I never saw much likeness masel’. I dinna suppose we ever see oursel’s as others see us, though. Which brings us back to Burns.” He tucked the foam around the bones, stood up, and set the lid atop the crate. “Your battles are done, lad. Rest in peace.”
That’s the idea. “I guess you should tighten the lid. The lab packed him up with silica gel. But then, it doesn’t matter whether his bones are preserved or not, not any more.”
“We need to let him return to the dust from whence he came, right enough. But we can do better than this packin’ case. Lindley has a coffin for him. And Mum’s arranged for a proper headstone.”
“That’s really above and beyond.”
“We’re his family. He’ll have to take us whether he wants us or no.”
Which left James between a rock and a hard place, Amanda thought. He couldn’t ask for more respect. And yet the people who respected him were descended from… . She knew whom they were descended from. She, at least, wasn’t going to hold them accountable for that shot in the dark.
Leaving the screwdriver on top of the box, Amanda turned and strolled toward the door. As she’d intended, Malcolm fell into step beside her. Attractive as he was, disillusioned as she starting to be with James, still she felt like the worst sort of hypocrite eyeing the one in front of the other’s—remains.
“Just one thing,” said Malcolm. “What’s your name?”
“Oh! I’m sorry. Amanda Witham. Glad to meet you.”
Again they shook hands. “You e-mailed the business address askin’ for Mum’s phone number,” Malcolm went on.
“That was before I knew I’d be coming here. Before Cynthia sent me off like a FedEx package. No wonder your mother was expecting a little kid.”
“Cynthia? The snotty woman who rang last Sunday?”
“The what?”
“Mistress Snotty, Mrs. Anthony Chancellor.” He imitated Cynthia’s too-cool-to-melt-butter drawl and smiled mischievously.
Amanda laughed. “Yeah, you’ve got her number. What’d she say to you?”
“No so much what she said as hoo she said it. I was thinkin’ you were a sweet, simperin’ little doll-child, wi’ hair ribbons and frilly socks. I reckoned if her son’s engaged to you then he’s stealin’ the cradle blind. And here you are, lackin’ two inches of my ain height, chuckin’ antique cutlery at me.”
“It wasn’t exactly cutlery,” Amanda told him. “And I am not and never have been engaged to her son. Who isn’t here. He decided not to come. Me, I’m not even going with anyone.” Maybe she shouldn’t have added that last factoid, but Malcolm took it in with a sober nod.
They stepped through the doorway of the great hall onto the landing of the stairs. Sunlight shone through the slits of windows and was reflected off the whitewashed walls, making the staircase a well of light. Just around the bend hung the three portraits. They stopped in front of them.
“May I have a look at your camera?” Malcolm asked.
She’d forgotten the camera draped across her chest. “Sure. It’s not mine, though, it’s CW’s. Colonial Williamsburg’s.” She handed it over. He squinted through the eyepiece and adjusted the lens. “Please, take pictures,” Amanda went on. “I’m supposed to come back with lots of documentation. I even have a video camera upstairs.”
“Do you, noo? I helped film the excavations at Whithorn Abbey, I’d be pleased to help.”
“That’s cool. Thanks.”
If Duncan’s accent was inflected Oxbridge, and Norah’s was hardly any less “proper,” Malcolm’s accent ran up and saluted the St. Andrews cross of the Scottish flag. No wonder Cynthia hadn’t been able to understand him, not on th
e telephone. Following his words gave Amanda an excuse to look at him. He was like James, and yet he was definitely not like James.
James’s painted face stared into eternity, his expression obscured by the gleam of sunlight on the surface of the picture. Malcolm lowered the camera. “Too much light. But I suppose you have ower many photos o’ the miniature already.”
“On every brochure,” Amanda answered. “Cynthia implied that you and your mother were living in genteel poverty, forced to sell off family heirlooms like the miniature.”
“Every now and again we sell the odd mathom—to use Tolkien’s word—for the ready. A bit o’ cheese-parin’ never goes amiss, but we’re no on the dole.”
“Cynthia usually acts like Lady Bountiful. She’s not anything official with CW, you understand, but she’s a major donor and really does do a lot of good work for them, so they put up with her.”
“She’s ower the top, Mum said.”
“Too much, you mean? Definitely.”
“My condolences.” Malcolm handed back the camera and pointed to Archibald’s portrait. “My ancestors were a gey respectable lot. Even wi’ so many gone for soldiers, we’ve no had a true wastrel since yon James. Just as weel he dinna inherit, I’m thinkin’, although he might have settled had he survived the skirmish in America.”
“The grand and glorious Revolution, a skirmish? Heresy, Mr. Grant, heresy!” Amanda returned Malcolm’s laugh. Side by side they descended the stairs. “Men of James’s time and class were usually into gambling,” she essayed.
“Gamblin’, wenchin’, duelin’, drinkin’—the lot. We have a letter to James from his dad, threatening to cut him off if he didna behave himsel’. The same letter suggests a marriage wi’ the Seaton lass. Isabel. She was the daughter of some business associate.”
Shadows in Scarlet Page 21
