Shadows in Scarlet

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “He had plenty of substance then. For a couple of minutes anyway.”

  “Just a couple of minutes, was it?”

  She wasn’t going to fudge that, either. “It was good. Really intense. I wasn’t as if I started from a standstill, I’d been turned on all week. It was what I wanted. Then.”

  “Then?”

  “Yeah, now it’s all looking like a really bad choice.”

  “Well then,” he said, just about as noncommittal a statement as she’d ever heard. His brows settled down into their usual intelligent arcs, like diacritical marks over his eyes.

  They left the shelter of the trees and walked out onto the hillside. Glenmoriston stretched westward at their feet, the river and its tree-lined banks fading into the hazy blue horizon. Cerberus slipped through a fence into a field and in some glimmering of instinct raced toward a group of sheep. They braced themselves for orders, and then, as the dog scampered aimlessly around, shrugged and went back to grazing.

  “So,” Amanda went on, stepping over the edge. “Are you okay with that? That I had sex with him? I mean, my bad choice wouldn’t necessarily be any of your business, except that this guy’s trashing your house and threatening people. Which makes it your business.”

  “You’re makin’ the assumption, lass, that I’m wantin’ you for masel’.”

  Oh. She’d thought they connected last night. But James had broken that, too… . She saw the twinkle in Malcolm’s eyes. “You rat! Like I really need to be teased right now!”

  Laughing, he released her hand and tucked his arm securely around her waist. She hung on for dear life. They walked on down the lane and turned onto a twin-rutted track that climbed up the hill. In the distance a herd of deer picked their way among the gray stones that emerged from the mottled green of heather, gorse, and fern.

  “Mind you,” Malcolm said. “My ain record’s no so tidy. I’ve sown my share o’ wild oats. Canna say I’ve ever had to pray for a crop failure, though.”

  “Which is what I’m doing right now,” Amanda said with a rueful laugh.

  “Maybe I’ve been careful. Maybe I’ve been lucky. But I’ve seen my mates usin’ the lassies for games o’ power and ego—like James, I reckon—and I’ve no stomach for it. Call me unmanly, if you like.” He shot her a sharp look.

  “Unmanly? No way. It takes a real man to admit he’s not the helpless victim of raging hormones. Not,” she added, “that women don’t play games of power and ego, too.”

  “But you’ve no stomach for them?”

  “God, I hope I don’t play games.”

  “You’re no playin’ wi’ me.” His arm tightened around her waist.

  She felt his heart thrumming in his chest, and the muscles in his flank contracting and relaxing. “Trust me, Miss Mundane and Dull, to fall for a silver-tongued devil. If it were just my problem that’d be one thing. But I’ve dumped him on you. He’s going to be out to get you not only because of Archibald but because of me.” Amanda pulled Malcolm to a stop, untangled herself from his arm, and looked into his face. “We’re past flirting, aren’t we?”

  “That we are, lassie. Well past.” He frowned slightly, choosing his words. “You did the right thing bringin’ James hame. Dinna worry yoursel’ aboot it. Or aboot me. James’ll be after me, aye. But I’m as much a Grant as he was. Is. It’s ‘Stand Fast’ for me too.”

  “And?” Amanda prompted.

  “And he’ll no be comin’ between us. We’ll be standin’ too tight together. If that’s what you’re wantin’ to know.”

  “It’s what I’m wanting to know,” Amanda replied, and she eased slowly to earth. “What’s beyond ironic is that if it wasn’t for James we’d never have met.”

  “It’s himsel’ who brought us together, right enough.” Malcolm grinned. He’d gone over the edge, too, not sure what she felt, not sure what she’d tell him, but his landing, too, was soft.

  He gestured toward the castle on its crag, green leaves lapping its foundation, flag waving bravely from its highest tower. A cloud covered the sun, casting the hillside and the rutted track into shadow, but the castle stayed glowing in the sunlight. “That’s right magic.”

  “Magic,” Amanda repeated. “Is it ever.”

  “Are you sure we only met a few days ago? Have we no been together for years?”

  “In your dreams,” she told him with a grin of her own. “And in mine.”

  Malcolm turned back to her, taking her shoulders in his strong hands. “Noo then. Is there anything else needs tellin’?”

  “Not unless you’re interested in my grandmother’s maiden name or the grades I made in elementary school.”

  Sunlight swept over them, but it didn’t shine as brightly as his eyes. “You’d better stop smilin’ then, so we can make a proper kiss o’ it.”

  She stopped smiling. Gently she pressed her lips against his, testing for warmth and texture. A shiver ran down her back. Yeah.

  She wrapped her arms around his chest and angled her head the other way. This time her mouth melted against his and his tongue greeted hers so delicately her nipples prickled. Oh yeah.

  Another repositioning, for maximum effect, and they came together again, lips and tongues moving in a slow dance of heat and tension and taste until Amanda’s knees wobbled and sparks twirled behind her eyes. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Maybe it was love, maybe it was oxygen deprivation. She didn’t care. It worked.

  They stood molded together from thigh to throat, panting in the same rhythm. Malcolm’s lips teased her ear. The moisture on her lips turned tingling cold in the wind. She felt light, almost transparent, like she could surf on the wind. In fact, she could hear the wind rushing past her ears, making an odd rumbling sound.

  She was hearing an engine. She turned her head against Malcolm’s as he peered around hers. A car climbed the lane toward Dundreggan and disappeared into the trees. “Church must be out,” she wheezed.

  “No,” he wheezed back. “That’s a taxi. We’re havin’ a visitor, it seems. We’d better go and see.”

  But not before several more kisses. At last they parted, clasped hands, and started down the track. Cerberus bounded out of the field and sniffed at them, probably assessing the reek of hormones.

  The taxi was just emerging from the stone gateway. Its door was stenciled “Abertarff Motors, Inverness.” Malcolm exchanged a wave with the driver. “Good job gettin’ a taxi on a Sunday, especially one to come all the way oot here. Our visitor has more siller  more silver, money  than sense.”

  “Oh no.” Amanda’s glow popped like a soap bubble. “That describes Cynthia to a tee.”

  But it was Wayne’s beefy shape slumped on the stone bench, two suitcases at his feet. Margaret and Denis sat a few meters away, eyeing him as suspiciously as he was eyeing them. Great, Amanda thought, Cynthia sent her stooge to do her dirty work.

  “Wayne!” she called. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Wayne looked up to see Cerberus’s black-and-white shape bearing down on him. He leaped to his feet and stood stiffly while the dog circled around him, giving him the smell of approval.

  Amanda couldn’t swear Wayne was wearing the same clothes he’d had on last Wednesday, but his suit looked like he’d slept in it every night since then. His cheeks were stubbled and his eyes were puffy and streaked with red. “I saw you up there on the hill,” he said accusingly. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

  Malcolm extended his hand. “Malcolm Grant. Welcome to Dundreggan Castle.”

  Wayne lifted his paw and let Malcolm shake it. “I thought you were some old geezer.”

  “No,” Malcolm told him, and took a wary step backward.

  “Wayne,” said Amanda. “To repeat, what the hell are you doing here? Did your mother send you to check up on me?”

  “Oh.” Wayne looked down at his feet, his belligerence deflating. “No. She doesn’t know I’m here. I kind of ran away from home.”

  Malcolm turned and started checking over the herbaceous bo
rder. Cerberus ran playfully at the cats. They responded with humorless glints of claw and tooth. Amanda said, “Excuse me?”

  “What you said about me being a mama’s boy and all that.”

  “Yeah, well, I was way out of line… .”

  “No you weren’t,” said Wayne. “You were right on target. I’m sorry I drove away without you. That was a cheap shot. I’m glad you came without me.”

  Not half as glad as I am, Amanda told herself.

  “I had the limo guy drive me around until after dark. Then I went home, meaning to tell Mother off, but she wasn’t there. So I went out to the Benedetto’s house and spent the night with them. She didn’t call there looking for me or anything.”

  “She thought you were here,” Amanda said.

  “There were police cars all over the Hall. Vernon said the scabbard was missing, but I called Carrie the next morning and she said you had it with you, to make pictures with the sword. That was so cool, the way you took it without asking. I figured if you did it, I could too.”

  Malcolm turned back around. Amanda felt panic welling up in her throat. “Do what, Wayne?”

  His smile was smug. “I went over to Melrose Thursday morning and just filled up my suitcase. The tea service. The inkwell. I have a right to be there, I work there, after all. And all that stuff is mine. Well, more or less.”

  “It belongs to CW,” Amanda said faintly. “Your mother gave it to them, remember?”

  Wayne waved his hand dismissively. “She’ll settle up with them. That’s what she gets for keeping me on a stupid allowance and not letting me have my fair share. I mean, I had to have money if I was going to break off with her and make my own way. And she could trace my credit card.”

  “You still had your plane ticket.”

  “Yeah. I took the stuff to London. Got there Friday morning and went to the National Gallery and ‘Phantom of the Opera’ that afternoon—that was sweet!—and Saturday I went into Sotheby’s and tried to sell the Chinese vase, because it was the thing most likely to break.” His smug smile wobbled into the queasy expression of a vegetarian confronting a rare steak. “Only one problem.”

  Malcolm stopped pretending to ignore the conversation. “Sotheby’s had an inventory o’ the items. Listed as stolen goods.”

  “Yeah. So I played dumb and as soon as the guy’s back was turned I ran. He didn’t chase me very far.”

  Amanda visualized Wayne running down a London sidewalk chased by a frock-coated functionary. The image would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

  “I rushed back to the hotel and checked out before they could send out an APB,” Wayne concluded. “I still had my plane ticket on to Inverness, and I knew you were here. So I spent the night on a bench at the airport and came up here this morning. I used the rest of my cash to pay the taxi driver. Everything you hear about the Scotch being stingy is right, he wanted a fortune to drive me here.”

  Malcolm favored Wayne with a tight smile. “That’s ‘Scots,’ Sunshine. We’d be pleased if you’d accept a meal, a bed, and a bath here wi’ us. The door’s no locked, you could’ve gone inside and helped yoursel’ to everything we own.”

  “Oh,” Wayne said.

  “Come on,” said Amanda, feeling like she was sitting a particularly ungainly baby. “You’ll feel better once you get cleaned up.”

  “And we’re needin’ to …” Malcolm began, but was distracted by the car that drove in through the gateway. Denny Gibson’s police car, with Gibson behind the wheel and Norah installed comfortably on the passenger side.

  Wayne emitted a small yelp.

  “P.C. Gibson’s a friend of the family,” Amanda told him. “He’ll give you a fair hearing.”

  Malcolm stepped forward and opened Norah’s door. “Mum, Denny. The plot’s thickenin’.”

  Gibson got out of the car and put on his cap. “Is it, then?”

  “Then we’d best have a spot of lunch,” said Norah. “Mr. Chancellor, I presume? I’m Norah Grant. Shall we go inside?”

  Wayne mumbled something polite and let himself be herded into Dundreggan Castle, Malcolm and Amanda trading incredulous looks behind his back.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Norah announced they’d eat lunch in the dining room, although Amanda wasn’t sure whether the occasion was Wayne or Sunday. As she set the table she sent more than one wary glance up to the arch of the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The stones seemed to be securely in place, which was more than she could say for her feelings. One part of her danced arabesques of joy, one part slammed the dishes around in angry frustration, one part listened for the sound of footsteps.

  Wayne lurked in the downstairs lavatory until Norah called him to the table. He found himself seated next to Gibson, and kept shooting glances at the policeman like those Amanda was making at the ceiling. From the head of the table Norah doled out roast beef, potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts, and small popovers she called puddings. Appetite overcoming a guilty conscience, Wayne slathered everything with gravy and started forking it into his mouth.

  Amanda dismembered a sprout. Of all the idiotic half-baked schemes he could have come up with! She hadn’t taken the scabbard at all, let along taken it without permission. Cynthia was sure as hell on the warpath now—she’d probably think Amanda had led him on or set him a bad example or something. Malcolm’s foot nudged hers companionably beneath the table and she decided that the moment had its compensations.

  “Whilst I was driving to church with the Finlays this morning,” said Norah, and, parenthetically to Wayne, “The Finlays do for us here at Dundreggan, but they’ve gone on to their daughter’s in Kyle of Lochalsh the day …”

  Wayne acknowledged her words with a vague nod.

  “… Irene was telling me about her aunt, who lived in a house in Culloden, close to the battlefield. It was a new house, mind you, but her aunt would sometimes see soldiers marching through the walls on their way to battle. And more than once she heard the wailing of the clanswomen searching for their husbands and sons amongst the bodies.”

  “So you explained last night’s stramach?” Malcolm asked, and amended, “commotion,” for the benefit of the outlanders.

  “Yes. They had some idea of what was going on, of course.”

  Gibson calmly mashed potatoes and carrots onto his fork. Norah had probably told him all about it on the way back from church. A ghost. No big deal. Amanda shook her head. Their acceptance was like lugging a heavy suitcase up six flights of stairs and then finding an elevator.

  “You see,” Norah said to Wayne, “ghosts happen in the best of families.”

  His expression hung between dazed and dubious.

  That was Amanda’s cue. “Wayne, you’ve got the wrong idea. I didn’t take the scabbard without asking permission. I didn’t take it, period. It wasn’t until I got here I realized I had it with me. The ghost of James Grant took it and put it in the box with his bones. His consciousness is in it.”

  Wayne put a forkful of meat and pudding into his mouth without taking his eyes from Amanda’s face.

  He thinks we’re messing with his mind. “I never believed in ghosts until I met this one. He exists. Really. Last night he smashed the display case and took both the scabbard and sword that goes with it.”

  “I bet it was my mother and her stupid seance, wasn’t it?” he said, and swallowed. “She stirred something up. Something you’re calling a ghost.”

  “This is one thing your mother has no control over,” Amanda told him.

  Wayne shook his head, rejecting either the ghost or any doubt in Cynthia’s omnipotence.

  Gibson turned to Wayne. “I understand you have several items from Melrose with you.”

  “I guess that looks pretty bad, like they were stolen or something.”

  “I’m afraid that in the legal definition they have been stolen.”

  Wayne’s chin wobbled. “Are you going to call my mother?”

  “I’ll take a statement,” Gibson told him. “And I’
ll contact the police in Williamsburg. How you deal with your mother is your own affair.”

  Norah stood up and started stacking the empty plates. “After you and Denny finish the statement, Wayne, you’ll phone her.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Wayne handed over his plate, no doubt thinking, moms always stick together.

  Amanda and Malcolm helped Norah carry the plates to the kitchen. They went back to the dining room with chocolate mousse cake and a pot of coffee. The odor of the coffee was almost as bracing as actually drinking the caffeine, Amanda thought. And the way the flavors of coffee and chocolate combined in the mouth was sure one of Mother Nature’s best botanical feats.

  Norah asked Wayne about Cynthia and listened to his confused account of life with mother. “She must have a great deal of trouble seeing you as an adult,” Norah said at last.

  “No kidding,” said Wayne.

  “It might help if you were to start acting as an adult.”

  “Like not going off half-cocked and taking stuff from Melrose?”

  “That would make a good start,” Norah told him.

  Gibson folded his napkin onto the tablecloth and took a notebook from his pocket. “Let’s be getting on with the statement, I’m booked to guide a fishing party this afternoon.”

  “But you’re a policeman,” said Wayne.

  “Yes, but there’s not much of a living in it.”

  Wayne scraped the last smear of icing from his plate. “Anything you say,” he said, sounding like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

  In the kitchen Amanda and Malcolm washed the dishes, sneaked bits of meat to the animals, and listened to the voices in the dining room. Gibson got Wayne’s story out of him as calmly as a dentist extracting a tooth. Every now and then Norah interjected a comment or question. Finally all three went into the entrance hall to get the artifacts out of Wayne’s suitcases.

  “They’re handling him beautifully,” Amanda said. “The poor guy has to be stressed out.”

  Malcolm cut a thin slice from the remaining cake. “I dinna have to be jealous o’ him, do I?”