“My dislike for him kept me from considering him dispassionately. His leaving a fragment of the ‘spolia’ inscription conveniently by the gate should have tipped me off that the entire scenario, of a thief hitting Caterina, was a trick.”
“Your suspecting Sweeney would be like my suspecting Forrest,” Gareth returned. “Of the two of us I’m the trained detective. And I detected sod-all, didn’t I? You weren’t stupid. I was.”
They exchanged a long, disgruntled look.
“My skepticism wasn’t blocking you, was it?” Gareth asked.
“No. Not at all,” she assured him.
“But you feel betrayed. Not so much by Sweeney as by your own senses.”
“Yes,” Matilda admitted. “And you’re both angry and frightened that you came so close to failing. Tell you what. I won’t feel stupid and feckless and guilty if you won’t.”
“All right then.” Gareth’s eyes fell. He drank.
Clapper hurried up with two plates of bread, cheese, salad, and pickled onion. “Dr. Gray, Inspector March, I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing needs to be said,” Matilda assured him.
“Except perhaps a thank you to your public servants,” said Gareth.
Clapper looked at him doubtfully, not sure that was a joke. “Oh—er—thank you, Inspector. When you get back to Scotland Yard, if you’d share out those brochures I gave you. . . .”
“Certainly,” Gareth assured him.
Through a lull in the conversation came Watkins’s voice, “. . . rubbish and gossip, as I’ve said all along.”
“Right,” said Clapper, sliding in behind the bar once again. “Harmless nutters, the lot of them.”
Matilda sliced the wedge of cheddar on her plate, balanced it on a bit of the crusty roll, and decorated the combination with a morsel of onion. “You’re not asking me why you knew Ashley was in danger. How you knew you could trust Nick. How you know what I’m feeling.”
“I don’t have to ask you, do I? I know.” Gareth ripped the roll apart with his teeth. “I was in a flap, I wasn’t stopping to analyze, I was simply feeling. It probably won’t happen again.”
“It might not,” Matilda agreed. “How are you feeling now?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“Yes, but you’d feel better if you told me verbally.”
Shaking his head, Gareth said, “When we first met I thought you were playing games. And now, at the end of the day, I see that you were the only person not playing games. Next to Gran, you’re the most honest person I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” Matilda told him. “Your gran would be very proud of your honesty.”
“If it—if that certainty in my senses—does happen again,” returned Gareth with an uneven smile, “I won’t be frightened of it. I imagine she’d be proud of that, too.”
“Very much so.” Interesting, Matilda thought as she ate, how the two motherless boys responded to their own sensitivity, Gareth spending years denying, Nick hurrying to reply with an awkward religious impulse. Nick would eventually grow up. If he became half the man Gareth was, he’d be a remarkable creature indeed.
She pulled Nick’s necklace from her pocket and fastened it around her neck. The gold crescent nestled in the open throat of her shirt. “Do you sense any magic in this?”
“I sense something magic, yes.” His eyes focused thoughtfully on the valley of flesh just below the gold. “I don’t think it’s the necklace, though.”
“Magic is in the senses of the beholder.” Matilda shoved her plate away. She sipped again at her whisky, and ran her tongue between her lips to catch the last nuance of its taste. “You have to leave for London tomorrow morning?”
“Forrest told me to be in the ready room at first light on Monday, my reports ready to file. I must admit that a load of paperwork won’t come amiss.”
“I have to stay on here, to finish the excavation. Ted Ionescu will help, I imagine, once he’s over the shock.”
Gareth’s voice dropped into a lower register. “I’d hoped to spend a few days showing you Wales.”
“I’d have liked that. Let’s do it some other time.” By no accident at all her hand was lying on the table. His hand slipped forward. Their fingers touched. An electric tingle ran up Matilda’s arm.
“Beltane,” Gareth said. “May Day, the rites of spring—it’s not something one can ignore, is it?”
“No.” She turned her hand palm up. His forefinger traced a path from palm to pulse. Her pulse raced to his touch.
He smiled, not at all unevenly. “I’ve some CDs of Welsh music in my room. They’re rather a secret vice.”
“Disturbingly sensual?”
“Inspiring, in the proper circumstances. Shall I fetch them?”
“Please.”
As one, they stood and headed toward the stairs.
* * * * *
Ashley shut the door of her room and hurried toward the staircase. Here came Bryan from the other direction, already dressed in his best jeans and baseball cap. He was the squire that polished the knight’s armor, she decided, rather than the knight himself. The squire who would eventually grow up to be a knight. But she didn’t want to be carried off by anyone, knight or knave, not any more. Being abducted wasn’t even remotely what it was cracked up to be.
“I hear the band’s a U2 rip-off,” he said. “That’s okay, just as long as they have enough bass.”
“Dancing outside the churchyard,” said Ashley. “I’ll have to write up the symbolism for English next semester.”
They waited in the hallway for Gareth and Matilda to pass them. “We’re going to the dance,” Ashley said, “to celebrate the rites of spring and everything. Want to come?”
“Thank you,” Matilda said with a smile so broad her molars gleamed. “We have other plans.”
Gareth looked solemn and inscrutable. “Have a good time.”
Bryan and Ashley pushed through the fire doors. “I might switch my major to archaeology,” he said. “All this Roman stuff is really cool.”
“I was thinking about psychology,” said Ashley. She glanced back over her shoulder. Matilda was unlocking the door of her room. Gareth was leaning close to her. Ashley read his lips: “Half a minute. Turn down the covers.”
Book covers? They were spending a Saturday evening working on the excavation records . . . Whoa! she thought, and stifled her grin. Matilda and Gareth, what a concept. But why not? Good for her! Good for them both!
Hand in hand Ashley and Bryan trotted on down the stairs and out the door into the lucid light of evening.
* * * * *
Matilda’s hand lay on the pillow beside her sleeping face. It reminded Gareth of the hand in Shadow Moss, resting peacefully on its block of peat. The necklace at Matilda’s throat, sparking in the slow rise and fall of her breath, reminded him of something else entirely.
He finished dressing without opening the curtains—enough of the delicate morning light leaked round them that he could find his clothing. A shame he had to drive back to London today. But Forrest would have his guts for garters if he weren’t at the Yard Monday morning. He couldn’t risk his chances for promotion, not now, not after almost making a mess of the case.
Outside the window birds trilled happily. Church bells pealed. Gareth picked up the silvery discs of his CDs and placed them in the boxes. Derlyth Evans’ harp music, “Living and Being” by Plethyn, Cusan Tan’s album “Kiss of Fire”—appropriate, that. He’d never listen to any of them again without remembering how they’d sounded with Matilda’s talented hands kneading the muscles of his back and loins, with her body moving rhythmically in complement to his, with her forefinger rubbing the imprint of a crescent from his chest.
He remembered riding Gremlin through the dusk toward Durslow, the rush of the wind bearing him back into his own past. He remembered the white-clad figures dancing between fire and shadow and turning in the end to the light. He remembered Matilda’s lips and tongue shaping words in
his ears, speaking of cares and worries he’d never before dared to express. He remembered her lips and tongue playing his ears and mouth and body parts further afield, in a silence more profound than words. A silence broken only by the sighs and cries of affirmation which had shown him how pleased she was by his touch, and shown her how pleased he was by hers. He’d never realized that extra-sensitive perceptions, either her well-developed ones or his furtive ones, could serve pleasure as well as intellect. It was Matilda who carried him into the future.
And what of that future? he wondered. Once away from her empathy, would he go back to distrusting himself? And he answered, no. She had held a mirror up to his own face, and shown him who he could trust.
With a reminiscent sigh that filled his nostrils with the scent of books and roses, Gareth put on his jacket. He left the newest Ar Log neo-Celtic revival album next to the note on the dresser. In the thin light his handwriting seemed not black on white but gray on gray. The words were trite expressions of affection and respect. He knew he could trust Matilda to see beyond them.
Gareth walked across the room, the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. At the door he paused and looked back at the bed.
Matilda’s blue eyes were as clear and bright as the morning sky. Her lips pursed as she blew him one last kiss.
Catching it with a smile, he stepped out into the shadowy corridor and shut the door behind him.
About the Author
After starting out in science fiction and fantasy, Lillian Stewart Carl is now writing contemporary novels blending mystery, romance, and fantasy, along with short mystery and fantasy stories. Her work often includes paranormal themes. It always features plots based on history and archaeology. While she doesn’t write comedy, she believes in characters with a sense of humor. Her novels have been compared to those of Daphne du Maurier, Mary Renault, Mary Stewart (no relation), Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s colleague Charles Williams.
Her fantasies are set in a mythological, alternate-history Mediterranean and India. Her contemporary novels are set in Texas, in Ohio, in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and in England and Scotland.
Of her Lucifer’s Crown, Library Journal says: "Blending historical mystery with a touch of the supernatural, the author creates an intriguing exploration of faith and redemption in a world that is at once both modern and timeless.
Of her Shadows in Scarlet, Publishers Weekly says, “Presenting a delicious mix of romance and supernatural suspense, Carl (Ashes to Ashes) delivers yet another immensely readable tale. She has created an engaging cast and a very entertaining plot, spicing the mix with some interesting twists on the ghostly romantic suspense novel.”
Among many other novels, Lillian is the author of the Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron cross-genre mystery series: America’s exile and Scotland’s finest on the trail of all-too-living legends. Of The Secret Portrait, Kirkus says: “Mystery, history and sexual tension blend with a taste of the wild beauty of the Highlands”. Of The Burning Glass, Publishers Weekly says: “Authentic dialect, detailed descriptions of the castle and environs, and vivid characters recreate an area rich in history and legend. The tightly woven plot is certain to delight history fans with its dramatic collision of past and present.”
With John Helfers, Lillian co-edited The Vorkosigan Companion, a retrospective on Lois McMaster Bujold’s science fiction work, which was nominated for a Hugo award.
Her first story collection, Along the Rim of Time, was published in 2000, and her second, The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth, in 2008, including three stories that were reprinted in Year’s Best mystery anthologies.
Her books are available in both print and electronic editions. Here are her other Smashwords titles. Here is her website. Here is her Facebook fan page.
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