Ashes to Ashes (32 page)

Arm in arm, Heather sulking, Steve cajoling, they walked around the corner of the building. A few minutes later a car revved, loudly and unnecessarily, in the parking area. Heather’s stepmother’s Datsun, no doubt; the girl drove it with the heedless swoop of the newly licensed.

Well! Rebecca thought. Heather was turning out as surprisingly as Elspeth had. There must be something in the atmosphere at Dun Iain that made mice into lions. And what had that argument been about, anyway?

Phil appeared in the door. “Alarms are up. Dead bolt’s fixed.”

“Thank you,” she replied. His steps disappeared downstairs. Dorothy’s voice echoed upstairs. The front door slammed twice.

A preternatural silence fell over the castle, the usual creaks and pops of the house swallowed in the white noise of the rain. Rebecca started down the stairs and walked right into Darnley’s steady gaze as he crouched in the corridor, playing Greyfriars Bobby yet again. She stopped, a chill running its cold fingers down her spine.

He’d seen James lying there dead. Had he seen him fall? Or had he seen the old man pushed? The cat roused itself, looked up, meowed. Rebecca picked him up and laid her cheek against his soft fur, his little body thrumming comfortingly against her face.

Maybe some food would soothe the vague unease like a poison ivy rash in her stomach. She found Michael in the kitchen heating up the leftover soup. “Great minds think alike,” she said. “I’ll make some bran muffins.” They cooked and ate, jostling for the last crumbs, and when at last the food was gone Rebecca said, “You go on, I’ll clear up.”

Michael departed waving the bottle of Laphroaig and two glasses. “Usquebaugh was invented for a dreich night like this one. The museum, at least, expect their scholars tae be drinkers.”

“I won’t tell the state if you won’t,” Rebecca replied.

That was what she needed, she thought as she finished the dishes, threw the dead bolt, and started upstairs. A good hot meal to dull the nerves. As dismal day clotted into dark night outside, the inside of the castle became cozy, even the ghosts dozing in the gentle swish of the rain. The stone shed its gray chill, the dark paneling glowed warmly in the lamplight, and the steps spiraled like the petals of a sunflower. Like Michael, the house was very appealing when well behaved.

His voice wafted down the stairs. As Rebecca took down and brushed out her hair she listened to the song, then laughed. No wonder she couldn’t understand the words; he was singing Runrig’s “Chi Min Geamhradh”. She went on to the fourth floor and stepped into the bedroom as his voice leaped upward with emotion. He saw her and stopped. The next phrase fell silently, like a silk scarf, through her mind. “What do the words mean?”

“I dinna ken. I dinna have the Gaelic; I learned the song by rote.” He smiled reminiscently. “I knew a lass from Skye when I was at university. In moments o’ emotion she’d start talkin’ Gaelic. A’ those soft gutturals like puffs o’ thistledoon in my ear.” He reached for the bottle perched atop the bureau and poured a generous dollop into the empty glass. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” What dynamic of rain and Scotch had brought forth that confidence? Rebecca smiled, admiring the sinuous dance of the light in the amber liquid in her glass. “Here’s to the little man in the velvet weskit.”

“Which means?” asked Michael teasingly, raising his own glass.

“The mole who dug the hole into which King William III’s horse stumbled, killing him. William, not the horse. I assume the mole was sitting there smoothing its little plaid and snickering.”

“Very good.” Michael bowed graciously and sipped, swished the whiskey around his mouth and with a blissful smile swallowed.

The whiskey detonated inside Rebecca’s mouth and nose, filling her head with peat smoke and heather. She settled down on the floor next to the apothecary’s chest. The space heater sighed. The rain, muted by the stone walls, crooned a siren song about burns and braes. The smell of leather books and furniture polish mingled with the tang of whiskey inside her sinuses.

More old maps were in the first drawer. The next one held postcards and candy wrappers. The third… . “Uh-oh,” Rebecca said, “a contraband copy of Carnegie’s
The Gospel of Wealth
. The title’s been scratched off the spine. James, hiding it from his father? Or John, checking up on the competition?”

“Look at these novels,” said Michael. “All wi’ Elspeth’s name written on the flyleaf. Mrs. Holmes, Mrs. Southworth— sentimental moralists I’d expect. But Ouida, and
Lady Audley’s Secret
. Racy stuff.”

“I’m getting to like Elspeth,” admitted Rebecca. She opened another drawer and was rewarded by a mint copy of Boswell’s
Tour of the Hebrides
.

“How old are you?” Michael asked suddenly.

“How old am I? Twenty-seven. Why?”

He laughed. “You’re sae girlish at times. And yet you have such matronly gravitas. Gey contradictory.”

She sat with the book in her lap and stared at him. He found
her
contradictory? She countered, “How old are you?”

“Altogether too close to thirty, hen.”

Again he’d called her a pet name. Her cheeks burned— from the whiskey, no doubt. Rebecca opened the next drawer. In it was a wool cloth, green Forbes tartan. She took it to the bed and spread it out. It had a distinct odor of mothballs, but only two tiny holes. “Are you going to want this?”

Michael glanced around. “Bundle it up wi’ Elspeth’s clothes.” He turned back, singing under his breath, “I’ll roll you in my green plaid while we lie upon the grass.”

Rebecca quelled a giggle and reached for the far end of the cloth. “Did you ever want to play the pipes for one of the folk-rock groups? You’re as good as any I’ve heard.”

“Why, thank you. You heard me playin’, then?”

“The great Highland pipes are a little hard to miss.” She overbalanced and climbed onto the bed. “Although I almost wish I hadn’t; they made me hideously homesick for a place I’ve barely been.”

He was looking at her again; she felt that exacting blue gaze on her back. “No sae surprisin’. You’ve been livin’ there in your mind for years.”

“Oh. You’re right. Very perceptive.” She glanced around appreciatively. He shrugged, smiling back. She sat down and pulled the ends of the cloth toward her.

“Mind you,” Michael said, “I would’ve liked to play wi’ a group. But I wisna keen on livin’ on the dole between engagements. So I contented mysel’ playin’ for the Glendhu band at the occasional festival.”

“Have you ever tried Rizzio’s guitar?”

“And Baron Ruthven wi’ his wee dirk comin’ after me like he did poor Davy Rizzio? I’m never touchin’ that again.”

“Another booby-trapped artifact? In the ashes of time you do find the odd live ember.” Rebecca laid the cloth on the foot of the bed. Compared with some of the other rooms in the house this one was not at all haunted. Not one object they’d found here had that strange resonance, as compelling as music. “I played the accordion,” she said. “We couldn’t carry a piano around with us. But after endless repetitions of ‘Beer Barrel Polka’ and ‘Fascination’ I gave up. It was only later I realized I could’ve been playing the old Scottish and Irish songs, like the ones you grew up on.”

“I grew up on the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Willie Nelson.” Michael stood, rescued her glass of Scotch, and brought it to her.

“Thanks.” Tilting her head to drink, she saw that the underside of the canopy was stitched with intricate floral figures. She set her glass on the bedside table, flipped off her shoes, and lay back. “Well, look at that!”

Michael peered under the overhang. “Aye?”

“Beautiful embroidery.” And, as he moved, “Take off your shoes.”

He sent her a look of amusement and exasperation mingled. His Reeboks thudded on the floor and his head thumped the pillow. He balanced his glass on the cross on his chest; X marks the spot. “Victorian. Elspeth’s?”

“Seaming her sanity with embroidery floss? I bet this is where she met Rudolph. No wonder this room isn’t haunted. She was happy here.”

“Depends on how you mean happy.” Michael raised his head to drink. “Wasn’t Elspeth engaged to a man in Dundee before John carried her away? It’s like you said— he always wanted things that belonged to someone else. At least he couldn’t keep her.”

“Ah, she had him knackered right and proper. Takin’ trophies in the battle of the sexes, she was.”

“And it can be a battle,” Rebecca said. She reached for her Scotch, sipped, put it back. The room had a warm golden aura, as if she were looking at it through her glass. “Why did you ever take up with Sheila to begin with?”

He tensed. “It was almost two years ago. I was workin’ on the Jacobite exhibit at the British Museum. The same Jacobites the English used tae shoot like rabbits— noo they’re fair romantic. Sheila was publicity director. I was lonely and randy and she was lookin’ for entertainment. It was like a nettle rash. It’s nae good tae scratch it but you do anyway.”

“Quite lethal,” Rebecca agreed.

“And why did you take up wi’ Ray?”

“I was the classic ugly duckling. Braces on my teeth, glasses, nose in a book, no idea how to make friends, scared to death of boys. When I finally grew up, lonely and randy, there was Ray. He wanted me.”

Michael turned his head to look at her. “All it took was him wantin’ you? I was right— your standards are awful low.”

“I got what I wanted at the time. A family, more or less. At least he was never cruel to me, like Sheila was to you.”

That deflected Michael’s scrutiny. “I widna play her game of kiss my hand and thank you for civilizin’ me.”

Yes, he defended his territory. Even if he was a closet romantic. Rebecca’s mind frothed with satiny whiskey-scented bubbles. Aren’t we a couple of goofs, lying here with our bodies separated by a foot and a half, when the Atlantic isn’t wide enough to separate our minds.

Michael leaned across her to set his glass on the bedside table. He rapped the top approvingly. “Sheraton.”

“Oh?” she said, more for his posture than his comment.

He stayed propped on his elbows, his body angled across the bed, half beside her, half over her. His forefinger appeared in her peripheral vision and traced a line down her temple to her jaw. “Do you ken,” he murmured, his breath warm with peat smoke, his eyes sparkling with clean-washed Caledonian sunlight, “that I’m a Scottish pervert?”

“You are?”

“Aye. I like women better than whiskey.”

“I see.” She raised her hand and twined her fingers in the long, soft hair at the nape of his neck. “I thought, though, you didn’t like me.”

He grinned. “I’ve been likin’ you as much as you’ve been likin’ me.”

“That bad?” She grinned back.

“Just aboot.” The fingertip moved to her mouth and stroked her lower lip. “But then, I do like a woman wi’ a tart tongue in her head.”

“Show me,” said Rebecca. Her hand pulled his head down to hers. He parted his lips and showed her. Just as the whiskey had detonated in her mouth and nose the kiss detonated in her entire body. Some shred of rationality said, what do you think you’re doing? The rest of her sighed, and said, It’s about time.

“Ah, lass.” Michael laughed against her lips. “That’s right magic.”

She would’ve laughed, too, at the delightful absurdity of it, except laughing spoiled the shape of her mouth for kissing.

It must have been the lifetime of burred r’s and rounded vowels that gave his lips and tongue such flexibility. He covered her face, her ears, her throat with little licks and nibbles, a bit haphazardly, but not, thank God, sloppily. He tasted different from American men, but that was probably the benign influence of the whiskey. If he smelled of anything beyond his own subtle scent, it was soap. Her hand found the gap between the hem of his sweatshirt and the top of his jeans, hungry for that cool yet warm skin.

His hands were delicate, strong, inquisitive. Sleight of hands, touching her as he touched the chanter of the pipes until she, too, sang in a high, clear melody played over the drone of his breath.

Rebecca didn’t wonder what elemental fires burned beneath his surface. She saw them, touched them, tasted them, in the intricate pattern of flame and ash that was his face close to her face, that was his body beside hers. He was hiding nothing; whatever he was was there in her arms, beneath her hands, sheening her lips with the flavor of grain and peat and something indefinable that was Michael.

Hail spattered into the humming in her head.

Michael’s body went stiff. His head lifted and turned toward the door. Footsteps. James’s heavy steps, bloody great tackety boots, thudded down the staircase and up the hall toward the door. Rebecca’s mind stuttered. This time they were going to see him.

The steps stopped in the doorway as if repelled by something inside. But nothing was there. Not the least hint of a shape moved in the bright light of the hall. A gust of cold air, like an exhalation of hurt and disillusionment, chilled Rebecca’s forehead. Then the presence was gone.

The rain spit and drizzled. The lights glared as crudely as those in an operating room. This room is haunted after all, Rebecca thought. This bed is haunted, we’ve been overcome by an echo of lust. And yet touching Michael wasn’t lustful clawing at an itch. It was the slow friction of music in the mind, soothing and exciting at once.

Michael caught his breath in a wheeze and looked down at Rebecca. His affectionate expression melted and ran, exposing his mask of crisp appraisal. Then that, too, evaporated, revealing doubt and pain. His eyes frosted, barriers rising. Whatever insight she’d had into the light and shadow inside him was cut off with the finality of a door slamming shut.

He slid down her body, lifted her sweater, and laid his face on her bare skin in the hollow where her ribs curved and parted. The moment stretched, a note of music held to an excruciating length. Her mind played two melodies in counterpoint, please stop, don’t stop, please stop, don’t stop.

Then in one shuddering movement Michael pulled himself away, stood up, and walked out of the room.

Rebecca looked at the canopy without seeing it, her thoughts tumbling like pebbles in a mountain stream, their edges smoothed by bewilderment. She had seen pain on his face. She had seen conscience.