Ashes to Ashes (28 page)

She didn’t move. His fingers began tapping gently but impatiently at the angle where her hip met her thigh.

Eric’s masculinity flared around his armor like the corona around an eclipse. When the barriers were down he’d incinerate her, as Zeus did some hapless mortal— not Europa, not Danae, she’d have to look it up.

If the barriers came down. She wanted to hold that part of him that was the child in the picture and tell him it was all right. But the man he was now didn’t need her to tell him anything. Even in the most intimate of moments he was perfectly capable of remaining so slick she’d slide off him.

She didn’t move. She was still in his arms, but she was no longer touching him. The song she’d been singing thinned and died into a sour resonance in the back of her mind. His armor was so brightly polished it reflected odd, evasive shapes. She might never be able to see inside.

Items listed in the inventories were missing. James hadn’t liked Eric anymore, there at the end. A letter from Sotheby’s marked a page in
MacKay
… . Just once, Rebecca demanded of herself, can’t you trust someone?

She couldn’t see his face; her face was buried in his throat, her nostrils filled with his salt and spice scent. His hand clenched on her teddy, twisted, and released it to retreat down her thigh. Beneath her hands his breath slowed and deepened, the tension ebbed from his body, his skin cooled.

That’s all? But men were mortally insulted at being thwarted— especially at such a moment.

Rebecca looked up. He was gazing not at her but at the window across the room. With his hair tousled across his forehead he seemed almost vulnerable. Tired. Certainly disappointed. He would hit her not with anger, then, but with sarcasm. No fair, she pleaded silently, to talk about wasting the concert tickets, the fancy dinners, the bottle of champagne.

He exhaled, pulled the hem of her dress to her knee, and stroked her hair back from her face. His eyes were the black cairngorms she remembered from that first night, a hint of smoke drifting in their depths.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being pulled in so many different directions right now. I’ve been leading you on all this time, I know.”

“Then continue to lead me on. I’m enjoying it.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “After the first of January, after all the sound and fury at Dun Iain is over, would you like to come on a cruise with me?”

She stared. “Do what?”

“Come on a cruise with me. The Caribbean in January. A vacation after all your hard work. My treat, of course.”

She relaxed against him. Thank God for Eric’s self-control, for his almost frightening maturity. If his hand had taken the plunge she’d have been Jell-O; he could have carried her into the bedroom like Rhett Butler. And would probably have thrown out his back, halting the proceedings in an even more embarrassing manner.

A cruise. That might work. After she’d survived the ghosts, the artifacts, the maudlin music of a set of pipes. After her damned suspicious nature had burned itself out for lack of fuel. They could have that brief, intense encounter after all, made nice and tidy by a beginning when the ship sailed and an end when it docked. She’d bring fire-fighting equipment and grappling hooks, just to be prepared. “Why yes,” she said. “Let’s try that.”

“It’s a date, Rebecca.” Eric levered her off his lap. “Would you like to go home now? You can stay, if you like.” He held his hands to the side— see, I’m unarmed and not dangerous.

“Dun Iain? Home?” She laughed wanly. “It’s the closest thing to a home I have right now, isn’t it? Yes, I would, please.”

He put on his burgundy jacket, helped her collect her coat and shoes, and walked her down to the car. It was after one AM. Even so they were in traffic almost all the way to Putnam. They sat not talking, quiet music emanating from the speakers, Eric driving with one hand and holding her hand with the other. Passing headlights swooped out of the darkness like flak, burst and died. Rebecca slumped, aching, tied in knots of unrelieved desire. The pain would eventually dull. It always had before.

The drive was a tree-lined tunnel. At its end every light in the castle blazed. No cars were in the parking area beside the Toyota and the Nova. So much for her fantasies about Michael and the mail carrier. Unless the woman had been and gone. Well, he was a grown man. He could manage his own affairs. Rebecca clambered wearily from the car.

“The lights were on like this the night your room was vandalized?” Eric eyed the ranks of glowing windows. “I’d better come in with you.”

Rebecca unlocked the door and pushed it open. Her steps on the flagstones sounded like gunshots. “Michael?”

A sudden pounding shattered the silence. She whirled around. Eric was staring at the storeroom door. “Hello!” said Michael’s voice. “Would you mind terribly unlockin’ the door?”

“What the hell?” asked Eric. He tried the knob.

“Use the key,” Michael called.

“It’s not in the lock.”

“Then look for it!”

It took Rebecca only moments to find the key, lying in a rim of shadow just where the white marble of the sarcophagus met the gray stone of the floor. She thrust it into the lock and threw the door open.

Michael leaned against a packing crate, two cans of Moosehead, his notebook, a crowbar, and a heavy screwdriver beside him. Other crates stood open, their lids strewn all the way back into the shadows where the ceiling curved toward the floor. “Welcome home,” he said to Rebecca. “I was afraid you’d no be back the night.” He inspected her up and down and added, “You’re a wee bit peelie-wally.”

“Peelie-wally?” asked Eric.

Michael’s eye shifted to him, taking in the absence of vest, coat and tie. “Thin and pale, like a plucked chicken,” he explained. Something in his expression glinted not so much with amusement as with a furtive satisfaction.

Eric turned one way, rolling his eyes upward. Rebecca turned the other, looking down at the floor, smothering a grin and a groan. The turkey, that was exactly how she felt. But if it was none of his business what she had done this evening, it was none of his business what she hadn’t. “What on earth are you doing? Did you open all those boxes?”

Michael closed his spiral notebook and tucked a pencil into the wire. “It’s a fair cop. Caught me workin’.”

“At this hour?” Eric asked.

Michael yawned. “I was goin’ to quit hours ago, mind you. But the door slammed and locked itself. Or at least I never heard anyone there.”

“Here we go again,” said Rebecca. “Every light in the house is on. Human or supernatural malefactors?”

Eric scoffed, “You could’ve locked the door and scooted the key underneath it. It was just over there.”

“Oh aye, I was right keen on spendin’ the night in the lumber room.” “You could’ve used that stone to smash the lock.”

He was pointing at a three-foot high piece of sandstone whose surface rushed with carvings of hunters on horseback. Michael’s face suffused with horror. He stepped back and patted the artifact protectively. “This is a Pictish sculptured stone, I’ll have you know. Resembles the one at Aberlemno. And look at that one there.”

Oh my, Rebecca thought. She followed him like a child following the Pied Piper. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Roman milestone, probably from Hadrian’s wall. See?” His forefinger traced the inscription. “’Imp Caesar Hadrianius Leg III’. Third legion.”

Eric, still in the doorway, hiked back his jacket, stuck his hands in his pockets, and rattled his change.

“John must’ve bought oot some grave robber’s entire store,” continued Michael. “Look— a bronze figurine, a stone bowl, and Samian ware from Gaul. Legionary Tupperware, eh?”

Rebecca picked up the smooth red-slipped bowl. It had come from France to Britain and now here, over the miles and the centuries. It thrummed very faintly next to her skin, transmitting some inchoate memory of the other hands that had held it.

“A glass flask for oil.” Michael indicated a small tissue-wrapped object. “Very rare. And here… . “Another stone, carved in a faint image of a seated woman. “An altar. ‘Deo Sancto Juno Caelestis.’”

“Look!” Rebecca called to Eric. “Isn’t it great?” He smiled faintly, his eyes glazed. Whether at the flood of information or at a Scot speaking Latin Rebecca couldn’t tell. She turned back to Michael. “’Juno Caelestis’. That means Brigante territory. What’s the provenance?”

“That’s just it.” Michael dropped the lid of a case with a thud and turned to Eric, scowling. “Your bleedin’ inventories dinna have Sweet Fanny Adams aboot this lot. They’re taken oot o’ context. It’s criminal!”

“They’re not my inventories,” retorted Eric.

Michael gesticulated. “Forbes should be hanged for scarperin’ wi’ these things. They’re soddin’ useless the noo!”

“He’s already dead,” said Eric. “Has it occurred to you… .”

Rebecca started toward him. Michael jogged her elbow, pulling her back. “Just look at this.”

He put into her hands a metal casket about the size of a loaf of bread. The silver trimming was tarnished, but bits of enamel showed faintly through the dust. An inscription ran along the rim of the lid. She held the casket up to the light and squinted. “James Graham, Earl of Montrose. Michael, you don’t mean this is the man’s heart!”

“I told you it was here,” he replied. “The one thing I do have provenance for. Open it up and take a keek.”

“Bloody hell I will!” Rebecca thrust the casket at him so quickly he almost fumbled it. She dusted her hands. “The last thing I want to look at is someone’s mummified heart. Especially when you consider how it left his body!”

Michael grinned. “Dinna get the wind up. You dinna have tae look. Noo if John really had Mary’s severed head around here somewhere… .”

“Is he always this gruesome?” asked Eric.

Rebecca retreated toward the door. “Not really. Pardon him his enthusiasms, will you? Most of them are mine, too.” And to Michael, as he stood unrepentant, holding the casket, “No wonder you didn’t hear anyone lock the door. You wouldn’t have heard a brass band. You’ve made quite a dent in the pile, haven’t you?”

“Well, since I was locked in… . “His eyes slid slyly away from hers. He wrapped the casket with a cloth and tucked it into a box.

No wonder he’d wanted her to go away. But Rebecca didn’t have enough energy for a real head of rage. With Michael rage was wasted effort. “You’ve been in here every night I’ve been gone, haven’t you? Trying to get all the goodies for yourself.”

“For the museum,” Michael corrected. “It’s my job.”

“If you say that one more time, I’ll scream!”

Eric smiled at Rebecca and Michael both like a teacher at slow pupils. “Has it occurred to you that someone could’ve been out here looting the entire house?”

Rebecca sagged. Michael swore, charged past her and ran up the stairs. They went through the house, from the room beneath the platform on down, Michael at point, Eric and Rebecca following warily behind. Nothing was gone. Nothing was moved. Darnley sat impassively washing his face on the bed on the fifth floor, the impression of Elspeth’s body beside him.

One glimpse of the cat and Eric sidled back downstairs. “You lucked out this time,” he told Michael when they regained the entry.

“You make it sound as if I let someone in,” Michael replied. “For a’ I ken it was the bogles again, bein’ more creative this time oot.”

“Sure,” said Eric.

Michael turned abruptly and stamped into the kitchen— as well as he could stamp in Reeboks.

“Innocent until proven guilty?” Rebecca suggested to Eric. “Surely it’s our same malefactor. But he— she— would need a key.”

“The keys are still here,” called Michael. “Is that evidence for or against me, Mr. Expensive Lawyer?”

The tight line of Eric’s mouth relaxed. He didn’t demand why Rebecca was defending Michael. She wasn’t sure herself, except that she lived in Dun Iain, too. “As long as nothing’s missing I’ll have to assume you’re innocent, won’t I?” he called. And, with a shudder as if something cold had traced his spine, “God, I’ll be glad when all this is over.” He wrapped his arm around Rebecca. “Walk me to the car?”

He might well be glad when it was over with her, too. He looked, she thought contritely, exhausted. His eyes were brittle smoked glass, the parallel lines between his eyebrows cut deep. And he had to drive back to Columbus. “Would you like to stay here?” she asked. “We have plenty of beds.”

A sardonic spark lit his eye and winked out. Sure.

The night was utterly dark, utterly silent except for the dissatisfied mutter of the wind in the trees. On the neutral ground of the parking area Eric and Rebecca kissed with more rue than passion. “I hadn’t intended the evening to end like this,” he told her.

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley, Rebecca said to herself. The best laid schemes to get laid, that is. Aloud she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t think I did either.”

“Well, now we have our cruise to look forward to.”

“Yes, we do.” Just keep letting me see those chinks in your shell, she thought. Even for a brief encounter I want a man, not a knight in shining armor. She stood shivering in the cold until the red taillights disappeared into the trees.

Just as she was locking the door Michael wailed, “Damn and blast!”

Rebecca wasn’t sure she was capable of caring about anything else tonight. The echoing clarity inside her head was worse than any headache. She looked into the sitting room. “Now what?”

He held one of his cassettes. The tape spilled from it, tangled around the lamp, the chair, the shelf where the stereo equipment sat. “It’s one o’ my Runrig tapes. You canna get them here!”

“Oh no! Not the live album, the one with ‘Loch Lomond’ on it?”

“Aye, that one.” He tried to reel in the tape. It was knotted beyond repair. “Damn,” he moaned, and laid the cassette as reverently down as if it were the mangled body of a pet.

“I love the way they do ‘Loch Lomond’,” Rebecca protested. “They have such a gestalt going with the audience, the song tarted up into pop-rock and yet with the bloody heart still beating.”

“Oh aye,” Michael said softly. He glanced around, just long enough for her to glimpse the anguish in his face. For once the psychological warfare, whether perpetrated by man or spirit, had been directed at him.