Houses of Stone (11 page)

Ahead lay a narrow passageway with closed doors along one side. That was all she saw before the cold leapt out at her like an imprisoned animal desperate for freedom. It was far more intense than that first wave of icy
air, not the absence of warmth but a positive force, active and malevolent. Black cold, cold darkness, heavy with despair. It gripped her body like huge dead hands, weakening her limbs and stifling her breath.

She fled mindlessly, leaving the door ajar, and tentacles of icy air followed, trying to hold her back. Down the narrow stairs, stumbling and slipping, along the corridor toward the back of the house—and straight into the arms of Cameron Hayes. She clung to him, panting and shivering. But not with cold. Sunlight filled the corridor; the air was cool but perfectly comfortable.

"What's wrong?" His voice was low, the soft slurred accent more pronounced. He was a little taller than Bill Meyer; her head fit neatly into the angle of his neck and shoulder. Meyer was more heavily built, as she had good cause to remember. Now she was acutely conscious of the structure of Cameron's body, bone, sinew and muscle, under his thin shirt. He smelled of sweat and paint and turpentine, not expensive aftershave.

Karen stiffened, straightening the fingers that had clung to his shoulders, moving her hands to press against his chest. The ridges of his collarbones were hard and sharply defined against her flattened palms. "I beg your pardon," she said formally. "I didn't see you."

"My fault," Cameron said, in the same slurred voice. "I shouldn't have let you go up there alone. Did you see . . . Did a mouse run over your foot?"

She had not deceived him. She'd have to find some reasonable excuse for that mad rush, but pride kept her from accepting the one he had offered. "I am not afraid of mice. It must have been a—a bat. Flying at me, flapping its wings."

"They don't get in your hair, you know. That's an old wives' tale."

"Would you mind letting go of me?"

"Oh. Sorry." One of his hands had cupped the back of her head. When he lifted it, a few hairs caught on the roughened skin. Karen pulled away, smoothing her tumbled locks.

"Bats can be rabid."

"Of course." He continued to watch her, his face unreadable. "They aren't usually active during the day."

"I must have disturbed it."

"Right. Well. I'd better get back to work. Sure you're okay?"

"Absolutely."

He nodded and walked away. Karen went in the opposite direction— primarily because it was the opposite direction. After getting lost once or twice in the twisting corridors of the west wing she found the stairs that descended into the kitchen. The old gas stove and painted cupboards were comforting reminders of ordinary domestic activities. Karen raided Cameron's supplies and made coffee. The room was warm, but she could still feel the chill deep inside.

Maybe there was a curse on the place, she thought wryly—something that doomed her to make a fool of herself every time she came there, something with a perverse sense of humor that pushed her into situations where she was forced to act like a helpless, hapless idiot of a Gothic heroine. Why the hell did Cameron have to turn up at that particular moment? He had known she was lying about the bat. Now he'd think she was a silly, hysterical idiot, especially after that joke about the house being haunted.

Karen didn't believe in ghosts either. She had never had an experience like that one, though. Was it possible that some places retained memories of past tragedy or desperate grief? Not the spirits of the dead themselves but emotions felt so strongly by the living that they had permeated the very fabric of the walls and the surrounding air?

It was just as likely that such experiences happened only to people with overactive imaginations and strained nerves. Especially people who had fattened their imaginations on horror stories like the one Simon had read to her. It had haunted her ever since. Darkness, cold and despair . . . Damn Simon anyway. That nasty story was probably the genesis of her dreams, too.

Time was getting on. She ought to start back soon, it was a long drive. For purely rational reasons she decided to go out the back door and around the house. She would then have explored every part of it. No need to pass through the main block again.

The enclosed porch she had seen only from the outside was cluttered with Cameron's equipment—rags, paint cans, tools. The door was unlocked; she opened it and cautiously descended the sagging steps. The scent of the lilacs was so strong it overcame the smell of paint and turpentine. Reaching across, she broke off a single spray of clustered
bloom and sniffed it appreciatively as she followed the path toward the front of the house.

Someone else must have arrived; she could hear voices. One voice, rather. It was loud and aggressive and unfamiliar. Cameron's responses were inaudible until she turned the comer of the house in time to hear him say, "I said no, and I mean no. If you think you can—"

Seeing her, he broke off. The other man turned.

He was a few inches shorter than Cameron and a good many years younger. The unlined skin of his face was spotted with acne which he had tried to conceal with makeup and with artfully arranged locks of flaxen hair. He had dimples. He produced them when he caught sight of Karen and assumed a pose that showed an impressive display of muscles to best advantage.

"Morning, ma'am," he cooed. "I didn't know you was here. Hope I'm not interrupting."

Both statements were untrue. He must have known someone was there, he had seen the car. She was only too familiar with the look that had accompanied the second lie, she had seen it on other masculine faces.

With a brusque nod of acknowledgment she turned to Cameron. "You should have told me you had another appointment, Mr. Hayes. I wouldn't have detained you so long."

"My only appointment was with you," Cameron said in the same impersonal tone. "He's just leaving."

"Oh, is this lady a client? Well, I sure don't want to interfere with your business, Cam. Sorry, ma'am. Hope I'll see you again."

Karen did not echo the sentiment. Smirking and strutting, the young man returned to his pickup—a newer, brighter, fancier model than Cameron's—and drove off.

"Thank you," Cameron said, tight-lipped and red-faced.

"What for?"

"Preventing Bobby from beating the . . . from beating me up. That's how he'll tell it. And that's what you thought was going to happen— right? You assumed I couldn't handle him and you figured he wouldn't start anything while you were present."

"Was he about to start something?" Karen asked innocently.

Cameron let out a long breath. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Have you finished for today?"

"Yes. But I'll be back."

His color had returned to normal. When he spoke, his voice was colorless and flat. "Any time, Dr. Holloway. Just let me know."

Glancing into the rearview mirror as she drove off, she saw him ascending the ladder. He did not look in her direction.

"Fifty-one five," Peggy repeated gleefully. "Hot damn!"

She didn't mean "fifty-one dollars and five cents." She meant "fifty-one thousand five hundred dollars." Peggy's reaction to the price Simon had finally set assured Karen that Peggy was ready and willing to accept it, but the number sounded terrifying.

"It's a lot of money," she murmured.

"Cheap as dirt. You can thank the good old boy literary establishment for that," Peggy said cynically. "Men dominate the committees that determine how university money is spent. I could almost feel sorry for what's-er-name—Angelo—trying to convince a bunch of middle-aged male chauvinists that a Gothic novel by an unknown woman writer is worth that much. I'm surprised she got them up to fifty thou."

"I'm surprised she didn't use her own money."

"Probably doesn't have it."

"How did you—" Karen stopped herself, but not quite in time.

"I write best-selling sex manuals under a pseudonym," Peggy said, in a tone which, though amiable, indicated she had said all she intended to say on that subject.

Simon's message had been waiting for Karen when she arrived home Sunday evening. There had been a number of other messages on her machine, including several from Peggy, increasingly irate in tone; Karen had called at once to tell her the good news and suggest they meet at the campus coffee shop next morning to discuss future plans.

The news had taken Peggy's mind off her grievance for a time. Now she turned a critical stare on Karen. "I hope you aren't planning to rush off to Baltimore today."

"No, I'm not."

"You hadn't planned to go to Virginia, either. You didn't tell me you were going. In fact, you deliberately misled me. Don't think you can sneak off without me today the way you did last weekend."

"I can't, can I?" Karen said quietly. "Not without the money."

Peggy's eyes shifted. "I didn't mean it that way."

"Yes, you did. I don't blame you." That was a lie too, but she made it sound convincing. "Let's get this out into the open, Peggy. I'm willing to accept your generous offer, but only as a loan. Strictly business. We'll go to a lawyer and draw up the necessary papers."

Peggy was silent for a moment. Voice and expression were neutral when she replied. "If that's how you want it."

"That's the only way I'll accept it." Another lie. She would have robbed a bank if there were no other way. She would have preferred to borrow from an impersonal source; a bank manager wouldn't lecture her about her personal habits and treat her like a two-year-old. But it would have taken weeks to get the money, even supposing she could persuade a bank to accept such doubtful collateral as a battered manuscript.

"Deal," Peggy said. "Now would you care to tell me about your weekend, or is that none of my business?"

"You'll be happy to hear that without your restraining influence I managed to behave like a complete idiot," Karen said cheerfully. She had made her point, and Peggy, no fool herself, had understood. Whether she would continue to accept the implicit conditions was another matter, but Karen didn't want her to harbor hard feelings.

"Oh, yeah?"

Karen glanced at her watch. She had a class in ten minutes, so she made it brief, describing only her encounter with Lisa Fairweather and Bill Meyer. One admission of fallibility was enough; there was no need to mention that she had also made a fool of herself with Cameron Hayes. "It wasn't very smart of me to go out there alone," she admitted. "But I don't think I deserved such total humiliation."

Peggy was trying not to laugh. She lost. "Sorry," she sputtered. "But it's such a classic, banal Gothic plot! Being rescued by the dark handsome man you detest, in the presence of the beautiful Other Woman—a blonde, of course ..."

"Meyer was thinking exactly the same thing, damn him. Conceited bastard ... He isn't handsome. What made it especially entertaining was having the Other Woman take me for a bag lady." She consulted her watch again. "I'd better get going. Have you any free time tomorrow
or Wednesday? I'll try to set up an appointment with my lawyer. We might plan to drive to Baltimore on Saturday."

"We?" Peggy repeated.

"Of course."

"Okay. I'm free tomorrow after three, and on Wednesday morning. Wait a minute," she exclaimed, as Karen rose to her feet. "You haven't told me what happened after you got caught."

"I managed to get in touch with Mr. Hayes that evening. He took me out to the house next day; he's trying to clean the place up so he can sell it. He was very nice," she added, with a meaningful glance at her companion. "He didn't lecture me about my rude, careless behavior."

Relations between them continued to be self-conscious, if not actually strained, for the rest of the week. Peggy was curt and businesslike during the meeting with the lawyer, and left immediately afterward. There was no time for friendly conversation; it was one of the busiest weeks in the academic year, and Karen was pushing herself to finish her work as quickly as possible. She pushed her students too, scheduling exams at her convenience instead of theirs and rejecting all but the most compelling requests for extensions on papers and reports. Their response convinced Karen that they were the whiniest, most self-pitying bunch she had ever taught, and her opinion was confirmed when she found out some of them had complained about her to the departmental chairman.

"He had the gall to tell me I was obviously suffering from nervous strain, and that maybe what I needed was a more active social life," she reported bitterly. "Can you believe that guy?"

They were on their way to Baltimore. Peggy was driving—and smoking. Karen had not objected to either. Some concessions were necessary to reestablish friendly relations; Peggy's manner had been decidedly stiff when they met that morning.

Her efforts seemed to be succeeding. "Sure, I can believe it," Peggy said. "You'd better watch him, Karen. He's out to get you. Sexual harassment is a hot issue these days; he's not dumb enough to make a direct move or explicit remark, but he can drive you crazy without actually stepping over the line."

"He hasn't got anything on me. I haven't neglected my work; I'm
completely caught up except for turning in final grades in two courses, which I will do on Monday. And once I've published the manuscript . . ."