Kingdom of Shadows (29 page)

Almost at once the darkness was over. A faint silver rim was reappearing on the far side of the moon. The eclipse was passing. She walked back slowly towards the house and pushed open the back door. She was pulling off her boots as Sarah went to answer the phone.

‘It’s Mrs Cassidy,’ she said as she handed the receiver over. The kitchen was warm and steamy; Clare could smell some kind of casserole in the oven.

‘Hi, Emma. How are you?’ She tried to make her voice cheerful.

‘I’m pretty fed up actually.’ Emma sounded unusually depressed. ‘I had to ring someone.’

‘What is it?’ Clare, the phone in one hand, wriggled free of her coat. She frowned, trying to shake off her own black mood. Behind her Sarah had tactfully left the room.

‘Peter’s back.’

‘But surely you should be pleased.’

‘Yes. I should.’ Emma sniffed miserably. ‘But he’s going away again, almost at once.’

‘Oh, Emma. I’m sorry. That’s beastly.’

‘Yes.’ There was a long silence, then Emma went on, her voice a little brighter. ‘Do you want to hear some gossip?’

‘Why not? Who are we going to talk about?’ Clare tried to make herself sound cheerful.

‘Me, actually.’ Emma suddenly gave a rueful laugh. ‘I seem to have found myself another man. If I want him.’ The last sentence was spoken almost in a whisper.

For a moment Clare, stunned into silence, didn’t reply.

‘Are you horrified?’

‘Horrified? No. I’m impressed. Who is he? What is he like? Have I met him?’

‘Ah, all that is classified information. All I can tell you is that he is dishy; he’s quite old – mid-fifties, I should say. And he’s an American.’

‘Emma, you sly old thing! How long have you known him?’ Clare was intrigued.

There was a slight pause. ‘Does forever sound corny?’ she answered at last.

‘Absolutely awful.’ Clare laughed. ‘When are you seeing him again?’

‘I don’t know. He’s going up to Scotland next week. He said he’d ring me when he got back. I wasn’t going to see him again, Clare, but Peter will be away …’ Her voice trailed into silence. ‘He’s been away about six months this year so far, and I’m fed up. I’m lonely. I know it’s not his fault; I know it’s part of the job. I know I should be able to cope. I have Julia; I have the gallery. I’m very lucky. But I need something else.’

‘I know.’ Clare’s voice was bleak. ‘And for you the something else is American and dishy.’

How strange that Emma too should be lonely. Two lonely women with such different ways of dealing with their loneliness. Clare smiled to herself wryly. There was a moment’s silence.

‘He’s special, Clare.’

‘He must be if you like him.’ Clare smiled.

‘Are you still doing your meditating?’ Emma had suddenly noticed the sadness in Clare’s tone and she cursed herself silently for being thoughtless.

‘The meditating you told Geoffrey about, you mean?’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry about that. It just slipped out. Has he been in touch? Tell him to mind his own business.’ Emma’s voice had lost its self-pity. She was suddenly her old energetic self.

‘I did.’ Clare smiled grimly.

‘And, are you still doing it?’

‘You mind your own business.’

Emma laughed.

Paul had been watching the eclipse from the Embankment. Walking slowly away from Westminster Bridge, dazzled by the street lights and the cars, he had stared upwards with almost unwilling fascination as the moon slowly died. He was thinking about Clare. He didn’t like himself for what he was about to do, but there was no room for sentiment in business. Or guilt.

He stood for a moment just inside the door of the restaurant in Long Acre, ostensibly taking his time as he extricated himself from his overcoat and handed it over. Scanning the seated diners, he instinctively picked out Rex at once. Ten minutes late himself after his long, slow walk through the cold streets, he had known the American would be there early. He studied the half-averted face, trying to read the man’s character; trying to establish a base from which he could find an advantage.

Slowly he followed the
maître d’hôtel
towards the table. For a moment the two men looked at each other, one standing, one seated, appraising one another in silence. Paul stood for a moment longer than necessary, then he held out his hand.

‘Mr Cummin?’

Rex did not rise. ‘I hope you’re not going to waste my time, Royland. As you didn’t cancel, I assume your wife has changed her mind and that you really do have her authority to negotiate this time.’

Paul frowned as he seated himself at the table. ‘I told you in my letter –’

‘Your wife rang me. She said no way was she selling, and that you were not empowered to act for her.’ He waved away the waiter who was hovering with the menus. ‘Unless I have some assurance that she has changed her mind –’

‘My wife is ill –’

‘Not according to her.’ Rex’s eyes were fixed on Paul’s face.

‘Emotionally ill.’ Paul looked away. ‘May I ask when she rang you?’

‘Monday.’

Paul thought fast for a moment, then he leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘I can explain. Why don’t we order an aperitif and discuss this? I think you and I want the same result from this meeting and I believe we have something to build on.’

Rex raised an eyebrow. ‘OK. We’ll discuss it.’ He clicked his fingers at the waiter. ‘Bourbon on the rocks.’

‘The same,’ Paul ordered hastily. His chest was feeling tight; his stomach churning uncomfortably. Surreptitiously he wiped his hands on the napkin out of sight beneath the tablecloth which covered his knees.

‘Let me put my cards on the table.’ He took a deep breath. ‘As you have probably gathered my wife is emotionally attached to the land you want. It has been in her family for hundreds of years. Any offer that was made for it would have to compensate us fully for that emotional attachment.’

‘My existing offer already does that.’ Rex picked up his glass as soon as it was put before him. ‘The market value on the hotel is half what I am offering, and I’m giving over the odds per acre for the land as well.’

Paul could feel himself sweating. ‘But we are talking oil are we not?’

Rex inclined his head. ‘Ownership of the land does not confer ownership of the mineral rights as I’m sure you know.’ He leaned forward. ‘We get a drilling licence, and all we have to pay you as owner is compensation for loss of amenity and rent for the space taken up by the installations. That would be peanuts compared with what I’m offering you.’

‘So why’ – Paul was suddenly suspicious – ‘why, if you don’t need to own the land, are you so keen to buy?’

Rex smiled. ‘I’ll be straight with you. It gives us the advantage over the other companies if bids go to tender when the D.o.E. hand out the sectors in the next licensing round.’

‘So it’s worth a lot to you, to own the land.’

An ancient Comyn castle. The seat of his ancestors. A romantic ruin. A dream. Rex clenched his fists. ‘It’s worth what I offered. No more.’ He drained his glass. His heart was beating very fast.

‘What if another company does bid for the land?’

‘They won’t. No one else has been surveying that sector. I expect Sigma to be the only bidder.’

‘But you said –’

‘I said if, Mr Royland. I’m only hedging my bets. I don’t need to buy. But take my word for it, oil is going to be extricated from that headland whatever happens. Whether you make money from it is up to you and your wife.’

Paul looked grim. ‘My wife will be going away shortly. By the time she has left she will have given me power of attorney to act for her in her absence, but I shall only do so if I feel the money is sufficient compensation for the loss she is going to suffer. You had better leave the offer with me, Mr Cummin. I have to go to Zurich for five days –’ He had tried to get out of the trip every way he knew. To leave now in the middle of everything was disaster, but old Beattie was adamant. ‘It has to be you, Paul,’ he had said. ‘Only a senior director can go.’

He glanced at Cummin and saw a flicker of alarm on the man’s face. It gave him a second’s cautious elation. Perhaps after all Zurich wasn’t such a disaster. He smiled coolly. ‘I must ask you not to contact my wife while I’m away. If you wish to get in touch with me I shall be at the Baur au Lac Hotel.’

If only he was a poker player. He had a feeling Cummin probably was. And he didn’t like the way the man had suddenly smiled. He was a good-looking bastard – rich, assured, perhaps twenty years older but, being American, probably ten times fitter. Defensively he picked up the menu. ‘Shall we order?’

In the far corner of the room three other diners were ordering too. Soberly they chose food and wine, then leaned together and talked again. Only now and then, cautiously, did Neil glance across at Paul and Rex. He was too far away to hear what the two men were saying, but he didn’t need to. The course of the meeting had been easy to follow. The initial suspicion, the hostility, the cautious overtures and now the conspiratorial
bonhomie
as the two men toasted one another in glass after glass of top-price claret. So, the deal was on and Earthwatch, with the help of the nation’s press, was going to fight Sigma and the oil lobby for all it was worth; and in the process it was going to tear Clare Royland apart.

Clare lay back in the bed and stretched luxuriously. She still loved Sunday mornings more than any other time. It was the only day she allowed Sarah to bring her breakfast in bed with the papers and she revelled in it. Casta lay on the floor asleep after her early-morning walk to the village with Sarah to collect them.

With Paul in Zurich she felt more relaxed than she had at any time lately. She was free to plan, and for once her plans could be her own. She had awoken with the realisation that the thing she had feared for so long had happened. The time for togetherness was over and she wasn’t afraid. It was as if she had been liberated. Without him she was free. There was nothing she couldn’t do; nowhere she couldn’t go.

There was no reason to stay alone any more awaiting his plans, waiting to see what his diary offered. She had broken free of her enchanted prison and beyond it there was a whole world waiting for her exploration.

She turned the pages of one of the colour supplements, idly glancing at the glossy advertisements, but her mind was busy. She was working out exactly when she would drive north to Scotland. There was nothing to stop her. If he wanted her back for any dinner parties she could always fly down; or she could refuse. Suddenly the possibility of defying Paul was a reality. She had done it over the sale of Duncairn. She could do it again.

It would be lovely to go north now, before the bad weather came, whilst the trees were still gold and red and the air still soft. She eased herself up on the pillows and, throwing down the magazine, wrapped her arms around her knees. Her depression had lifted. She felt wonderfully free and happy.

On the carpet by the window Casta stirred uneasily. She raised her head and looked towards the bed with a little whine. On the back of her golden ruff the hair was beginning to stand on end. Clare didn’t notice, but she frowned. The room seemed to have grown cold. She shifted uneasily under the soft duvet, glancing towards the window. It was closed and yet she could feel the draught distinctly playing across her face and arms, and somewhere in the distance she could hear the sea.

She jerked upright, her mouth suddenly dry with fright. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No! I didn’t summon you!’

The Sunday Times
and the
Observer
slid from the bed on to the carpet.

Casta leaped to her feet and ran for the door, her ears flat against her head, her tail pressed down between her legs as desperately Clare hung on to reality, her hands clenched into the fabric of the bedclothes as she scrambled to her knees. ‘No! Not now. Leave me alone …’

She could see the mist swirling in the corners of the room, and the fire flickering in the great fireplace of Slains Castle. It was hot now, stuffy and airless, and she could smell the bruised heather on the floor and see the shadowy figures moving to and fro in front of the windows – her bedroom windows. In terror she shrank back against the pillows, shaking her head, desperately trying to drive them away, but slowly the images were growing stronger. Then she saw Isobel.

Her eyes were full of tears. She stared up at the Earl of Buchan as he stood over her, not wanting to believe what he told her. Her Uncle Macduff was dead; the Scots had suffered a terrible defeat at Falkirk at the hands of the English cavalry and massed archers, and Scotland was in disarray.

‘He was a brave man, my dear. We shall miss him at the head of the men of Fife.’

She looked away, not wanting him to see the desolation which had swept over her, and she murmured a prayer for the soul of her uncle, who had shown her so much kindness in these later lonely years. Near her Alice Comyn sat at her embroidery and she felt comforted suddenly by the other woman’s presence. In the months since her miscarriage the two women had become friends. She no longer looked on Alice as her husband’s spy.

She looked up wearily as her husband threw off his dusty mantle and unbuckled his sword belt, laying the long sword on the table near her. He beckoned forward a page with a bowl of water and a towel and splashed some of the dust from his face. Then he called for wine.

‘Great-grandmother will be heartbroken,’ she said sadly. ‘Macduff was always her favourite son. So, what of Scotland now?’ She watched him drink. ‘Have we lost all? What will the English do next?’

‘Edward won’t follow up the victory, if my guess is right,’ he said slowly. ‘The English have no food; the land is burned, the stock long gone, as happened before when Edward was forced to pay me compensation for what he did to Buchan when I came into his peace.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘And his generals are restless. My guess is they will not press north. They have gone west now, following the Bruce and his men, but I doubt if they will consolidate any attack they make there. The men of Carrick should be able to hold them off.’