Blue Bells of Scotland: Book One of the Blue Bells Trilogy (7 page)

"It'll be perfectly safe. Thank you, thank you, and thank you again!" Shawn kissed her with each thank you, hands pressed on either side of her face. "And thank you from the whole orchestra." He kissed her again. "And thank you from my trombone." He kissed her again, till she laughed, pushing against him. "Do you know how beautiful your laugh is? Do you know how beautiful your eyes are? Do you know how beautiful your smile is?"

She tried to wipe the smile from her face and look stern. "I never said...."

"You've saved us all," Shawn continued.

"I didn't say...."

"I'm going to show you the very best time today."

"With what money?" Amy asked.

Shawn pulled a stack of credit cards from his back pocket, fanning them like playing cards. "The magic plastic." He laughed. His eyes danced, and he raced on, leaving her no room to argue or think. "All over Inverness, the best lunch money can buy, a picnic like you've never even dreamed of, under the stars at the top of the keep where we'll...."

Amy looked pointedly at Rob.

"...have a great picnic," Shawn finished. "Thank you, thank you,
thank you
for saving me!" He led her out of the room. To those assembled in the hall, more now that word was spreading, he announced, "Amy has saved our last concert! Let's hear it for Amy!" Those in the hallway clapped and whistled, and Shawn kissed her again, long and deep. She pushed him away, blushing furiously. "I'll be ready in half an hour," she said, and ducked back into her room.

* * *

Shawn passed the next hour and a half pleasantly with Amy, exploring the cobbled roads, and shops of Inverness. They found the pawn shop down a narrow street, barely more than an alley, with dumpsters and boarded windows. A skinny man with torn jeans and a drooping eye puffed on a cigarette, watching them. Shawn convinced her to wait outside, and exhaled with relief when her only reaction was, "You will get it back, won't you?"

"We're all getting a big bonus. I'll have it back in three days."

Inside, he waited impatiently while the old man studied the ring under lights and lenses, and finally filled out some forms and handed him a thick sheaf of bills. He thumbed through, counting quickly, stuffed them in his wallet, and hurried out into the sunshine of an otherwise perfect day. He steered them back along the River Ness, walking hand in hand on its pebbled shore, toward the castle. "I forgot my camera. I want pictures of the most beautiful girl in the orchestra."

They climbed the stairs guarded by stone lions, and entered the huge wooden doors. Amy followed him toward the red carpet racing up wide stairs. "Stay here," Shawn said. "Rest up for all the walking we're going to be doing. Hey, Dana!" He waved, grateful for her presence. "You were asking about Inverness. Amy, tell her about the bridges." He dashed up the stairs, two at a time, leaving her behind. His heart pounded. Last night's adventures were getting dangerously close. Dana wouldn't tell Amy about the game. But he hoped Jimmy would come in a back door.

* * *

Dana's eyebrows dipped in concern as Shawn dashed up the stairs. "You okay, Amy?" she asked. "You look kind of pale."

Amy sank into a chair. "Just tired." The carpet stretched across the foyer. Dana would never have gotten into this mess, she thought.

Dana dropped down beside her. "Didn't those antibiotics help last April? Did your doctor warn you they can interfere with your birth control pills?"

Amy looked up, meeting Dana's golden brown eyes, so much like Shawn's. "They can?"

Dana nodded, her cinnamon puff hair shaking like a duster feather. "Medications, miss a day, take them a few hours late, even."

Amy closed her eyes, even now remembering Shawn's rage. His
sturm und drang
would be useless this time. Still, she dreaded it.

"Shawn would…" Dana broke off.

Amy opened her eyes to see Jim, the portly trombonist, come in from the castle's library. "What's up with Shawn's trombone?" he asked.

* * *

Shawn stopped at Caroline's room. Glee flushed her face when she saw him. He brushed past her, to her roommate. The woman turned, smiling, from hanging up a blouse. The smile faded at sight of his dark face. "I'll say it once," he snapped. "Do not ever,
ever
again tell Amy that I went anywhere with Caroline."

"I didn't mean...." Her hands fell limply from the hanger.

"Flutes are a dime a dozen." He pierced her with a hard stare, long enough to make sure she understood, before turning to Caroline. She lowered her eyelids; a smile curved her lips. He stepped closer, letting his body brush the length of hers, and lifted her chin. Her smile stretched lazily. "Even first chair flutes," he said softly. His eyes bored into hers. He punctuated each of the next syllables, with an ominous decrescendo. "Do. Not. Hurt. Amy."

He dropped her chin, stepped away, and addressed them both with his public bonhomie. "Rob's a great guy. I hear you had fun with him last night, Caroline." He turned on his heel, not closing the door behind him. That problem was solved.

It was in his suite, with the blazing noon sun enriching every shade of blue, as Shawn re-counted the bills, that he found the new problem: a faint smudge in the ink on one of the twenty pound notes. His heart picked up an extra couple of beats. He'd seen such a smudge, once before, when he'd gambled with the wrong sort and been paid off in bad bills. He examined the note more carefully, holding it up to the sun.

This couldn't be happening, not here, not now, not with a bad-tempered Scot coming for his money, and Amy waiting downstairs. He felt no great desire to be beaten to a pulp today, and even less for Amy to discover he'd lied to her. He pulled another twenty from the pile and compared the two. His heart sank. Such small details, but there it was. He studied the other twenty pound notes from the pawn shop. Two more were bad. Damn! Why did these things happen to him!

He was so intent on his scrutiny of the bills, that the pounding on the door nearly jolted him out of his skin. It settled back, quivering, around his shoulders. He crossed the huge room in a few quick strides, throwing around plans. What if Jimmy noticed? Jumping out the window wouldn't do. He didn't have another sixty pounds to give the Scot. He needed his trombone. Telling the truth, with a promise to scrape up the rest by tomorrow would lead to a scene, prevent him getting his trombone, cause trouble with Conrad, and even worse trouble with Amy. There was only one answer.

He shoved the bad bills back into the middle of the pile, smudged sides down. He threw the door open. Sixty pounds wasn't so much. His eyes darted from the large wooden case dangling from Jimmy's hand to the two large men behind him. The man was still getting a great deal of money he hadn't had before. Shawn greeted him with enthusiasm, shaking his hand with a big grin and a "Good to see you! There's your money!" The forgery was well done. Jimmy would never notice.

"Aye!" The Scot grabbed for the money with his big, reddened fist. He dropped the case with a thud that made Shawn's stomach turn, and thumbed through the money, counting, while Shawn's heart hammered in his chest. He considered the distance to the window. The numbers added up. Jimmy saw nothing else, and broke into a grin. "Come play poker wi' me anytime!" he said, and shook hands again, in earnest friendship this time. The men behind him grinned and pumped Shawn's hand.

"Any time!" Shawn said, and it was over. The door shut. He closed his eyes and heaved a breath of relief.

* * *

Amy seemed to forget whatever had been bothering her. Shawn's credit card and a small deli provided the perfect picnic dinner, complete with a new picnic basket. He ducked into a shop and bought himself a bell-sleeved shirt, a long, woolen tunic, leather boots, and a red plaid tartan to throw over his shoulder. His long chestnut hair completed the look. It brought a smile to her face. "No kilt?" she asked.

"Those came later," Shawn said. "This is what we wore in the re-enactment camps."

"No leggings?" She stared at his knees, hairy and bare, between the tunic and boots.

He grinned. "I'm not wearing tights, no matter what you call them." Considering what the counterfeit notes could have turned the day into, her answering smile lit him up inside. He was grateful, suddenly, to be here. He vowed there would be no more redheads, no more Carolines.

He rented a car to drive to the nearby castle, twisting along narrow roads. Amy gasped at the scenery. Scotland's stark hills rose around them, rich with the purples and violets of heather and bluebells, and lively yellow splashes of gorse. She laughed at his tunic and boots, as they hiked the countryside above the castle.

They climbed to the top of a monroe and looked down at the cattle milling in the bowl below. A man squinted up at them, shielding his eyes against the sun, before raising a hand and calling a greeting. Shawn waved back, and they continued climbing, the rampant bluebells grazing their ankles. "He was dressed like you," Amy said.

Shawn shrugged. "A lot of people stick to the old ways, here in the Highlands. Friendly, though, aren't they."

Amy nodded. At the top of the next rise, looking down on the loch, she stooped to pick a bouquet of bluebells. Their delicate blossoms spilled riotously over her hands. "This is what the song's about?" she asked.

"What song?"

She rolled her eyes. He slapped his forehead. "Bluebells, of course. Is that what they are? I don't know." He dropped himself into the sea of blossoms, staring down the boulder strewn slopes they'd just hiked, running steeply down to the loch, and the loch itself stretching like an azure ribbon, north and south under an endless sea of blue sky. The lowing of cattle drifted up from somewhere far below.

"You don't know the words?"

"Sure." He lay back in the bluebells, hands behind his head. His dark chestnut hair splayed across the blossoms. "My dad sang it all the time. Noble deeds, streaming banners, that kind of thing." He gave a roguish wink. "I just play it because it impresses people."

She stretched out next to him, propped on an elbow, and dropped the spray of flowers on the chest of his tunic. "What have flowers got to do with noble deeds?"

Shawn laughed, brushing at them. "The guy's from the Highlands, wants to get home where the bluebells are."

"Why is that piece such a big deal?"

"It isn't, really, not once you can do it. Just scales, arpeggios, a few octave skips. Easy. It's a show-off piece, you know, just because you can. Back in the day, people thought trombones could just play oompah-oompah—too rough and crude to do anything fancy like a flute or violin. Then Arthur Pryor put that together and showed the world there was a whole lot more potential there."

"Like you?" Amy dangled a single stalk, letting the delicate bell trace the outline of his jaw.

He turned away; took the flower from her hand and studied it. Nearby, a flock of ewes and their lambs grazed, giving him an occasional wary glance and warning bleat. "No," he said. "This is it. This is me. You see it all."

She fell silent. After several minutes, he gathered the fallen bouquet, climbed to his feet, and took her hand. They clambered higher up the mountain, digging their toes into impressions in the earth to climb almost vertically. He grasped her hand, helping her along, though his own soft leather soles slipped in the soft earth now and again.

They reached another summit, looking out over the stunningly blue waters of the loch, and hills undulating forever in every direction. Towns and fields stretched away below. Vertigo swept Shawn. He laughed, feeling alive! He turned to Amy. The sun warmed her smooth, pale skin. The breeze tugged at her long, thick braid. Life was good!

"It isn't," she said.

"Isn't what?"

"It isn't all. There has to be more to you, or you wouldn't be with me."

Shawn dropped onto a rocky jutting of stone, his shoulder toward her, staring out at the water. A bee buzzed around the flowers in his hand, and disappeared into a patch of gorse. "Look, no heavy conversations," he said. "It's a nice day, okay? Let's not ruin it."

But she persisted, joining him on the rock, her shoulder brushing his. "If you were nothing more, you'd be back in your room with Caroline. That's a 'nice day' for the person you show to the world." She twisted the end of his red tartan around her hand, watching him.

Shawn breathed deeply, saying nothing. Sunlight skipped along the loch's waters, making him blink. A wind blew fresh and strong, this high. And the drunken romp on the pile of bills didn't seem as fun, here in the light of day with Amy. It felt tawdry. He stared at the ground, muttering, "I was never with Caroline."

"Yeah, I know, she was with Rob. I'm just trying to understand you," Amy said. "I'm sorry." Dropping the plaid, she worked her fingers into his, and they sat, with her head on his shoulder.

The silence stretched again, till Shawn broke it. "Let's go down to the castle. Today's the last day for that living history group. I'll find a way to get in after they close."

* * *

They toured the castle in silence, holding hands. The southern half lay in ruins. Stopped only once for an autograph, they soon moved on to the restored half, swarming with actors in medieval dress. The men wore wide-sleeved shirts and tunics much like Shawn's own, though the tartans over their shoulders were blue. They went about the daily activities of medieval Scotland, cooking, carding wool, and sharpening weapons, for the benefit of tourists.

One of the men paused in the midst of cleaning a horse's hoof, staring at Amy. She glanced away. When she looked back, the woman next to him was staring at her, too. They turned quickly under her gaze, whispering to one another.

"Shawn." Amy gripped his hand a little more tightly. "Some of these actors are looking at me strangely."

He glanced around the courtyard, at the buzz of medieval life humming around them. "You're imagining it," he said, and returned to scanning the walls for a way back in; listening with half an ear as the short, elderly tour guide, swishing her voluminous dress across the grassy courtyard, described the castle and its history, battles and lords, and the days of the Jacobites and Covenanters.