Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (39 page)

“Oh, it is,” Pamela said tartly. “But I should like it spelled out all the same.”

“If my nephew is dead, and it seems that he must be, then this will,” he invested great scorn into the single syllable, “cannot be allowed to stand. While you are lovely, you are not blood and in this case, blood will out. This estate should have been mine when my brother passed and now, with all other heirs dead, it will be.”

“This estate,” she said quietly, “passes to the eldest child, of which you are not one. As Jamie has no living heirs to pass it to, it was to his discretion whom he wanted as its guardian until such time as he returns home. There was no mention of you in any of the papers and we have a team of solicitors who went over all of it in fine detail with us.”

“I too have solicitors,” he said, placing the teacup on the table. “They do not share your belief that Jamie had the legal right to leave the guardianship of this estate in the hands of whomever he pleased. They believe I have a very good case and I intend to prosecute it to the fullest extent.”

“I believe that will be a waste of your time and money,” Pamela said, keeping her tone pleasant. “But if you wish to squander both commodities that will, of course, be your own business.”

“Indeed it will,” his tone was pleasant too, but not without challenge. “Long ago, I approached my nephew, Jamie’s father, and asked him for what was rightfully mine. And then when he died, I asked his son. Now I find I am no longer inclined to ask but rather to tell. This house and all that is in it belongs to the Kirkpatrick family and I am, despite being Fortune’s outcast, most assuredly a Kirkpatrick. Family should administer the estate. It is unfortunate that young James has met with some terrible fate, but while it is tragic it does not alter the fact that this estate is mine, should have been mine long ago and, of course, it goes without saying that I will be claiming all the assets that go with it.”

“I believe it shows a somewhat less than familial feeling to keep insisting that Jamie is dead, which I assure you he is not.” She smiled, for Jamie would not want her to give in to her anger at this man. She had her own fears as to the state of Jamie’s well-being, but refused to believe he was gone. This man, despite his words, had likely long wished Jamie dead. She could almost hear Jamie’s voice in her head, cautioning her to never underestimate even the most obvious adversary.

She stood to refill the cups, adding the sugar and lemon in exact measurements. She would not allow the standards of hospitality to slip, even when the guest was overtly hostile. His eyes seemed to pluck at her neckline and pry through the very seams of her clothing. It was nearly time to nurse Conor and her breasts were taut against her blouse. She felt as though the man sensed this, or could see the change since they had left the kitchen. She felt in need of a shower, merely from the touch of his gaze. It was, she knew, very deliberate on his part.

She sat back down, fighting the desire to wrap her sweater around herself in defense.

“Satisfy my curiosity, will you?” he said, stroking one puffy finger along his lips. “Tell me what that much money and property buys a man?”

“Not what you seem to think it does,” Pamela said dryly, averting the hot words she could feel bubbling up in Robert beside her. She knew, though just how she could not have said, that it was imperative that they keep their cool in the face of this threat. And that this man was a threat, she was in no doubt.

He canted one leg over the other and leaned back. The gesture echoed his nephew, though this man’s elegance seemed a practiced, conscious part of his arsenal, whereas with Jamie it was merely a natural part of him.

“You might be surprised what I’m thinking.” He paused for effect, “I have a very fertile imagination.”

It was as though Robert were not even present, for the man was very clear about whom he was inviting onto the sparring field. Jamie had this skill as well, to make it seem as if there was no one else present, even when the room was crowded. But this was the inverse of Jamie’s skill, a dark feeling, as though he could touch without moving, could sense the fears that moved inside her about what sort of damage he could do, and that he fed on it.

It had been one innuendo too much for Robert, for the small Scot stood, tone brisk.

“I think sir, that you’ve taken up enough of Mrs. Riordan’s time and hospitality this afternoon. I believe it will surprise no one if I say that next time we meet, it should be with legal representation in attendance and in a less private venue than Lord Kirkpatrick’s home.”

Pamela rose to stand beside Robert, aware as she did so of Philip’s eyes skimming the length of her body. She ignored it, for there was nothing else to do.

It appeared Uncle Philip had gotten whatever it was he wanted from the meeting, for he rose as well, again with that inverted echo of practiced elegance.

She walked him to the door alone, after giving Robert a look which conveyed that he should stay behind. She needed to show Philip that she was not afraid to be alone with him, that she had indeed been left with Jamie’s trust for reasons other than what he believed.

He bent once again over her hand, and she allowed it, for she would not give him the pleasure of having her shake him off. He could not know how much he had discomfited her in a single meeting. His lips were cold against the back of her hand and his tongue flicked lightly along the edge between two of her fingers. The inference was inescapable, and she repressed a shudder of revulsion before gently disengaging her hand.

“You will be seeing much more of me,” he said as he stood, “and I, of you. It would be better if you were pleasant with me, Pamela. It will go far easier for you in the end.”

She merely showed him out the door, unwilling to give him the engagement he was looking for until she was on more certain ground.

She let out the breath she had been holding, after barring the door behind him. Then she went to the kitchen, picked up her son, and took him to the study to nurse. The normality of it and the soft weight of Conor’s body in her arms siphoned away some of her agitation.

Robert, who had the timing of a master statesman, rapped on the study door just as she finished nursing. He came in looking slightly grim.

He poured them each a small tot of whiskey and set hers on the table beside her. She left it for the moment, putting Conor to her shoulder and letting his sweet weight and warmth finish the job it had begun. She felt more relaxed, though not much more capable.

“How much of a threat is he?” she asked. She was sitting in the wingback leather chair Jamie favored. She needed some vestige of his presence to shore her up in the face of this menace.

Robert sat across from her and took a deep breath. “I’ll not know yet, but if he’s right and Lord Kirkpatrick is dead, then your hold on things—despite the will—may be more tenuous then we would like. As the man pointed out, he is blood and, as you are well aware, Jamie made a very unexpected move by entrusting everything to your hands. I know he had very good reasons for doing so, many more than I perhaps realize, but blood is blood and will often win out in a court of law. If nothing else, he can tie our hands badly and cost us hugely in time. He could be distracting us for some other purpose, as well. Certainly it’s clear he is neither a good nor scrupulous man so we will have to be very much on our guard. Pamela—we can’t afford a single mistake or so much as a ha’penny to be unaccounted for in the company ledgers.”

Conor sighed in repletion, his breath warm against her neck. She wanted to close her eyes as he did and go to sleep, anything to avoid thinking about this newest problem. However, it wasn’t merely about her and what suddenly seemed her frightful inadequacy. There were many other people depending on her to be strong.

“Then that’s what we will do. Jamie trusted us to protect what he built. I refuse to let him down. If he had wanted his uncle to have anything, he would have stipulated as much in the will. Jamie is a very generous man, so if he didn’t put his uncle into the will, there’s a damn good reason why.”

“What if…?” Robert began, but did not continue, for the words were already there between them, had been there during the entire conversation.

“No,” she said fiercely, “no! Jamie is not dead. He will come home.”

Robert’s face looked more owlish than usual, the soft light playing off his glasses.

“I think perhaps,” he said gently, “we have to consider that he may not be able to come home, that perhaps we are indeed on our own here, Pamela.”

“No. He will come home, Robert. He will because he has to.”

From the Journals of James Kirkpatrick

June____, 1962

I am hiding. I know that well, but as hideaways go it would please even a hermit. The path down to the house runs between thick stands of pine and the pathway itself is so deep with needles you can’t even hear your own footsteps. A wee weathered gate hangs crooked as sin between two pines and is thick with a rambling rose of unknown provenance. The house itself—well, hut if we’re being strictly technical—is held together by the most frighteningly large and vengeful-looking wisteria, though from a distance the overall impression is one of great charm. Up close, you realize that without the vine the whole place would likely crumble into dust.

Inside, it’s just rough pine planking for both floor and walls, well weathered to a deep amber and thick with the scent of summers past. A small iron bedstead holds a lumpy mattress and worn bedding that is nevertheless clean and smells of the salt and sand that impregnates every atom of air here. I can rest here. I can hide here, and maybe if I am very lucky, I can find a way to solidify this amorphous jelly of a universe I inhabit.

June____, 1962

In the night, this is a different country, when the fields do lie under some dark enchantment. In the night, when humanity sleeps, you can feel the ancient bones of this land twist and groan and rise ever closer to the surface. In the night, the shy creatures are abroad, the fox who gazes at the moon transfixed, the owl flying on silent wings through the mountains and streams of the air. In the night there is no law. The borders of daytime float away and the wild rules at will.

When it’s dark, I feel the planet as she must once have been, a free and dreadful thing growing rampantly, suckling dread young who were born with the taste of blood upon their grasping tongues.

I walk amongst all this darkness and hear the whispers of wild things, and the language of earth and thrusting weed, of the sea and its own dark creatures—things that will never see the light of day. Yet I sense their bodies, floating, diaphanous, dreadful, simmering near the surface, drawn there by the moon’s silver lure. They prick their claws along my spine and make me glance behind to find my shadow a grotesque thing, reminding me who the true monsters of this world are.

You can feel the planet spinning at night in a way that the busyness of day precludes. I cannot seem to rid my head of the words of Walter de la Mare in these dark hours—

The waves tossing surf in the moonbeam,
The albatross lone on the spray,
Alone know the tears wept in vain for the children
Magic hath stolen away.

Would that it had been magic that had taken my sons away, that I might believe them gone to a far land, where flowers storm like snow and boats dip and stream along the Milky Way.

Colleen said to me that we cannot produce anything but children born with broken hearts—I suppose it stands to reason at this point, as both of ours are broken.

A broken heart does not mix well with sleep. It keeps one awake for the fear it has of death before morning. Yet I do not fear my own death. Instead I think of it with something akin to longing because it would be a release from these awful, shivering thoughts that I cannot obliterate from my mind. Perhaps it is why the night seems a natural home for me now. I understand the dark things, the yawning abysses of the world, the things that exist beyond the realm of today’s laboratories. The dark is for magic, good and bad, woven from realities and the deep dreams that lie fallow in the base of man’s brain.

I often look up to the night sky during my rambles and wonder as man has wondered since he crawled up out of the blood warm seas—Are we alone here? Am I looking for God or little green men?

I cast my mind out far, over the great depths and fiery dance of the countless suns, moons and stars to the edge where the tide of infinity laps against those original starry shoals and ask—what, who, how? Is there another mind out there that could recognize the firing neurons of my own? Is there a yearning as vast as that of humanity, the hope that if we reach out with radio waves, spaceships, telescopes—that our grasping fingers will touch more than… nothing? And what would we hear inside that great silence, which seems as though it would be the most terrifying sound of all?

June____, 1962

I miss my wife. There, I’ve admitted it. I miss the woman I married. I want to be able to comfort her and I cannot and it makes me feel entirely impotent as a man. I feel like a shell here, as I wander the woods and the shore. Even sailing does not bring the needed reprieve. Nothing does, and the light is changing, making that imperceptible shift that warns me I’m nearing the edge of the abyss. The trouble with falling into that abyss is that even if one can manage to climb out, one cannot shake off the ghosts that cling and crawl out with one, for the abyss is haunted. I know, because those ghosts keep me company tonight. They cluster close and whisper the things I wish I could deafen myself to, but I hear them. I hear them well and their voices rise higher each moment, until I cannot hear anything else for their clamor.

June____, 1962

I was out for a solitary ramble this evening, when I came across a most enchanting sight. At first I thought I was seeing things—always in the realm of possibility with my quixotic and unreliable grey matter—and even rubbed my eyes to be certain I wasn’t hallucinating. But no, the vision remained. There was a creature dancing on the small shingle just down from my hut, dancing light and joyous under the full moon that was rising on a twilit sky. She can’t be of this realm, I thought, for she seemed impossibly ‘other’, as though she had never tasted of man’s disillusion or bitterness, and knew no such word as pain. I told myself a pretty fancy, as I stood there watching her. She was born of the sea foam, and rose right there from the mysterious waters for a dance on the solidity of the earth, and that when she was done she would slip back into the waters with barely a sigh in her wake, and return to that deep blue kingdom from whence she had come. And there was I, mortal clay, having caught a young oceaniade cavorting on the sand.