Shadows in Scarlet (26 page)

There was the difference between a real aristocrat and a wannabe like Cynthia, Amanda thought. Norah didn't have anything to prove. If Cynthia thought that was eccentric, then that said more about Cynthia than it did about Norah.

Irene scooped some leftover salmon onto a saucer and set it down in the corner. The cats roused themselves and raced toward it. The dog looked up hopefully, tail patting the floor, until Irene gave him some, too.

"The dog is named Cerberus,” Norah said. “We took him in as a charity case. As a sheep dog he's a disgrace to his profession, sits there with a fatuous smile while the sheep run amok. But he's a fine pet."

"Cerberus,” Amanda repeated. How appropriate for Dundreggan to have a dog named after the guardian of the gates of hell.

"The cats are good mousers,” Norah went on, “although I confess we've made pets of them, too. My son, with his appalling sense of humor, named them ‘The Catchers', Margaret and Denis, after the former prime minister and her husband."

Amanda laughed. “Which of your sons has the appalling sense of humor?"

"They both do, but Malcolm's the one at home and so most likely to inflict it upon us."

"Mr. Duncan told me your son Archie is a pilot. It's traditional for the younger one to join the military, isn't it?"

"Oh aye, but we're doing it backwards this century, since the two great wars took everyone. Archie's the elder. He inherited the title when my husband Alex died, but little of Alex's affection for the property, I'm afraid.” She frowned slightly, and then her brows shrugged the frown away.

Amanda nodded. Cynthia had, of course, gotten it all right. Being a widow, Norah was “Lady Norah,” not “Lady Dundreggan.” Malcolm was “the Honorable,” not “Lord Dundreggan,” therefore he was the younger. “Neither of your sons is married?"

"No, not yet. Malcolm is looking more seriously than Archie, I believe. There's certainly no new Lady Dundreggan in the offing."

"A’ titles are little mair than words noo,” said Irene from the sink.

"They've never been anything but,” Norah said with smile. “Games of power and precedence that would be ludicrous if they weren't so deadly. It's the land that matters, the land and the family."

Amanda nodded agreement.

"I understand,” Norah went on, “you're writing a book on James Grant's life and death in America?"

"One of our librarians is writing an article, and I've promised to bring her material. It may balloon into a book."

"Alex's father organized the family papers a good many years ago, before my time. Malcolm and I have a squint at them every now and then, but we've never focussed on any particular period."

"But he's putting it all on computer?"

"Oh aye. He'll be glad to find the appropriate material for you. There's an unpublished autobiography written by James's cousin Archibald, I believe. He inherited Dundreggan on James's death. But you were asking about him earlier."

An autobiography!
Yes!
Amanda considered high-fiving Norah but contained herself. “The museum in Edinburgh sent us a copy of the letter telling James's family of his death. It mentions Archibald."

"The letter written by Lindsay of Balcarres. Malcolm Major must have been right pleased to uncover that one. I believe he donated it to the museum with a few notes attached."

"Yes, he did. The notes were really helpful."

"I hope his notes turn out to be only the tip of the iceberg, then.” Norah drained the last drops from her cup and stood. “You're welcome to copy anything you find. We have a small photocopier in the library."

"The government and its paperwork,” added Irene.

"Dundreggan is a listed building, which means we have to obtain consent from the bloody great bureaucracy if we want to so much as repair a window.” A rueful smile turned up one side of Norah's mouth. “If you'll excuse me, I'd best go deal with some of that paperwork now. If you'd like to explore the library...."

Amanda stood up, folding her napkin. Despite the coffee she was so sleepy Norah's voice advanced and receded like an ocean wave. “Thanks, but I'm still under the influence. Maybe I'll just look around, if that's all right."

"By all means. We don't have any mysterious locked dungeons, although you'll find quite a few lumber rooms filled with things I keep hoping are valuable antiques but which I suspect are rubbish. Dinner is at seven."

"Thank you.” Amanda turned to Irene. “Can I help with the dishes?"

"Ah, no, away wi’ ye,” the woman replied, her mock ferocity making it clear no one invaded her domain except Norah.

Amanda walked back upstairs to her room and perched on the window seat, feeling like Rapunzel in her tower. Below her lay a walled garden teeming with roses of every color. Beyond it stretched the lawn and the driveway and the outer wall where the masons tapped away. Calum stood nearby, smoking a pipe and either offering advice or gossiping. Beyond him spread the awesomely beautiful landscape of stone, sky, and mountain.... Amanda's eyes closed. She sat up with a jerk. If she went to sleep now she'd never sleep tonight.

Wow, a night's sleep. Between James and the airplane, she'd forgotten what that was. Jet lag, sex lag—funny, though, how those sweaty and exhilarating minutes already seemed way in the past, like something she'd read about, not actually done. And it wasn't that they'd left her exactly mellow, either.... This time her head fell forward. She staggered to her feet.

The afternoon stretched ahead of her like a long road, bedtime only a distant glow on the horizon. One step at a time, she told herself, and opened the camera bag. No way her fuzzy brain would be able to work the video camera. She took the still camera and went back downstairs, glancing again at the three portraits. The eternal triangle.

She was only putting off the day of reckoning, she told herself. Sooner or later she was going to have to meet the James exposed in the family papers. The scoundrel—charming, of course. The rogue—lovable, ditto. Archibald's version would hardly be impartial, but still she was going to have to cut James some slack. Maybe more than some. And yet his ghost wasn't the man he'd been, was it?

Amanda went out the front door and took pictures of the castle, of the view, of the masons at work. Cynthia would want a soundtrack for the film—a piper piping a lament, or a voice singing the Gaelic song James had quoted, assuming Amanda could find it.

A gate in the interior wall led into the rose garden. She was headed in that direction when Irene looked out the door. She uttered a string of diphthongs of which Amanda understood only her own name and the word, “telephone."

Suddenly she was wide awake. What? Cynthia couldn't leave her alone long enough to do her job? It wasn't her fault Wayne had bailed at the last minute.

Irene went into the house and came back carrying a phone. Amanda sat down on a stone bench beside the garden gate, squared her shoulders and pressed the phone to her ear. “Amanda Witham."

"Hi! It's Carrie!"

"Carrie?”
Whew.

"I hope I figured it right and it's two pm over there and not two am."

"You're right. I just had a delicious lunch with Norah. You wouldn't believe this place. It's absolutely gorgeous. And cool."

"I have no doubt,” Carrie said dryly. “Pardon me while I rev up my air conditioner and admire the view of the water cooler."

"I'm already taking pictures,” Amanda assured her. “I'm glad it's you. I thought it was the dragon lady. Who was dead wrong about Dundreggan being run down, by the way."

"I haven't heard a cheep from Cynthia or from Wayne, either. And I'm not going to rattle their cage. I'm calling about the robbery."

"Robbery?"

"Someone opened the Lucite box holding James's scabbard and took it."

"James's scabbard?"

"Roy noticed it was gone after you left yesterday afternoon. He swears someone was in the entrance hall the entire time, but they couldn't have covered it every minute."

Amanda frowned. She'd left yesterday afternoon, not last month. “A bunch of people were milling around right before I left. And I asked Roy to carry the bones out to the parking lot, so he wasn't there. Shit."

"The police were all over the place, even stopped a school bus that was leaving. Bill Hewitt came out at closing time, but I guess Cynthia's grapevine broke down, because she didn't. Bill's going to call her this morning. Talk about being caught in your own trap—her publicity stunts may have attracted a dishonest collector."

The cold stone of the seat was anesthetizing Amanda's rear end. “You're doing more than just letting me know, aren't you?"

For a long moment the line echoed hollowly. Then Carrie said, “Well, I sure haven't told anyone else this, Amanda, and I apologize right up front for the way my mind works, but I couldn't help but wonder...."

"Whether I grabbed the scabbard on my way out?"

"You might have asked yourself whether James would want his sword without its scabbard."

"Yeah, well, I did ask myself that.” Amanda re-thought her answer. James touched the scabbard the way he touched her, and for just about the same reason. It, and the sword, and she herself took him back to the time he was strong. The vulnerability she found so attractive he found deeply disturbing.

Carrie couldn't bring herself to ask the obvious. Amanda could. “What about James? He would have had just enough time to move the scabbard from the display in the entrance hall to the packing case before I shut the lid. I'll go look. And if I find it?"

"You'd better start thinking up some good explanations, preferably ones that don't involve supernatural intervention."

"I don't suppose I can just bring the scabbard back with me and stuff it beneath a bush so the cops will think it was there all along.” The chill of the stone radiated up her spine, pinching her shoulders. “I'll call you back, Carrie. Thanks."

"Good luck."

Amanda pressed the button on the telephone, wondering whether Carrie meant
good luck, I hope you find it,
or
good luck, I hope you don't?

Like it mattered now? Either way, it was too late. She got up, rubbed the cramped muscles in her behind, and limped into the house. Not knowing where the telephone belonged, she left it on a chest in the lower hall next to a vase of iris and roses.

She went upstairs again, telling herself that back home people paid good money for stair climbing machines. She got the screwdriver and went back down.

The great hall was silent. Dust motes danced in bars of sunlight that stretched diagonally down from the high windows. The sword glittered. Amanda pulled the crate away from the display case, knelt down on the planks of the floor, and with a squeal of rending wood unscrewed the screws and pried open the lid.

One edge of the layer of foam was wrinkled. She lifted it. The scabbard lay snugged along the side of the box, the oval badge repeating the oval shape of the skull, the words “Stand Fast” a caption to the empty eyes.

She must have heard it knock against the bone when she'd taken the box out of the car. The scabbard had probably been knocking against bone all the way across the Atlantic, but the skull wasn't damaged. The bone was firm and chalky cool to her fingertips. She already knew James was hard-headed.
Stand fast.

"Well thank you very much!” she said, and gave the crate an impatient push. Who the hell did James think he was? Or, more to the point, who did he think she was, screwing her around like this? And after she'd happily helped him do it literally, too!

She could still hear his voice, like a wisp of velvet, murmuring “You are mine, Amanda.” Only now instead of shrugging away those words she cringed. She'd known something was going to go wrong, but it sure didn't have to go wrong this soon. Or to this extent.

Amanda picked up the scabbard and tucked the foam back around the bones. Still kneeling, she held it up to the sword. Oh yes, if there hadn't been a kink in the weathered steel the two would have fit perfectly. Like her body had fit his, briefly, but not so perfectly after all.

"You've seen the sword, then, lassie,” said a voice like a wisp of velvet. “Goes wi’ yon scabbard, does it?"

Amanda spun around so fast she almost dislocated her neck. Three feet from her eyes stood a pair of athletic shoes and wool socks. Above them extended a well-worn and very nicely shaped pair of blue jeans. Over the jeans hung a fisherman's knit sweater, arms akimbo. Above the sweater a young, handsome face, topped by tousled auburn hair, looked down at her. His eyes were blue-gray. His smile was boyish and sophisticated at once.

She knew those eyes and that smile, knew them intimately, and yet they weren't the same. The bones of this man's face had been beaten from different steel. They'd been tempered two centuries longer. This man's slender hips and broad shoulders were refined by shadows.

Amanda sat down hard on the floor, the scabbard across her lap. She might as well be wearing Sally's stays for all the air that was making it into her chest. “You,” she stated, jabbing the air with her forefinger. “You are Malcolm Grant."

One of his eyebrows lifted warily upward, as though her next move would be to hand him a subpoena. “I'd best be ownin’ the truth of the matter, then. Aye, I'm Malcolm Grant. And you're the lassie from America. You're no what I expected."

He extended his hand. Amanda watched herself take it. He both shook her hand and pulled her to her feet still clutching the scabbard in her left hand. His palm was warm beneath a superficial coolness and his grip was firm. He smelled of fresh air. His blue-gray eyes were clear, not at all smoky. They shone like searchlights focused on her face.

"No,” she said, “you're not what I expected either.” She managed to let go of his hand and step back.

The scabbard wrenched itself out of her fingers. She made a grab for it, but it clattered to the floor. The noise was loud and brash, bouncing back from the high ceiling.

It lay at Malcolm's feet. He tilted his head in appraisal. “That's a challenge, is it? You're throwin’ doon the scabbard instead o’ the gauntlet?"

But all Amanda could do was stare, for once completely out of answers.