Jean minded—they seemed like such babes in the woods—but . . .
“Young Brendan was in the bar at the hotel—the barmaid took special notice—and came away here with Roger and Sawyer. You saw Kirsty in the window and the constable on duty saw her in the entrance hall.” Alasdair stacked the last plate on the shelf.
Nothing like sharing a domestic task to be companionable. Alasdair had thawed from ice-rimed to merely refrigerated. His drawbridge might be closed, but somebody was home. She could see the movement through his arrow slits and murder holes. “There’s a notebook in the tower room with the pages torn out,” she said, “That couldn’t have been Ambrose’s book, could it?”
“It could hardly have been there for seventy years.”
“No, no, I mean what if Ambrose’s mythical, mystical papers were really a notebook where he kept his field notes or whatever. Maybe that’s what Iris wanted Kirsty to hide. Although I don’t know what else there could be in those papers—Roger went right to that passage grave. I bet he thinks that’s where Ambrose found the treasure, you know, Picts using it as a handy storage dump or something.”
Another grin was threatening to smooth the arch of Alasdair’s lips, and his expression was askew with bemusement and amusement both. Yeah, she was babbling. Whiskey and nerves.
He didn’t babble. He said, “Maybe so, Jean,” and spread the towel over the handle of the oven. Without asking her, he refilled their glasses with whiskey and water.
A wee doch and dorris for the road ahead? she asked herself. For the next item on the agenda? The whiskey had already loosened her tongue. Now if she could just avoid tripping over it.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Jean retrieved a platter of fruit and cheese from the refrigerator and dumped a few digestive biscuits onto it. “Coffee?”
“No thank you,” Alasdair said, strolling across to the TV and DVD player. “I’m thinking it’ll be difficult enough sleeping on your couch the night.”
“I’m just as likely to be in danger during the day, you know.” Jean scooted her books and papers to one end of the coffee table and set the plate down.
Alasdair fed a DVD to the player. “That’s as may be, but criminals are a bit like cockroaches, seen off by the light.”
“Are you really all that sure I’m in danger?”
“Are you sure you’re not in danger? Except from me, that is.”
There was a provocative statement. His back was turned to her as he wielded the different remotes, but she tried to read his shoulders, and deduced only that he was neither braced nor relaxed. She should respond with something eloquent and profound about the proximity of danger, death, and destruction, and the benefits of detente . . . Instead, the words spilled out: “Alasdair, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said what I said last night. It was rude. It was wrong.”
“No matter,” he replied.
Baloney with mustard. It did matter. Big time. But he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Wiping black feathers from her mouth, Jean switched off the kitchen light and closed the curtains against the long, lingering evening light. The light was on in the upstairs hall—that was enough. The room was enveloped in the tender shadow of dusk, bright enough to tell an apple from a grape, dark enough to blur awkward expressions.
Cate Blanchett’s resonant voice sounded from the television. Logically enough, Alasdair was playing the first of the three segments of The Lord of the Rings. Jean sat down, not at the opposite end of the couch but not right next to him, either. “Fruit? Cheese?”
“Thank you.” He chose a biscuit and a morsel of Orkney cheddar.
They watched the movie from their own individual islands of space—no woman is an island, Jean thought, nor is any man . . . Then she didn’t think much of anything, but only felt. The music, the words, the imagery, sent delicious shivers trickling down her limbs—well, that was the fiery fragrance of the whiskey, too, and the sweetness of the fruit, and the saltiness of the cheese, and the crunch of the cookies. And Alasdair’s presence, his flesh too solid upon his bones and his energy field licking her like a cat’s tongue.
If they spoke at all, it was to comment on individual scenes and debate the adaptation, amiably enough. If they moved it was to offer each other the platter and set down their empty glasses. And yet as the movie reached its climax Jean realized they were sitting close, angled toward each other. When the first arrow hit Boromir, they flinched as one.
Oh no, there she went, her jaw aching and her eyes swimming. The emotions tangled not in her esophagus but in her gut. They whispered of danger and desire, not necessarily danger from anything physical nor desire for it, and yet the physical was there. And it could be snuffed out at any moment, by an arrow, by an explosion, by a fall. “This is ridiculous,” she said, and of course her voice wobbled embarrassingly.
“Eh?” asked Alasdair, no doubt thinking she was talking about the movie, where Sam was now floundering in the river, risking his life to reach out in love and hope.
Her eyes still facing front, she said, “We can sit on our own little desert islands, or in our castles with the icicles dripping off the battlements—choose your image—trying to out-stubborn each other. Trying to out-neurosis each other, for that matter. But it’s not going to work.”
“Ah,” he replied, his voice more of a purr than a growl.
“You made it pretty clear last month that I was the danger to you.”
“You are that. Although I’m thinking now I was wrong to give you the elbow then.”
Wait a minute. She turned her head to see his blue eyes gazing at her steadily but no longer coolly, less ice than melt water, and his mouth set in its ogee curve, carved not in stone but in something more pliable. He was goading her. Moderating the tart words that first came to her, she said, “You didn’t break up with me last month. There was nothing to break up.”
“You asked me to dinner. I took that as an overture.”
“I just wanted to get to know you better.”
“You’re knowing me better. And I’m knowing you.”
She looked around the room for inspiration and saw Aragorn strapping on Boromir’s gauntlets, dedicating himself to the task ahead.
You didn’t get the cool armor-plated guys until the next movie, the actors who looked so much smaller without the layers of protective gear. If she stripped away Alasdair’s armor, broke his shell, chipped him free of ice, dragged his drawbridge open, what would she find? Not something small. Something rich and strange. As for whether she’d like it . . . That was what didn’t matter. She could trust him. She might not always like him, but she could trust him. Just as he could trust her.
Jean waited until the credits began to roll, angelic voices singing of love and loss. Then she said, “I’ve pretty well proved I’m not much good at relationships.”
“You’ve got a better record than I’ve got. At least you’re talking to your ex.”
Taking a deep breath that had a slight ragged sound to it, like a stifled sob, Jean said, “Never mind who we were in the past, with other people. This is you and me. Now.”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t move.
She looked around at his grave, still face, now gazing past her, past the television, past the walls of the cottage. Her heart bungeed down into her knotted abdomen, then bounced up into her throat. “Alasdair?”
He didn’t turn toward her brandishing a crucifix, or his warrant card, for that matter, reminding her that he was a cop on a case and she was no more than an associated artifact. He smiled, his lips wry, his eyes rueful. “We’ve been setting out the rules of engagement, I’m thinking, and the provisions of the treaty. Could we make the running together?”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Oh aye, I reckon it is that.” His hand landed gently on her shoulder and moved up so that his thumb traced her jaw and his fingertips brushed the back of her neck, the spot activated by her sixth sense. Now her usual senses detonated—rock-steady flesh, the aura of
sun-warmed grain, the catch in his own breath. A thrill fizzed through her body as though her blood had carbonated. Oh my . . . “Mind,” he went on, “it’s not the done thing to seal this sort of agreement with a handshake.”
“I should hope not.” She took off her glasses and set them aside, and laid her palms flat on his chest so that his heartbeat reverberated up her arms and matched her own. She leaned toward him as he leaned toward her, like pilots searching for a safe port in the fog—although which was the pilot, and which the rocks she couldn’t say and didn’t care.
Their lips met, tentatively. Her thought evaporated like whiskey in her throat. Oh my, oh yes, oh . . . Tentative became firm became mutually invasive, a delicate teasing and twining, then a full-bodied exploration, then delicate again, so that sparks danced behind Jean’s eyes and tremors ran delightfully up and down her limbs and her chest burned—okay, it was probably oxygen deprivation, so what. She hadn’t expected, anticipated, dreaded a quick chaste peck, but this was . . . Oh my.
At last she found her arms wrapped around Alasdair’s torso, his arms locked around her, her cheek squashed against his collar, seemingly swapping the same breath back and forth. His chest was rising and falling as though he’d run a race. His face was pressed against her hair and she could feel his lips moving somewhere around her temple. Please don’t get regretful, she pleaded silently. Please don’t make it all seem foolish. Just hold me, now, for the moment.
He didn’t say anything. He held her. She’d never thought his taut body could actually yield, surrender to such an embrace, but there he was, and there she was . . . Somewhere behind the piping of her blood in her ears, the drumming of his heart in his chest, and the music still flowing from the DVD, she heard another rhythm. Footsteps, walking down the upper hallway.
Slowly Jean extracted herself from Alasdair as he extracted himself from her. They exchanged a careful, questioning look footnoted with exasperation, and turned toward the staircase just as the voices began to speak.
The woman said, each word clear as a whiskey glass etched with thistles and heather, “You’ve got no heart, Ambrose, and no stomach either. You’re playing the laird, with right of pit and gallows and all, and I’m no more than a sheep to you.”
The man’s voice, like his daughter’s, was trained in proper English. “How impertinent! I’m caring for you, as is my duty, and you throw my family name in my face.”
“Ah, this for your family name! And your duty as well. You dinna care, not for her, not for me, only for him, the Devil take him and good luck to them both!”
Alasdair’s shoulder against Jean’s stiffened as she tensed against him. She didn’t need her glasses to see the shadows of two people extending along the staircase, their feet thumping quickly down the steps to the landing. She was in the lead—thick-heeled shoes, a sack-like dress, long reddish-gold hair frilling over her shoulders, a square face. She turned back to the lantern-jawed man in his three-piece suit, who stopped on the step behind and above her. “A divorce, I’m thinking, there’s grounds right enough.”
“How dare you?” he retorted, and lifted his hand as though to strike her.
She dodged, and lost her balance on the narrow step. For a long breathless moment she seemed to hang in mid-air, resisting gravity, both her expression and his changing with exaggerated slowness from anger to surprise to terror. Ambrose grabbed for her hand, too late.
She screamed, a short sharp outraged shriek that made both Alasdair and Jean jerk back. She fell. Her body crashed from step to step and against the balusters, limbs jerking every which way, and landed at the foot of the staircase in a heap, a very still heap, like a puzzle of clothing and body parts disassembled by some giant hand. Blood trickled from beneath the bright hair and over the flagstones of the floor, past the splayed left hand with its shortened forefinger.
“Oh God, no, no, God, no!” Ambrose howled, and ran down the stairs.
The front door flew open and the velvet curtain whisked aside—or the shadows of the door and curtain, rather, like shapes in smoke against the actual objects. And a second woman stood there, her flowered skirts settling around her dainty form, a scarf clutched in her petite hand, her bobbed dark hair framing a sharp face struck with horror. Her gaze moved from the broken body to Ambrose’s trembling form. And her expression segued from horrified to something sly and fox-like.
They were gone, all three of them. The velvet curtain stood open, the door was shut and locked, and the staircase gaped like an empty gullet. The aroma of perfume, of coffee and smoke, of blood, of age and mortality, filled the room and then dissipated.
With a cough, Jean exhaled both the odor and the breath she just now realized she’d been holding. She subsided against Alasdair. “You were right. Edith is the one who died. Eileen was outside, in the summerhouse, maybe, heard her fall and came rushing in to see what had happened.”
“Oh aye.” Alasdair’s body was stiff, withdrawn into itself, no longer yielding to her touch. His arm wrapping Jean’s shoulders seemed affectionate and yet perfunctory.
“I should have noticed the first time I heard the rhythm of their voices. It was like hearing Jonathan and Brendan talking. I could tell their accents were different without hearing the actual words. Ambrose spoke Oxford English. Eileen was American. Edith was a Scot.”
“You were hearing what you expected to hear. Like seeing Nessie.”
“But ghosts can’t give testimony. They’re not evidence.”
“Edith’s body needs identifying, right enough. Proof she, not Eileen, was missing a finger.”
“And some reason why she was wearing Eileen’s earrings.”
“Earring. One”
“Whatever. Damn it, every time we get an answer to one question, we get five other ones. Like who’s the ‘he’ Edith was throwing in Ambrose’s face. Crowley? And what happened to Eileen?”
“She gave up on a bad marriage.” Alasdair’s hand grasped Jean’s shoulder almost too tightly for comfort. The crease between his brows indicated deep thought, and not, she bet, thought entirely about the case.
Loosening his grip, Jean tucked her hand inside his. Her lips felt bruised from the urgency of their kiss. That was a fait accompli—a faint accompli, whew—a commitment, even if the unearthly echo of Edith’s voice had re-introduced issues of caring, condescension, and marriage gone sour.
The television screen went blank and the speakers fell silent. Outside, a breeze rustled the leaves on the trees. Distant laughter stirred the eternal twilight. “Alasdair,” Jean said, “part of the deal here is that we have to talk to each other.”
With a ghost of a smile, evoking things past, things present, things yet to come, he laid his cheek on the top of her head. “And part of the bargain is that we’re obliged to listen, is that it?”
“That’s it,” she said, and settled down in the security of his arms.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Once again the sound of footsteps stirred Jean’s sleep. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. She’d had the strangest dream . . . It wasn’t a dream, she realized with a rush of adrenalin that made her cheeks burn. She and Alasdair really had—what was the pop-culture expression? Taken their relationship to a higher level?
Just admitting they had a relationship, let alone exchanging a passionate kiss and some frank conversation to prove it, had taken them to nose-bleed heights. Playing tortoises rather than hares, ants rather than grasshoppers, suited their emotional phobias. In six months or so they might actually work their way to erogenous zones below the shoulders.
Smiling, Jean climbed out of the bed and opened the drapes. A gauzy curtain of mist flirted with the surface of the loch. Whether those billows beyond it were clouds or mountains she couldn’t say—they looked like the same substance, neither earth nor air. “The Misty Mountains of Home” was one of those evocative old songs she’d always liked. Home was more than a building, wasn’t it? Home was where the heart was, and right now her heart, for be
tter or worse, was downstairs asleep on the couch.
No, she corrected as she heard the sounds from the kitchen, he was making coffee, bless the man for having domestic skills. It was his quiet steps past her door, to the bathroom and back, that had awakened her.
Padding into the hall, she noticed that the door of the lumber room was now wide open. Alasdair must have shut it after he’d checked on the pictures last night. When she’d finally gone to bed, long after midnight, she wouldn’t have noticed that door if it had flung itself off its hinges and onto her feet. Her senses had still been humming from Alasdair’s touch, her ears still satiated by his voice. Their exchanges about seeing ghosts, their childhoods, their work—but not their marriages—had proved that the physical was only half of intimacy.
It had been time well-spent, she thought, and peered at herself in the bathroom mirror. Still, she could tell by the dark circles cushioning her glassy eyes that she’d stayed up way too late for two nights in a row. Make-up? Well, just a bit of mascara. If Alasdair was frightened away by her bed-headed face, then he was made of weaker stuff than she thought.
Jean walked downstairs, wondering how to greet him. If she threw herself into his arms, would he disclaim all knowledge of last night’s alliance and offer her only his name, rank, and serial number?
He was leaning on the cabinet with a resigned air, probably telling himself that a watched toaster oven never toasts. At her step he looked around, considered her awkward smile, and finally returned a lopsided smile of his own, the crease in one cheek deeper than the other. What a revealing development this is. With that mutual smile, his drawbridge squealed open by several more rusty links, and the Gordian knot of her nerves broke a few more strands. “So far so good,” Jean said.
“We’ve survived a whole nine hours or so together,” agreed Alasdair, and glanced at the toast. Since he’d turned his back on it, it was starting to char. They bumped elbows retrieving it, and between them managed to get the toast, butter, jam, and coffee onto the table.
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