“Your feet must be freezing,” he said dryly, “the stones outside the study door get very cold this time of year.”
“I—I—” she stuttered.
“Yes? You—you what?”
“I saw someone walking up to the back of the house. They seemed to be sneaking. At first I thought it was a burglar and then,” she faltered under the green eyes, which were simmering with an anger he rarely displayed, but that could wither all in its path when let loose.
“And then what? You charged downstairs half-naked, not even stopping for socks to confront the burglar?”
“I’m not half-naked,” she said indignantly, tugging angrily at the jersey to little avail.
Jamie merely raised a gull-winged brow.
“I’m going back to bed,” she said, “I’m freezing and—”
“Oh no you’re not,” Jamie smoothly interrupted her. “You’re going to come back to the study with me and tell me exactly what you were doing outside the study door, and how much you heard of the conversation.”
She considered protesting his highhandedness, but taking a look at his expression, rather meekly followed him down the drafty hallway, the flagstones so cold that her feet ached.
The study by contrast was a haven of warmth and coziness. Jamie threw a blanket at her and shoved a pair of slippers across the carpet with his toes. “Cover up,” he said curtly.
She could feel the hated flush flooding her skin to her hairline, but nevertheless put her icy feet in the slippers gratefully. The blanket had been draped over the chair by the fire and was hot to the touch. She wrapped it around her waist, the heated folds clinging to her chilled skin.
Jamie took the chair across from her, looking preternaturally alert for such an ungodly hour. Whatever had been the genesis of the meeting in the study, the result of it had obviously agitated him. The golden hair, falling uncharacteristically long over his collar, was disheveled, and the green eyes were hectically bright. His attic profile did not discharge its normal aloof elegance, but rather a febrile tension that pulsed in the very air, despite the cat-like stillness of his body.
She realized suddenly what it was that had disturbed her about his near manic energy—she had seen him so before, and knew that the glitter preceded a darkness that was so profound it could take months for him to find his way out of it.
“Exactly how much did you hear?” he asked, the tone deceptively mild, though the look in his eyes was anything but.
“Only snatches,” she said, feeling like a guilty schoolgirl who’d been caught en flagrante with the gym master.
“Enough to gather exactly what we were talking about. I’ve warned you before what happens to nosy little girls who stick their face too close to the fire.”
She ignored the sarcasm. “And who is likely to be burnt in this particular fire?”
“Me,” Jamie said calmly. “And possibly the man you overheard, though I hope I can prevent that.”
“Stealing government documents though,” she said, “that seems an insane risk to take.”
“When the stakes are this high, so are the risks.”
“You really are an implacable bastard,” she said in frustration.
“We’re talking about government sponsored murder for hire here, I rather think an implacable bastard is exactly what’s called for.”
“It’s true then?”
“It seems to be.”
A needle of ice pricked at her heart. Every time she thought she had seen the worst this country had to offer, it inevitably surprised her by taking the game down to a more frightening and murderous level. Her husband and brother-in-law were in the category of highest risk—male and Catholic. Which included Jamie himself, a fact of which he was no doubt uncomfortably aware.
“If you knew I was out there the whole time, why didn’t you say something?”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers hard against the lids. “Because I didn’t want my visitor to know you were out there. I trust you, him I’m not entirely certain of just yet.”
“You trust me? Despite what you know about my past?” she asked softly.
“Shouldn’t I? Besides I rather thought you’d given up spying on a professional level.”
“I think you rather showed me up for a rank amateur last time I played Mata Hari. Besides, I would never intentionally do you harm, Jamie.”
“Good.”
“Will telling your contacts help?”
Jamie shook his head. “It might help, or it might open a can of worms that I’m not able to handle. They may be involved, I don’t know. Half the time I don’t know with whom I’m dealing on the other side.”
“So you’ve chosen a side then, Jamie?”
“The only side I’m on, Pamela, is that of peace. It’s just that peace tends to make for some odd and fairly undesirable bedfellows in this strange little war of ours.”
“The man tonight—he was one of those undesirables?”
Jamie shrugged, face inscrutable. “Perhaps, perhaps not. It remains to be seen.”
“You’re playing with fire here, Jamie.”
“And you’re not?” He had, with his usual maddening precision lobbed the ball straight back to her. “Investigating Brian Riordan’s death?”
She could feel the blood rush out of her face to the vicinity of her midsection.
“Well aren’t you?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” she said tartly, “As you seem to be able to read my mind.”
“Your mind,” he smiled in an annoying manner, “is about as decipherable as the aperiodic crystals of Assyrian cuneiform.”
“Which you’ve probably been decoding since your third birthday,” she retorted, tongue tart as his own.
“Could you try for an instant not to be difficult? You don’t understand what’s at stake here. One false move, one misstep, and the whole house of cards is going to tumble down.”
“Don’t tell me to be careful, Jamie Kirkpatrick, don’t tell me what I can and cannot do when you play with fire on a daily basis.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked as if he’d no notion of what she referred to, but she’d seen the spark of fear in his eyes.
“When was the last time you took your medication, Jamie?” she asked, knowing it was insanity to be having this conversation with him. It wouldn’t help the tension that was growing between them like a well fueled fire.
“Pardon me?” he said, voice calm though the hand around the glass had tightened until the bones showed hard against his skin.
“Your medication, the little pills that are supposed to keep you on an even keel, the ones you’re supposed to take every day without fail. How many bottles are sitting in your medicine cabinet unopened? Don’t tell me to watch myself when you’re risking everything with every day you leave the lid on those bottles.”
“Have you been snooping through my things?” His eyes narrowed and elongated the way they always did when he was very, very angry. The firelight struck gold off his hair and glowed in miniature in the depths of his whiskey, lending him the aura of a fallen angel. She swallowed, thinking she might rather face one of the lesser castouts of heaven than James Kirkpatrick in the grip of a black temper.
“Yevgena told me to check,” she said defensively, feeling the first tremor of doubt as to her motives.
“And as we know you always do exactly as you’re told,” he said, voice suddenly smooth as glass. She knew well enough to be alarmed by this.
“Only when it’s this important.”
“When what is this important?”
“You—your life,” she replied, lips dry and tongue thick with panic.
“And why is my life of concern to you?”
“Because—because,” she stumbled, “I care for you.”
He smiled, though it did nothing to reassure her. “You care for me? How touching, and yet I fail to see how that gives you the right to pry into personal matters and rummage through my things.”
This was patently unfair, Pamela thought fuming inwardly. He was the master of meddling in things that were not his affair. “If you can’t be bothered to keep yourself back from the precipice, why shouldn’t I?”
“Because, quite simply my dear, it’s no longer your business.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice, feeling that she had been put rather sharply in her place.
Jamie had the grace to look shamefaced. “I didn’t mean that quite how it came out. I’m just a bit tired and my head is aching.”
“What else is it?”
Jamie gave her a dry look, and then laughed. “I’d forgotten you always read between my lines.”
She merely raised a sooty brow in his direction, making it clear he wasn’t going to lead her off down a conversational side path.
“I’m maybe a wee bit discouraged. Despite everything I don’t seem to be effecting any real change.” He took off his glasses, rubbing the marks on his nose that they left behind.
“Jamie Kirkpatrick you’re a fool. You’ve done more than anyone else could have for those people. We’re all just caught up in events so much larger than ourselves right now, it’s hard to see that making sure Nelson McGlory has new eyeglasses is still important.”
This bought her a tepid smile. “It has stopped him from walking into telephone poles.”
“It all matters, even the small things, and Jamie, you know how important your,” she paused, trying to decide how to most delicately phrase the next few words, “other work is. And I think things are changing, the world press is here in droves.”
He gave her a weary look, as though he saw something in her face that made him profoundly sad. “American innocence, what a beautiful commodity and yet what a price it comes at.”
“You don’t think it helps, all this attention?” she asked, piqued by his comment on the state of her cynicism.
“No, I don’t. We’re just the latest stop on the atrocity tour, Pamela. They’ll hang out at the Europa for a few more months, a few might get addicted to the story and even try to stay and develop an understanding for it, but most will move on as soon as they realize there are no easy answers, if indeed any at all, to the Irish question.”
“Don’t you believe that any change is possible?”
He paused for a moment before answering, fixing her with a weary look. “Change in increments perhaps. But not the sweeping reforms that those people in the streets are looking for. Unfortunately, after eight hundred years of waiting, nothing less than the world turning upside down and inside out is going to satisfy them. But there isn’t going to be a happy ending, at least not anytime soon.”
“Oh Jamie, how can you believe that?” she asked, realizing, even as she said it, that she was confirming his opinion as to her political naïveté.
“How many dead people did you photograph these last few weeks?”
“Touché.”
“Pamela, you know as well as I do that in any country there are always two histories—that of the politicians and the privileged and that of the dispossessed. In no way do the two histories bear any resemblance to each other. One survives to make its way into textbooks and the annals of history, the other dies with the people who lived it. The journalists aren’t here to tell the whole truth. They malign or cozy up to the IRA, depending how many atrocities they’ve committed in the last month, and when something comes along that’s sexier in the business of unofficial war, they’ll be gone. Ireland is but a season on the world stage,” he shrugged eloquently, “and it plays well on American television. It’s just that sometimes what my role is on that stage becomes a little unclear.”
“Do you ever think of just leaving the stage—walking off into the sunset—maybe with Belinda?”
He eyed her shrewdly, the firelight casting his face half in shadow, so that his expression was unreadable, though the undercurrent of despair was evident in his words.
“All the time, and yet I’m afraid I’m as much a prisoner of this country as your husband. We have different lines, but we’re playing much the same role.”
“Except you don’t seem to be illegally imprisoned at present,” she said, somewhat more sourly than she had intended.
“Do you wish that I were?”
“No, I’m sorry Jamie.”
“Likewise. We both seem to be in less than congenial frames of mind this evening.”
“Perhaps it’s that we seem unable to be less than honest with one another.”
He smiled. “Perhaps.”
“I think I’d best get back to bed.” She stood, the blanket no longer warm, but still a comfort against her bare legs.
“What you heard tonight—Pamela it goes without saying, you have to keep it to yourself. It’s not just me who would be in danger should any of that information get out.”
She looked him directly in the eye. “It does go without saying. It always has.”
Chapter Fifty
Fire, Fleet and Candlelight
THE MOON CAME UP LOW AND SMOKY over the hills, lending a spectral cast to bony tree limbs and the hunched shoulders of the surrounding hills. The light hadn’t managed to seep down to ground level, there shadows clustered thick as club moss. Pamela shivered. Despite several layers of wool and a stout pair of boots, the cold was insidious and seemed to have crept right into her marrow.
She’d parked the car some ways back, behind a hedgerow so tangled with drenched and withered fuchsia that there was no way anyone could spot it.
Now she crouched in a thick stand of wych elm, alternating between looking at her watch and forcing herself to not run back to the car as fast as her shaking legs would carry her. Underfoot the papery seed discs of the majestic trees rustled ominously. Every little noise struck at her nerve endings like an ice pick.
Had something moved in the undergrowth? It was hard to see, but yes, there it was again. She held her breath and peered, eyes watering with the effort to make some shape of the formless thing that slithered along the ground. A snake? No, this was Ireland, a snake hadn’t been seen here in hundreds of years. So not a snake. The movement flickered again and she leaned forward, hand going to the pistol she’d strapped to her ankle.
Just then, a hand came across her mouth from behind and an arm like an iron bar fixed itself across her back. She tried to twist out of the hold, but couldn’t budge the grip on her more than a hair’s breadth. The other hand slipped the pistol out of its holster.
She tried screaming but nothing more than a squeak managed to get past the cold leather against her lips. It was then she realized her captor’s finger was lodged between said lips and took a deep breath through her nose before biting down hard.
A muffled ‘ouch’ was the only reaction, though the one syllable managed, even through her panic, to sound familiar.
“Don’t yowl, I’m letting you go now.”
She whirled round as best she could from her undignified position. “You scared the hell out of me,” she said, voice sounding more relieved than indignant, however.
“You little fool, what did you think you were doing, sneaking out here on your own?”
The tide swept back toward indignation. “It’s my business what I’m doing here. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I believe you made a promise to Pat that you wouldn’t go off on your own.”
Damn Pat! He’d obviously told Jamie to keep an eye on her. She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it. She was actually quite grateful for his presence. It wasn’t likely that anyone had seen him, Jamie was well versed in slipping in and out of places without arousing notice. When he wanted to, that is, at other times he seemed the epicenter of whatever universe he was moving through.
Like her, he was dressed in black from head to toe, the only spot of color on him the occasional flash of teeth as he spoke.
“Is he late?”
“Not yet,” she said, struggling to keep her teeth from chattering. “Don’t you even want to know why I’m meeting h
im?” she asked, feeling rather irritated at his smooth taking over of the situation.
“I assume it’s the next mile on your wild goose chase.”
There was really no response to that, Pamela thought, so she wouldn’t deign to give him one.
“Are you certain he meant here?” Jamie asked, the vertical crease in his forehead matching the frown on his face. “I don’t like this, it’s terribly isolated. Something feels wrong.”
She brushed spiderwebbing out of her face. “I’m not leaving. If this man knows anything I want to find out what it is.”
“Then we need to be somewhere we can hear him coming before he sees us.” Jamie eyed the byre that sat on a slight rise, in the quickly fading light. “There’s a loft,” he said speculatively, “that will have to do. Come on.”
They ran low and quick across the open ground, though Jamie, who’d the senses of a hungry jungle cat, didn’t sense anyone about.
The byre was a tall, narrow building with the loft high up and tucked toward the back. It was apparently used as a storage facility and not to house animals, for none of the usual ordure of sheep or other livestock tinted the air.
Jamie chose a small door at the side, with a large clump of lilac sheltering the opening. It opened easily and the two of them, after a last scan of the area, slipped in. The byre was built of gray fieldstone and was cold as the bowels of hell on this November night.
Jamie clicked on a narrow beam of light, casting it around, careful not to shine it near the small, thick-paned windows. There was no ladder, but large spikes stuck out at regular intervals from a beam that ran up the length of the wall to join with the roof joists.
“Up you go, test your weight with each one before you move on, though.”
Jamie needn’t have worried, the beam was stout and the spikes well fixed within it. She was up and over the lip of the loft in seconds. Jamie followed on her heels, clicking the light off as he came over the top into the piles of hay.
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 57