The Burning Glass

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Maybe her paranormal allergy was playing tricks, or her nerves were overreacting to Wallace’s dubious death, or her imagination was responding to the setting, the air stirring with time-drowned memory and desire burned to ash, nothing left behind but ravaged stone. What she’d seen at the chapel, assuming she’d seen anything at all, was the glint of headlights from the main road across the river. She hadn’t seen that much at Isabel’s window. Never mind. With something between a sigh and shrug she started back toward the sanctuary of the flat.

  Alasdair stepped into the doorway, his body silhouetted against the light. His solid, concentrated body, contents under pressure. She stepped inside and he locked the door behind her. “Let’s be getting ourselves to bed, lass. No splinters. You get on, I’ll clear away.”

  She brushed his lips with her own, needing to make no other reply, and headed down the hall. By the time she stepped out of the shower her nerve endings were doing the wave around the stadium of her psyche. She’d only known the man for three months. They were mature people, they knew what they were getting into. But she hadn’t shared a bed in years. Heck, she hadn’t had sex in years. Alasdair had admitted that he’d last had sex a couple of years ago but hadn’t made love in a very long time. Sex was a basic biological urge. There was a lot more to it than biology, however.

  She fussed around with dental floss, tweezers, and emery board—this was no time for a hangnail—then considered her flushed face in the mirror. He’d never seen her without makeup, meager though that was. Maybe she should reinstall her eyeshadow, mascara, and lip gloss, just for the occasion. But then, he wouldn’t want to leave the lights on, would he? Maybe she could get the candles from the dining table and . . . No. Falling asleep with candles burning was stacking the odds against a long relationship. Especially here at Ferniebank, with Isabel’s cautionary tale.

  Jean settled her new nightgown over her curves, sucking in her stomach and throwing out her chest. The gown was simple cotton, if with some darting and shirring to keep it from hanging like a potato sack. Appearing before Alasdair in a black lace spider’s web with a push-up bra would have been, well, fake. If they couldn’t be real now, when could they be?

  You know, she told herself, you’re going to spend a lot more time worrying about it than actually doing it. She stepped out into the hall. Alasdair?

  The dishes were stacked in the drainer beside the kitchen sink. Alasdair sat on the living room couch, feet propped on the coffee table. His left hand stroked Dougie and the right held open the large, flat book of the Ancient Monuments report. His sturdy forefinger tapped one of the pages as though considering testimony in a case. But at her step he looked up, then sat up, pulling off his reading glasses.

  She hadn’t seen those for a while. He was just a bit vain, wasn’t he? “The bathroom’s all yours,” she said. “I’ll turn out the lights.”

  Again that quick touch of lip to lip, a lick and a promise. The bathroom door shut. Jean eyed the inscribed stone lying in state on its doily and turned off the ceiling light. The front windows were pale rectangles, the pale glow of the yard light cheered by yellowed lace of the curtains.

  Dougie gazed at her over the back of the couch, his eyes twin dots of phosphorescence. “Sleep tight,” she told him, and retreated to the bedroom. There she found a small nightlight beside the wardrobe. Ah good. It emitted a rosy shine, making the shadows soft and suggestible and yet providing enough light to keep the proceedings from turning into a farcical scramble.

  Jean glanced out the window toward the river, no more than a skein of shimmer, and toward the chapel, invisible in the darkness. No lights flickered through the trees. The wind rattled something loose in the outbuilding.

  She pulled the curtains and turned back the duvet. The sheets beneath were lightly scented with smoke—they’d been dried outdoors, downwind of Roddy’s peat fire. Inhaling, she sat down on the edge of the bed. No, that made her look as though she was waiting for a bus. She lay down, flat, like an effigy on a tomb. No. She tried rolling onto her side, but wasn’t sure where to put her limbs so that they appeared seductive and not awkward. She sat up again.

  Alasdair walked in, wearing striped pajama bottoms and a fresh white T-shirt. Without taking an extra step, he came straight to the bed, sat down, and drew her back against the breadth of his chest. His exhalation across her ear sent a frisson of delight down her spine. “You’re sure about this, are you?”

  Every single one of her nerve endings turned toward his true north and hung there, quivering. “Yes. Are you?”

  His answer was a caress, his large, capable hands making the serendipitous discovery that, cupped, they were just the size of her breasts. Wow, she thought again, and as his fingertips put the discovery to investigation, oh yes.

  Time stretched, slowed, stopped. Space contracted. The nightgown and the T-shirt and pajamas discorporated. Curious and shy at once, he touched her as though she was made of crystal, and she touched him as though he was made of the finest bone china, until the inspirational tour of the erogenous zones intensified each caress. His skin beneath her lips was salt-sweet, blending with the scent of smoke in her throat to make him taste like a fine Islay whiskey—they’d sat beside Loch Ness sipping Islay whiskey the night she’d realized it was all going to come to this.

  Making love was like riding a bicycle. The body memory was still there. The mechanics were ordinary, murmured that ineradicable lump of intellect, like a stone in her shoe, that held down one corner of her senses. It was the partner who was not.

  She hoped she was skilled enough to please him. If Alasdair could hold himself and everyone he dealt with to high standards in other areas, then he might do so when it came to sex, too . . . She was pleasing him. The smooth banks and braes of his body sang to her hands, her lips, her tongue, verse and response, and singed them as well.

  She glimpsed his face in the shadows, intense, set, eyes slitted. His body was heavy, but not too heavy—it was comforting, solid . . . She suppressed a quick ow, and when he stopped, whispered, “Go on, go—oh.”

  Yes, that was what she wanted, what she needed—bodies interlocked, limbs entwined, forehead pressed to forehead—yes. The bedposts beat muted time against the stone wall, stopped, started again as they shifted around, playing variations on a theme. His breath came in syncopated gasps, in counterpoint to hers, and that cool observer in her senses murmured that still he was holding something back, assessing and evaluating even as he enjoyed. Contents under pressure, not just for him, for her as well—let go, let go, it’s all right. Not yet.

  Her unfocused eyes saw something beyond his shoulder, a glow moving against the window curtains—more headlights, certainly, headlights across the river, fluttering through the trees. . . . If she was seeing fireworks, they were inside her own mind. Her eyes shut as her body arched back against the pillows, ah, yesssss.

  When she opened her eyes again, Alasdair was looking down at her, sweat glistening on his forehead and pooling between their bodies. And suddenly she felt the chill of the room that a moment ago she could have sworn was hot as a conservatory growing tropical plants.

  His lips were rosy, almost bruised. They parted. She pressed her fingertips against them before he could speak—don’t say anything, above all don’t ask if it was all right for me—it’s good, it’s good. But still a faint arctic gleam lurked deep in his eyes, and she thought of Yellowstone Park in the winter, the hot springs steaming up through drifts of snow, rimmed with ice bright as gemstones. Not yet. Soon.

  One more time the bedposts thumped the wall, as though knocking at the blocked door in the Laigh Hall, and he was beside her, pulling the cool duvet over them both. She lay back into his arms and cast a wary glance at the window, but if any light shone through the curtains at all it was simply the ambient light of a starless, moonless night.

  And then footsteps walked across the ceiling. Jean turned her head so quickly to look upwards that she missed Alasdair’s nose by a millimeter. Her body
seemed to sink into the mattress, that cold spectral sensation heavier than Alasdair’s full weight could ever be. She didn’t need to ask if he heard the steps. His body grew so hard and brittle, she felt as though she was lying in the embrace of a fully-armored knight.

  The light steps moved slowly from one side of the room to the other, paused, then came back again. After what seemed like two hours, but which was probably only a few minutes, they faded away into the profound silence. But no sooner had Jean taken a deep breath and swum up from the depth of her sixth sense, and Alasdair had shaken off his petrifaction and with a similar deep breath relaxed against her, then the harp music filled the night.

  The strains rose and fell, slow, then fast, then slow again, lovemaking in melody. The strings vibrated in the same frequency as Jean’s nerves. Alasdair’s fingertips stroked her flank in the same rhythm, as though she were the musical instrument. The music came from another dimension, the prickle on the nape of her neck told her that. And yet it wasn’t at all fearsome, just melancholy.

  Alasdair’s hand stopped moving, his body went inert, and his breath slowed. He was asleep. Jean drew his arm further around her and clasped his hand between her own. She lay there, her thoughts drifting like thistledown, listening to the otherworldly music, until at last, it, too, faded into silence and time, and she slept at last.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jean woke suddenly, a ray of sun shining in her eyes and birds singing arias outside. Whatever she had been dreaming sifted through the fingers of her memory and disappeared, leaving only a vague, unsettled, melancholy.

  Alasdair was no dream. He was lying beside her, the duvet not quite pulled up to his naked shoulders. His hair was a bit longer than the severe style he’d worn when they first met, and was actually tousled. Once he’d been blond, she supposed, but now those amber waves of grain were touched by frost. She’d never known him without the gray in his hair and the creases beside his mouth and eyes, now partly erased in sleep. His unshaven cheeks and jaw made him look not hard-bitten but tender, taken unawares.

  She had only known him for three months. For one of those they’d ignored each other, giving their mutual attraction every chance to wither and die. And yet here they were, coupled, flesh of each other’s flesh—more or less. For all the dithering and all the doubts, sex was the easy part.

  The sunbeam faded. Jean wallowed, drowsily replaying the sensations of the night before, and the footsteps, and the music of the clarsach. . . . The clock beside the bed read nine a.m. Where was Dougie? Usually he wanted his breakfast by now. The little cat must be sulking somewhere, his role as the man of Jean’s house usurped by another male.

  She climbed out of bed into the cold air, her feet landing on the nightclothes puddled on the floor. The long muscles of her thighs twinged. Wincing, she huddled on her robe and headed to the bathroom, only to discover that muscles weren’t the only part of her anatomy signaling how long it had been since she’d practiced the amatory arts. She and Alasdair would have to work hard to alleviate her condition.

  She was still not wearing any makeup, in the full light of day, even. She shrugged. As for her hair, she would probably win a Medusa lookalike contest. There. A wet comb helped.

  Back in the hallway she looked around. Still no Dougie. You’ve never been properly snubbed, Jean thought, until you’ve been snubbed by a cat. She walked gingerly into the bedroom and threw open the curtains so that the light fell on Alasdair’s face. He twitched and groaned, and then, with a ghost of a smile, muttered, “Bonny Jean.”

  She kissed the top of his head, then found her glasses on the dresser and put them on. A look through the window showed her patches of blue sky between white billows of cloud, the distant green hillside, the gilded trees, the river glittering to another ray of sun. Just because she couldn’t see the main road from here didn’t mean that headlights wouldn’t reflect this way.

  Alasdair sat up and gazed at the bedside clock as though trying to remember how to tell time.

  “Coffee?” asked Jean. “Tea?”

  “Please.”

  Smiling, she tottered off to the kitchen and found the packet of coffee inside Minty’s basket—it was like Dr. Who’s Tardis, bigger inside than out. Within moments she had the pot dripping away. The delectable scent alone helped to jump-start her brain. Dutifully she ascertained that both cars were still occupying the otherwise empty courtyard and the piece of inscription was still sitting on the bookshelf. But Dougie was nowhere to be found, not under the couch, not under the bed, not behind the television.

  Her smile curdling, Jean rattled the box of kibble and called his name. That produced Alasdair, back in pajamas and T-shirt. “Misplaced the moggie, have you?”

  “Where could he have gotten off to? The windows are shut, he couldn’t have slipped out. I mean, y’all don’t have window screens here—I’m always worried about him back in Ramsay Garden. Dougie?”

  Alasdair opened the door of the broom closet and flipped on the light. “He’s used his loo.”

  “Dougie! Breakfast time!”

  Alasdair switched the light off, then with almost a double-take, peered into the shadows. “Well, now, that’s right interesting.”

  “What?” Jean tried to peer past him.

  “See that bit of light just there?”

  She shoved him half a step aside and looked. The far end of the closet was illuminated by a thin strip of, well, not light exactly. Not-darkness. Which wavered suddenly as a small body leaped through it and into the closet.

  Both Jean and Alasdair jerked back, then laughed as Dougie came strutting past the brooms and piping, whiskers at full smirk. Brushing by his attentive audience, he headed straight for the kitchen. “Fetch the torch,” said Alasdair, squeezing back into the closet.

  Jean got the flashlight and placed it in his outstretched hand, then pressed herself into the closet behind him. The beam of light revealed an opening cut through the thickness of the stone wall, perhaps a foot tall and eight inches wide. At the far end it was partially covered by a broken piece of wood—the paneling in the Laigh Hall. It moved aside when Alasdair pushed at it, opening onto shadow.

  “He’s found himself a secret passage. Is that an arrow slit that was once on an outside wall? Or a serving hatch from the old kitchen?”

  Jean eased herself back out into the flat. “It’s too small for a hatch, and that was never an outside wall. I bet it’s a squint, a spyhole. The Laird’s Lug.”

  “I’ll tack a bit of plywood over it, keep the moggie within bounds.” Alasdair emerged from the closet and switched off the flashlight.

  Dougie was sitting next to his bowl, his head cocked to the side, obviously thinking, first they run about looking for me, then they neglect me. Humans!

  With a low bow, Jean made him an offering of kibble. Then she poured out two cups of steaming black elixir, handed Alasdair a cup, added milk to her own, and drank. Another brain cell stirred to life. “The Laird’s Lug, or ‘ear.’ The laird would eavesdrop on his guests or petitioners or workers—the people waiting around to see him. The hole was probably covered by a tapestry or something, the equivalent of a secret microphone today.”

  “He’d learn a thing or two to his advantage, if not to theirs.” Disdaining the proffered milk carton, Alasdair took a swig of coffee, straight up. “That’s likely listed in the old P and S survey. I’ll have a wee keek after breakfast.”

  “Speaking of which . . .” Jean gathered the supplies she’d brought and assembled muffins and eggs. They ate off the ordinary pottery from the cabinet, leaving Minty’s crystal and china gleaming in the drainer. “I’ll take her things back when I go to lunch, er, luncheon. I hope her new creations are as good as last night’s food, and she hasn’t gotten carried away with something weird like anchovy ice cream.”

  “The food was good, but then, we had a bit of an appetite.” Alasdair only kept his deadpan lack-of-expression for a few seconds. His grin broke through like sunshine through storm clouds,
exposing slightly uneven teeth that just added to the charm. Alasdair. Charm. Who knew?

  Jean knew. She grinned back at him. “You did hear the footsteps, right? And the harp music?”

  “Obliging of Isabel to play accompaniment—if that’s what we were hearing.”

  “I don’t think we were hearing the wind, or anything like that, but no, it might not have been the ghost playing the Ferniebank Clarsach.”

  “Usually these things are explained away with, it’s music from a radio, or, it’s someone playing a CD or the like. Though if it’s someone playing silly beggars, I’d like to know how they managed it.”

  “And why they bothered.” Jean grinned again. “But what if it was Isabel? We might have been hearing the same music played on the same instrument that Robert the Bruce heard. By the same hands that Mary Stuart heard playing. No matter how you try to un-romanticize them, they’re still important historical figures. Suddenly I’m not so dubious about that dratted paranormal allergy.”

  “Even though it was when we found we had the same allergy . . .” He let the sentence trail away into a rueful smile.

  He understood. Jean reached over and took his hand. Outside, the gate clanged open. Feet clumped across the gravel. With a quick squeeze, Alasdair released her hand and leaped to the window. “Well now. Roddy Elliot’s got a key as well.” He reached for the doorknob, then spun around and strode back to the bedroom.

  No, Jean thought, the P and S caretaker wasn’t going to impress anyone wearing pajamas. Especially not a farmer who’d probably been up since dawn. She peered out from behind the curtain to see a raw-boned man lumbering across the courtyard. His wellie boots were splashed and his pants stained, and his sweater, an intricate Fair Isle knit, trailed broken ends of yarn.