Amanda shook her head. Years of wheedling Cynthia for favors made Wayne incapable of taking “no” for an answer. “That’s not where our friendship is heading. I’m sorry, but there it is.”
“I love you,” he said with a earnest sigh. The odor of Crest Mint Gel bathed her face.
“No you …” No matter how annoyed she was, she had no right denying the man his feelings. Although she could fudge her own a bit. “Listen, Wayne, I’m not looking for Mr. Right just now. Okay? I need to get my master’s degree, and find a good job—it’s not like I’m in computer science, you know, my brother’s barely a senior and already has a position lined up.”
His hands kneaded her shoulders. His face sagged.
“Besides,” she went on, pulling against his grasp, “I’m not so sure that Mr. Right, or Miss Right, isn’t a lot more likely to sneak up on you when you’re not looking. Now will you please let me go?”
He released her so abruptly she lurched back into the display flat. The Lucite box with the bone fragments slid onto her shoulder and she grabbed it with both hands. James’s portrait fell onto its face. Wayne leaped forward to seize one of the prints. A long breathless moment later, the wire holding the second one broke with a ping and it crashed to the floor.
In spite of her stays Amanda was on the print before Wayne could reach it. It wasn’t broken. Had she knocked it over or was James making his presence known again?
She replaced the box with the bones, opened the one with the miniature and set it upright, propped the print against the leg of the display, and scowled. “Good one, Wayne!”
“I’m sorry,” he moaned. “That was beyond stupid. You’re not going to sue me for sexual harassment, are you?”
And lose my job? Amanda retorted silently. But he was already crushed. She didn’t need to rub it in. Reversing her scowl into a stiff smile she said, “Come on. Get a grip. Everything’s cool.”
A movement in the back hallway was Lafayette, padding purposefully toward the front door. Amanda swished across the hallway—it was very satisfying having long skirts to swish—and opened the door for him. She followed him down the steps, intending to go all the way to front gate and shanghai a group of Cub Scouts if necessary, but already several people were advancing along the gravel walk. “We’re in business,” she said over her shoulder, and switched her mental facilities into antique-speak.
To his credit, Wayne pulled himself together and played Page in his usual accomplished way. In fact, he’d obviously been doing his own research. Again and again during the day he stopped his tour groups by the display and regaled them with stories of the Highland regiments.
“After the rebellion of 1745, the English encouraged the creation of Highland regiments in order to employ the Highlanders in a manner advantageous to England. ‘And no great mischief if they fall’, as General Wolfe has pointed out. Prime Minister William Pitt has authorized the recruitment of men even from the disaffected clans, because ‘not many of them will return.’”
By the end of the day Amanda was wading in. “By raising regiments, the Scottish gentry assimilates with the dominant English culture. For the ambitious landowner, the army is a way to social advancement and often a way to reclaim land confiscated during the late unpleasantness.”
“What about the peasants?” someone asked.
“Some tenant families are blackmailed by their landlords into putting their sons into scarlet coats,” replied Wayne. “Even so, more than one soldier returns home to find his family gone and his cottage destroyed. Some of the misrepresentations made to the recruits are leading to demands for honorable treatment and even mutiny.”
“Those settlers who came here from Scotland,” Amanda went on, “have found their loyalties tested during the present hostilities. Some fight for the King, while others have gone to the British colonies in Canada.”
“And, if the truth be told, there are voices in Parliament which support the rights of the American colonies,” concluded Wayne.
A tourist with a bristling gray moustache inspected the prints. “Have you ever thought that the armies with the fanciest uniforms are almost always the ones that lose? The Nazis during WWII, for example. Oh, excuse me,” he added with a smile, “I suppose you haven’t heard of that one.”
Amanda and Wayne shared a calculatedly puzzled glance. “But I follow your reasoning, sir,” Amanda said. “It is evidence of complacency and pride to bring the same uniforms to Virginia’s or to India’s heat that served so well in Britain’s chill. Or, many years ago, for Roman officials to build open villas in that same British chill, as though sheer force of will can dominate a climate.”
The sightseers laughed. Wayne bowed them out the door into the blast of heat and sunshine. “Many thanks for your company. If you would do us the honor to visit the gift shop.”
Amanda glanced at the miniature portrait. If Cynthia had the bright idea of hiring an interpreter to play James this summer, he’d need an outfit with an air-conditioner, like an astronaut.
Wayne shut the door. “I’ll run upstairs and make sure everything’s okay. You can do the downstairs.”
“Thanks.” That was Amanda’s job, but if he was trying to make up, she wasn’t going to argue. She strolled through the library and replaced a couple of books that were lying open on the desk. The ink blot still curled across the blotter, with the addition of a tic-tac-toe game and a couple of four-letter words in childish printing. She tore that sheet off and threw it away.
In the back hall she ran into Roy. “How’s it going?”
“Some of the tourists have really good questions,” he answered. “You’d swear others just fell off the turnip truck. One guy asked me …”
A sharp cry echoed through the house, followed by a series of muffled thuds. Something substantial was falling down the stairs—maybe that something substantial which had just gone up the stairs. Amanda grabbed her skirts and ran, but Roy beat her to the scene.
Wayne lay crumpled at the bottom of the staircase. Strewn behind him, marking his path down the steps, were his wig, one of his silver-buckled shoes, and his pocket watch. His face was ashen.
Roy knelt beside him and cradled his head. “Are you all right?”
By easing herself down the newel post Amanda was able to kneel, too. “Wayne?”
Wayne’s eyelids fluttered and his mouth twitched. “Fear not, fair lady, ’tis but a flesh wound.”
“Wayne!” Amanda patted him down, but found only a scraped knee that was bleeding through his hose. Good thing he was so well padded. “Move your fingers and toes. Now your arms and legs, yeah, like that. I don’t think anything’s broken. Unless you cracked a rib—does it hurt to take a breath?”
“I hurt all over,” Wayne groaned. “But no, the ribs are okay.”
“Man, you’re going to have bruises on top of your bruises,” Roy told him. “Come on, let’s see if you can stand up.”
Roy was much more help to Wayne than Amanda was. She had to concentrate on getting herself to her feet. But once there she took Wayne’s other arm. He swayed gently between her and Roy, taking inventory. “My ankle,” he said at last, and tried to put his weight on his unshod foot. “Yow! No go, folks. It may not be broken but it’s sure as hell sprained.”
“Maybe we should call an ambulance,” Amanda suggested.
“Oh no, no,” protested Wayne. “No way. Just help me to my car, I don’t drive with my left foot anyway.”
“All right,” Roy said reluctantly, “but I’m coming with you. You have to get to a doctor.”
“I’m okay,” Wayne insisted.
His color was better, Amanda noted. She walked up the stairs to collect his watch, shoe, and wig, and gave all three to Roy. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, no, no,” said Wayne. “I’m just fine. You have to lock up the house.”
“All right. But I’m going to call and check on you.”
“No need, I’m fine—ouch!” Wayne took a step, then another. By lean
ing heavily on Roy he made it out the door, down the steps, and into the sun.
Amanda draped Wayne’s other arm over her shoulder. The three of them hobbled down the gravel walk in an awkward five-legged gait. “What happened?” she asked. “Did somebody leave a candy wrapper on the stairs?”
“I—er—I don’t know,” Wayne replied. “I just fell over my feet, I guess. You know how clumsy I am.”
There was something behind his words, an edge Amanda couldn’t quite classify. He was clumsy, she thought, although more socially than physically. She’d heard that Princess Diana had thrown herself down the stairs to get her husband’s sympathy. But even Wayne wasn’t that neurotic, to risk breaking his neck just to make Amanda feel sorry for him.
What if he’d arranged the wig, the shoe, and the watch, then jumped from the bottom tread and thrashed around to make noise? But he wasn’t asking her to come home with him and soothe his brow.
She grimaced. It wasn’t light work hauling Wayne down the slipping and sliding gravel of the walk. He wasn’t faking his ankle, that was for sure, any more than he was faking the scrape on his knee. Even if the fall had started out as a stunt, he really was hurt.
At last they had Wayne at his car. Roy offered to drive. Wayne wouldn’t hear of it. Rolling his eyes, Roy climbed into the passenger seat. “I’ll call the Benedettos and let them know my car’s still out here,” he told Amanda. “I’ll catch a ride with Carrie tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring you myself.” Wayne offered Amanda a jaunty grin missing only Indiana Jones’s old hat. The engine roared and the car pulled out, scattering gravel.
Amanda was too short of breath to call good-bye. She stood panting, her lungs filled with the odors of auto exhaust, Wayne’s after shave, and sweat. Her shadow stretched out before her, pointing to the gardens. Gardens, she thought.
Tomorrow the garden club was holding its monthly luncheon in the dining room, one of the many perks Cynthia had retained when she donated Melrose to CW. Thank goodness Carrie would be here. She doubted Wayne would be. She saw him mummified in adhesive tape and painted with iodine, laid out on a Williamsburg Collection reproduction settee, Cynthia feeding him chicken soup from a demitasse spoon. Maybe, she thought, he was trying to get attention not from her but from his mother.
If they gave out Oscars for most irritating person, today Wayne would’ve won hands down. But he had so many redeeming features, reaming him out wouldn’t be one bit satisfying. Which was even more irritating.
Amanda stalked back into the house feeling like a lathered horse. She spent a long time doing aquatic aerobics in the shower. Then she fed Lafayette, who had of course finished his rounds and was ready for dinner well before she’d even thought about hers. By the time she’d gone through the grounds and around the house it was almost dark.
Turning on all the lights in the upstairs and downstairs halls, she checked out the top of the staircase. She found no kinks in the carpet, no lost pencils, nothing to have made Wayne fall. Sally’s painted eyes looked impassively down from her portrait, offering no help.
All right, Amanda told herself, so there was nothing here for Wayne to have tripped over. That didn’t mean her crazy theory was right. His fall had been an accident. It was surprising more accidents didn’t happen, with the interpreters running around in unfamiliar clothing. He’d snagged his shoe buckle against his opposite ankle or something. Just because he was playing the situation for all it was worth didn’t mean he was guilty of …
Whoa. Amanda stopped dead on the fourth step from the bottom. What if Wayne had seen James? Just a glint of scarlet in the shadows, maybe, enough to startle him and make him miss the first step? That would explain the edge in his voice—he wasn’t sure he’d seen anything at all, let alone a ghostly figure. Better to be called a klutz than nuts. But it’d been full daylight, which made that scenario, too, unlikely.
She made a mental note to ask Wayne. It’d be sort of comforting to know someone else had seen James, however briefly.
Back in her apartment Amanda gathered sandwich fixings from the refrigerator and tucked the telephone between her shoulder and cheek. “Hello, Mrs. Chancellor? This is Amanda Witham at Melrose. I was just checking to see how Wayne is doing.”
“Why, how nice of you to call,” replied Cynthia’s candied voice. “He’s resting comfortably, thank you. A bit of a sprained ankle, some bruises, nothing too bad. The doctor suggested he stay home tomorrow.” Wayne’s voice bellowed in the background, then was muffled as Cynthia either closed a door or pressed a pillow over his face. “Can you and Carrie handle the visitors all alone? Of course, you’ll have the ‘servants’, and the caterers for the luncheon, and I’ll be there with the garden club, if there’s anything I can do to help. I’ll try to have Wayne back out there on Saturday, he’ll be limping, but we’ll just have to pretend Page has gout or something. Thank you again for calling, you’re so sweet to think of us. Good night.”
“Good ni …” The line was already dead. Amanda set the phone down on the cabinet, wondering how Cynthia had learned to speak entire paragraphs without breathing.
Tonight the cozy apartment was too small and too warm. Amanda wrapped her sandwich in a napkin, turned off the floodlights, and stepped out into the night. She sat down on a bench beside the front walk. The trees, the lawn, the river were sketched in shades of gray beneath a lucid Prussian blue sky. Between bites of sandwich she watched a glow on the eastern horizon swell into the rising moon. Just past the full, it made a bronze oval like the badge on James’s scabbard. In the pale light the shadows of the trees darkened to inky black. Is this romantic or what? Amanda asked herself. She might as well be at the multiplex wallowing in some vivid fantasy.
A cold breeze lifted her hair, but not one leaf rustled. Gooseflesh rose on her skin. She spun around. Speaking of fantasy… .
James was seated comfortably next to her, one arm and hand resting on his lap, the other crooked over the back of the bench. He glowed faintly in the darkness, shadowless. “Good evening, Miss Witham.”
“Erk …” She gulped down a mouthful of ham and cheese. “Good evening, Captain Grant.”
“Please, continue with your repast. I—I have already supped.” James’s eyes fell and he frowned, as though trying to remember something. Like the menu of a meal eaten two hundred years ago.
Amanda nibbled at the crust of the bread. But she didn’t want the sandwich any more, not when she had such a feast for her senses.
James seemed every bit as concrete as he’d been the night before. The planes and angles of his profile were cut flawlessly against the moonlit night. His lashes concealed his downcast eyes. His hand on the tartan fabric was lean and strong, the nails neatly pared. The topic of eighteenth-century fingernails wasn’t on Amanda’s agenda, but she suspected James’s should have been dirty.
Was it his wealth that had kept him and his uniform spiffy after two years’ slogging around the southern colonies? Or was she seeing him not as he had actually looked at his time of death, but how he imagined himself to look? If he were generating his own image, though, he’d have his sword. And the scabbard at his side was still empty.
Maybe this was how she wanted him to look, attractive not only physically but conceptually, the ultimate mysterious stranger.
He raised his head and smiled at her. The bread turned to dust in her mouth. Her analysis burned to ash in the light of his eyes.
This guy is good. Really good. And he knew it. She put the rest of the sandwich down on the low wall behind the bench. Having him watch her eat was like having him watch her change clothes, rushing things a bit for a—what? Second date?
He tilted his head to the side like a bird contemplating a worm. “Your color is high, Miss Witham. I trust you are not succumbing to the sickness of these warm climates, that which is caused by the putrefaction of vegetable matter and the unhealthy night air. Perhaps we should retire inside.”
“No problem,” she said. “Very few people around her
e get mal—the sweating sickness—any more.”
“Indeed? How fortunate.”
“I—er… .” Well, this wasn’t a date, was it? Weather, a celebrity scandal, the latest movie—those topics weren’t going to cut it. But James, like most people, liked to talk about himself. If she got him going on what to him was contemporary color, she could use the details to punch up her thesis. As long as she remembered all the suitable academic qualifiers. James was definitely a source she’d have to keep secret. Not Deep Throat, but Deep Kilt. “Tell me more about London. I’ve never been there.”
“Ah, London. New squares and new streets rise up every day in such a prodigy of buildings that nothing in the world can equal it except old Rome in Trajan’s time, perhaps. But Rome today is sadly decayed, as are its monuments, and London has been built afresh since the great fire of the last century. Mr. Wren’s churches are famous for their handsome steeples, and the mighty dome of St. Paul’s rises over all, the equal of St. Peter’s without a doubt.”
“You’ve been to Rome, too?”
“Certainly. A gentleman must have a proper education, mustn’t he?”
“I imagine you’ve been properly educated,” Amanda said dryly.
James grinned, taking her meaning. His hand slipped away from his lap and took hers. Funny how someone who hadn’t the least concept of electricity could send electric sparks through her body. Doubly funny, that though she wasn’t really touching him, she could feel him the way she could feel a breeze on her cheek or water trickling down her back.
“It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,” James murmured, “Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.”
Those lines from Romeo and Juliet weren’t nearly as moldy an oldie in 1781, Amanda told herself. In James’s slightly ironic voice the phone book would seem profound. She cleared her throat. “What about ‘My love is like a red, red rose’?”
His eyebrow quirked. “A colonial verse?”
“Robert Burns.”
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