Shadows in Scarlet

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  The other brow rose.

  “You’ve been spending too much time in London and not enough in Edinburgh.”

  “Edinburgh,” he said. “The tenements crowded together above the dark depths of the loch and the castle frowning over all like a specter of ancient and weary Time. And yet I am told there are plans afoot to build a fine new city in the best model of London.”

  “Some Scot you are, singing the praises of London.”

  “And why not, Madame, when such interchanges make a beneficial mixture of manners and render our union more complete? Scotland’s union with England, that is to say.” His amendment only emphasized the double meaning of his earlier words. His thumb caressed the hills and valleys of her knuckles, considering the possibility of other, more private, hills and valleys.

  Amanda was caught between amusement and lust. I can’t really touch him, she reminded herself. Then why was the flirting of his thumb across her knuckles so exciting?

  Amanda raised her free hand and set it against James’s chest, on the silver buckle of the shoulder belt. The buckle she’d seen tarnished and dirty, and which now lay in the box in the entrance hall, still stained with age. Beneath her fingertips it gleamed like myth—Laurian silver or Tolkien’s mithril—there, she could sling around literary references just as well as he could.

  She sensed pressure, and coolness, and the faintest, most distant vibration, as though a heart beat in the chest beneath the belt and the scarlet coat. But it was only an illusion of a heartbeat, wasn’t it?

  She dropped her left hand, retrieved her right, and stood up. The man wasn’t real—yes he was, he was a real ghost—he was as real as she wanted him to be and as he wanted himself to be. This place was real. This time was real. Why couldn’t her fantasy be real, too?

  The moonlight shimmered on the river and spangled every leaf and branch as though the Virginia landscape, too, wore silver fittings. A footstep crunched on the gravel walk. He was standing behind her. Every follicle on the back of her neck tightened to the quick cool stirring of—his breath, he had breath, or a memory of breath.

  “Amanda?” James asked. “If I may presume to address you so familiarly.”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Be not melancholy. The war will soon end. All will be well, in one way or the other.”

  “Yes.” She turned around. No surprise James was close behind her. She found herself nose to chin with him. The ruffle at his throat and the kilt at his knee were subtle tickles against her chin and her thigh. His arms closed around her, leaving her hands spread on the fragile resonance that was his scarlet coat and his chest beneath. Go for it. Wreathed in the smoky sweet aroma of whiskey, she opened her lips for his and shuddered in delight at his kiss.

  It was a teasing hint of a kiss, a delicate merging of lips and tongues, more a tension in her skin and a melting warmth in her stomach. And yet his body was undeniable beneath her hands and mouth, leaning insistently into hers, there. She’d never felt anything like it before. She wasn’t just turned on, she was flying high.

  After several long and gratifying minutes Amanda came up for air. She hung onto James until her knees stopped bending backwards, like a giraffe’s, and then looked into his eyes.

  At a distance of only a few inches they were no less vivid, crinkled with pleasure. Pleasure, not triumph. Sally Armstrong would have slapped his face for an embrace and a kiss a lot less invasive than that one. She would have had the vapors for days worrying it would tarnish her reputation. To Amanda the kiss was only the overture and the curtain going up. On what?

  James spoke first. “If I have offended your delicate nature, Amanda, I apologize. But your beauty overwhelms me.”

  If she responded with a crass twenty-first century retort, would he vanish? She didn’t want to find out. She didn’t know what she wanted. She didn’t know what he wanted, for that matter—he had his name back, didn’t he?

  As a man of his time, he might want an evening’s recreation from her. As a man out of his time, he might want comfort from a living woman. Or he might be repeating the pattern imprinted on him before his death—Melrose and a woman. “What do you want, James?” she asked.

  He blinked. Uncertainty moved like a wave up and down his face. His eyes looked somewhere beyond Amanda, beyond the moon and the night. “I want my sword,” he said.

  Duh. She should’ve figured that one out for herself. And just how symbolic was his sword anyway, especially now? But James Grant had, thank goodness, lived long before Freudian theory. “What if I find your sword for you?”

  “Then, then… .”

  She’d done it now. His body thinned, so that she could see the dimly lit windows of her apartment through his chest. Even though she could see her hands and arms embracing him, she could no longer feel him.

  As long as he ignored his circumstances, she thought, as long as he pretended he knew where he was and what he was doing there, he could maintain the illusion of life. “James.”

  His face firmed. His eyes focussed on Amanda’s, gleaming hard as gemstones. “If I had my sword I could go home with honor, home to Dundreggan, honor intact—with my sword I could avenge …”

  He was gone, but his voice lingered in a cry of rage and pain. Even after it, too, faded, Amanda stood stock still in the middle of the path.

  Avenge what? His death? But why should he have to return home to do that? The American hand that fired the fatal bullet had long ago turned into American dust.

  “Go home with honor,” he’d said. Maybe he’d left Scotland under some sort of cloud. Maybe his service here in the colonies was intended to buy him back his honor, the honor a man of his era and his class would think more important than life itself.

  A man of his era. Amanda looked up at the indifferent face of the moon. It wasn’t fair. Why should the one man she could never have be more compelling than any other man she’d ever met?

  Chapter Nine

  “Robert Burns,” read the entry in the encyclopedia, “began writing poetry in 1783.” No wonder James had never heard of him, Amanda told herself. “Ae fond kiss and then we sever, Ae fareweel, and then forever.” Burns had his depressingly realistic moments.

  She shut the book, put it back on the shelf, and closed the doors of the cabinet. Her reflection wavered in the glass, a twenty-first-century woman wearing eighteenth-century fashion and dabbling in eighteenth-century romance.

  Back then a kiss would’ve been filled with mystery and magic. Now nothing about the entire spectrum of physical love was at all mysterious, let alone magical. Of course, if the mystery was gone, so was the shame. You lose some, you win some.

  Amanda’s former roommates might have settled for casual encounters on back seats and park benches, but she never had. She’d planned her relationships carefully, trying to create magic and mystery. Her former lovers—all two of them—were nice, well-meaning guys, and the relationships had been rewarding enough within their contexts.

  So here she was in a very old context that was plenty new to her. Amanda left the library, went into the main kitchen, and unlocked the back door. The morning was hazy but fresh, like James’s eyes. And just about as warm.

  He was a man of his time, not hers, she reminded herself. The glow of the Age of Enlightenment hadn’t necessarily illuminated the shadowy corners of the bedroom. By eighteenth-century standards James was being very bold with her. Partly from the soldier’s eternal imperative—now or never—but also because of Amanda’s seemingly unconventional dress and manners. Last night’s kiss alone put her beyond the pale. Now he’d expect her to put up or shut up.

  “Good morning!” Two white-coated figures stood before her, one male and one female, carrying covered trays and grinning from ear to ear.

  Amanda grinned back. “Oh! Oh, hi! Sorry, I didn’t see you come around the corner.”

  “You were a million miles away,” said the woman.

  “About two hundred years away, actually,” Amanda replied. “You’
re from the caterer, aren’t you? Come on in, make yourself at home.” She stepped back from the door so they could get inside, and hovered while they went back and forth to their truck.

  Soon Carrie and Roy arrived, too. Roy stayed in the kitchen to brief the other interpreters on today’s line—that Page had been unexpectedly called away to a meeting of the House of Burgesses.

  Carrie and Amanda fixed a placard to the “Open’ sign by the front door: “We regret that the Dining Room of Melrose Hall will be closed from noon to two p.m. today.” “Hope no one will be too disappointed,” said Amanda as they took their positions at the top of the steps.

  “Maybe Cynthia will let us leave the door cracked, so the peasants can catch a glimpse of their betters at feeding time.”

  Amanda laughed. “Heard anything from Wayne?”

  “Not directly. Cynthia says he’s making a speedy recovery, and will be back at work tomorrow. What happened, anyway?”

  “He tripped over his own feet,” Amanda replied cautiously. “I thought at first he’d done it on purpose, to make me feel sorry for him, but he really is hurt.”

  “Poor Wayne. He’s like Frankenstein’s monster, put together from Cynthia’s leftovers.”

  “Will he ever be struck by lightning and transformed into a man?”

  “Not if he runs to Mommy every time a storm comes up.” Carrie shook her head. “If we don’t get a fax from Edinburgh today about our mysterious Captain Grant we’ll have to wait until next week.”

  “Rats. I could try and find an e-mail address for the Grants themselves, I guess. Or just ask Lady C. for their phone number.”

  “You’ve really gotten hooked on the guy, haven’t you?”

  “He’s a little more exciting than anyone in real time,” Amanda told her, right up front.

  “Hard to make out with a miniature portrait and some bones, though,” teased Carrie.

  Amanda managed an inscrutable smile. The first customers of the day came walking up the path and she and Carrie dropped into their roles.

  One group came and went, and two, and three. By late morning the dining room was resplendent with white linen and bone china, and delectable smells were wafting from the kitchen. The interpreters used every excuse to drop by and sample the rejects—an overdone roll, a too pale strawberry, a radish rose that looked more like a dandelion. Even the archaeological students were attracted from the depths of the garden, their muddy feet smudging the back steps while the caterers handed goodies out the door. Lafayette padded tirelessly around legs and between tables and chairs, pouncing on any scrap as it hit the floor.

  Cynthia and the florist arrived just before noon. Lady C. stood over the woman while she set out the centerpiece, a lush but tasteful arrangement of roses, carnations, lilies, and baby’s breath. The florist escaped down the walk past the incoming pastel dresses of the garden club.

  Amanda and Carrie curtsied and directed the dozen or so women inside. A few lingered by the display in the entrance hall, commenting on the truth of the famous Melrose legend, but still the dining room doors shut promptly at noon. The clink of silver against china and various feminine twitters began to filter into the hallway. “Cynthia runs a tight ship,” Amanda commented.

  “She gets things done, no doubt about it,” returned Carrie. “Roy’s been grazing in the kitchen long enough. Let’s put him on the front door and see if there’s some extra salmon mousse.”

  There was, as Lafayette’s satisfied smirk confirmed. The courses came and went, soapsuds bubbled in the sink, and one last bite of peach melba dissolved on Amanda’s tongue. “Delicious,” she told the caterers. “Thank you for letting us have some of the leftovers.”

  “If I wrap up the rest,” the man replied, “you think those kids digging in the garden will eat them?”

  “They won’t even wash their hands first,” Carrie assured him.

  Back in the front hall Roy was ushering another tour group outside. The dining room door opened and Amanda glanced around at it. “Amanda, dear,” said Cynthia. “Bring in that picture of James Grant, would you please?”

  Amanda took the miniature out of its box and into the dining room. She expected Cynthia to be seated at the head of the table, but no, she occupied a modest spot midway down its side, opposite the door. Amanda set the portrait down between Cynthia’s coffee cup and the centerpiece. When she turned to slip out again, Cynthia’s manicured talon seized her wrist and pulled her back. “This is Amanda Witham, who plays Sally Armstrong for us. She’s the sweetest thing, so pretty and polite.”

  Amanda shaped her mouth into a demure smile, and said to herself, if you only knew. “May I be of assistance, Madame?”

  “Yes, dear, you may. We’ve had quite the daring idea for our entertainment today—well, to be fair, it was Julia’s perfectly brilliant suggestion.” A bird-like woman in frilly pink—Cynthia’s stooge, Amanda guessed—nodded weakly. “Betsy, you’ll give your little talk on tax reform next time, won’t you?” A large woman in a lilac tent attempted a smile. “We need for you to close the blinds, Amanda, and light that candle on the end of the sideboard. I think you’d better turn off the fans, too. We’re going to have a seance.”

  Amanda opened her mouth, found it empty except for a couple of words that wouldn’t lie gently on Cynthia’s shell-like ears, and closed it again. She shuttered the windows, turned off the box fans in the corners, took a book of matches from the sideboard and with a whiff of sulfur lit the candle.

  “Bring it here,” Cynthia directed.

  Amanda set the candlestick next to the miniature. James’s painted features gazed from their frame with the same ironic self-awareness she found so stimulating in the—existing—man.

  “Now turn off the lights,” ordered Cynthia. “But stay there by the door, please, so you can turn them back on.”

  Amanda flicked the switch, plunging the room into dusk. Lines of white light edged the shutters. The candle gleamed a steady yellow. Without the breeze from the fans the room grew warm and close, the odors of food, roses, and bath powders thickening the air. Voices rose and fell in the entrance hall, then with multiple footsteps receded upstairs.

  “Now let’s all place our hands on the tabletop and close our eyes,” said Cynthia. Dutifully everyone splayed her fingers on the table and ducked her head. Amanda stood watching. Did anyone really believe she could summon James’s ghost? Surely Cynthia didn’t. She was merely playing games with the household legend and its archaeological sequel.

  “Oh dear,” Cynthia said with a little laugh, “I’m not quite sure how to begin. I mean, it’s daylight and everything. Well. Let’s try calling him.” She raised her voice. “Captain James Grant, are you here? Give us a sign if you’re here. Your physical form has been here a long time, Captain Grant. Let us know if your spirit is here as well.”

  Silence. Sweat gathered along Amanda’s hairline. She strained her eyes through the shadows. On the one hand she wanted James to suddenly appear, preferably standing on the table, and scare the crap out of Cynthia. On the other hand she wanted Cynthia to blow it big time. James didn’t come and go on anyone’s whim. He had a mind of his own.

  A cool draft tickled her face and then was gone. Air movement around the door?

  “You remember Melrose Hall.” Cynthia’s voice was losing inflection, becoming hypnotic. “You spent almost two weeks here, Captain Grant. Do you remember sharing tender moments with Sally? Do you remember cutting at the banisters—you were a naughty boy, weren’t you, Captain Grant?”

  Amanda blinked. The room darkened as the candle no longer burned yellow but a deep orange red.

  “Captain James Grant, are you here? Give us a sign.”

  Upstairs a door slammed. Everyone around the table jumped, and one or two eyes glinted before shutting again.

  “Eyes closed, ladies,” Cynthia said. “Hands on the table.”

  Another draft brushed Amanda’s warm cheeks, cooling them. It’s going to hit the fan now, she thought. They sh
ouldn’t have called him. Whatever formless consciousness he was between appearances was as mischievous as a poltergeist.

  Cynthia leaned forward, pursed her lips, and blew. The candle went out, its trail of smoke a ghostly gray shape wavering upward. Several women squeaked. The dense, scented air was congealing in Amanda’s lungs. Her eyes, adjusted to the dark, detected Cynthia’s slow and subtle movements.

  Her right hand went into the pocket of her dress, then, holding something that glinted in the feeble reflection of daylight, snaked forward. “Captain Grant,” she crooned. “James Grant, give us a sign that you’re here.” Her voice concealed the snips of the nail scissors. Three decapitated roses fell to the tablecloth. Slowly Cynthia returned her hand to her pocket and closed her eyes. “Captain Grant?”

  The nerve! Amanda thought with an incredulous grin. Other people played games. Cynthia orchestrated Olympic events.

  The candle flared with light again. The candlestick rose from the table, one inch, two, and tilted to the side. Amanda’s grin changed into a grimace. One candle might not burn the house down, but James’s presence didn’t need to be playing with fire, any time, anyhow. James? Hello?

  Maybe his force field responded to her emotion. Maybe he got bored playing around. The candlestick settled back down. The leaves and flowers of the centerpiece bowed as though to a stroking hand and then straightened again.

  The room was dark and silent and hot. Amanda tried to breathe. But Cynthia hadn’t noticed the candle move. If her eyes had been open just then, Amanda would have seen them shining like a cat’s.

  “Turn on the lights, please, Amanda.” Cynthia’s voice was calm and composed. “Well, my goodness.”

  In the sudden rush of light the three red roses and their scattered petals looked like bloodstains on the white tablecloth. Their color mimicked that of James’s painted coat. Several of the women seemed frightened, others skeptical, but none of them were shrugging it all away. Cynthia rose from her chair. “I’ll be having a few words with the florist. If the flowers had been fresh-cut they’d have survived the heat without any problem.”