Shadows in Scarlet

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “I’m not upset. No way.” She pulled her jacket closer around her and watched smiling as the night sped away beside the car.

  Dusk lingered in the west. In the east stars played tag with wreaths of cloud. Amanda couldn’t see a moon. It was like she’d fallen out of time. And yet time was carrying her onward. She’d only met Malcolm two days ago and already she’d fallen hard for him. The strength of her own emotions would’ve surprised her, except when it came to her emotions she was beyond surprise.

  She knew what was going to go wrong now. She herself was booked to disappear into thin air next Thursday. But where there was life there was hope and a second chance. This time she wasn’t going to rush anything. This time she was going to get it right.

  They turned off the main road. Dundreggan sat on its hilltop, its windows disembodied points of light against the dark. Like a jeweler’s display, Amanda thought. Diamonds on velvet.

  “Bluidy hell!” Malcolm exclaimed. “Every light in the place is switched on!”

  “I hope the fuse box hasn’t gone on the blink again,” said Norah.

  “Calum has it well in hand, I expect.” He guided the car up the last hill. The house disappeared behind the trees, then jumped out at them, every window clearly defined, bright arches and rectangles against the black bulk of the walls. The car rolled into its parking place. Without the engine noise, the only thing Amanda could hear was the wind.

  “I’ll see what they’re on about.” Norah got out of the car and walked down the driveway to the front door.

  Malcolm handed Amanda from the car and looked up at the castle. “It’s a sight,” he said. “We’ll owe a packet to the Hydroboard, but it’s a sight.”

  “So are you,” Amanda told him. “Where were we?”

  “Just here, I’m thinkin’.” He turned to her. She cupped his face in her hand, drew him forward, tilted her lips to his.

  From inside the house came the sudden smash of glass. A woman screamed. The sound was harsh and shrill in the silence.

  Malcolm and Amanda recoiled from each other, sprinted for the door, and collided in the opening. Norah was just running up the spiral staircase. “Irene!” she called, “Irene, are you all right?”

  Amanda’s shoes slipped on the flagstones. She glanced down. Rose and iris petals were spread across the floor. Every blossom in the vase on the kist had been shredded.

  Something dull and hard thudded into her exhilaration and sent it into a death spiral. No. No. No. She followed Malcolm up the staircase and past the three portraits.

  Just inside the door of the great hall Calum and Irene stood clutching at each other, Norah beside them. They were staring at the splintered remains of the display case. Shards of glass spattered the floor and the empty wooden crate. The air in the hall was icy cold, sucking the last flush of elation from Amanda’s limbs. Yes.

  “What happened?” Norah asked.

  Calum’s eyes bulged from his face. “All evenin’ there’s been noises. Steps clumpin’ up and doon the staircase, up and doon. Doors openin’ and slammin’ shut. The flowers torn to bits. And the animals goin’ daft, barkin’, whinin’, hissin’. We were standin’ here at the door, havin’ another look, touchin’ naethin’, and that crate jumps up into the display case, crash, the lot goes tae buggery. Then the sword and the scabbard come flyin’ through the air, right at ma heid, oot the door and awa’, only the guid Lord kens where.”

  Amanda took a step forward, glass crunching beneath her feet. The sword and the scabbard were gone. On a rush of air and movement, like the one that had smashed a drinking glass against her kitchen wall. Damn. Damn. Damn!

  “Well then,” said Malcolm, his words reverberating in the frosty silence. “Amanda, it’s time you were tellin’ us the rest o’ the story.”

  Her thoughts congealed, cold and clear as ice. She wasn’t surprised at her own emotions, no. But James’s emotions, it seemed, had a totally unwelcome surprise left.

  “Yes,” she said between her teeth. “It sure is.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Amanda looked into her mug, hoping she could read the future in it. But it was only black tea swirling with milk.

  After cleaning up the debris and turning off the lights, Irene and Calum had gone to their rooms in the south wing, too shaken to care how Amanda explained their horror-flick of an evening. She was left facing Norah and Malcolm across the kitchen table, Cerberus a furry bulk huddled on her feet. They’d be lucky, she thought, to see Margaret and Denis before Halloween.

  No, James was not going to go quietly into that good night. Or even stay a figment of her and various animals’ imaginations. With the evening’s special effects he’d given the entire household the finger. Her shoulder blades twitched. But ever since that last spasm of violence the night had been ominously silent.

  “Yes, James is haunting me,” she told Malcolm. “I know you meant it as a joke or a metaphor or something but …”

  “No, lass, I was wonderin’ even then. Before I heard the footsteps.”

  Great, Amanda thought. Good thing she’d never wanted to be a politician. Covering up was not her strong point.

  “Last night? You heard them, too?” asked Norah.

  “Oh aye.” Malcolm’s uncompromising gaze made Amanda feel like the suspect in an old police drama, cornered and spotlighted. “Steps that didna make the floorboards creak, steps that turned your door knob and then were in your room. But you didna come screamin’ oot, did you? We’ve never had a ghost here, no until you came, you and your box o’ bones. James Charles Edward Grant, who was never one for bein’ timid.”

  “I could hardly walk in here and announce, ‘I’ve brought you a ghost,’ could I?” Amanda demanded.

  “Why the bluidy hell no?”

  She met his eyes squarely. He had every right to be mad. So did she, just not at him. “You’d think I was crazy. You’d laugh at me. How was I supposed to know you already believe in ghosts?”

  “You weren’t,” Norah said soothingly. “Look at this way, Amanda. Our traditions of death and the otherworld reach back well into Celtic prehistory. All good Highlanders have a touch of the second sight—my grandmother told me when I was five years old I’d marry a man from Glenmoriston and have two sons. We know families with resident ghosts, if milder-mannered ones than James.”

  “I thought all that was just tourist stuff. Sorry.”

  Malcolm offered her a conciliatory if somewhat lopsided smile.

  Amanda smiled back. What maddened her more than anything else, she thought, was that she’d come down from the evening’s high much too fast. She sipped at the tea. “James said his Highland troops were superstitious. But in his day educated people didn’t waste time with ghost stories and stuff. I’ve thought all along how ironic it was he ended up a ghost himself.”

  “You were talkin’ to him, then?” Malcolm asked.

  “Yes. I talked to him. I saw him, I smelled him, I touched him. I knew the bones were his before they were identified. When I asked him what he wanted he told me.”

  “Aye?”

  “He said he wanted his sword, he wanted to come home, and he wanted revenge against Archibald. My theory about Archibald murdering him—I made that fit what he told me.”

  “Not good scientific practice,” said Norah, “but understandable. If his ghost looks anything like his portrait, he must be right dishy.”

  “Handsome? Oh yeah. Like Malcolm, handsome and charming.”

  “My dad never ticked me off for gamblin’ and drinkin’ and fightin’,” Malcolm interrupted. “I dinna cut up rough when a lassie gives me the elbow. Tells me good-bye.”

  He might mean Isabel, but she didn’t turn to Archibald until James was dead. He probably meant Amanda herself. My sweet, my own. Looked like she was the only one who’d wanted—she had to face the truth—a one-night stand.

  Again she ducked Malcolm’s perceptive eyes. “I thought James would be able to rest once he saw his sword again. Once he was
properly buried at home and I told everyone his story. Not that the story I was going to tell was the real one. Everything he told me was the truth, and yet it was all a lie.”

  “That’s just it. He canna get the revenge he’s wantin’. Archibald, alive or dead, owes him nothing.” Malcolm tapped his mug on the table. The table, thank goodness, didn’t tap back. “Do ghosts have rules, like the laws of physics? Most stories tell of the—the presence—hangin’ aboot the person’s bones. That’s when you first saw him, was it, when his bones were found?”

  “Yes. That same night, sitting on the staircase in his scarlet coat and kilt. The next day the archaeologists hauled the bones away to the lab and I didn’t see him again until they set up the display in the entrance hall.”

  “A display of his bones?” Norah asked.

  “A few of them. And the miniature portrait, some prints and maps, the snuffbox that was in his sporran, and his scabbard …” Amanda stopped dead, her mug halfway to her lips. That was it! She put the mug back down with a crash. “It’s the scabbard! He was holding it—its ghost—when I first saw him. Even when it was just hanging at his side he kept touching it. That’s why he’s still here. He shed his bones like a snake sheds its skin. His presence is in the scabbard.”

  Norah nodded. “He was buried with it, wasn’t he? His anger became focussed on it during all those long years beneath the sod, I expect.”

  “Did you bring the scabbard here?” Malcolm asked Amanda. “Or were you coverin’ for James?”

  Was it ever a relief to talk to them. No more fudging. No more rationalizing. “He sneaked it into the box with his bones. I didn’t know it was there until Carrie called and said it was missing.”

  “And you didna throw it at my feet, did you?”

  “No. It jumped out of my hands. Because you’re descended from Archibald, I guess.”

  “And because I was givin’ you a good look, like Archibald tippin’ his bonnet to Isabel.”

  I know, I know, Amanda thought with a squirm, I should’ve seen it coming.

  “Now he’s carried away both scabbard and sword,” said Norah. “Can he actually—discorporate them, do you think?”

  “He can move things around,” Amanda said. “But as far as I can tell he can only make himself and his uniform disappear.”

  “Dundreggan has lumber rooms to spare. The sword and the scabbard could be anywhere.” Norah drained the teapot into her cup.

  “I wonder why ghosts always appear in clothes?” Malcolm asked.

  “Some Victorian lady writer,” replied Amanda, “once said that if ghosts appeared naked they’d be even more fearsome and horrible.”

  Malcolm laughed. So did Norah.

  Amanda’s feet had fallen asleep beneath Cerberus’s weight. She tried wiggling her toes. The dog whimpered, but shifted his mass onto Norah.

  “Has James ever materialized during the day?” asked Norah.

  “No, only at night.”

  “Then it’s just as well we have short nights this time of year.”

  “But even when he’s not material he’ll respond to stimulation like a poltergeist.” Amanda set her chin. “He’ll be back.”

  “He’s never had his revenge,” Malcolm said. “But if he intends to skewer Archibald’s descendant instead o’ Archibald himsel’, then he’ll no be havin’ it.”

  “He couldn’t do that, he’s not substantial enough … .” And who firmed him up? she asked herself. Who’d made his purgatory a time not of redemption but of renewed strength? “I don’t know what he’s capable of,” she concluded lamely.

  Norah smiled in sympathy. “You thought you knew him, didn’t you? But he deceived you.”

  “In a way. But mostly I deceived myself.” Amanda stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go crawl into a corner. I’ve caused enough trouble for one night.”

  “You’ve no caused any trouble,” Malcolm stated. “The fault’s on James’s head. Come along, I’ll walk you to your room.”

  “Leave your door open,” counseled Norah, “and give a shout if you’re frightened.”

  “That’s what I hate the most,” Amanda said. “I told him once he didn’t frighten me, but he does now. Malcolm, watch your back.”

  “Oh aye, I think I should do. Good night, Mum.”

  “Good night, Malcolm. Amanda. Try to sleep.”

  They walked down the hallway and up the staircase, and paused in front of James’s portrait. “I bet Archibald was secretly pleased the way things turned out,” said Amanda. “Dashing, handsome James, constantly taking center stage—he must have been a real thorn in the side.”

  “A silver-tongued devil, right enough,” said Malcolm, with a narrow sideways glance at Amanda. “The sort that always gets the girl.”

  She wasn’t going to rise to that bait, not now.

  Malcolm escorted Amanda to her door and checked over her room. Nothing was messed up or broken. “Well then,” he said. His mouth was set in a straight line and his eyes were affectionate but cool, understandably distracted.

  “I was going to tell you, really. I’m sorry it happened now, like this.”

  “I am, too. I feel like a lad rapped across the knuckles for havin’ his hand in the box o’ sweeties.”

  “Caught in the cookie jar. Not that I’m a box of sweets …”

  Malcolm gestured a disclaimer.

  “… but I’ll still be here for several more days. Good night.”

  “Good night,” he said with a smile, and turned away.

  With a parting look at the kilt, Amanda went into her room and inspected her face in the bathroom mirror. A fine line creased the skin between her brows. She smoothed it with her fingertip. “James, I’m not two-timing you,” she said quietly. She’d honored her part of the agreement and now he wasn’t honoring his… . They hadn’t made any agreement. He’d used her, she’d used him, and it was done. “James, please, there’s nothing for you here, not any more.”

  She didn’t see any movement behind her reflection, not the least shiver of the fresh flowers in the alcove, nothing. James must be exhausted after his temper tantrum. Or so she hoped.

  Propping her door open, Amanda went to bed. But the pale light of dawn was filtering into the room before she fell asleep. She didn’t dream about James and his corroded charm but about Malcolm, and woke up filled with determination—let’s just see who’s stubborn!

  No one was in the sitting room or the library. In the kitchen a note was propped against the teapot. “Dear Amanda, I thought you might like to have a lie in. Your breakfast is in the oven. Irene, Calum, and I have gone to church. Keep your pecker up. Norah.”

  Pondering the joys of dialect, Amanda found a plate of eggs and sausage tucked away in the lower warming oven. In the upper, hotter one sat a savory-smelling pot roast obviously intended for Sunday dinner. She made herself a cup of instant coffee. Malcolm must still be around. And James.

  She tidied up her dishes, went upstairs and brushed her teeth, and, putting on her windbreaker, went outside. The blue sky was scattered with clouds that sailed like treasure galleons before the wind. The cats sat bundled on the stone bench looking like petulant pincushions. Cerberus was snooping around the corners of the rose garden while Malcolm clipped the withered blooms. Amanda stood in the gateway watching him work.

  His movements were precise, contained, without the least bit of swagger. He had James’s ease with the language, his penetrating eyes, and his smile, his astounding smile. But he wasn’t James. Malcolm had nothing to prove. No way could she resist climbing down the family tree from a hopeless relationship to one with so much possibility. And yet James hadn’t exactly dropped off his branch like a dead leaf, which was her own darn fault.

  Malcolm spun around. “Oh, it’s you, is it? I kent someone watchin’ me and thought it might be himsel’.”

  Amanda glanced up at the windows overlooking the garden. They shone in the sun, empty. “Has anyone found the sword and the scabbard?”
/>   “No.”

  “So now what happens? In most haunted house stories the living inhabitants simply move out, but I don’t think that’s an option here.”

  “No a bit of it. We’ll see if he makes an appearance tonight. Maybe pinchin’ the sword will settle him.”

  “Yeah, right,” Amanda said. “Can we get out of earshot for a while?”

  “I was goin’ to suggest just that.” Malcolm set down the clippers and rinsed his hands at a nearby faucet. When he took Amanda’s hand his was ice-cold, but it warmed up fast. It wasn’t only the scent of the flowers and his closeness that made her giddy. She felt like she was standing on top of a cliff, peering over the edge before taking the plunge. This is it. The last bit of truth, take it or leave it.

  Silently they strolled out of the garden toward the stone gateway, Cerberus at point. He frisked on down the drive in the cool shadow of the trees. The vault of green leaves made a mosaic of the sky. Bits of sunlight spattered Malcolm’s hair with bronze. “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  “When I finally got to sleep, yes, I did, oddly enough.”

  “I decided it was no use barricadin’ my door. He can probably walk through it.”

  “I’ve never seen him do that. He just materializes inside.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  So far Malcolm had been pretty darned empathic, Amanda told herself. Surely he could handle the rest of it. If not… . If not, he couldn’t, that was all. And that would be all, which was just the problem.

  “I think that at first,” she said, “James was animated—activated, whatever—by being at Melrose, where he died. But now he has me as an animating force. He’s like an incubus.”

  “An incubus?” One of Malcolm’s eyebrows arched upward. “You ken the proper connotation o’ that, I expect.”

  “You do, don’t you?” Amanda kicked a pebble clattering down the crumbled asphalt of the drive. Cerberus made a right-angle turn and nudged it with his nose. “Yeah, I had sex with him. Big surprise, right?”

  “No.” Malcolm’s grasp of her hand didn’t falter. Neither did his steps. Both his brows were askew. “How? James may be able to carry things aboot, but still, he disna have real substance, does he?”