“Good lord, no. It’s been a comedy of errors right from the beginning.”
“Guid.” He set a morsel of cake in Amanda’s mouth and followed her smiling lick of her lips with a kiss.
She could get used to this, chocolate and kisses and Scotland… . A crash made them spin around. In a scramble of paws Cerberus dived for one doorway, the cats for the other. A wine bottle lay broken at the foot of the rack, its shards sparkling islands in an expanding pool of red.
Norah ran in the door. “That wasn’t my Staffordshire platter, was it?”
“No,” Malcolm said tightly. “That was James playin’ up again.”
Amanda scowled. It was like James was deliberately trying to kill the last traces of her feelings for him—and pity was about all she had left—even though his motives, if he had coherent motives, were just the opposite.
Norah eyed the blood-red pool for a long moment. Then she sighed and started picking up the larger pieces of glass. “Amanda, Denny would like for you to identify the items from Melrose.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Feeling obscurely guilty over both the wine bottle and the stolen items, Amanda went into the entrance hall.
Wayne’s two suitcases lay open against the wall, exposing a collection of dirty underwear. Amanda averted her eyes to the objects lined up on the kist and a couple of chairs. The tea service, the inkwell, the candlesticks. Even the bogus earrings were there, still in their Lucite box. Amanda thought of Wayne sneaking through the house one jump ahead of a tour group, filling his suitcase and priding himself on his initiative, and cringed.
“Yes,” she said. “The last time I saw all these things they were at Melrose. I’d check them over every night.”
Gibson handed her his notebook. “Would you be signing that, please?”
She signed.
Wayne sat on the bottom step of the stairwell, initiative drained to lethargy. “I’ll take them all back. I’ll face the music.”
“Whatever music you’ll be facing,” Gibson told him, “depends on whether charges are filed against you. Bringing the items back will help to mitigate, I imagine, although your being an employee of the Foundation might make it a wee bit dicey. If I were you I’d obtain legal advice.”
“My mum has a lawyer,” Wayne said. “But he’ll be working for her.”
“When I get back to my office I’ll ring Williamsburg and tell them matters are in hand. Norah?” Gibson tucked his notebook into his pocket and walked back toward the kitchen. “I’ll be leaving now.”
Norah emerged drying her hands. “Thank you for taking care of matters. I didn’t intend for you to work for your lunch.”
“No problem. You’ll walk me to the car, then?” Retrieving his cap from the coat rack, he and Norah strolled out the front door. A gust of damp, chilly wind whistled down the hallway.
Amanda gave Wayne a comradely pat on the shoulder. “You need to call your mother and let her know you’re all right.”
“And the things are all right.”
“Yes, them too. I’ll find the phone for you.”
The phone was on its stand in the kitchen, where Malcolm was just squeezing pink water from the mop. There was nothing left of James’s show of spite but a wet mark on the floor. “I’m sorry,” Amanda said.
“No apologizin’. Let him answer for himsel’”
“He stopped answering for himself two hundred years ago.”
“That’s just the problem.”
She could only worry about one thing at a time. Amanda took the phone to Wayne and dialed the international area code for him. “It’s Sunday morning there,” she told him, and retreated down the hall to the door.
It was growing dark outside. The clouds had congealed into a pewter lid. A few raindrops plunked down at her feet. They already had a ghost, why not the sinister Gothic atmosphere to go with him?
The rain thickened, obscuring the already soft shapes of the hills. Norah and Denny were a double outline behind the fogged windows of the police car, closing to a single one as Amanda watched. Smiling, she turned around and went back into the entrance hall.
“Yes, Mother,” Wayne was saying. “I’m just fine. Yes, I know you were worried. I’m sorry. I was upset, I didn’t think. No, I never think, do I. Yes, everything’s okay, even the vase.” He stopped, staring down at his feet.
Amanda heard a thin buzz emanating from the phone, Cynthia’s electronically amplified voice.
“Yes, Amanda’s here. No, she wasn’t upset, she didn’t know what I was up to… . Oh. The engagement.”
Amanda shot Wayne a look like a cattle prod.
He sat bolt upright. “Mother, there never was any engagement. Yes, I like her an awful lot, but she never led me on, not once. I guess I thought if I went along with all that engagement stuff she’d soften up. But she didn’t. She hasn’t. I don’t blame her for going off without me.” He paused, then started in again, taking it from the top, pausing every now and then to let the insect-like buzz rise to a crescendo and fall again.
Amanda gave Wayne a smile and an A-OK sign. Malcolm emerged from the kitchen, raised a brow at her, and turned to inspect the booty laid out on the kist and the chairs.
“Yes. She’s standing right here.” Wayne thrust the phone so abruptly at Amanda she almost fumbled it.
“Oh, ah, hello, Mrs. Chancellor.”
Cynthia’s voice poured into Amanda’s ear like honey over biscuits. “Amanda dear, I can’t apologize to you enough. How embarrassed you must have been. You have the most exquisite manners, of course you hesitated to explain things to me, but you really should have told me. You always have my ear.”
“Erk.” Cynthia’s words weren’t quite registering, they were so different from the ones Amanda had been expecting.
“I hope the police officer there didn’t give you too hard a time over the missing artifacts. I knew you hadn’t taken them, just the scabbard. To make photos with the sword—wasn’t that my clever girl! A shame everyone’s wires got crossed the day you left, but then, I wasn’t there.”
“No problem,” Amanda said brightly.
“Now I want you to do me a very big favor. Can you look out for Wayne? He’s such a—well, just between us, dear—he doesn’t always act his age. I’m sure you’ll take good care of him.”
“No problem,” Amanda said again, her voice rising even higher. She sat down on an empty chair. Trust Cynthia to pull the rug out from beneath her yet again, simply by cutting her about ten miles of slack.
“How is your work going?” Cynthia went on. “Are you finding lots of good documentation for our film and our book?”
“Lots.”
“Good. Good. James Grant must have cut such a dashing figure, I can hardly wait to hear more about him.”
She couldn’t wait to hear what she wanted to hear. Selective deafness seemed to be going around. “Thanks. Here’s Wayne.” Amanda handed the phone back across the hall and rolled her eyes at Malcolm. He propped himself on the back of her chair.
“Hello, Mother. It’s me. Yes, yes, I’ll pack everything up and bring it back. Yes, the policeman here’s going to call the police there. All a misunderstanding, that’s right. Thank you, Mother. I’m really sorry. I’ll come back with Amanda on Thursday. Yes, I know an old castle’s very romantic and everything.” Wayne glanced at Malcolm and his face suffused the color of the spilled wine. “No, she’s not going to change her mind.”
Amanda realized she and Malcolm were posed like the husband and wife in an old tintype. She bounced to her feet. He straightened.
“Yes, Mother. Yes, the Grants are very nice. Yes, I’m sure they’d appreciate your sending them a thank-you gift. I’m not sure they’d enjoy a book about the Yorktown campaign, the British lost … No, I won’t ever pull something like this again. Good-bye.” Wayne turned off the phone and went so limp Amanda thought he was going to slide off the step and puddle on the floor. When he rubbed his face it stretched like a rubber mask. “It’s all right. She’s go
ing to clear everything up with the police. No charges or anything.”
“Good,” Amanda told him.
“You said something about a bath, Mr. Grant. Malcolm.”
“By all means. Collect your luggage and I’ll show you to a room.”
Norah came back inside, cheeks pink, just as they were starting up the stairs. “Did you sort it with Mrs. Chancellor, then?”
“Oh, yeah,” Amanda told her. “Everything’s okay.”
“Good.” Norah nodded at the row of artifacts. “I’ll find packing material for this lot.”
“Thanks.” She owed Norah. Did she ever owe Norah.
Wayne and Malcolm had gotten ahead of her. Amanda caught up with them in front of the row of portraits on the landing. “There’s the original o’ your mum’s miniature,” Malcolm was saying.
“So that’s the rest of James,” Wayne returned. “He looks better with his skin on. What was all that about his ghost?”
“His ghost was at Melrose,” explained Amanda. “Now it’s here.”
“Okay,” Wayne said indulgently, with a glance at Malcolm that seemed to say, you work fast, don’t you?
And she’d thought Wayne would be the only person who’d believe her, Amanda told herself. Her batting average was going from bad to worse.
“That’s James’s cousin Archibald,” Malcolm went on, “who inherited the estate when he died. And Archibald’s wife Isabel.”
Wayne considered the other two portraits. “Archibald looks like Page, doesn’t he? A nice solid citizen.”
He trudged on up the staircase, Malcolm herding him from behind. Of course, Amanda told herself, a home run with Malcolm would skew the stats to her side, no doubt about it.
She frowned up at Archibald’s portrait. No, he didn’t look like Page. He looked like Wayne, with the broad forehead, the heavy jaw, and the general air of constipation—which in Archibald came across as complacency but in Wayne as anxiety. She’d been trying so hard the last few days not to think about Wayne she hadn’t noticed that he looked just about as much like Archibald as Malcolm looked like James. Weird. But then, there were only so many faces and body types to go around.
The men disappeared around the curve of the steps. Amanda went into the library. She turned on all the lights and the electric fire, but still shadows crammed the corners. Cerberus came ambling forward, whining and wagging his tail hopefully. “I know, I know,” she told him, “you were minding your own business and this crazy American dumps a ghost on you.”
The wagging tail changed rhythm. Good. Like Malcolm, he was okay with the issues. Not that the issues were in the least okay. She sat down with her references, gripping her pencil like a sword.
Chapter Twenty Five
The library windows might have been those of a submarine, streaked with damp, gray and sullen. The sound of the rain ebbed and flooded like the tide. When Malcolm showed up he peered resignedly outside, gave Amanda a quick kiss, and sat down at his computer. Cerberus stretched out before the electric fire, his chin resting between his paws.
Amanda tried to focus on her work, choosing which pages of Archibald’s memoirs to actually copy and which to summarize, but she felt twitchy. The walls really did have eyes. Somewhere in the house doors opened and shut. The telephone rang. Maybe Wayne had drowned in the bathtub—he didn’t reappear.
For a time the room was quiet, the only sound the occasional chirp of Malcolm’s computer. Then the notes of the tin whistle floated through the air, snatches of melody mixed with contemplative trills. Yes, Amanda thought, Malcolm had a versatile tongue. She gave up any hope of concentrating and put the papers back in the cabinet. “How about a walk?”
“It’s teemin’ doon ootside,” he returned. “But we can have a dander roond the house.”
Cerberus leaped to his feet, ready to go. Malcolm and Amanda secured the electrical gear and headed out, up the flights of steps, past the blocked-off doors, and down the dead-end hallways that testified to each generation’s bright ideas in home improvement. Along the way they rooted through drawers and cupboards, turning up everything from rusted agricultural equipment to crumbling butterfly collections. They didn’t really expect to find the sword and the scabbard. Even in the cellar, a damp and dark but thoroughly clean stone box, there was no trace of James. Still, as afternoon darkened into night, Amanda was sure she was sensing his presence. My sweet, my own.
She and Malcolm strolled into the great hall. Amanda inspected the tapestry, wondering if she could duplicate such an intricate pattern in 14-count needlepoint. She looked up at the pikes, halberds, and muskets fanned out on the walls and remembered what Carrie had said about her own tours of Great Britain: All those old houses have enough weaponry stuck on the walls to supply a good-sized army.
But the sword and its scabbard weren’t hidden in plain sight. “I keep expecting James to jump out and say ‘gotcha.’ Or, ‘unhand that damsel, you knave.’ Whatever.”
“So do I,” Malcolm returned. “But you’re no callin’ him any more, are you?”
“No way.” She heard a mocking echo of her own voice, with me you’re strong. “Maybe when I leave he’ll leave no, he has the sword back, doesn’t he? He may not need me any more. And I sure don’t want to go away and leave you with a freaked-out ghost.” I don’t want to leave you. But she didn’t have to say that.
“What matters noo,” Malcolm said, “is findin’ a way to turf him oot.”
“To get rid of him? Or to help him rest?”
“However you’re wantin’ to say it.”
Maybe she still felt some furtive sympathy for James, the little kid camouflaging his weaknesses with bravado… . Like she hadn’t had a damn good chance to notice he was a grown man? “He needs to go away. Absolutely. Got any ideas?”
“Oh aye, that I do,” Malcolm said with a nod. “I agree James’s energy’s in his scabbard noo, but I’m wonderin’, even so—if it was you made him strong, then it could be his fate’s in your hands.”
“In my … You think that just by telling him to go I can send him away?”
“I dinna ken, lass, but it’d make a gey interestin’ exercise in positive thinkin’, eh?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Amanda said. But she wasn’t putting much trust in her thinking skills. She’d made a habit recently of forcing illusionary square pegs into the round holes of reality. She’d been wrong about James, the Grants, even Wayne. And she still couldn’t get a handle on Cynthia, the fairy godmother from hell.
That image made her smile. So did Cerberus, sitting on the floor between them and watching their conversation like he was watching a tennis match. “My emotions aren’t jet-lagged or anything,” she admitted.
“Mine too, and I’ve no even gone travelin’.” Malcolm angled his forehead so that it touched Amanda’s. “Which disna mean I’d no consider a spot o’ travelin’—a bit o’ research into historic property management.”
The regimental flags ranked high overhead waved in a breeze. A cold breeze, that trailed icy fingers through the roots of Amanda’s hair. The tapestry billowed from the wall and settled back again. Cerberus cringed.
“Stuff that for a game of soldiers,” stated Malcolm. “Come along, let’s see what Mum did wi’ Wayne’s ill-gotten gains.”
Yeah, right, James. Like I’m really going to get off on a supernatural stalker. Her lips crimped, Amanda walked beside Malcolm and almost on top of the dog down to the dining room. Tidy cardboard and tissue paper packages were arranged along the sideboard. Norah was like Cynthia in one way, Amanda thought. She did things up right.
Amanda followed Malcolm into the kitchen, where they built sandwiches, fried chips, and brewed tea. Each with a tray, they went back up the stairs to the sitting room.
Norah was seated with Denis on her lap, Margaret tucked in beside her, and Wayne ensconced in an easy chair nearby. The television was tuned to a cricket match. “Lovely, very good of you,” Norah said when she saw the food, and added, “Irene rang. Th
ey’ll be spending the night with Marie.”
“There’s no need for them to be drivin’ in the rain and dark,” Malcolm agreed, and made room on the coffee table for the trays.
Cerberus trotted over to Wayne and fixed him with an adoring expression. Wayne’s expression was a lot less depressed than Amanda would have thought, considering. Norah probably had been doing some counseling. If she could raise a fully integrated male like Malcolm, she could rein in some of Wayne’s galloping insecurities.
The four humans and three animals were barely finished with their supper before the footsteps began, steady steps that marched across the floor of the great hall below like those of a sentry guarding his post.
Cerberus hurled himself onto Malcolm’s feet. The cats did their vanishing act. Norah, Malcolm, and Amanda shared a glance that was part cautious, part exasperated. Wayne muttered, “Yeah, we used to hear funny noises at Melrose when I was a kid, tree branches and stuff like that.”
His equivalent of Morag. Once again Amanda tried some consciousness-raising. “It’s the ghost of James Grant, Wayne, like we told you earlier. He’s not a happy camper.”
“After camping out at Melrose for two hundred years, I’d guess not.” Wayne chuckled at his joke. The others managed to contain their amusement. “Malcolm, Lady Norah, I really appreciate the hospitality, but I’m bushed. A plastic couch at the airport isn’t nearly as nice a bed as the one you’ve given me upstairs. Do you mind if I go ahead and climb into it?”
Norah made a gracious gesture toward the doorway. “Good night,” everyone chorused.
Wayne’s plodding steps receded down the hall and disappeared. The crisp steps below stopped. A door opened and shut. Amanda held her breath, waiting for Wayne to come racing back babbling about scarlet coats and swords, but no, he’d passed unscathed. Something about fools rushing in, probably.
“Well then,” said Norah, “I think we should leave the dishes ’til the morn. I’m taking a book to my room. Good night.” She left with a smile.
If she’d seen Norah and Denny at the ceilidh, Amanda told herself, Norah had seen her and Malcolm. Not that now was the time or the place to get closer. Malcolm sat at the far end of the couch, tense as a twelve-year-old at his first boy-girl party. The electronic laughter of a televised game show couldn’t penetrate the hush of the house. After a while Amanda realized she was holding her breath. “This is ridiculous.”
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