Fiona’s silence was so profound Jean felt like an intruder. Deciding she could wait awhile before turning over any more emotional rocks, she made an about-face and went back out into the hall. Now what? She glanced warily from the corner of her eye toward the game larder. . . . Behind her the dining room door slammed open. She jerked back against the wall, hands raised defensively.
Rick walked out of the room, his cell phone pressed to his ear. “Kieran. Where are you? Well, when you get rid of the cops come up to the office. We need to make plans.” With a beep he switched off the phone and disappeared up the staircase.
A well-developed startle reflex was nothing to apologize for. Jean peeled herself off the wall and ducked into the familiar but less than reassuring cube of the sitting room. Rick wanted to make plans for what? Her interview tomorrow? Or how to handle the cops? By the dim light leaking through the door she located and turned on a table lamp. The glow reflected off the paneling and from the array of portraits—Charlie, Rick, Jenny Cameron.
Taking deep breaths through her own very average nose, Jean considered Jenny’s Roman nose, arched eyebrows, and stubborn round chin. Even in this idealized sketch, Jenny hadn’t been candy-box pretty. Whether helping Charlie had been the smart, let alone the right, thing to do had been open to debate even before Jenny discovered she had sacrificed her reputation for him. Her supporters claimed that no man of twenty-five would have an affair with a woman twenty years older, which was a backhanded defense, especially at a time when elderly men married sweet young things as a matter of course.
But the concept of the double standard had been two centuries in the future. Even now it was honored more in the breach than in the observance. Of all the wounding aspects of the lawsuit, the one that had hurt the most was the assumption of many people, from hidebound university pundit to reporter to Vanessa MacLyon, that a female professor who slept with a male student was subverting the natural order.
Stop it, Jean told herself. It was over. It was finished. If nothing else, the considerable sum she’d won from the university had bought her freedom, to say nothing of part-ownership in Great Scot. Although at this moment, in this house, she wasn’t sure that partly owning Great Scot was the smart, let alone the right, thing to do. But how many Lovelaces, how many MacLyons, could she attract, for God’s sake!
The sound system came on again, thankfully playing one of Hugh’s genuinely emotional fiddle compositions rather than more of the synthesizer pieces that only simulated emotion. Jean looked up at Rick’s grandiose portrait. What he lacked, she decided, was not emotion but a sense of humor, some perspective. . . . Footsteps echoed in the hall. Vanessa said she’d heard ghostly footsteps. But Jean’s sixth sense was snoring gently in the vicinity of her well-filled stomach, exuding nothing more than the faint taste of cinnamon. Those steps belonged to someone perfectly corporeal.
The door opened, revealing Neil, in the flesh indeed. “Ah, here you are then. I chapped at the door of your room but you weren’t to home.”
“I was looking at the pictures,” Jean explained, that sounding better than I was hiding out.
He held up two crystal liqueur glasses and a plump-bellied bottle. “Bramble and whiskey cordial. Blackberry and Scotch, in American. Good for what ails you in any language.”
Jean wasn’t so sure about that. Neither was she sure that Neil was good for what ailed her. She’d never know without trying a sip, though. One sip, on a full stomach, that wouldn’t hurt. “Thank you.”
Shutting the door with his foot, Neil poured, set the bottle down on the coffee table, and handed over a glass brimming with a shimmering crimson liquid. “Slainte, Jean.”
“Slainte.” Jean drank. Oh now, that was good, a rush of sweet-tart berry and then the lingering astringent heat of the whiskey, blending incongruity with flavor.
Neil sat down and patted the couch cushion beside him. “Have a rest. Things haven’t happened as you expected, have they now?”
“No.” Jean sat down, leaving half a cushion’s width between them, and gestured toward the ceiling where she assumed the speakers were hidden. “Hugh’s new album. That’s good music.”
“Oh aye, I thought you’d enjoy hearing from Hugh.”
“How’s your mother?”
“Away with the fairies, Dad says. Only thing unusual in that is that this time she’s had a medical sedative instead of an alcoholic one.”
Oh. But Neil was holding up his glass, catching the light on its ruby-backed facets, his expression more thoughtful than distressed. Children accepted their family situation as normal, didn’t they? Not that Neil was even remotely a child. He was a consenting adult, just like her. He lifted the glass to his lips again.
The heat kindling in Jean’s gut didn’t come entirely from the liqueur. “Do they know what happened yet? The accident, I mean.”
“Mum drives too fast, says so herself, says that’s the only way to avoid the motion sickness. I’ve been thinking it was only a matter of time ‘til she ran some poor sod off the road. Pity it was Norman.”
“Why did Sawyer want to talk to Toby? Something about the car?”
“Oh aye.” Leaning back, Neil propped one arm on the back of the couch. His long, dark, eloquent brows tightened, crinkling his smooth forehead beneath its thatch of auburn hair. “The brakes packed up, that’s why Mum couldn’t stop quick enough to keep Norman from diving into the loch. D.C.I. Dour Cameron said himself the brake line’s been interfered with.”
“Why would Toby do that?”
“Dad says he was trying to kill one or the other of them—he had no way of knowing who’d next be driving the car.” Neil shook his head. “What a scunner, a chap you’ve worked with and come to like, having a go at your family. But then, there’s no getting away from your life history, Toby being raised in the worst part of Glasgow and all.”
“Some people can rise above their early programming,” Jean pointed out. “Does Cameron think Toby killed George?”
“He’s not exactly the talkative sort, is he now?”
“No.” She looked past the light playing along the facets of Neil’s handsome face to the two painted faces of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the far wall. “Why would Toby kill George? George was helping him out.”
“Aye, but there was George with that gold coin and Toby hasn’t a bean.” Neil intercepted Jean’s gaze, his smoky blue eyes contrasting with the glitter of crystal and crimson that he held to his lips. “No need being bashful about the coin, by the by. I didn’t know George was bringing it to you, but I knew he had it. Picked it up a long time past, maybe even when he was in commando training here.”
“But Toby wouldn’t have had to kill George to rob his house. Assuming it was robbed.”
“Maybe Toby wanted to, well, convince George to tell him where he found the coin so he could turn up the rest. Rick’s gone on about Charlie’s treasure often enough. Toby’s a bit lacking in the head, mind. Doesn’t always think things through, like whether the old man could remember where he found it.” Neil left his implication dangling just as George had dangled from a meat hook.
It was much too easy to explain away motive with a shrug and a suggestion of mental incapacity. Jean couldn’t see Toby torturing an old man to death, especially with a crowd of people in the house, whether he was lacking in the head or not. She tried, “Why would Toby go after your parents?”
“Ah, my dad pretty well runs things round here, Rick having other things on his mind. So does Vanessa, come to that. And chaps like Toby resent people in a position like ours.”
For just a second Jean heard Charlotte’s voice coming from her son’s lips. Then she told herself, again, that children accept their families as the norm. Which was close to Neil’s thesis about Toby, although he’d hardly intended to point out what they had in common. “So what is on Rick’s mind?” Jean asked. “The Lodge?”
“Jean,” said Neil, “it would be as much as my job is worth to put the boot in there. Although it is almos
t time for me to move on, I’m thinking.”
“Move on?”
“I’ll be putting together my own band, no need to let Gallowglass and their resentments stand in my way. I’m after playing in London. That’s where you go if you have something to contribute. And I have something to contribute.” He set his empty glass on the table. As he sat back he closed the half-cushion gap and his denim-clad thigh pressed up against hers.
There went her pheromone receptors again, responding to that elusive but undeniable male scent, something between steak and sandalwood. If Charlie’s followers thought with their hearts and not their heads, Jean was thinking with her gonads. Not that her gonads had had any workouts recently. Exercise was beneficial for all the other body systems. . . . “I’ve heard some really good Celtic folk-rock bands in the U.S.”
“Then maybe I’ll go there. I can do better than a rich man’s toy boy, don’t you think?” His voice was caressing, but something raw moved in his eyes, a small creature begging for approval.
That hint of vulnerability made him all the more appealing. Jean’s body told her to lean toward him. Her brain told her to back off. She was poised at equilibrium, between spinning into space and crashing to the ground.
A toy boy. That expression disparaged the man’s subordinate position, not its sexual connotation. She thought again how sick she was of double standards, historical or otherwise. A woman was a slut for sleeping around. A man was a stud. She was cheap. He was lucky.
Neil no doubt got lucky on a regular basis. He was a kilt and pipes fantasy. Maybe he was exactly what she needed. After all, they’d been drawn together in adversity. They’d bonded. She was single, she was over twenty-one—an affair might be just the thing, sex with no strings attached. . . .
Neil’s right arm slipped around her shoulders. His left hand took away her glass. His warm, vital body pulled her into its gravitational field. Her hands waved in mid-air, looking for a neutral place to land, and settled flat against his chest. No, his chest wasn’t neutral. Her palms molded themselves to his Gallowglass T-shirt as his slender musician’s fingers played an inspiring reel on her rib cage. Skillfully maneuvering around her glasses, he closed in.
She turned her head so that his lips brushed her cheek. Neil was a toy boy, decorative but immature. Maybe he was two-timing a girlfriend. Maybe he was between engagements, so to speak. It didn’t matter. Flirting was mild amusement. Sex was serious business, not cheap and easy entertainment. There were always strings attached.
“Mind you,” he murmured against her skin, so that she felt his accent as much as she heard it, “I’m right comfortable with my sexuality.”
“I’m not,” she admitted, more to herself than to him. “Comfortable with your sexuality, that is.”
“We need to be working on that, then.” He angled his head the other way and came around for another pass.
Again Jean ducked. “Neil, no.” Leaning back far enough to focus on his face broke the suction of his arms.
He cocked his head to the side. “No?” His sigh bathed her in the odor of blackberries.
“This isn’t. . . .” Footsteps walked down the hall, the hesitant steps of someone old or ill. The hair on the back of Jean’s neck, already standing to attention, quivered in a nonexistent breeze, and the air seemed to thicken. Oh great. More input.
“Eh?” Neil asked.
“Did you hear someone walking down the hall?”
“No. No one’s out and about. Rick’s in his office, Vanessa’s watching a film, Fiona’s pulling her usual long face in the kitchen. If that’s what’s put you off,” he added with his patented intimate smile, now buoyed with an encouraging lift of the eyebrows, “we can go on up to your room. Or mine, but the guest rooms are the more comfortable.”
“No, it’s not that—it’s just—this isn’t right.”
His face fell. “Ah Jean, you’re the nervy one. We could be turning that to our advantage, now.”
Good try, she thought. But no. “I’m going upstairs. Alone.” Neil lifted her hands toward his face, but before he could made the romantic gesture of kissing them, she pulled them away. Hoping her smile was more affectionate than acerbic, Jean extracted the rest of her body from his aura and stood up. “Later, Neil.”
“I live in hope, Jean.” His own wistful smile followed her to the door. When she glanced back she saw him curve into the attitude of The Thinker, as though, once out of the presence of a woman, he could admit to doubt.
Then she was alone in the chill of the hall. As she’d expected, no one was there. But it wasn’t until she was on the staircase that the fine hairs on her nape fell back against her skin, with a caress like that of Neil’s lips on her cheek.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The dense air seemed icy against Jean’s warm face. She scurried up the stairs, trying to outrun her—no, not embarrassment. Not even confusion, not when it came to Neil. Overload of both mind and body. She was trying to outrun the ghost and the darkness, both symbolic and real, of Glendessary House.
The grandfather clocked ticked away, measuring out the irrevocable passages of time. The sound of Hugh’s fiddle emanated from the shadows, now playing a lively jig. But even the most cheerful Celtic music was edged with pain. History was much too uncertain to commit yourself to joy.
From the upstairs window Jean saw Sawyer and a constable put Toby in a car and drive away, headlights ripping the twilight’s last gleaming. Two figures walked from the parking area around the corner of the house. Their faces were concealed by the darkness, but by their body language, one fawning, the other alert as a stalking cat, she deduced it was Kieran lecturing Cameron. Who was probably giving him lots and lots of rope.
Jean could hardly blame her hosts for abandoning her. In spite of Vanessa’s ultimatum, this was a lousy time to be entertaining a journalist. Besides, the journalist was happy to have been abandoned. She desperately needed a few moments alone. And, since it was one of Mother Nature’s jokes that the memories you didn’t want clung to your brain like Velcro and the ones you did want slid like an omelet off Teflon, those few moments alone had better be spent with her notebook and laptop.
Pulling the massive key out of her pocket, Jean unlocked the door of her room and groped inside for the light switch. Occasionally she had nightmares of running from someone or something in the dark, of flicking light switches only to have nothing happen. . . . The ceiling light glowed brightly. Ah, sanctuary.
She inspected her face in the mirror of the dressing table. It was pink of cheek and bright of eye. The pulse of her blood made her skin resound like the surface of a drum. Or a bodhran, to be Celtic. A good thing Neil hadn’t realized just how stimulating his attentions had been, or he might have pressed his case. Not to mention his entire delectable body. . . . No. Not even then.
Jean reached for her notebook. Her hand froze. Hadn’t she left the book lying to the left of her laptop rather than to the right?
Quickly she looked over her belongings. The dresser drawer wasn’t quite shut. Her suitcase was turned the other way around, with the zipper facing the wall instead of the wheels. Vanessa had said the ghost moved things around—that was a well-documented ghostly activity. Had she said that in order to cover up a search of Jean’s room? Vanessa had no way of knowing that Jean knew the presence was focused only in the sitting room, and, unless she was completely misreading her senses, the corridor.
She touched her laptop. It was warm. So much for that, then—ghosts weren’t known for their computing skills. That the material saved in her laptop was protected by passwords didn’t matter. All the notes she’d taken in the notebook were utterly damning. So who had searched her room? She hadn’t had a single member of the household in her sights the entire time since she locked the door and walked away.
Jean sat down hard in the desk chair. But she was a reporter, she rationalized. Why shouldn’t she be taking notes on the events she found herself caught up in? Would—the killer, she forced herself to ar
ticulate—hold that against her?
If the killer was someone in this house, someone she now knew, and not a Lodge member or other wild card, sure, they might hold it against her. Blaming her either for finding George’s body or for being curious wasn’t reasonable, but murder wasn’t particularly reasonable.
Oh God. Jean put her hand to her throat, feeling the cord tightening around her neck. Cold fear snuffed the last of the glow in her stomach. A grand story, huh? Up close and personal is what it was, and getting closer and more personal all the time.
And yet her own still-alive-and-kicking person was only a secondary issue. Her hand closed into a fist and thumped the desk. She wasn’t going to take the safe way out now, any more than she had the day she’d read the plagiarized dissertation. Short of running into the night—or attaching herself to Cameron or Gunn like a limpet—all she could do was keep on keeping on. Funny, how having the cops downstairs now seemed less like having rats in the wainscoting than like having angels in the rafters.
With an aggravated sigh at both herself and at whoever had violated the refuge of her room, Jean pulled out her cell phone and called her backup. Miranda was an inspiring example of the power of positive thinking.
“Hello,” said the voice emanating from the phone, “this is Miranda, I’m engaged just now—leave me a message.”
“Hey, Miranda, it’s Jean, I’ll call back.” That’s what she got for waiting until she had to call Miranda at home. If Miranda was even at home. She could be holding forth at one of Edinburgh’s posh restaurants. Going on to Plan B, Jean dialed Hugh’s number.
Bingo! “Hugh Munro, forward into Scotland’s past!”
“Hugh, it’s Jean. How’s it going?”
“Raining like stink here, other than that, no problems. Wee Dougie’s come for a visit, he was a bit peaky, I’m thinking.”
She’d never been able to convince Hugh that Dougie could survive a day on his own. “Thank you, Hugh. Just don’t spoil him too badly. You should see the cat here, she’s huge, part wild cat.”
The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1) Page 19