“Justice is possible, if not probable. Look at George, gnawing his guilt long past time to bury it. But then, that’s not so unusual.”
She’d seen implacable profiles like Cameron’s in medieval sculpture. “Guilt isn’t distributed evenly enough. Some people don’t feel it at all, others . . .” There was a point she didn’t need to belabor. “I stopped by the Commando Memorial this morning and left some flowers in the Garden of Remembrance for George. I’m sorry I never got to know him. He was a lot more complicated than I’d thought. But then, I’m a little quick to judge sometimes.”
“Oh aye, that you are.” But he smiled when he said that, and turned back to face her.
“And you aren’t?” she retorted teasingly. “What did you think of me when we first met?”
“Here’s a conceited wee woman, right clever but with a chip on her shoulder, thinking she can’t trust a man to take notice of her cleverness.”
She’d give him that, too. Resisting any mention of the chip on his own shoulder, she asked, “And my, ah, sprightly genius and very agreeable conversation won you over? Broke through your shell?”
“Don’t go breaking through my shell, woman, you might not like what’s inside.” His smile was more amused than bitter, repeated by the crinkle at the corners of his eyes.
She couldn’t ask for a fairer warning than that. And yet she’d had a glimpse beneath his shell, just as he’d had one beneath hers. They couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen. Or could they?
Jean realized she was leaning across the table, into the faint prickle of electricity she’d associated with the incident room but now realized was Alasdair himself, who was leaning toward her as though he, too, sensed something strong. Something hazardous. “Why ask me to dinner?” he asked, voice quiet but perhaps, still, just a bit menacing.
“I needed reassurance,” she said, giving him only part of the answer.
He knew it was only part of the answer. “I’m a policeman, not a psychiatrist.”
“But you’ve been involved in a lot of criminal cases. Me, all I seem to do is destroy young men’s lives. My history’s repeating itself.”
“Could you have lived with yourself if you’d not grassed up your student? If you’d let Neil get away with murder?”
“No. I had to do the right thing. Like George.”
“There you are, then,” Alasdair said.
“No matter where you go, there you are,” she returned, deliberately light, and sat back, breaking that subtle attraction. “You solved a high-profile case, Detective Chief Inspector Cameron. This will be a feather in your cap.”
He, too, retreated, his face suddenly weary. Either he was showing a lot more expression these days, or she had learned how to read him. “You did a fair amount of the work yourself.”
“Happenstance. Dumb luck. Stupid luck, for that matter.” She bit her lip. “Have you ever considered quitting the police force?”
Alasdair’s brows rose at that, in what Jean interpreted as a mixture of surprise and resentment. “Every so often I feel Andy Sawyer’s breath on the back of my neck, aye.”
“Here’s your chance to go out on a high note.”
“What should I do with myself, then?” His voice whetted its edge.
Good question. One she couldn’t answer. She looked out the window to see people were clotting into groups along the sides of the street. “It’s Tuesday. The school pipe band’s playing.”
“Oh aye,” he returned mildly, sheathing his vocal blade.
Jean signaled to the waiter. “Check, please.”
“I’ll get it.” Alasdair reached for his pocket.
“No, this was my idea.”
“All right, then.”
She squinted at the chicken tracks on the slip of paper the waiter presented, decided the sum was close enough, and fanned several banknotes across the plate it rested on. Alasdair stood up. “You’re away to Edinburgh the night, then.”
“It’s good to be back in my own flat. With my own stuff, pedestrian though it is, and my own cat, who’s not even remotely pedestrian. With all due respect to Clarinda, she’s a real lapful, but she goes with the big house. Dougie’s the size of a teddy bear. He fits.” She worked her way out from behind the table.
Alasdair didn’t repeat his comment about the importance of fit. Neither did he volunteer any information about his own home—a semi-detached house near Culloden was all he’d told her earlier. He held the door open for her, saying, “You’ll be writing more articles,” in the same tone he might say, You’ll be lobbing more grenades.
“I’ll get several out of the last week. When those run out, Miranda’s teeming with ideas. I just hope I don’t attract any more conflicted people, but I suppose like attracts like. . . .” She brushed by him into the street. He was doing it again, letting her rattle on until she revealed too much.
He said, “If you get yourself into trouble again, mind that you’re now known to the police.”
“I mind.” In both meanings of the word, she added to herself.
The Lochaber Schools Pipe Band was formed down the street, all the young people, girls as well as boys, tidy in their green tartan kilts. Alasdair, Jean thought with an appraising sideways glance, looked good in his understated business suit. In his kilt, he looked . . . Would she have asked him out if he hadn’t been wearing a kilt, his own kilt, one that fit properly?
And now what? What would she have done if he’d said, Sure, break my shell open? Would she have dared to expose the vulnerable creature inside? No. Dinner and conversation were easy enough, pleasant enough, when they mutually agreed to dance around the emotional elephant lying in the middle of the table. But that was all. She didn’t need a reclamation project in her life any more than he needed one in his.
With a ruffle of drums the band began to play “Scotland the Brave.” The kids came marching up the street, music echoing from the buildings on either side. “By any chance,” Jean asked, “do you prefer light jazz?”
“Eh?” Alasdair grinned, every tooth gleaming. “Ah no, this is the music that stirs the blood.”
The band marched past, drawing most of the crowd with it, leaving Jean and Alasdair standing on the curb like an island at ebb tide. Not that anyone was really an island.
He glanced at his watch. “Sorry, must run, media interview. Thank you for the dinner and the conversation.”
She looked into his eyes, guarded still despite that almost congenial little crinkle at their corners. “Thank you.” She extended her hand.
He took it in his firm but discreet grasp. Instead of shaking it he bowed, a la Bonnie Prince Charlie, and kissed it. His lips lingered, as cool and brisk on her skin as the wind from the sea. Something sparked in his gaze, like heat lightning on the horizon, and then chilled. “Cheers,” he said, released her hand so abruptly he threw it away, and turned to go.
Jean’s hand dangled in mid-air, hot and cold at once. No, she hadn’t asked him whether he found emotional intimacy aesthetically offensive, or whether he found it frightening. She didn’t have to. His answer would have been the same as hers. There might be some way of compromising between selling your soul and being lonely, but neither of them knew what it was. Which is why, she told herself as she made an about-face, she and Alasdair Cameron were walking away in opposite directions. Hail and farewell.
The band stopped in Cameron Square, in front of the West Highland Museum, pipes skirling. After Culloden, the English had banned the bagpipes as instruments of war. Because their music went right to the core of your being and squeezed until your eyes bugged out and your mind reeled and your heart bled with passion that could never be expressed. Not safely, anyway. Not safely at all.
She wondered if Alasdair were making the same rationalizations. She wondered what she’d say to him the next time she saw him—at one of the trials of course, strictly business. . . . Smiling wryly, Jean leaned up against the cool stone of the Museum and tried to convince herself that it was the music a
nd the music alone that pulsed dangerously in her blood.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lillian Stewart Carl has published multiple novels and multiple short stories in multiple genres. Her work blends mystery, romance, and fantasy, has plots based on history and archaeology, and often features paranormal themes. She enjoys exploring the way the past lingers on into the present, especially in the British Isles, where she’s visited many times.
The Secret Portrait is her twelfth novel. All the others are in print, and one is available in audio. Many of her novels and short stories are available in electronic form from www.fictionwise.com. Two stories have appeared in The World’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories III and IV, and many are available in a collection, Along the Rim of Time.
Lillian has lived for many years in North Texas, in a book-lined cloister cleverly disguised as a tract house. She is a member of The Author's Guild, Novelists Inc., Science Fiction Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime. Her web site is http://www.lillianstewartcarl.com
The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1) Page 35