Shadows in Scarlet (22 page)

"Melrose is more vivid in my mind than Dundreggan,” James sighed. “Yet I am called to the land of my birth as Odysseus was called to Ithaca. But his Penelope was faithful and my Isabel was not."

"Don't worry about Isabel. That's history, you'll excuse my saying so.” Amanda put her hands on his shoulders, or at least set her hands in the air next to the image of his shoulders, but he had faded so far she had nothing to touch. Maybe she shouldn't have told him, should simply have packed him up and carried him away. But no, that wasn't fair. If he woke up in Scotland he'd be more disoriented than ever. He deserved to know what was happening to him.

If he woke up.
Once his physical remains left Melrose, the last place to activate his consciousness, he'd probably be gone for good. Once his physical remains were buried in Scottish soil he'd definitely be gone for good, because he'd have gotten what he wanted.

James's eyes shone like a cold northern sea lit by the last rays of the setting sun.
"An ciaradh m'fheasgair mo bheath air claoidh,"
he murmured,
"mo rosg air dunadh's ‘a bhas gun chli.
It is a song the soldiers sing. ‘When day is over and life is done, my eyes closed, my strength gone.’ My strength gone...."

He vanished from the circle of her arms. Amanda dropped her hands to her sides. “James, your strength isn't gone. Not when you're with me.” She waited. Nothing. “James, we don't have much more time!” Nothing.

She punched the back of the couch with her fists. A cloud of dust rose into the air, hardly less substantial than James himself.

He might soon be at rest, but she wasn't so sure about herself.

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Amanda stood in her usual pose in the entrance hall, but her mind was focussed on the night before. James didn't seem to have much control over his appearances and disappearances. He wasn't teasing her....
Yeah, right.
Most men would love to vanish at heavy emotional moments.

A tourist group traipsed down the stairs, Wayne at their heels. “Have you seen Captain Grant's ghost?” a girl asked him.

"Stories of ghosts and spirits,” he replied with a grave nod of his bewigged head, “are grounded on no other bottom than the fears and fancies and weak brains of men. Belief in ghosts is a sign of ignorance and gross superstition, fitting only for the vulgar classes."

Nope,
Amanda thought. James wouldn't have believed in ghosts either.

"There was an article in the newspaper about that lady having a seance out here,” the girl persisted, “and flowerpots crashing and stuff like that."

Wayne had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I'm very much afraid, miss, that no flowerpots were broken. I believe the lady was simply entertaining her friends. Thank you for your visit to my home. Please do us the very great honor of stopping by the gift shop.” The sightseers stepped out the door and were swallowed by the afternoon sun.

Wayne pulled out a handkerchief, mopped his face, and said to Amanda, “My understudy's doing great. How's yours?"

"Vicky's a real trouper, picked up the lines instantly. And she looks more like Sally than I do—shorter and rounder in the face."

"Not as pretty as you are,” Wayne said gallantly.

"Thanks.” Another group of tourists arrived in the doorway and Amanda went to greet them. So far no one had taken the tour twice, and been confused by two different sets of Armstrongs.

When Amanda led this group back down the stairs she found one of Hewitt's students taking the four morsels of bone from the Lucite box. On the floor beside him sat a light wooden crate lined with stiff foam. In cutout shapes in the foam nestled James's skeleton.

The tourists gawked and pointed. The student explained what he was doing. Amanda hung back against the banister, her eyes moving from the portrait to the reconstruction to the mound of the skull peeking from the box. All three were empty illustrations of James, not the real man. The real man was a pattern in light and time. He couldn't be contained in or defined by wood, or foam, or bone.

The man she knew wasn't the same man he'd been in life, Amanda told herself. Her James was a tragic figure, with the appetites of the flesh but not its support. His touch was charmingly delicate because he wasn't up to anything stronger. His manner was appealingly vulnerable because his self-esteem had decayed with his body. If she'd met him as a living man, either in his era or outside it, she wouldn't have smiled at his boldness or sympathized with his temper. But she wasn't meeting him as a living man, was she?

The tourists were gone. “Here it is,” the student said. “Hell of a long way to go for a funeral."

"Better late than never,” Amanda replied vaguely.

The student unrolled a layer of foam over the bones and put the wooden lid loosely atop the box. “We've put some silica gel in there, but still, with this humidity, Dr. Hewitt said to leave the lid ajar until the last minute. Can you screw it down right before you leave?"

"No problem.” Amanda took the screwdriver and set it on the sideboard. “Thanks."

She stood for a long moment after the student left, considering the crate. The oblong box. The coffin. It had handles at either end and a tidy little plastic pouch for the necessary papers. The word “Fragile” was stamped on every side.
You're going home, James.

The screwdriver rolled clattering across the sideboard and pinged against the Chinese vase. Pleasure, Amanda wondered, or frustration? For a man so fair, James sure could play the brooding Byronic hero.

She hitched up her bodice and welcomed the next band of visitors.

At closing time Amanda shooed Wayne out the door with the others and headed back to her apartment pulling off her cap and loosening her gown. She didn't have to dress tomorrow, just hang around backstage ready to lend a hand if anyone needed her. Wayne was picking her up at two. In a limousine. Was she ever going to enjoy living on the right side of the tracks for a change.

Lafayette sat on the couch, guarding Helen's camera bag. The photographer hadn't tried to teach Wayne and Amanda the subtleties of filters and f-stops. She'd said, “Point there, punch here, wind this. And for God's sakes don't forget to take off the lens caps.” She'd left box after box of film, figuring that if the travelers took lots of pictures some of them had to turn out.

Amanda stowed the film, zipped the bag shut, and patted Lafayette. She made her rounds of the house and the garden and turned off the lights in the entrance hall display, but not before taking one last look at the snuffbox with its relief of Dundreggan. She'd be there herself day after tomorrow. Her nerve endings tingled with anticipation.

The box of bones still sat beside the sideboard. No sense in leaving it there. All the other luggage would go out the back. Not that she thought of James as luggage. Tucking her clipboard beneath her arm and the screwdriver in her pocket, she lifted the wooden box and carried it back to her living room. It was surprisingly light. But then, there wasn't much inside.

Night fell. Dinnertime came and went. Amanda sewed on a button, pressed a blouse, and packed. No James. She made back-up copies of her thesis. No James. She sent off a couple of e-mails and surfed the Web. Funny how studying up on the Scottish ferry schedules didn't produce any Scots.

Lafayette seemed kind of restless, she thought hopefully, sniffing at the packing crate by the door, leaping on and off the windowsills. But the air was turgid, not cool. “James,” she said aloud, “it's our last chance."

Nothing.

Lafayette hopped onto the bed and proceeded to lick himself down. Amanda pulled out a needlepoint project that she'd intended for her mother two Christmases ago. She stitched away and channel-surfed at the same time. Letterman's and Leno's jokes weren't particularly funny, especially those dealing with the harder edges of romance. An affair with a ghost might eliminate some of the hazards of intimacy, but only the physical ones.... She stabbed her finger so deeply she drew blood.

The night was hot and silent. Lafayette dozed. Amanda turned off the television and the lights and went to bed, where she twitched so restlessly the cat got up and left.

So much for the best-laid plans of man—and woman—to get laid, she thought with an apology to Burns. She'd try one more thing. “James,” she said aloud, “James, when you're with me you're strong again."

The reflection of the outside floodlights filled the bedroom with a pale glow. An icy breath of air made her sit slowly upright. Her skin prickled. The hairs on her head rose. Her T-shirt billowed in the draft and then stilled as the cold ebbed.

James stood beside the bed, neither lighted nor shadowed, a shape and a gleam of scarlet. “Hush, Sweeting, would you wake the neighboring houses?"

All she had to do was appeal to his ego.
Duh.
“There aren't any neighboring houses."

He grinned, eyes twinkling, and unbuckled his shoulder belt.

Yes!
Amanda's heart leaped, sending blood blazing into more than her face. She reached for him. In a smooth pirouette he evaded her. Fine, she was up for a strip show.

His shoulder belt and scabbard clanked, and the buttons on his coat flashed and jingled. His waistcoat and neck cloth fell silently, like white ghosts. James dropped his sporran onto the shoulder belt. A quick two-step and he was rid of his shoes and hose. Holding Amanda's eyes with his own, he unbuckled the belt that clasped his kilt around his waist and tossed the length of wool onto her feet. The phantom fabric tickled her toes.

His white shirt, its hem at mid-thigh, seemed no paler than his skin. Than his ephemeral flesh. But it sure looked like real flesh now. She was in meltdown. She peeled off her T-shirt and opened her arms. “James, I love you, I want you."

"Why speak of love, when its demonstration is so greatly to be desired?"

Yes!

His weight, heavier than she'd expected, pressed her back against the pillow. His body was solid beneath the cloth of the shirt and his lips eager against hers. His breath was scented with whiskey, sharp and smoky. His tail of hair spun through her fingers.

In one deft movement he scooped the shirt away and she lay naked against his naked chest. Against her fiery skin his seemed cool and dry. “My own,” he whispered. “My sweet.” His hands stroked her body, insistent, no longer either subtle or delicate.

She caressed his shoulders, his chest, his flanks—nothing metaphysical about him now, he was there, was he ever there, skin taut over muscle and bone, substantial bones, not the empty mocking shells that lay in the box in the next room. She pulled his head down to her breast, guiding his mouth—"There, yes."

And again he was pressing her into the pillow. They were wrestling, she realized, each trying to out-maneuver the other. So let him get on top, no problem.... He was between her thighs, hard against the damp heat of her flesh. Okay, okay, the foreplay had started the night he'd kissed her hand—a quickie was fine if it was intense enough and if she got any more intense she was going to explode—which was the general idea, although the process of getting there was half the battle—not that this was a battle, not really.

She grasped the firm double mound of his buttocks and wrapped herself around him, remembering his joke about sword and sheath.... In one thrust he was inside her to the hilt.

She gasped—good thing she'd been turned on for days, well lubricated by her own fantasies. The sensation rolled like an ocean wave through her body and broke over her fingers and toes and the crown of her head. He existed. He was real. She planted one heel against the bed and the other against his calf and hurried to catch up.
Oh yeah oh yeah.

The bed was creaking. Her own voice was making funny little sub-vocal squeaks and sighs. He was a swordsman all right, he didn't need Stirling steel to make his point—his face above hers was a bas-relief against the darkness, half turned aside, eyes closed, teeth gritted, concentrated into life—the barriers of time and death thinned, broke, and disappeared.

His hand knotted in her hair, pulling her head back so sharply her scalp stung. “Ow!” She tried to twist away, but not to lose either the rhythm or the crest of the sensation.

His body pinned hers and pulled away and pinned it again and hung there, shuddering. Her muscles spasmed in reply—
yes!
The flash point was like a pistol shot in the dark, sudden, bright, and then gone.

Amanda exhaled shakily into the air above James's head. So that was it. For something she'd wanted so badly it'd sure gone by fast. Time dilation, maybe. But what a ride.
Yes.

James sprawled on top of her, weighing no more than a heavy blanket, his fingers splayed against her scalp and his cheek tickling hers. “Amanda,” he whispered. “My sweet, my own, you have made me strong again."

"Seems the least I could do,” she croaked. It wasn't like she hadn't gotten anything out of the deal. In a minute or two, once she had some saliva back in her mouth, she'd ask him about his life and times—what did he really think of the Jacobite cause, how many servants did they have at Dundreggan, who had he met in the salons of Edinburgh. And after awhile she'd teach him a few things about leisurely lovemaking.

He raised his head. She could see the fan blades rotating through his features. “You are mine, Amanda. Mine.... “And on a sigh of words and whiskey he vanished.

She hadn't even had time to deflect his words with a joke about possession being nine-tenths of the law. “James?"

No reply.

Her arms flopped down to the bed, empty. So, she asked herself, did you ever think even for one minute he was going to turn out to be a sensitive new age guy?

For a long time she lay wallowing in sweat and sentiment, every perception of the last—five minutes?—looping round and round in her mind. She'd actually told him she'd loved him, hadn't she? Well, there were worse words for a man to hear on his deathbed.

Her scalp ached and she rubbed at it. No, he hadn't pulled out a handful of hair. As rough sex went that tug was fairly minor, she supposed. It hadn't spoiled the excitement of the moment. Not that she'd allow it to happen again, given the chance....