Ashes to Ashes by Lillian Stewart Carl Read Free Book Online Page A

man of steel.”
    “Hard to say,” said Michael. “How’d you like to be the only bairn of such a man?”
    “Better than being his wife,” Rebecca said emphatically. On the dresser in the big bedroom was a set of ivory-handled hairbrushes. They were flanked by several cut-glass bottles labeled with the names of expensive Paris perfumeries. “Also Elspeth’s? John and then James kept her things out, as if expecting her to return any moment?”
    “They were more than a wee bit mad, the both of them.” Michael fluffed up a pillow on the sumptuously draped and canopied bed, removing the imprint of a resting head, then turned and regarded the full-length portrait of Mary Stuart. Rebecca, too, was drawn yet again by the tragic queen’s serene expression. The crucifix she held gestured as calmly toward an inset scene of her execution as though she were a conductor sounding the downbeat of a symphony, “Scots Wha Hae” played in counterpoint to “Rule Britannia”.
    “I wonder,” Michael mused, “whether yon face peerin’ into his bed put old John on or off the job.” He turned aside, disallowing his smirk.
    That, Rebecca suspected, had been a salacious double entendre. She shouldn’t acknowledge it. She smothered a smile at both John Forbes’s necrophiliac tendencies and Michael’s undisciplined mouth.
    Footsteps clicked across the floor above. Michael’s face tilted abruptly upward. He stood very still, very quiet, staring so intently at the plaster ceiling she thought for a moment he could see through it.
    Before she could catch herself she spun about and looked toward the stairwell. Nothing appeared but Dorothy and her vacuum cleaner, heralded by thumps and crashes. Of course, Rebecca told herself. What did you expect?
    “There you are!” the woman cried cheerily. “Found the treasure yet?”
    Michael emitted a long exhalation.
    “There’re some fascinating things here,” returned Rebecca. And yet they were lonely things, objects in exile stripped to the barest emotional resonance. Like the guitar and the harp, they exchanged quick notes of terrible reminiscence… . Getting fanciful in your old age, she told herself. No wonder you got carried away with that guitar. Next you’ll start believing in the Forbes treasure. The Erskine letter would be treasure enough.
    “Checking out the bedrooms, I see.” Dorothy rolled her engine of cleanliness into the room, plugged it in, and laid down her basket. She fixed Michael with a stare over the top of her glasses. “So the two of you will be spending a lot of time alone here together, hm?”
    Michael glanced first at Mary’s painted features and then at Rebecca, just as Rebecca, to her horror, felt her cheeks grow hot in a blush.
    “I know how young people behave these days,” Dorothy continued with a ghastly simpering grin. “Everything’s so casual. Sleep around, have a good time, and never mind the consequences. Well, repent at leisure, I always say.”
    Time for a dignified exit. As one, Michael and Rebecca started for the hall, collided in the doorway, and lurched away from each other like magnets touching negative poles. They didn’t stop until they’d gained the airy, whitewashed expanse of the ballroom. Blocks of sunlight danced a slow and stately minuet across the floor and a suggestion of rot hung on the air.
    Michael seemed undecided whether to laugh or to swear. He said at last in a rather choked voice, “So then, what do you think?”
    “About the house?” Rebecca asked, smothering a rather warped grin. “The collection is more idiosyncratic than I’d imagined.”
    “About the house,” affirmed Michael, settling on laughter. He sauntered down the room, floorboards squeaking, to a semicircular window seat snugged inside a turret. “It’s right mixtie-maxtie. I wager old John didna ken the half of what he had.”
    “Do you think he has Admiral Nelson’s glass eye around here somewhere?”
    Michael leaned his elbow against the