The Burning Glass by Lillian Stewart Carl Read Free Book Online Page B

armor between his shoulder blades. His
voice was rough. “I didn’t know it was her buying the place. I
didn’t know she’d be coming here. Not ’til you said her name on the
phone.”
    “Who? Ciara Macquarrie? Why . . .”
    His gaze was steady, uncompromising, sparing
nothing. “Oh aye. Ciara Macquarrie. My ex-wife.”
     
     

Chapter Five
     
     
    Jean didn’t feel as though she’d been punched
in the stomach. She didn’t feel as though the rug had been pulled
out from under her. She didn’t feel anything at all. From some
remote place, Death Valley probably, she watched herself watching
Ciara stroll across the courtyard. Keith Bell slouched along
behind, appearing more like her shadow than her companion.
    A farm tractor rumbled down the road outside
the gate, startling the crows on the battlements into harsh
complaints. An ache in Jean’s chest nagged her into breathing.
Shuddering, she inhaled. And her thoughts plummeted downward and
shattered against the jagged stone of fact.
    Alasdair was in full lead-shielded,
locked-down mode, his face less expressive than the stark facade of
Ferniebank. But she could read the set of his broad shoulders all
too well. She herself had pared away his defenses, bit by bit,
leaving him vulnerable to this surprise attack. Once she had gotten
the vapors at the thought of Brad perhaps talking to Alasdair on
the phone. Now here was Alasdair having to introduce woman past to
woman present. He and Ciara made such an odd couple that Keith and
Ciara looked like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.
    The dratted woman was grinning as though this
unfortunately not-likely-to-be-brief encounter was the best joke
she’d heard in years. She’d known Alasdair was here. She was
enjoying the heck out of surprising him. . . .
    No. She wasn’t gloating. What she was doing
was extending her hand toward Jean. “Jean Fairbairn, I presume.
Ciara Macquarrie. I’m your predecessor with this po-faced specimen
here”—she nodded toward Alasdair, who took a short step
backwards—“or so I’m hearing from my local contacts. No worries,
though. I come in peace.”
    Jean managed to lift a paw, allow Ciara to
clasp it, and drop it back down to her side. The woman’s hand was
soft and rather damp. Around her hung the thankfully faint aroma of
one of those perfumes—lotus, patchouli, gardenia—that was a
molecule shy of bug spray.
    “Hi.” Keith had a surprisingly deep voice
considering the circumference of his neck. “We talked on the
phone.”
    Jean opened her mouth but nothing came out.
She could see herself reflected in his aviator-style glasses like
in twin mirrors, her eyes and her mouth both wide, dark
blotches.
    “Poor lamb, she’s had a bit of a shock,”
Ciara said to Keith. With a toss of her head that set her dangling
earrings to tinkling as gaily as wind chimes, she shooed him toward
the path that ran from the parking area to the river. The lilt of
her voice drifted back into the courtyard. “If we come back after
nightfall we’ll see the ghost walking from the castle down to the
chapel, trailing her shroud behind her like the wedding gown she
refused to wear. Could you not feel the disturbance on the upper
floor, where she died?”
    “Nope,” said Keith.
    “She’s there, right enough. The vibrations
were rattling my teeth. How sad that she’s lingering so near a
place of power like the chapel, and yet cannot let go. Wallace now,
he’s gone on to the next plane.” The motley pair disappeared into
the shade of the trees.
    Oh, Jean thought. Those gray walls down that
way, they were the chapel’s. Those shadows that lay long across the
courtyard, they indicated that the day was dying. That man standing
beside her, face shielded, eyes impenetrable, that was Alasdair.
Her Alasdair. He had expressionlessness down pat, oh yes, but
“po-faced” implied arrogance as well. Jean had thought him
arrogant, once. What? Had Ciara never broken his shell? Or had she
reinforced its