emanating from the stone faded until only a pale reddish glow remained. Mairi was gone for good this time.
I drew a deep breath. “I’m here, Ian,” I shouted, “behind the wall.”
Within moments he walked toward me, bandage around his arm, flashlight in hand. “Your parents have Kate,” he said.
“Is everyone all right?” I asked.
He nodded. “Everyone except Kate. She’s ill, Christina, really ill. She belongs in a hospital. I can’t believe that I didn’t see it before this.” He held out his hand. “Let’s go.”
Without a word, I pointed to the stone. He aimed his flashlight and stared. Disbelief on his face changed to awe. Reverently, he circled the dais, his flashlight moving over every inch of the glowing granite. “This is incredible,” he said at last. “There must be some kind of radiation coming from the rock, maybe uranium.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m not a geologist, but what other explanation could there be?”
“You still don’t believe in the supernatural, do you, Ian? Even after all we’ve been through.”
He waved the flashlight in the air. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. The point is, you’ve done it. You’ve proven that Scotland’s stone has been here at Traquair House all the time. You’ll be famous.”
I shook my head. “That isn’t what she would want.”
“What are you saying?”
I walked to where he stood and looked up at his face with eyes that finally recognized the truth. Without the blinders, I noticed the resemblance at once. The same thick, light hair and fair skin, the bluer than blue eyes, the masculine cut of nose and chin, the arrogant flair of nostrils. He was so very like him, a Saxon warrior thinly disguised by the clipped hair and civilized clothing of the twentieth century. Our lives had been linked as Mairi and Edward’s had been.
Gently, I reached up to touch his face and attempted to explain. “We were brought here and allowed to see this for a reason. Me, because of who I am, the last descendent of the Maxwells of Traquair. You, because you are a Douglas of Grizelle’s line. Don’t ask me to explain how I know that. It’s enough to tell you that without the two of us seeing this together, the curse wouldn’t be over.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Kate.” He sounded exasperated, as if his patience had finally worn to the breaking point. “Come now, Christina. You’re an educated woman. You can’t really believe in an ancient curse.”
“That isn’t important. You know as well as I do what will happen once we break it to the world that the stone in Westminster Abbey is a fraud. Teams of archaeologists and geologists and everyone else you can think of will park themselves on our doorstep and dissect our lives and our stories until neither one of us will be able to step outside again.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he countered stubbornly. “This is too valuable an artifact to be covered up and dismissed. It belongs in a museum.”
“What about your work? Do you really want your name to be a household word?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is Scotland, not Hollywood.”
I gave up. There was nothing more I could say. “Have it your way,” I muttered. “I’m going home to Boston.”
“Christina.” He reached out to touch my arm. “You can’t mean that. What about the baby?”
He said something else, but I no longer heard. I was looking at the stone. The red glow had disappeared. Except for the flashlight, the room was shrouded in darkness. I reached out, groping for the warm granite. There was nothing. I turned back to Ian.
Slowly, he aimed the flashlight in the direction where the stone had been. It was gone. Even the dais had disappeared. Moments passed with the two of us staring at each other in frozen silence. Finally, as if some wordless message had passed between us, we left the way we had come, climbing the stairs to light and life.
Epilogue
TRAQUAIR HOUSE
January 1995
Everything fell into place after that. I never did go back to Boston. Kate Ferguson was committed to a psychiatric hospital. My parents stayed until after the birth of my children and then left for home. Ian was reconciled to my decision to have the babies alone. Out of consideration for me, he had spent much of the last year in Edinburgh with the exception of a short period after the twins were born. His visits were brief but regular, and I had to admit, for a man who knew nothing about babies, he looked