quickly took the torn coat from him. She held his hand as they climbed the stairs.
“Oh, so warm,” he said, “so very warm.”
“Yes, sir, and the milk.” There stood the tall glass by the bed. He drank it down. She was loosening the buttons of his shirt.
“Thank you, my dear, my little dear,” he said. “Sleep, Mr. Ash,” she said.
He fell heavily on the bed, and felt the big feather comforter come down upon him, the pillow plumping beneath his cheek, the entire bed sweet and soft as it caught him and turned him in the first circle of sleep and drew him downward.
The glen, my glen, the loch, my loch, my land.
Betrayer of your own people.
In the morning he ate a quick breakfast in his room, as his staff prepared for an immediate return. No, he would not go down to see the Cathedral this time, he said. And yes, he had read the articles in the papers. St. Ashlar, yes, he had heard that tale, too. And the young Leslie was so puzzled.
“You mean, sir, that’s not why we came here, to see the shrine of the saint?”
He only shrugged. “We’ll be back someday, my dear.”
Another time perhaps they would take that little walk.
By noon he had landed in London.
Samuel was waiting for him beside the car. He was cleanly attired in his tweed suit, with a fresh, stiff white shirt and tie, and looked the diminutive gentleman. Even his red hair was combed decently, and his face had the respectable look of an English bulldog.
“You left the gypsy alone?”
“He left while I slept,” Samuel confessed. “I didn’t hear him go out. He’s gotten clean away. He left no message.”
Ash thought for a long moment. “Probably just as well,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me that the women were gone?”
“Fool. I wouldn’t have let you go if there had been any women. You should have known. You don’t think. You don’t count the years. You don’t use reason. You play with your toys and your money and all your fine things, and you forget. You forget and that’s why you’re happy.”
The car carried them away from the airport and towards the city.
“Will you go home to your playground in the sky?” Samuel asked.
“No. You know I won’t. I have to find the gypsy,” he said. “I have to discover the secret in the Talamasca.”
“And the witch?”
“Yes.” Ash smiled and turned to Samuel. “I have to find the witch, too, perhaps. At least to touch her red hair, to kiss her white skin, to drink the scent of her.”
“And—?”
“How will I know, little man?”
“Oh, you know. You know you do.”
“Then let me in peace. For if it’s to be, my days are finally numbered.”
Six
IT WAS EIGHT o’clock when Mona opened her eyes. She heard the clock strike the hour, slowly, in deep, rich tones. But it was another sound that had awakened her, the sharp ring of a phone. It must have been coming from the library, she reasoned, and it was too far away from her and had been ringing far too long for her to answer it. She turned over, nestling into the big velvet couch with its many loose pillows, and stared out the windows into the garden, which was flooded with the morning sun.
The sun was coming in the windows, actually, and making the floor amber and beautiful to look at right before the side porch.
The phone had stopped. Surely one of the new staff around here had answered it—Cullen, the new driver, or Yancy, the young boy about the house who was always up, they said, by 6:00 a.m. Or maybe even old Eugenia, who stared so solemnly at Mona now, every time their paths crossed.
Mona had fallen asleep here last night, in her new silk dress, right on the very couch of sin where she and Michael had done it together, and though she had tried her best to dream of Yuri—Yuri, who had called, leaving a message with Celia that indeed he was all right, and he would be in touch very soon with all of them—she had found herself thinking about Michael, thinking about those three tumbles, and how they’d been, very forbidden and perhaps the best erotic fling she’d scored so far.
It was not that Yuri had not been marvelous, the lover of her dreams. But the two had been so careful with each other; it had been lovemaking, yes, but in the safest way imaginable. And it had