summons produced only Dougie, who trotted out of the dressing room licking his lips, leaped onto the bed, and snuggled down amidst the pillows. Jean regarded him with a touch of envy. Not so long ago she’d been proud of her hard-earned self-sufficiency, the sort of pride that went before falling in love. Now she was incomplete without a man, if far from just any man.
They had been through more together in less than a year than she and her first husband had experienced in two decades. Alasdair had never met her ex, a man who was all ground and no imagination, but she’d met his, a woman who was all imagination and no ground. All four had promised to have and to hold until death did them part. But it wasn’t death that had parted them, although divorce was a sort of death.
Fergie had lost his wife to disease. And Tina had lost Greg to murder.
Jean jerked to attention as the clock struck six-thirty. Places to go, people to see, clues to ferret out. Tucking the phone into her second-best evening bag, a small leather pouch on a long strap, she gave her engagement ring a quick polish against her skirt and charged out into the hall.
She almost caromed off Scott Krum, who was lifting the lid of an ivory-inlaid chest opposite the door of the Charlie suite. He dropped it with a thud and whoosh that made the Grainne tapestry ripple. His teeth gleamed in a fixed smile framed by his dark—no, what Rab Finlay had was a beard. Scott’s goatee looked like it had been traced on his face by a black marker.
“Oh,” he said. “Hi. I forgot the camera, the girls want snapshots, I came back upstairs—this is your room, huh?”
“Mine and my fiancé’s, yes.”
“Your fiancé is here, too?” He sidled away.
With a suspicious glance at the chest—Fergie probably wasn’t keeping the family silver in there—and another at Scott—she didn’t see any cameras about his person, but a digital one would fit in a pocket—Jean locked the door and allowed herself to be led toward the staircase. “We’re getting married at St. Columcille’s, the Dunasheen chapel, on the third.”
“Great, great. After you.” Averting his eyes from the bedizened suit of armor, to say nothing of the mistletoe, Scott waved her onto the turnpike stair.
Jean stepped past the tripping stane and the chill spot, and at the second-floor landing asked, “So are y’all enjoying the Wallace suite?”
“Heather hasn’t found much to complain about yet, and that’s saying something.”
They walked down the first flight in silence, Jean breathing in the odors of roasting meat and baking pastry. Her stomach’s pitiful grumble reminded her she’d missed tea and Nancy Finlay’s superior baked goods, but then, she’d feasted on them yesterday, so it averaged out.
Safely in the entrance hall, Scott said, “I guess you’re wondering why I was on the third floor.”
“The question had crossed my mind.” Jean turned around to face him.
He’d abandoned the smile for an embarrassed grimace, but his eyes were guarded. “I work for an auction house in Maryland, doing appraisals, estate sales, that kind of thing. You know, Antiques Roadshow stuff. I was curious about what the MacDonalds have tucked away here. The older the house, the greater the chance of something really cool lying forgotten in a closet.”
No kidding, Jean thought, but what she said was, “Something that could be bought cheap and then sold on for a lot of money?”
“I don’t cheat anyone. Reselling is part of the business.” He dropped the grimace as well. “So what do you and your fiancé do for a living?”
“I’m a journalist and part owner of Great Scot magazine in Edinburgh.”
“I’ve heard of that. Pretty good worldwide circulation, right? Both paper and electronic?”
“Yes, we’re blanketing the world with dead trees and pixels both.”
“You think you could cut me a deal on advertising rates?”
“You’d have to check with my partner, Miranda Capaldi. She’s the boss.” And the various departments such as Advertising, Circulation, Editorial, Printing, and Web Design were scattered from Leith to Dalkeith, hardly out of Miranda’s sight, but pretty much out of Jean’s mind. “Alasdair—Alasdair Cameron—is the head of Protect and Survive, the security agency.”
Scott nodded. “Oh yeah, they’ve got a good reputation. I’d like to touch bases with him. Where is he?”
“He’s…” She redirected her statement in midstream. “He should be here for dinner.”
“Great. We’ve got drinks first, huh? The library, Diana said. Down this way?” Smile restored, he bowed Jean toward the hallway.
“Yep, this way.” She glanced back at the two black sheaths, establishing that the one on the right was still empty. Scottish regimental dirks were collectible items, but if Scott had decided to help himself, he’d have taken the sheath with its silver fittings and diminutive knife and fork as well.
Just because he was checking the place out didn’t mean he was a thief. Just because Jean’s curious nature had developed a suspicious streak didn’t mean there was anything suspect in an art dealer like Greg and an antiques dealer like Scott turning up in the same place at the same time. They’d both been attracted by the house itself. And Fergie certainly had things to sell, if not actively for sale.
Like books. Passing beneath another stag’s head, this one wearing a Sherlock Holmes–style deerstalker hat complete with an eagle feather, Jean led Scott into the library.
Glass-doored cabinets lined the room, rank after rank of books old and new glimmering behind polished panes like treasure at the sea bottom. The cabinet holding the Fairy Flagon was closed—Fergie was understandably protective of his family talisman. A peat fire burned in the fireplace, with both of the dogs, the lab and the terrier, lying broadside to it and absorbing most of the warmth. New Age interpretations of Christmas classics emanated from hidden speakers. In front of the center window sparkled a Christmas tree, every light reflected in the glass.
Jean tasted the air like she would a fine wine—a trace of smoke, a soupcon of old paper and leather, the sharp odor of evergreen, the silken hint of spices. No wet dog, though. The animals looked as though they’d been blow-dried.
Had they reacted at all to the black-clad man standing alone, wet, and cold in the parking area, looking not at the police vehicles but up at the lighted windows of the house? Or did they know him?
Heather Krum waited in the middle of the room, her arms folded across a beaded and embroidered jacket, her narrow glasses perched below a heavy fall of bangs letterboxing her eyes. “There you are,” she snapped to Scott. “I thought you’d met up with that Diana woman.”
“Our hostess?” he retorted. “I ran into Jane on the staircase, okay?”
“Jean,” Jean corrected, without continuing on to correct Scott’s geographical ambiguity.
Heather’s slitted eyes looked Jean up and down. “Are you here alone?”
“No, I’m here with my fiancé for our wedding on January third.”
“Oh.”
