Ashes to Ashes by Lillian Stewart Carl Page A

in timbre, becoming the swish of rain. The wind filled with voices growing first into shouts and then screams, blended with a staccato rattle of guns and the flat reports of cannon. Rebecca frowned, turning her head from side to side, struggling against the images, but still the sounds buffeted her ears and ricocheted across her skull. She felt the sting of sleet against her skin. She smelled gunpowder, cold steel, and the warm stench of blood.
    The claymore above her head flashed. It wrenched loose from its brackets and drove right at her breast.
    Metal rent, and the world turned upside down. With a short, strangled scream Rebecca crashed backward onto the floor. She lay stunned, her heart fluttering against her ribs, blinking as stupidly at the walls and ceiling as though she’d never seen them before.
    Then she focused her mind and caught her breath. Weird! The sword hung innocently in its brackets. The room was quiet except for the rustle of papers and the background murmur of wind and water. And yet for a moment she had been someplace else: Culloden, 1746.
    “Oh for heaven’s sakes,” she exclaimed, abjectly embarrassed. She’d dozed off, had a brief, if extraordinarily vivid, nightmare, and upset the chair. She was wedged against the wall in an inverted “V”, the lock of hair crushed in her hand.
    Nothing seemed to be damaged except her dignity. But she couldn’t get up. She had no room to maneuver; she didn’t dare struggle too violently, she might break something. Something other than the chair, that is.
    A movement in the door was Darnley, sitting with his head cocked to the side as if wondering what amazing gymnastic feat she would attempt next. She could, she thought dizzily, send Darnley for help, like Rin Tin Tin. No, she’d be mortified to have Michael help her, let alone see what she’d done. Even if she had to lie here all afternoon.
    No, that wouldn’t work, either. Eric was picking her up at five-thirty. She held her wristwatch before her face and swore. It was almost five. She wriggled, trying to turn herself on her side. The thick arms of the chair seemed almost malevolent the way they clutched at her.
    The sound of footsteps reverberated in the floor beneath her head. Darnley whizzed away. In spite of herself she drew her knees close to her chest and tensed. The steps came down the staircase, through the study, to the door. A vast pair of workboots stopped by her eyes, and hands the size of scoops on a steam shovel picked her up and set her on her feet.
    “Thank you, Mr. Pruitt,” she said. She carefully peeled the royal lock of hair from her damp palm.
    “I was just coming to fix that chair when I heard you go over,” Phil said. “Almost dumped Dorothy last week when she was dusting the desk. Looking through it, more likely. None of her business.”
    So Dorothy was a snoop. After finding her wardrobe open Rebecca wasn’t surprised. She restored the hair to its paper wrapper and tucked it away. “Maybe one of the ghosts thought I was her,” she said, not sure just how funny she was trying to be.
    Phil was inspecting the metal contraption that had hinged the seat of the chair to its base, turning it over and over in his hand. Sheared through, Rebecca saw. Just old and fragile… . Wait a minute. The jagged rim of the break stopped suddenly at a shining straight edge.
    Phil thrust the hinge into his rear pocket and picked up the two pieces of the chair. “The ghosts out here are pretty peaceable ones. I’ll take these out to the shed.” He tramped away, the rhythm of his boots going out not varying from the calm cadences which had brought him in.
    Rebecca shook her head. That was an awfully precise break, almost as if the metal had been filed through. Had Phil set a trap for Dorothy? He didn’t look like a practical joker. He didn’t look like the fanciful type, either, and yet he agreed matter-of-factly that there were ghosts in Dun Iain. She followed Phil through the study and