Free The Devil Wears Tartan by Karen Ranney Page B

stand between them, floating in the air unanswered. And then she made it worse, by adding yet another statement. “I thought it wonderful.”
    His eyes changed, so imperceptibly that if she hadn’t been studying him so intently, she’d never have seen it. A light flickered, like an underwater lantern below the surface of the lake.
    “I wouldn’t be displeased to do it again,” she said. “That is, if you have any interest in doing so. I would like, very much, to do it again.”
    This time, before he could say anything or, worse, not say anything at all, she left him, walking briskly across the courtyard and feeling his stare on her back the whole time.

Chapter 8
    M arshall was never completely free of demons, not even in the Egypt House, one of his favorite places at Ambrose. There were times when the voices swirled around the statues and hung low above the marble floor. Occasionally he thought he saw a creature with a cat’s head trailing a scarf behind a pillar, or the very tip of Amenhotep’s beard showing beside a doorway. When those moments came, he told himself they were the same visions and the same voices he always heard. These were not Egyptian ghosts or specters from thousands of years ago. These were simply manifestations of his madness. If he were in the middle of a fallow field, he would see something that did not belong there. No doubt the earth would speak to him, or the weeds rise up and twist themselves into some sort of creature.
    This time, however, he kept seeing something—someone—that truly shouldn’t be there, and this ghost wore scent. He was accustomed to auditory hallucinations, as well as visions, but he’d never before smelled attar of roses in the morning air at Ambrose. Dust, yes,and that strange almost cedar smell emanating from some of the mummies.
    But then, he’d never been married before, either.
    Sometimes all it took to appreciate one day from another was for something unusual to happen. A storm in the middle of a sunny afternoon, the unexpected appearance of an old friend, a few hours without pain—they were all ordinary events made slightly unusual, enough that they were marked and remembered.
    For Marshall, that moment of appreciation had come at dawn, when he’d awakened feeling the simple and curious emptiness of the day. Nothing hurt, nothing felt wrong. Above all, there were no memories or fragments of dreams to haunt him. If he’d had hallucinations the night before, he couldn’t recall them.
    Not one bloody, tortured man had visited him.
    There was no broken furniture. No blood to be found on the walls or the floor. There was no one standing inside the door, waiting for him to rouse so that he could be regaled with the horror of his behavior the previous night.
    Had marriage unexpectedly brought him peace?
    It would have been pleasant to sleep beside his bride, but Marshall couldn’t take that chance. He might have awakened like a banshee, howling through the halls of Ambrose. Or worse—he might have seen her as an enemy, someone to destroy, a legacy of his imprisonment in China.
    Thanks to his jailers in Peking, for seven months his life had been proscribed down to the minute. Sunrise to sunset, each moment was marked and measured against the day before.
    He’d been so damn hopeful in the first weeks, believing each day that someone would come for them. The sound of booted feet through the brick corridors had inspired hope that he and his forty men would be rescued soon. After all, they were emissaries of the Crown, representatives of the greatest monarch the world had ever known. Even the Chinese emperor could not ignore Queen Victoria’s might.
    But it appeared as if the world had forgotten them, and the whole of China and the British Empire battled silently and in secrecy.
    After three months, Marshall settled into a routine. He began to view anything different that happened with suspicion. Any sudden noise was cause for alarm. Any deviation in his