Dreaming of the Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

sure.”
    They settled in the squashy armchairs before the fire, and when Vic had tucked her feet up under the folds of her dress and sipped her tea, she said, “Seriously, Duncan, I’m glad for you. But I haven’t asked you here to pry into your private life, though I have to admit I’m curious.” She smiled at him over the rim of her china cup.
    The familiarity of the floral pattern had been nagging at him, and its juxtaposition against her face clicked the memory into place—Vic opening a gift box, lifting out a cup, and holding it aloft for him to inspect. The china had been a wedding present from her parents, a proper set, her mother had called it, as if afraid his own family might offer something unsuitable.
    “Curiosity always got Alice into trouble,” he teased. Alice had been his pet name for her, and it had suited her in more than physical resemblance.
    “I know,” she said a bit ruefully. “And I’m afraid things haven’t changed all that much. What I wanted to see you about has to do with my work, and it’s a bit difficult. But first I thought I’d get to know you again, see if you’d think I was just some hysterical, bloody female.”
    “Oh, come on, Vic. You—hysterical? That’s the last adjective that would have come to mind. You were always the epitome of cool detachment.” As he spoke he thought of the one place she had abandoned reserve, and he flushed uncomfortably.
    “Some of the people in my department might use a bit less flattering terms.” She grimaced. “And my choice of subject matter for my book has made me decidedly unpopular in certain quarters.”
    “Book?” Kincaid dragged his attention from the photo of Vic’s errant husband. What had she seen in him? McClellan looked tweedy and bearded, handsome in a studiously academic way, and Kincaid could easily imagine him chatting up his students. He supposedhe ought to be glad that life had seen fit to make Vic the butt of one of its little retribution jokes—the biter bit—but instead he felt a surge of anger on her behalf.
    He had not been blameless in the breakup of their marriage, and they’d both been young, just beginning to discover what they wanted out of life. But he could imagine no excuse for Ian McClellan’s behavior—and what sort of man, he wondered, would go off without a word to his son?
    “My biography,” Vic answered. “That’s what I’ve been working on this last year. A biography of Lydia Brooke.” She reached up and switched on the reading lamp beside her chair, casting her face into shadow and illuminating her hands as they clasped the teacup in her lap. “Ian said he’d been displaced, and I suppose in a way it’s true. Men—I don’t like men very much these days. They want you to be brilliant and successful, just as long as it doesn’t take any of your attention away from them and their needs. And as long as your accomplishments don’t outshine theirs, of course.” She looked up at him and smiled.
    “I sound an awful bitch, don’t I? I’m generalizing, and I know there are men capable of more, but I’m beginning to think they’re the exception. Ian didn’t start on the graduate students until my salary equaled his.” Her mouth twisted in disgust and she shook her head. “Never mind. What do you know about Lydia Brooke?”
    Frowning, he searched his memory, turning up a vague recollection of slim volumes on the shelf in his parents’ bookshop. “A Cambridge poet, a sort of symbol of the sixties … She died quite recently, I think. Wasn’t she related to Rupert Brooke?”
    “She was obsessed with Rupert Brooke when she came up to Cambridge. Whether or not she was related to him is another matter entirely.” Vic shifted in her seat so that the light fell across her face again. “And you’re right, Lydia did burst upon the scene in the mid-sixties. Her poems were full of an aching disenchantment, and I suppose they touched something particular in that generation. After a