The Burning Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

English
border.
    She hadn’t lived in Scotland long enough,
accumulating an ultraviolet deficiency, to bake herself in the sun.
Neither, manifestly, had Rebecca Campbell-Reid. She was seated in
the flickering shadow of the arbor, a tea tray on the table and a
baby carriage close by. Her honey-brown hair was held back from her
face with a plastic clip, an accessory Michael could perhaps have
used. Her features were as genial as his, if, like his, sculpted by
an intelligence so quick as to be impatient.
    Rebecca called over the music, “There you
are, Jean.”
    “Here I am,” Jean shouted back. She sat down
in a plastic chair and peered into the pram. Two-month-old Linda
was asleep, her little pink rose-petal face utterly at peace. Add a
halo and wings and she would make your average Renaissance cherub
look like a gremlin. Jean sat back with a smile that was fond but
hardly wistful. She had learned long ago, after one very brief
pregnancy, to take out her maternal impulses on other people’s
children. “So she’s already used to the sound of the pipes?”
    “Passed along with the tartan DNA. If you’ll
sit here with her, I’ll run inside and get you a cuppa. Or do you
have time?”
    “Thanks, but no, I don’t. I need to get on
out to Ferniebank.”
    “Oh, you’ll love Ferniebank.” Rebecca’s tone
said, “Oh, you’ll love having a root-canal.”
    “Let me guess. The Gray Lady is based on a
real ghost.”
    “So say the locals. Mind you, with the place
closed and all, we’ve only peeked in through the gate, but there’s
something properly uncanny about it.”
    Jean had trouble seeing uncanniness being at
all proper, but then, Rebecca’s slight paranormal sensitivity
picked up resonances more than actual ghosts. Jean filched a morsel
of shortbread from the tea tray. “Thanks. I think. So where’s the
B&B you’re minding?”
    “Just around the corner. The Reiver’s Rest.
Named for the reivers who were bloody-minded power-hungry thieves
taking advantage of unrest along the border. The Highlands have no
monopoly on romanticization.”
    “You remember the old story about the beggar
in the Border village? No one would give him the time of day, let
alone a penny or a crust of bread. Finally he asked, ‘Are there no
Christians here?’ And someone answered, ‘No, we’re all Armstrongs
and Elliots hereabouts.’ ”
    “The Fairbairns are Armstrongs, aren’t they?”
asked Rebecca with a grin.
    “Yep. One branch of my family goes straight
back to this area. There’s a comment on determinism versus free
will.” Jean finished her cookie. “The Reiver’s Rest. Okay.”
    “There’s a comment on the heritage
business.”
    “If it weren’t for the heritage biz, I’m not
sure Scotland would have a viable economy. I know Miranda and I
wouldn’t. Ironic, how Alasdair’s now working for the exact industry
he’s made so many snide remarks about.”
    “You need a little pragmatism in amongst the
flights of fancy.”
    “That’s exactly what he’d say.”
    At the far side of the garden, Michael segued
into a hornpipe, his long fingers springing on the chanter like the
legs of a ballerina. Several people clapped in time. Rebecca’s
sharp brown eyes focused over Jean’s shoulder, and Jean turned to
follow her gaze through the gateway.
    A policeman was leaving the museum. His
blunt, heavy features and stubbled jowls would have looked at home
beneath a reiver’s steel bonnet. What he placed on his head,
though, was a black cap with a checkerboard band. He opened the
passenger side door of his car.
    From the museum stepped a woman with the face
of a Roman matron, from her upswept dark hair stroked with silver
to her deep-set eyes with their heavy lids to her jaw as smooth and
hard as marble. Her turtleneck, tweed jacket, trousers, and boots
fit her svelte body like kid gloves would have fit her hands.
Locking the door behind her, she tucked the key and something
else—a small box—into her large leather