Houses of Stone, KATHY [classic literature books TXT] 📗

Clara. The servant reassures her. Clara is in the next room, where she is being tended with the same care. But 'there was no connecting door.' '

"That has a nice ominous ring to it," Peggy mumbled around a mouthful of enchilada.

"It's meant to sound ominous. She's got some nice descriptive touches," Karen admitted cautiously. "The storm-clouded sky and the moaning of the wind are typically Gothic, but the figure with the angelic halo and the blank face is quite well done. So is the transition from that horrific vision—was it hallucination or reality?—to the commonplace comforts of a warm, well-lighted bedroom and the smiling face of a kindly old servant."

"Sounds like . . . what's her name? . . . the housekeeper in Jane Eyre."

"Mrs. Fairfax."

"Right. Does that imply that Ismene had read Charlotte Bronte?"

"No." Karen's voice was sharp. The slightest suggestion that Ismene's work was derivative, anything other than brilliantly original, raised her hackles. "That's one of the things I've been looking for, of course— internal clues that could tell when the book was written. Right now I can only guess. Sometime between 1775 and 1840. That's another frustrating thing! I haven't heard a word from the original owner. Why the hell doesn't he have the courtesy to answer my letter? You don't suppose Simon—"

"No, I don't suppose Simon failed to forward it. The guy could be sick or out of town or just dilatory. It's all for the best, really; you've got a lot of work to do right now. Once the semester is over, you can concentrate on the manuscript."

Karen scowled at her. "I hate reasonable people. As a matter of fact, I could concentrate on my academic work a lot better if I knew there would be something else to concentrate on afterward. I don't have the manuscript, I don't have a name or an address—I don't have anything!"

"If it relieves you to make melodramatic speeches, go right ahead," Peggy said calmly. "But you know that's nonsense. You have Simon's word—and mine—that the manuscript will be yours."

"I wasn't implying—"

"And even if the owner doesn't respond to your letter we can probably track him down. It may take a while, but I can think of several methods." She glanced at her watch. "I've got a meeting at one-thirty. Hurry up, finish your salad."

Karen did as she was told, resignedly anticipating indigestion. It was easier to obey Peggy's orders than argue with her.

She stopped at the bank and the cleaner's, reaching campus in time to meet her two-thirty class. The students seemed particularly dim-witted that afternoon, and two of them asked for extensions on their semester papers. Karen's stomach was churning as she trudged up the stairs toward her office, and she cursed Peggy under her breath—unfairly, because her discomfort was due more to general frustration than to guacamole and sour cream. Turning the corner of the long corridor, she came to a sudden stop. Someone was standing in front of the door of her office. It was not one of her students. The outline was that of a man, abnormally tall and thin. Late-afternoon sunlight pouring through the window at the end of the hall framed his head in a golden halo, but his face was an oval of darkness.

Karen let out a stifled cry and lost her grip on the books she carried. The tall figure hurried toward her. It seemed to shrink and fill out as it approached, assuming normal dimensions; he was tall, but not monstrously so, lean but not as cadaverously thin as that first image had suggested, and when he spoke it was to utter the most banal of courtesies.

"I'm sorry, did I startle you?"

Karen knelt to collect her scattered belongings. She felt like a fool. That momentary impression of facelessness had been the result of her overactive imagination, assisted by the effect of the light. She could see him quite clearly now, even to the color of his eyes, as he stooped to help her pick up the books. They were grayish-blue, framed by lashes as light as his hair, which might have been silver-gray or sun-bleached blond. The latter, she thought, studying him covertly; though permanent lines had been etched into the skin of his forehead and around his mouth, she judged him to be in his mid-thirties. When he straightened, offering a hand to help her to her feet, she saw he was several inches over six feet, and dressed conservatively in a dark three-piece suit and white shirt.

He went on apologizing. "They said it would be all right for me to wait for you here. That is ... you are Dr. Holloway?"

He sounded as if he didn't believe it. She could see herself reflected in his look as in a mirror—round face and dimpled chin, snub nose and smooth pink cheeks. "Except for my hair I look like that damned moppet Shirley Temple," she had once shouted angrily at her mother, from whom she had inherited the characteristics in question. It was no consolation to know that when she was her mother's age, she would look fifteen years younger. Right now she needed those years. It was difficult enough for a woman to make men take her seriously. A moppet, even an adult moppet, didn't stand a chance.

"That is correct," she said coldly. "It was not your fault; my mind was on something else. We didn't have an appointment, did we?"

"No. I took the chance of stopping by, since I was in the neighborhood. My name is Cameron Hayes. You don't know me . . ."

She did, though—suddenly, surely, illogically. Her icy expression slipped; she beamed at him as if he had been a long-lost lover. Hayes's face relaxed into an answering, if tentative smile. "I'm the person you wrote to a few weeks ago, Miss Holloway. Or should it be 'Doctor'?"

"Ms. will do," Karen said. "I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Hayes."

And that, she thought, was the understatement of the year. Somehow she managed to unlock the