“I think I’m hungry after all,” I explained. “Let’s have some cocoa and biscuits.”
Still child enough to be tempted by chocolate, and young enough to be willing to eat at any time, Bree offered no argument, but sat down at once and picked up the tea-stained sheet of green paper that served as the daily menu.
I didn’t particularly want cocoa, but I did want a moment or two to think. There was a large sign on the concrete wall of the parking lot across the street, reading PARKING FOR SCOTRAIL ONLY, followed by various lowercase threats as to what would happen to the vehicles of people who parked there without being train riders. Unless Roger knew something about the forces of law and order in Inverness that I didn’t know, chances were that he had taken a train. Granted that he could have gone anywhere, either Edinburgh or London seemed most likely. He was taking this research project seriously, dear lad.
We had come up on the train from Edinburgh ourselves. I tried to remember what the schedule was like, with no particular success.
“I wonder if Roger will be back on the evening train?” Bree said, echoing my thoughts with an uncanniness that made me choke on my cocoa. The fact that she wondered about Roger’s reappearance made me wonder just how much notice she had taken of young Mr. Wakefield.
A fair amount, apparently.
“I was thinking,” she said casually, “maybe we should get something for Roger Wakefield while we’re out—like a thank-you for that project he’s doing for you?”
“Good idea,” I said, amused. “What do you think he’d like?”
She frowned into her cocoa as though looking for inspiration. “I don’t know. Something nice; it looks like that project could be a lot of work.” She glanced up at me suddenly, brows raised.
“Why did you ask him?” she said. “If you wanted to trace people from the eighteenth century, there’re companies that do that. Genealogies and like that, I mean. Daddy always used Scot-Search, if he had to figure out a genealogy and didn’t have time to do it himself.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, and took a deep breath. We were on shaky ground here. “This project—it was something special to…to your father. He would have wanted Roger Wakefield to do it.”
“Oh.” She was silent for a while, watching the rain spatter and pearl on the cafe window.
“Do you miss Daddy?” she asked suddenly, nose buried in her cup, lashes lowered to avoid looking at me.
“Yes,” I said. I ran a forefinger up the edge of my own untouched cup, wiping off a drip of spilled cocoa. “We didn’t always get on, you know that, but…yes. We respected each other; that counts for a lot. And we liked each other, in spite of everything. Yes, I do miss him.”
She nodded, wordless, and put her hand over mine with a little squeeze. I curled my fingers around hers, long and warm, and we sat linked for a little while, sipping cocoa in silence.
“You know,” I said at last, pushing back my chair with a squeak of metal on linoleum, “I’d forgotten something. I need to post a letter to the hospital. I’d meant to do it on the way into town, but I forgot. If I hurry, I think I can just catch the outgoing post. Why don’t you go to the Kiltmaker’s—it’s just down the street, on the other side—and I’ll join you there after I’ve been to the post office?”
Bree looked surprised, but nodded readily enough.
“Oh. Okay. Isn’t the post office a long way, though? You’ll get soaked.”
“That’s all right. I’ll take a cab.” I left a pound note on the table to pay for the meal, and shrugged back into my raincoat.
In most cities, the usual response of taxicabs to rain is to disappear, as though they were soluble. In Inverness, though, such behavior would render the species rapidly extinct. I’d walked less than a block before finding two squatty black cabs lurking outside a hotel, and I slid into the warm, tobacco-scented interior with a cozy feeling of familiarity. Besides the greater leg room and comfort, British cabs smelled different than American ones; one of those tiny things I had never realized I’d missed during the last twenty years.
“Number sixty-four? Tha’s the auld manse, aye?” In spite of the efficiency of the cab’s heater, the driver was muffled to the ears in a scarf and thick jacket, with a flat cap guarding the top of his head from errant drafts. Modern Scots had gone a bit soft, I reflected; a long way from the days when sturdy Highlanders had slept in the heather in nothing but shirt and plaid. On the other hand, I wasn’t all that eager to go sleep in the heather in a wet plaid, either. I nodded to the driver, and we set off in a splash.