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Category: Mystery/Crime/Romance
Description: Fleeing an academic scandal and a broken marriage, Jean Fairbairn has come to Scotland to work for an Edinburgh-based history and travel magazine. Writing about the Scottish national pastime of playing illusion off reality is just the quiet, scholarly pursuit she needs to soothe her burned-out emotions. But when Jean heads for the Highlands to investigate the 18th century mystery of Bonnie Prince Charlie's lost treasure, she finds herself involved in a contemporary murder case--and not as an innocent bystander, either. Alasdair Cameron, the police detective in charge, has his own perspective on reality and illusion. The American dot-com millionaire living out his tartan fantasies in a restored mansion is the loosest of loose cannons. His trophy wife isn't necessarily standing by her man. Their housekeeper knows what's going to happen before it does. And their youth piper is a kilted daydream, even though his parents are nightmares. At Glendessary House, old wounds and old glories aren't distant memories evoked over a glass of single-malt, to the skirl of the pipes. Here, they are up close, personal, and deadly. It's a good thing Jean has back-up in Edinburgh. Because if butting heads--not to mention hearts--with Cameron isn't enough to do her in, then a killer is waiting and watching, with a motive for murder not hidden nearly deeply enough in the past.
eBook Publisher: Wildside Press, 2006 USA
Wildside Press eBook Store Release Date: August 2006

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [375 KB], ePub (EPUB) [379 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [332 KB], Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.2 MB], Palm Doc (PDB) [378 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [463 KB], Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [363 KB], hiebook (KML) [856 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [430 KB], iSilo (PDB) [310 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [387 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [466 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [482 KB]
Words: 107829
Reading time: 308-431 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Jean Fairbairn sat on the stone windowsill of her office, if hardly in command then at least in admiration of all she surveyed.

The bloodstained walls of Edinburgh Castle loomed over a row of modern shops. The dour medieval houses of the Old Town turned their backs on the sprightly Regency fa�ades of the new. Car parks overlooked cemeteries. Businesspeople carrying cell phones and briefcases threaded their way among tourists dawdling over their maps, all pretending not to see the homeless.

Edinburgh itself, Jean thought with a smile, should have been the protagonist of native son Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was an appropriate place for her to either find herself or lose herself, depending on her mood of the moment. And right now her mood was upbeat, confident, eager to explore. She must be getting in touch with her feline side, and not only in posture.

"You'll have me barring the window," said a voice behind her. "We can't have you falling out and scaring away the paying customers."

Jean looked around to see Miranda Capaldi, her friend of twenty years and business partner of four months, peering into the room. Jean's smile grew into a grin. "Funny how the tourist brochures never show the throngs of tourists. It's quantum travel. The act of looking at the sites changes the nature of the sites you look at."

"Oh aye. The cafe up at the Castle is serving iced tea. Seems you Yanks can't leave home without bringing your bad habits along with you. That much for their authentic Scottish experience." Laughing, Miranda strolled across to the window and sat down on the other half of the sill.

Jean gathered in her denim skirt, not that Miranda's svelte figure needed much room. The subtle fragrance of her Chanel moderated the odors of diesel and frying food rising from the street four stories below. Jean's perfumes usually evaporated into a brown sludge, sour with reproach, before she remembered to use them. Speaking of odors, she said, "Two hundred years ago people were emptying chamber pots out this very window. If tourists want authenticity...."

"Authenticity? Not a bit of it. They come here chasing romantic fantasies. Like you, I'm thinking."

"Me? I'm a hard-bitten old cynic. Look at the articles I was doing for the magazine even before I moved here, about legends hitting the road and blowing a tire. Playing reality off illusion."

Miranda cocked a tweezed eyebrow.

"Okay, okay." Jean raised her hands in surrender. "I wouldn't have moved here if I didn't think the grass was greener or the tartan brighter, whatever. It's merciful fantasy that keeps you going. Still, I maintain that anyone who moves to Scotland in January isn't chasing illusions, romantic or meteorological."

"Oh aye, the winter was dreadful, right enough. But look now, a May afternoon with sunshine enough to warm the cockles of your heart."

Yes, just as the sunlight transformed Edinburgh's Calvinist gray to cosmopolitan color, some similar alchemy was going on in that part of Jean's psyche known as "heart," whether that included the ambiguous "cockles" or not. Home is where the heart is, she thought. Heart of Midlothian. My heart's in the Highlands. Queen of...

"Is living here what you were expecting, then?" Miranda, as always, cut to the chase.

"Scotland is. Owning half the magazine is. Living alone, that still seems strange."

"Just you wait, you'll meet someone new."

"No way," stated Jean. That was the last thing she needed, another man to complicate the life she'd gone to such lengths to simplify.

Miranda's other brow rose to meet its mate, but she held her tongue. A soft knock on the door announced Gavin, the teenager who minded the reception desk. "Ms. Fairbairn, you've got a visitor."

An elderly gentleman peered around Gavin's shoulder. His diction betrayed his national origin south of Hadrian's Wall. "I wasn't quite sure I should call in, I suppose I should have rung for an appointment...."

"Come on in." Jean stood up.

Miranda sauntered away, her murmured, "I'll leave you to it, then," pierced by a curious backward glance.

"Good of you to see me. I'm George Lovelace, Leicester University, retired." The old man extended his hand.

Jean took it. "No problem."

While many old men had a handshake that felt like an empty glove, his was firm, almost fierce. He stood so ramrod straight his ivory-headed walking stick must have been not support but swagger stick. Maybe his gray regimental moustache, thick glasses, and tweed suit--sturdy old-fashioned tweed, not today's lighter fabric--boded less an hour of polite boredom than an interesting new story-quest to complement the day's sunlit affirmations.

"Please, sit down. What can I do for you?" Adjusting her own glasses, Jean maneuvered around the corner of the desk and into her chair.

Lovelace took the other chair in the room, a straight-backed number that belonged in a collection of torture devices, and looked vaguely around at Jean's books and papers before looking somewhat less vaguely at her. "Miss Fairbairn. Dr. Fairbairn, rather."

Her doctorate had been awarded to Jean Inglis. Just because the marriage was over didn't mean the degree wasn't valid. Still, she defaulted to, "It's Jean."

"I've been enjoying your articles in Great Scot, er, Jean. Fine magazine, that. Miss Capaldi has made a good fist of bringing it to life again. It was one of my childhood favorites, Scotland being another world to me as a lad in the Home Counties. Happy days, those, when I'd play at Arthur and his knights or William Wallace or Bonnie Prince Charlie in the heather. Not that we had heather in Orpington."

Jean had seen Orpington. It was a suburb of London teeming with traffic. She suspected Lovelace would not agree with those who thought the change meant progress.

"Well now." He leaned forward, focusing. "I most especially enjoyed your article about Prince Charles. Not the present one, of course. The Young Pretender, the Bonnie Prince of the seventeen forty-five rebellion. History creates different versions of such figures, doesn't it?"

"Like running them through a hall of mirrors."

"Quite right. That's how history is transmuted to legend. Not that I mean to disparage legend. As you said yourself, legend is the yeast that makes history rise. Nice turn of phrase, that."

Miranda had wanted to edit out that flight of verbosity. Jean decided Lovelace was a charming old gentleman.

"I understand," he went on, "that you had a most distinguished career at a university in America."

Her biography was printed in the back of the magazine. The fact that her academic career was dead, buried, and eulogized was not. She said neutrally, "I taught British history for almost twenty years. What's your field?"

"Eighteenth-century literature, specializing in first editions, ephemera, arcana, curiosa, and marginalia."