Dreaming Of The Bones

the gray stone church in Trinity Street well. In fact, when Adam Lamb had first refused to see her, she’d thought of coming here to a Sunday service just so that she could see him from a distance.

Would Nathan be pleased that his intervention had saved her from a spot of spying, she wondered, smiling. It was tempting to think of Nathan, even standing in the chill of the vicarage porch, but much too distracting. Instead she made an effort to prepare herself by picturing Adam Lamb as he’d looked in one of Lydia’s old photographs, a thin-faced boy with tight, dark curls, unsmiling—and now a hostile man who had agreed to her presence only at the request of an old friend.

Vic licked her lips and rang the bell once more.

The door opened when she’d half turned away. She hadn’t heard footsteps, or the lock turning, and she took a sharp, surprised breath.

“Hullo, I’m—”

“So sorry, so sorry,” said Adam Lamb breathlessly. “A distraught parishioner on the telephone. It’s always something, isn’t it? And one can never get off when one needs to, not until they’re satisfied they’ve told you every detail three times over. Let me take your coat,” he added, and smiled at her.

The vicarage hall was even colder than the porch, and Vic shivered as she felt a current of frigid air against her bare calves. She’d worn a tailored Laura Ashley suit in navy, a long double-breasted jacket over a short pleated skirt, in hopes both that she looked reassuringly businesslike and that Adam Lamb appreciated legs. Now it seemed that neither option was to do her much good. “No, thank you,” she said regretfully. “I think I’d better keep it.”

“Quite wise of you. If you think this old place is drafty now, you should feel it in midwinter. But I’ve got the gas fire lit in the sitting room, and I thought we could have some sherry, or Madeira if you prefer.”

“Sherry would be lovely,” Vic said as she hurried after his retreating back, trying to collect herself He was taller than the photographs had shown, and still thin. The dark curling hair had gone mostly gray but was still abundant. The thin face was heavily lined, as if he’d not lived an easy life, and he wore a heavy gray cardigan over his clerical garb. All this she could fit over the image in her mind as one would lay a transparency over a diagram—even the gold-rimmed thick spectacles that gave his blue eyes an owlish look—but nothing had prepared her for the grave sweetness of his smile.

She registered faded lino beneath her feet and dark mustard color on the walls, then he opened a door at the end of the passage and ushered her through. It was warm, amazingly enough, and she sat gratefully in the armchair he indicated.

“If you’ll just excuse me for a moment,” he said, “I forgot to turn the answer phone on, and I’d better do it, else we’ll be interrupted.”

His absence gave Vic a chance to examine the room, and she saw that this was where he had made his mark on the shabby anonymity of the vicarage. A colorful rag rug covered most of the fitted mustard and brown patterned carpet, and deep red velvet curtains covered windows that she thought must overlook the narrow lane beside the church. A fine set of cut crystal glasses stood on the low table before her chair, and the jewel-like reds, greens, and blues winked at her in the light of the gas fire.

Books lined every available bit of wall space, and that, at least, didn’t surprise her.

She had just slipped out of her coat and stretched her feet towards the fire when Adam Lamb returned. He poured her a sherry from the crystal decanter, and when she sipped it she found it fine and very dry, just the way she liked it.

He folded his long body onto the red Victorian love seat opposite her and raised his glass. “Here’s to warmth,” he said with feeling. “I spent five years out in Africa, and I don’t think my blood ever regained its good British fortitude. Sometimes I dream of the sun, and of nights under the mosquito netting. But you don’t want to hear about that.” He gave his disarming smile again and sipped from his glass. “You came to talk about Lydia.”

“You’ve been very kind,” Vic said hesitantly, “and I don’t mean to seem rude, but I had the impression when I rang you before that you didn’t want to talk about Lydia.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about Lydia,” Adam explained. “But, you see, I didn’t know you.”

“Me?”

Adam sat forwards, hands on his knees, his expression earnest. “I didn’t know if you were sympathetic to Lydia. You might even have been—if you’ll excuse the expression—a muckraker. And I couldn’t participate in a book that focused on the more scandalous personal episodes in Lydia’s life rather than her work. ‘The poet as neurotic,’ you know the sort of thing.”

“You talked to Darcy, didn’t you.” It came out as a statement rather than a question. “To check me out.”

“You said you were on the English Faculty when you wrote.” Adam seemed suddenly much preoccupied with examining his fingernails. “So he seemed the obvious person to ask for a reference. I didn’t know you knew Nathan. Personally, I mean, rather than merely as Lydia’s executor.”

“And Darcy told you that I wasn’t academically sound, didn’t he? That I intended writing some hysterical feminist tract.” Vic could feel the hot patches of color burning in her cheeks. She told herself she wouldn’t undo Darcy’s damage by getting angry at Adam, and took a calming breath.

“He didn’t actually say that …” There was an amused twist to Adam’s long mouth, and much to her surprise, Vic found herself smiling.

“He merely implied it.”

“Something like that.” Adam had the grace to look sheepish. “I think I owe you an apology, Dr. McClellan. I’ve lived in Cambridge long enough to know what interdepartmental rivalries are like, and I should have taken it for just that.”

It was best to let it pass, she thought, and give Darcy a piece of her mind at the first opportunity. “You can start by calling me Vic,” she said. “My friends do.”

“And Adam,” he responded. “Call me Adam. My motley flock calls me Father Adam, but there’s no need for you to do so.”

Now that they were so cozily established on a first-name basis, Vic thought she’d better make sure they had no further misunderstandings. “Look… Adam,” she said, and found that the use of his name made solid the link in her