Chapter Three

"I'm taking you back to my apartment first," Ximena murmured, as she and Adam embraced at the USAir gate in San Francisco after his late-morning arrival. "I want some time for us before I share you with my family."

She did not mention her father as they walked arm-in-arm to the baggage-claim area, chattering a little too single-mindedly about heavy traffic on the way in and the expected ordeal of trying to retrieve Adam's luggage amid the pre-Christmas crowds. It was only as they made their way out to the airport car park that she even skirted the unspoken question that lay between them.

"Oh, Adam, if I've learned nothing else during these past months, it's how much I miss your company," she blurted, as they wheeled his luggage trolley out of one of the car-park elevators. "I'm so glad you're here."

The glance she directed his way spoke volumes, as did the taut caress of her hand against his, just before she gestured down the next aisle in the car park. Feeling the tension, and all too aware of his own long-banked yearnings, Adam only smiled and said, "So am I."

Her manner turned brisk again as she directed him toward a black Honda Prelude neatly inserted in a space between two larger vehicles.

"Well, this is my current bus," she said, as she opened the trunk to accommodate his bags. "It isn't a Morgan, but it's never let me down."

One of the things Ximena had left behind her in Scotland was a yellow Morgan sports car, presently collecting spider webs under a dust-sheet in one of Adam's stableyard garages.

Watching her buckle up, he was obscurely glad she hadn't had the heart to get rid of it. As they pulled out of the car park and headed northward on the freeway from the airport, it was clear that she had lost nothing of her flair for driving.

"Thanks for not asking questions that I'm not ready to answer," she said over her shoulder, as she overtook a pickup truck pulling a sailboat on a trailer. "I'll make sure you don't regret this. Just promise me something."

"What's that?"

"Promise me that for the next few hours you won't speak of anything that doesn't apply directly to us. There's time enough for - the other."

He could not see her eyes behind the sunglasses she had donned before taking to the road, but her grip on the steering wheel was stronger than it needed to be.

"I promise," he agreed, and simply reached across to touch a hand to her knee before subsiding into companionable silence for the duration of the drive to her apartment.

By common consent, neither of them allowed any shadow of the future to intrude upon their lovemaking. Initially wary of giving full rein to his passions, Adam had been moved beyond words to find himself courted with a fervor equal to his own. Sheer physical delight, long denied by their separation, washed over him in a dazzling torrent. Temporarily bereft of all intellectual reservation, he surrendered blindly to their shared ardor, finding in that union a rare moment of release.

The intensity of that pleasure left behind a lingering glow of profound well-being, but precious as that sensation was, Adam would willingly have exchanged it for the burden of care he knew Ximena must shortly resume. Time was moving on, and there was nothing he could do about it. But if he could not keep her from the grief that lay ahead, perhaps he could still offer her a prospect of happiness beyond.

Possibly to hold her own thoughts at bay, Ximena had set some music playing in the next room before she went off to shower. Adam let the music wash over him without particular awareness, fresh from his own shower and a change of clothes as he settled on the couch in her little sitting room and put his feet up, curling his palms contentedly around a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea.

Her apartment occupied the top floor of a newly renovated town house near San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The view of the neighborhood, seen from the living room windows, embraced a vivacious fin-de-siecle collection of gables, cupolas, and widow's walks decorated in gingerbread woodwork. On a clear day it was possible - so Adam had been told - to catch a fugitive glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge beyond the dark green feathering of trees that marked the intervening presence of the Presidio. Today, however, both the park and the bridge were shrouded under a silvery haze of the dense fog for which the city was famous.

Relaxed and beginning to feel gently jet-lagged, Adam withdrew his gaze from the neighboring skyline to contemplate the more intimate features of the apartment's interior, sipping distractedly at his tea.

Ximena's rented flat in Edinburgh had been comfortably suited to her needs, especially for a busy ER physician who frankly spent little time there, but it had come already furnished, leaving her little or nothing to say regarding the decor. This place, by contrast, had started off empty, giving her ample scope for indulging a more personalized expression of taste. Adam expected that much of the furniture had been handed down from her parents or bought second-hand during her student days, but most of the appointments seemed to bear what he was beginning to recognize as Ximena's distinctive style. Left to his own devices while she showered, Adam found it instructive as well as pleasant to contemplate the effects of her self-expression.

The room was sparely appointed, in keeping with the clean, sunlit expanse of wide windows and stripped woodwork. The variegated tones of wood, tile, and stonework contrasted elegantly with the thick, cream-colored plushness of the fitted carpet. The sofa upon which Adam was sitting was a luxuriously comfortable design piece executed in brick-red Cordovan leather.

That terra-cotta hue was reflected several times over in the selection of prints by Diego Rivera and Joaquin Torres-Garcia that were scattered across the walls. Among the original objets d'art in the room were a stained-glass depiction of a smiling Madonna done in rich blues and golds, an art naif oil painting of three jaguars, and a lively bronze casting of two dogs dancing that recalled examples of Calima statuary Adam had once seen in an exhibition of pre-Columbian art. He was touched to see a blue glass votive candle he had given her, set beneath the portrait of the Madonna.

The overall effect was one of discriminating eclecticism. That effect was all the more commendable since Alan Lock-hart's progressively worsening condition had left his daughter with little opportunity for shopping - or indeed anything else - in the months since her return.

Despite Ximena's earlier protestations that she would not allow her concerns to intrude on their time together, she had finally updated Adam on her father's condition before sending him off for his shower, huddled miserably in the circle of his arm while she recited the essentials in detached clinical phrasing that left little doubt of her growing sense of helplessness.

Though Lockhart's attending physicians initially had been able to arrange his medication to permit relative comfort and alertness during the daylight hours, steadily mounting levels of pain had eaten into that schedule until now he was left with only two narrow windows of lucidity each day: a few hours early in the morning and a similar period late in the afternoon. By structuring their own activities to take advantage of his periods of alertness, Lockhart's wife and family had managed to achieve a fragile semblance of routine. But there was no hiding the fact that Ximena's father was rapidly approaching the point where conventional medicine could offer him nothing more than a choice between agony and oblivion.

Adam had in mind a third alternative - though whether Ximena's father would be receptive to the idea could only be determined at first hand. Formal introductions were to take place later that afternoon, when Lockhart would be awake and all the other members of Ximena's family would be present.

In the meantime, there had been this precious interlude. Adam finished his tea and set aside his mug with a sigh, cocking an ear toward the bedroom as awareness of a different piece of music drew his attention back to more pleasurable contemplations.

Passionate and precise, the rippling string-notes of a vihuela provided intricate accompaniment to a woman's clear contralto. From the formal structures of counterpoint, Adam was willing to guess an origin in Renaissance Spain. After a while, Ximena's own voice floated in from the direction of the bathroom, matching that of the recording artist, note for note:

I am the dark girl… I am the rose without thorns, that Solomon sings of. I am the bush in flames, burning without being burnt….

Ximena's accent was virtually flawless. But then, Adam reminded himself, her mother was a native-born Spaniard. Teresa Constanza Morales and Alan David Lockhart had met thirty-six years ago in Granada, where Lockhart, then a student of architecture, had come to study the designs which glorified the memory of the Nasrid empire. They had married the following year, thereby setting in motion the stars of fates other than their own.

Still humming along with the music, Ximena appeared at the door to the bedroom hallway, wearing a casual suit of forest green. Pausing in the doorway, she cocked her head first one way and then the other as she fitted on a pair of gold-and-jade earrings in the form of Aztec totem frogs. Adam watched her with a smile playing over his lips.

"Morenica," he said aloud.

Ximena looked up. "I beg your pardon?"

"You are the dark girl, morenica cuerpo garrida."

Ximena wrinkled her forehead at him. '' The dark girl with the handsome body'? Don't let my parents hear you call me that before they get a chance to know you better."

Adam chuckled. "I wouldn't dream of it," he assured her. "What time are we meant to be there?"

Coming forward, Ximena leaned down and kissed him on the mouth. "In about as long as it takes to drive from here to there," she said with a smile. "Are you ready?"

"I will be, as soon as I've put on a tie," Adam said, stretching to retrieve the one he had draped across the back of the couch. "Your parents are expecting a Scottish laird. I'd better look the part."

Laughing, she took the tie from him and looped it around his neck, pulling him closer for another kiss.

"I'm content with el sefior de corazon, the lord of my heart," she told him happily, pulling him to his feet.

It was another five minutes before they reluctantly left the apartment.

UCSF-Mount Zion Medical Center lay to the north of Golden Gate Park, between Post and Sutler Streets. With the onset of visiting hours, the hospital car park was crowded, but Ximena swung in through the emergency room entrance and tucked the Honda into one of the spaces reserved for members of the staff.

"Lucky for us you have some rank to pull here," Adam remarked lightly as Ximena turned off the engine and set the handbrake.

"Lucky, indeed!" Ximena agreed with a rueful grimace. "My old supervisor must have pulled a dozen strings to get me reinstated. I'm going to owe a lot of favors when this is over and done with."

They entered the hospital through the door adjoining the ambulance bay. Inside, Ximena paused to trade greetings with admiring members of the nursing staff and several of her colleagues, though she kept moving the two of them in the direction of the elevators. Adam could sense her pleasure in her co-workers' reaction as she introduced him - he was long accustomed to turning female heads, and not a few male ones - but her manner was brisk as they made their way together into the heart of the hospital complex.

It was only when they came within sight of the doors leading into the concentrated care unit that her composure showed signs of wavering. The indications were subtle, but Adam was instantly aware of them.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Ximena squared her shoulders, not looking at him. "I will be," she murmured. "Let's go in."

Adam stepped in front of her long enough to open one of the double doors. Once past the threshold, they carried on along a carpeted corridor, Ximena nodding to several nurses as she passed. At the nurses' station halfway down the corridor, a slim, erect woman in a bright red jacket and black skirt was conversing with one of the nurses.

The woman was similar in height and build to Ximena, with smooth dark hair, densely threaded with silver, caught up in a chignon at the back of her neck. When she turned her head, her profile had the attenuated elegance of a study by El Greco. Mentally matching up images, Adam knew that the woman could only be Ximena's mother.

His conviction was confirmed a moment later when the sound of their footsteps caused the woman to look around. Her thin, sensitively molded face lit up at the sight of Ximena.

"Oh, there you are, mi corazon!" she exclaimed. "I was hoping I might catch you as you came in. Your father is having a chat with Mrs. Jenny. It seemed a good time for me to slip out and stretch my legs - and to exercise my maternal curiosity."

Before Ximena could speak, her mother's liquid dark eyes transferred their gaze to Adam, and the smile grew warmer still.

"There can be no doubt that you are the dashing Scottish gentleman of whom our daughter has spoken at such length. It is a great pleasure at last to be meeting you, Dr. Sinclair."

Her voice was deeper than Ximena's, her English overlaid with the stately accents of her Andalusian homeland. Taking the slender hand she held out to him, Adam raised it to his lips in courtly salute.

"The pleasure is mine, Senora. And no one regrets the delay more than I do."

"Ah, I perceive that you have the manners of a grandee, Dr. Sinclair. But I hope that will not prevent you from addressing me as Teresa," she said with a bit of a twinkle in her eye.

"Only if you agree to call me Adam," he replied, releasing her hand.

"That I will do," she agreed, shitting to draw Ximena into a fond hug, though her twinkle quickly faded as they drew apart. "But we must not keep your father waiting. He has waited a very long time for this moment."

Alan Lockhart had been installed in a private room not far from the nurses' station. His visitors arrived to find the door standing partly open. A petite, dark-haired young woman in a neat grey suit and clerical collar was standing just inside the doorway, jotting down entries in the notebook she carried in the crook of one arm.

"I'm glad you remembered that one," Adam heard her say. "It's always been one of my favorites. Did you have anyone in mind for a soloist, or will you trust me to find someone? I've got more than a few contacts over at the university music school - some lovely voices."

An indistinct murmur came from within the room. Adam could make out nothing of the words, but the woman paused to write down something more in her notebook.

"I'll see what I can do," she promised. "I'll make some phone calls and get back to you in the next few days. In the meantime, I'd better say goodbye. I'm due over at the Student Mission Center at four, and I've got a couple of other people to see before I leave."

Turning, she pulled up short as she became aware of Teresa Lockhart and her companions.

"You mustn't go just yet, Jenny," Teresa said with a smile, motioning her to come into the corridor. "Here is Ximena, and a gentleman from Scotland whom we both would very much like you to meet. His name is Dr. Adam Sinclair, and I am told he ranks as an expert consultant in the field of psychiatric medicine. Dr. Sinclair, allow me to present the Reverend Jenny Carstairs, one of our hospital chaplains."

"For my sins!" Jenny Carstairs directed an ironic glance toward the ceiling, then extended a firm hand and a pixie-like smile. "Nice to meet you, Dr. Sinclair. I understand you just flew in this morning."

"I did," Adam replied. "I was addressing a medical symposium in Houston, and I was delighted to escape."

"Well, I'm sure everyone is delighted that you did," she said. "I've heard very nice things about you."

"Probably greatly exaggerated," Adam protested, with an amused glance at both Ximena and her mother.

"Jenny has been a great comfort to all of us," Teresa said, her smile still in place but shading into sadness. "Sometimes I don't know what we would have done without her, especially these past few months."

"Now, Teresa, that's giving me far more credit than I deserve," the chaplain answered robustly. "You and the rest of your family have been the real workhorses."

"Speaking of which, where's Austen?" Ximena asked. "I thought he and Laurel were going to hold the fort until I got here."

Jenny Carstairs gave her hand a pat. "Your father had a few things he wanted to discuss with me in private, so your brother volunteered to make a run down to the cafe in search of coffee. Laurel and Emma have gone down to Mrs. Chang's room so that Emma can show off her costume for the Christmas play."

"My granddaughter is a gregarious soul," Teresa explained wryly. "She has made friends with several of the other patients here. Mrs. Chang is a particular favorite. She can make animals out of folded paper. As far as Emma is concerned, origami might as well be magic."

"Maybe it is," Adam said with a smile, thinking of Mc-Leod. "I have a friend with a similar interest. I'm not sure there isn't some magic in the way he gets his results."

"Well, I told Laurel I'd let her know as soon as we were finished here," the chaplain said. "Dr. Sinclair, I'm happy to have met you, but I'd better be on my way. Goodbye for now, and I hope I'll be seeing you again. Teresa, Ximena - I'll check back with you in the morning."

With a farewell wave, she headed off down the hall. As her footsteps receded, Ximena drew herself up and summoned an air of determined calm.

"Time to make our entrance," she observed aside to Adam. And pushed the door open wide.

Tall enough to see over her head, Adam found his gaze drawn immediately to the bed that dominated the room. The gaunt figure under the sheets was lying very still, eyes shut, jaw set in an attitude of grim endurance. An image came to Adam's mind of a cadaverous tomb effigy left behind as a memento mori by a medieval bishop of Aries. It seemed hard to credit that the ravaged frame of Alan Lockhart could still harbor a living spirit.

"Hello, Daddy, I'm back," Ximena said as she headed toward him. "I've brought someone to meet you."

Lockhart roused himself with visible effort, his face a sunken mask from which all color had long ago fled. Only his eyes were still alive, burning with a preternatural intensity fuelled by the spirit within.

"Bene fa, nina." He greeted her with the merest flicker of a smile. "How is your Flying Scotsman?"

His voice was roughened by suffering. Advancing to the bedside, Ximena reached down and lifted her father's wasted hand to her lips.

"Why don't I let him tell you himself? Adam, come and be introduced. This is my father, Alan Lockhart."

Joining her beside the bed, Adam found himself subjected to searching scrutiny. Returning that regard, he received a vivid impression of the man Alan Lockhart had been in his prime - tall, vital, and vigorous, as stalwart and individualistic as the buildings he had designed during his working lifetime. To see so much that had once been fine and strong now reduced so spitefully to ruin gave Adam a pang of grief he had experienced all too often in his career as a physician. It was like seeing a noble cathedral wantonly levelled by the ravages of war.

A war of insurrection. To be a victim of cancer run rampant was to have one's own body rebel against itself in pitiless self-destruction. Adam still intended to read Alan Lockhart's case notes when he got a chance, but those notes, he knew, could go only so far in detailing the course of devastation. The human effect was much, much worse.

Their mutual scrutiny lasted but a few heartbeats. Blinking, Lockhart extended a hand that was nothing but bones and tightly stretched skin. Adam took it with careful firmness, wincing inwardly at the insubstantial fragility of the long fingers.

"Forgive me if I don't get up," said the man in the bed, in a labored display of humor. "I'm very much the prisoner of my condition these days. Jenny Carstairs has been helping me plan my escape. But I've one or two pieces of unfinished business yet to attend to, before I can make good on those arrangements."

His words were painfully measured, but the force of the soul behind them reached out to Adam in an almost palpable appeal. Nor did the man seem inclined to release Adam's hand.

"Sometimes it's good to let someone else take on some of the burdens of responsibility," Adam said. "Under the circumstances, perhaps you ought to consider appointing a deputy."

"Maybe so," Lockhart conceded, his eyes never leaving Adam's. "The difficulty lies in finding the right man for the job."

His transparent lids drooped, and for a moment he seemed to fold in upon himself. Adam waited steadfastly, Lockhart's hand still in his, until the other man drew a sighing breath and re-opened his eyes.

"You've come a long way to visit my daughter. I'd like to know more about you - in your words, not hers. Pull up a chair and tell me about your house."

Though the request seemed a trifle odd on the surface, Adam sensed that it was not the non sequitur it appeared to be.

"What would you like to know?" he asked, releasing Lock-hart's hand and moving a chair closer to the head of the bed to sit.

Lockhart's chest rose and fell. "Anything and everything," he said with a faint smile.

"Don't be silly, Daddy," Ximena murmured, interposing uneasily. "The rules to your game won't apply here. Strath-mourne has been the Sinclairs' family residence for several generations. Knowing about the house won't tell you very much about Adam himself."

"Let me be the judge of that," Lockhart told her, with a flash of his former strength. Directing his gaze toward Adam, he said, "Humor me."

As Adam scooted his chair closer, prepared to oblige, he felt Ximena's hand on his shoulder.

"As an architect. Daddy has always maintained that you can tell a great deal about a person's character from the kind of house he lives in," she warned.

"I see nothing amiss in that," Adam said, with a reassuring smile. "On the contrary, I expect an architect would find Strathmourne of great interest."

While Lockhart lay back and listened, and Ximena and her mother drew up chairs on the other side of the bed, Adam began describing the house, from its Palladian fa9ade and gothic windows to the allocation of space in the kitchen wing. More and more, however, he found himself digressing to talk about Templemor, the seventeenth-century tower house elsewhere on the Strathmourne estate. Once a ruin, Templemor had been undergoing extensive renovation during the past two years. Most of the structural repairs were now complete, and Adam was starting to consider plans for the interior refurbish-ments which would eventually make the old tower habitable again.

Almost without being aware of it, he found himself pouring out his enthusiasm for the project with a fullness he had rarely shared with anyone outside the ranks of the Hunting Lodge. Lost in contemplating the image in his mind's eye, he only belatedly became aware that Alan Lockhart was smiling up at him with genuine warmth. He stopped himself with a self-deprecating grin.

"You'll have to pardon my misplaced fervor. Restoring Templemor has been an ambition of mine since childhood."

Lockhart's smile remained in place, his voice firm when he spoke, even if weak. "Sounds as if you're not only a traditionalist, but a romantic as well," he said softly.

Adam gave the architect a quizzical look. "Is that good or bad?"

"Either way," said Lockhart, "it makes you a man after my own heart."

A sudden commotion from the direction of the hall put an end to any further discussion. An instant later, a small figure came bursting into the room in a diaphanous flutter of white robes, papier-mache wings, and a tinsel halo atop titian curls. This cherubic apparition was closely pursued by a taller figure in royal blue, who scooped up her quarry with maternal single-mindedness.

"Easy, Emma!" she admonished. "This is a hospital, not a circus tent."

Laurel Lockhart had fiery-red hair and the springy fitness of a natural athlete. Her freckled cheeks were flushed with the chase, and she grinned good-naturedly over her daughter's somewhat tousled head as she noticed Adam.

"Excuse me if I seem to have my hands too full to offer any other form of greeting, but I'm Laurel Lockhart," she said. "You must be Adam. There couldn't possibly be a second man fitting the descriptions we've had from Ximena."

A diversion from Emma spared Adam the necessity of framing a response. Wriggling loose, she darted over to the bed to stretch on tiptoe, flourishing a slightly crumpled construction in silver paper.

"Look, Grandpa!" she urged. "See what Mrs. Chang made me!"

Lockhart retained strength enough to feign ignorance. "Is it a goose?"

"No, silly, it's an angel!" Emma crowed triumphantly. "Mrs. Chang says it's supposed to be me."

"That was very complimentary of her," said a joking male voice from the doorway. "It's a good thing Mrs. Chang doesn't know you like we do, eh, pumpkin?"

Emma whirled away from the bedside. "Daddy!" she exclaimed happily, and hurled herself at the newcomer with puppy-like abandon. Clearly Ximena's brother, he bore a close resemblance to what their father must have looked like in his youth.

"I'm Austen," the man said, staggering under the impact of his daughter's embrace around his knees. "You must be Adam. It's a pity we couldn't have met sooner. Now that you're here, I hope you'll be staying long enough for us to get better acquainted."

"I hope so, too," Adam said, turning a physician's eye on the elder Lockhart. "In the meantime, though, perhaps we'd all better adjourn to the lobby. Your father looks as if he's needing a rest."

Even as he spoke, a nurse appeared at the door.

"Sorry to interrupt," she apologized, "but it's time for Mr. Lockhart's medication."

"That's all right. We were just getting ready to leave," Austen said. "We'll see you tomorrow, Dad. And we'll take pictures of the angel for you - if monsters disguised as angels register on film!"

So saying, he scooped up his daughter, being careful not to crush her wings, and carried her giggling into the corridor, followed by Laurel, Ximena, and Adam, leaving Teresa to sit with her husband as he drifted off into drug-induced oblivion. Adam watched briefly from the doorway before turning to join Ximena and her brother, while Laurel attempted to straighten little Emma's halo.

"This play of Emma's starts in just over an hour," Austen was saying to Ximena, "and we still have to grab a bite to eat. I don't suppose you and Adam would care to join us at McDonald's?"

"That sounds fine to me," Adam said, before Ximena could decline. "I'm game, if you are," he told her.

"Play and all?"

"Play and all," Adam agreed. He cocked an eyebrow at Ximena and added, "You can regard it as a test of my devotion."

"More like a trial of courage," Ximena murmured, "but you did volunteer."

"Obviously he doesn't know the difference between courage and foolhardiness," Austen said with a laugh. "But never mind, Adam: The experience may one day stand you in good stead."