"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."