"I've no doubt." Turning my head, I looked at the dappled sunlight dancing through my window, and the sliver of blue sky that glinted beside the great chestnut tree. "Will it be a bad storm, do you think?"
Jeannie nodded. "Brian brought the boat back in at half-past two this morning, and there's not much makes my Brian cautious. Oh," she said, as an afterthought, turning at the door, "you do mind that it's Davy's birthday, don't you?"
As if I needed reminding, I thought, stretching my weary limbs beneath the sheets. Hopeful that Jeannie wouldn't see the tiny flush that touched my cheeks, I nodded, feigning nonchalance. "He's thirty-seven, isn't he?"
"Aye. Not that you'd ken that from looking at him." She smiled indulgently. "He's been bouncing about like a lad Robbie's age, all the morning."
Where he had found the energy to bounce, I didn't know.
I felt rather deliciously lazy, myself. Simply rising and dressing and brushing my teeth took me all of twenty minutes, and my fingers were so clumsy with my plait that in the end I gave up the effort. The wind caught the loose strands as I stepped outside, and blew them stinging across my eyes.
I nearly walked straight into Adrian's red Jaguar, parked at a crazy angle just a few steps from the house, the keys still dangling in the ignition. Adrian had been quite cautious with his keys since the night we'd sat up in the field, and this was hardly his usual parking technique, but when I caught up with him in the Principia a few minutes later, I saw the reason for his carelessness. He put me in mind of a stylish corpse—deathly white and draped artistically across his desk, his arms outstretched.
"Late night?" I asked him.
"You have no idea."
"What are you doing here, then?"
Raising his head, he propped it up with a hand and half opened one eye. "Herring Queen."
"I'm sorry?"
"Bloody Herring Queen," he spelled it out more clearly. "Herds of people milling about, underneath my window. It's impossible to sleep."
No one else was around at the moment, so I filled my coffee cup and took my chair. "Where is everybody?"
Adrian shrugged. "I haven't the faintest idea, but I'm sure they'll be back. They've been in and out all bloody morning . .. every time I start to nod off."
"Very thoughtless of them," I agreed.
Hearing the smile in my voice, Adrian opened his eye wider, to stare at me suspiciously. "You're looking rather ragged yourself, my love."
"Am I?"
"Mmm. Almost as ragged as our Mr. Fortune. He's—"
"Adrian," I interrupted, not listening, "how long have you been sitting here?"
He consulted his watch. "About an hour and a half. Why?"
Frowning down into the drawer of my desk, I pushed aside a ballpen to get a better look at the tiny gold medallion gleaming in my pen tray. The Fortuna pendant. "You didn't see who put this in here, I suppose?''
He squinted as I held it up. "Let's see... it might have been that Roman chap. Big man ... a bit transparent..."
"Don't."
My tone surprised him. "Darling, I'm only joking."
"Well, don't. Not about that."
"Then no, I didn't see anyone putting that thing in your desk," he said. "But that doesn't mean anything. Even I have difficulty seeing with my eyes shut, and a pack of burglars could have stripped the finds room bare without my noticing."
It must have been one of my students, I told myself. They both had keys to the finds room. Or it might have been Peter, or David. But still...
"Here's the watchdog," Adrian announced. "Ask him."
Kip came dancing through the arching door with energy to spare, half running down the aisle between the desks to check that I was really there, then bounding back to watch Wally and Peter maneuver a bundle of sleeping bags into the room.
"Dear, oh, dear," Peter said, when he caught sight of me. "You ought to be in bed, Verity."
When I reminded him that Jeannie had woken me on his own orders, Peter, as endearingly contradictory as ever, dismissed that as irrelevant.
"Yes, I know," he said patiently, "but I hadn't seen you then, had I? And you ought to have known that once I'd seen you I would send you back to bed."
"Well, I'm up now. So there." Smiling to soften the comment, I held up the golden pendant. "You didn't put this in my desk drawer, by any chance?"
"No, I'd imagine David did that."
"David?"
Peter nodded. "He found it on his desk, as I recall, but as none of us had our keys to the finds room handy he must have thought your desk was the safest option. Rather careless of the students," he remarked. "I really ought to have a word with them about security."
"Ye canna be too careful," Wally said. He'd finished stacking the sleeping bags in a temporary pile against the wall, and straightened now to light a cigarette. "I saw a bluidy thievin' Hielanman go creepin' past the hoose this very mom."
Peter's eyebrows arched. "Did you, by God? A Highlander? Wearing a kilt, was he?"
"Aye. Ye'd best count yer coos."
Peter, who had no cows to count, took the advice with a solemn nod, his face perfectly straight. If I hadn't looked at his eyes, I'd have thought him serious. But Wally had no such pretensions. He grinned broadly as he drew on the cigarette, and sent me a wink that made Adrian swivel his head, his gaze narrowing.