Page 86 of The Midnight Secret

But Mhairi closed her eyes in despair. Flora had gone all that way, only to end up empty-handed?

Lorna had been the nurse to deliver Flora of her baby, an eyewitness who was respectable and upstanding, a pillar of the community. She could have undone her wrongs and still slipped away into a new life with Mary – not a perfect ending, without the baby, but a happy enough one at least.

Instead she’d chosen to fall deeper into the lie, taking her secrets with her to the grave.

Chapter Twenty-Five

EFFIE

17 March 1931

Dumfries House, Ayrshire

Effie sat low in the sky-blue car, her goggles on and hair flying like Medusa’s snakes as they roared over the graceful hump of the Capability Brown bridge. They swept through the estate at speed like a tropical typhoon in the heathered Scottish countryside. Effie felt her heart accelerate as this small pocket of land, which had briefly been a home to her, revealed itself once more.

Archie glanced over at her as the great house came into view. It was gracious and elegant, and to her eye when she had come fresh from St Kilda seven months ago, it had seemed like a palace. But she had grown since then, and she knew now it was an exercise in neoclassical restraint. Grand, yes, but also very much a home.

She looked up at the tall windows. Was Sholto in one of the rooms, still hidden from her, just as her approach now was unknown to him?

Archie’s fingers tightened around the wheel, his drivinggloves so new they still creaked. He had insisted on driving her here, even though she had told him she was perfectly capable of taking the train. She knew this was a test. There was every chance in coming here that she would be standing between the man who loved her and the man who wanted her. But it wasn’t a question of who she wanted. It was a matter of who she could have. She had been lying to herself that she’d only come here with one mission in mind; the frantic thud of her heart was making it plain this was not neutral territory for either of them.

He hit the brakes, sending gravel flying as they careened to a flamboyant stop, and Henry the footman stepped forward with a blank expression – which slipped as Effie removed her goggles.

‘Hallo, Henry,’ she smiled, pushing back her tangled bright blonde hair.

‘...Miss Gillies. Welcome back to Dumfries House.’

His hesitation revealed his profound shock, and she knew word would be below stairs before she could achieve what she had come here to do. She wondered if Fanny, Billy and Mrs McLennan would want to see her; they had been her first new friends on the mainland and she felt still the tension of being caught between worlds here: upstairs or downstairs? Where did she belong? And with whom?

Seven months later, she still didn’t know.

‘Thank you, Henry. This is Mr Baird-Hamilton.’

‘I wondered if I might have an audience with Sir John,’ Archie said, taking charge.

There was another uncharacteristic, stunned hesitation. ‘Sir John?’ the footman clarified.

‘Yes. I was told he and Lady Rosemary have been staying here during the countess’s recuperation?’ Archie said briskly, pulling off his driving gloves with a bored air.

‘Indeed, sir,’ Henry nodded, recovering himself.

‘Tell him I have some information he will want to hear – pertaining to...er, recent losses.’

‘Of course, sir. Please follow me.’

He led them into the house Effie now knew well; she had walked, or rather run, these corridors barefoot, slept in a bed upstairs and eaten dinner at the servants’ table below stairs. They passed beneath the family portraits that had once seemed so austere. Now, as she looked on those faces, all she saw was Sholto’s eyes or his nose or the curve of his top lip – or that blonde cowlick that wouldn’t stay back, no matter how often he combed it...

Was he here? In his bedroom or in the pantry, wheedling Mrs McLennan for a pie? Driving down the long avenue or riding on Taliska, his favourite horse? She felt her senses reach out, straining for a trace of him: his scent lingering in the hall, a stray hair on a coat, muddy boots, a familiar shadow glancing on the wall...

Their footsteps echoed, sounding into the far reaches of the long corridors as Henry led them to the blue drawing room. It was where visitors were usually escorted, not the parlour where the family preferred to gather.

‘I shall inform Sir John of your arrival,’ Henry nodded, leaving them in the grand space with a nod of his head and a flash of his eyes in Effie’s direction.

Archie unbuttoned his coat and took off his cap, raking a hand through his hair. His cheeks were flushed from their drive, his eyes as bright as if he’d run here. He paced, restless, as they waited for their audience. Was it irony or fate that MacLeod was to be found here, in the crucible of Dumfries House, and not at home in Dunvegan?

Effie stiffened as she heard the soft closing of a door furtherup the hall, then footsteps sounding – but they were travelling in the wrong direction. Her heart fluttered, sparrow-like, darting and alert, too frightened to land, searching for Sholto in every corner and every shadow.

She crossed to the windows and stared out over the grounds. Every patch held a memory for her: the fountain, the night of the party when Sibyl’s cruelty had been revealed; Stairs Mount, where she and Sholto had picnicked between the trees while pretending they could simply be friends; the ha-ha where her runaway horse had bolted and only Huw Felton’s quick thinking had saved her.

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