“Perhaps.”
“You must have other plans for your holiday,” Peter objected. “You and Chip.”
“Yes, that’s true.” Grace rose.
Catriona rose also in one swift movement. The dog looked from one to the other, alert, watchful. “Must you leave so soon? We’ve hardly had a moment to catch up on the gay old times at Innisdale.”
“The boatman is waiting for me.”
Catriona didn’t move for a moment, then said gently, “Ah. Of course. You wouldn’t have rowed yourself over.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.”
Catriona stretched, an unselfconsciously graceful movement. “Safe home.”
“I’ll see you out,” Peter said.
Catriona started to say something, caught his eye and subsided with a shrug.
They walked in silence down the grim serpentine hall past suits of armor and assorted weaponry. Here and there the subject of a murky portrait inspected them from across the centuries. Those Ruthvens who were not powdered and wigged ran to red hair, lynx eyes and unpleasant sneers.
“Satisfied?” Peter queried, as they walked back toward the dock.
The island was bathed in a fiery glow. Even the loch seemed to burn. The sun was setting, the tiger’s eye closing in sleep.
Grace glanced his way. “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be? One woman is dead, murdered. A priceless artifact has been stolen, and you’re the number one suspect. Lord Ruthven is missing and probably dead. You’re on the lam with the Bride of Dracula…”
“Lam? You really did visit Calum and Monica.”
“I’m on my way back there now.”
“Good. Stay there.”
They passed between two stone pillars topped with finials fashioned like knights in a game of chess.
“Peter, what is going on?”
“You’ve summed it up pretty well.”
“You must know that by running away you’ve made yourself look guilty of…everything.”
He ignored this, eyes on the boat where Chaz and Donald MacLeod waited.
“I see you brought the faithful Honeybun.”
“Why can’t you tell me? Why can’t I help you?” Until the moment he had opened the castle door she had believed that somehow she would find him on the side of the angels. Although all the evidence pointed against it, she had so wanted to believe that he had come to Scotland in pursuit of Catriona, not to join her. And even now…
Peter glanced back at the tower. “Get,” he said flatly, “while the getting is good.”
The storm at the Bells’ had been upgraded to gale category as their departure date for the Canadian conference drew nearer.
“Are you going to the police?” Calum queried, when Grace finished recounting her visit to A’ Mheirlich Saobhaidh.
“No.” It startled all of them that she didn’t have to think about it.
“Why, for God’s sake!” Chaz exclaimed. “At the very least these people are suspects in a murder investigation.”
He would never in a million years understand why. She wasn’t sure she really understood. Loyalty? Curiosity? Love?
“I need to know more before I do anything.” She selected a second piece of the rich date-and-ginger shortbread that Monica had served with tea.
“What does that mean?”
She already regretted her words. “Just that…we don’t really have any proof.”
“Proof?” Chaz was practically goggling at her. “What kind of proof do you believe you need? Do you think the cops wouldn’t want to know where these felons are?”
Grace said, “I realize that, but Peter might, um, have a plan. I don’t want to jeopardize whatever it is he’s doing.”
“You mean like stealing things and killing people?”
“That wasn’t him!”
Monica said reluctantly, “We don’t know that, Grace.”
She didn’t know it, and yet she seemed to have reached the point of impasse. The point where she either accepted on blind faith that Peter was who she believed or…she…let go.
She wasn’t ready to let go. Maybe there was a third alternative.
“I can’t believe this is you talking,” Chaz said. “I can’t believe you know what you’re saying.”
Monica and Calum exchanged a look.
“Whisht,” Calum said, suddenly very Scottish. “Let’s leave it, shall we? A meal and a dram, that’s the thing. And then we’ll talk.”
Calum hauled the still-protesting Chaz out into a pine-scented night that already smelled like Christmas, and Monica turned to Grace.
“Okay,” she said grimly. “What’s the real scoop?”
Grace shook her head.
“I can’t turn him over to the police without knowing…”
“You’re not thinking of going back there?”
“Sort of.”
“On your own?”
“Unless you want to come with me.” Grace was half-joking, but Monica’s eyes suddenly gleamed.
“If only we could! What a lark!” Then reason seemed to cloud her mind. “We can’t, and even if we could, we’d be crazy to try.”
“I have to try,” Grace said.
“No, but I’m serious. These people are career criminals. They’ve killed.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You believe it.”
Grace had no answer.
“Peter went with them of his own free will, right? Nobody held a gun on him.”
“Appearances can be deceptive.”
“What does that mean? You think they’re putting the squeeze on him?”
This was the short-term effect of living with a man who wrote detective novels.
“I don’t know. I know that Peter couldn’t have killed Lady Ives, and I don’t believe he had anything to do with Lord Ruthven’s disappearance because of the way he reacted when I told him about it.”
“How did he react?”
“He was startled. Even alarmed. Whatever he had expected to happen, that wasn’t it. I can tell when he’s lying. Usually. This was the real thing.”
Monica considered her argument.
“You’re pinning a lot on a single reaction.”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
“Okay, suppose Peter is innocent. Maybe he has a plan. Your turning up unexpectedly might throw a wrench in the whole setup.”
“Or I might be able to help him.”
Monica raked a hand through her short blond hair.
“Then how do we help you?”
Grace told her.
Before falling asleep she thumbed through her copy of Burke’s Peerage. Calum had not exaggerated the amazing and adventurous history of the Ruthvens. Besides an aptitude for plotting and scheming the Ruthvens were a remarkable lot, bold and courageous men and beautiful, equally lionhearted women.
There was a legend concerning one Ruthven daughter who, fearing she would be discovered in bed with a suitor her parents disapproved of, made a nine-foot leap over a sixty-foot drop separating her lover’s tower bedchamber from the rest of the castle.
Years of teaching adolescents had familiarized Grace with the lengths girls would go to, but nine feet was still pretty spectacular.
A soft tap on her door had Grace calling, “Come in!”
She expected Monica, but it was Chaz who cautiously opened the door.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
She sat up against the pillows as Chaz shut the door and came to sit on the edge of the bed. The springs squeaked beneath his weight.
“It’s not any use, is it?” His long-lashed soulful eyes held hers steadily.
Grace shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too. I think you’re making a terrible mistake.”
“I hope not,” said Grace. “It means a lot that you cared enough to”—she tried to make a little joke—“save me from myself.”
Chaz said grimly, “It’s not yourself I want to save you from, but I guess he’s got you under his spell.�
� Like those old Dracula movies, Grace was the victim sitting there in the dusk, scarf wrapped around her bitten neck, claiming she’d never felt better in her life.
“We had a good life together,” he said.
“We had a comfortable routine,” Grace said, “but I don’t think either of us would ever have pushed for more.”
“When the time was right I would have.” He looked at her ringless left hand.
“I am sorry,” she said again because there wasn’t much else she could say. She knew, if Chaz did not, that the time would never have been right.
He sighed heavily. “Then I guess I’ll head back to London tomorrow. My plane leaves Saturday.”
“I’ll miss you,” Grace said. And it was true in a way.
Chaz leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.
“Sweet dreams,” he said. She couldn’t blame him for emphasizing the word “dreams.”
While waiting for the taxi to take him and Monica to the airport, Calum spent the morning instructing Grace in the fine art of lock picking.
“Of course it’s theory, not practical application,” he admitted, studying the array of shiny picks and jimmies spread out on the table before them.
“Hopefully I won’t have to use them,” Grace said, and Calum looked crestfallen.
“Calum, what else do you think she may need to break in?” Monica, sounding like a mother sending her only child to summer camp, was occupied putting together a “nice little workbox” with what she considered—probably from reading Calum’s books—to be the burglary essentials: screwdriver, Instamatic camera, rope, etc.
“This is an awful lot of rope,” Grace objected, joining her in the kitchen. “I don’t actually plan on scaling any walls.”
“You have no idea what you may end up having to do,” Monica said rather direly.
“Well, I probably won’t be having dinner with them,” Grace pointed out, pulling a black silk stocking out of the toolbox.
“Ha. Funny. Anyway, you look good in black.” Monica tossed the stocking back in the metal box.
When she reached the village of Eacharnach, the fitful Scottish sun was shining, glittering on the loch’s blue water. There was a tang in the air that reminded her of the sea. Gulls whirled overhead.
The tiny village made Innisdale look like a bustling metropolis by comparison. Grace was the only visitor, and the fact that they could keep track of visitors said something about how isolated Eacharnach was.
The village boasted three pubs and one inn. Grace booked a room at the little inn, which looked out across the sun-dazzled loch. The room had sloping ceilings, and four-poster twin beds with paisley quilts. A sampler on the wall read: “Ae fine thing needs twa to set it off.”
She lunched downstairs in the taproom.
“Is there a history to the castle on the island?” she asked Donnie MacInnes, the publican, doing her best to sound like an innocent American tourist.
“Aye, there’s a verra fine legend about the castle if it’s legend you’re wanting.”
“It’s called the Thieves’ Den, is that correct?”
“The Den of the Thieves, that is true. Och, but the castle was not always belonging to the Ruthvens! There is a story about how it came to be known as A’ Mheirlich Saobhaidh. It was back in the days when the castle was a stronghold of the Menteiths. After the trouble between the clans—” Grace opened her mouth to ask which trouble, then closed it again, realizing the foolishness of the question.
“There was a kinsman of the Ruthvens who came to stay with the chief of the Menteiths. He dined and drank with his host as an honored guest, he slept beneath the Menteith roof, protected and sheltered by the sacred tradition of Highland hospitality.”
Grace had read up on some of the sacred traditions of the warlike Highlanders, but she didn’t interrupt.
“The next morning the gentlemen of the house rose to go hunting, and this son of the Ruthvens went with them. When the gentlemen reached the mainland, Ruthven’s own men were waiting. The Menteiths were slaughtered to the last man. Their heads were mounted on pikes and displayed on the galleys that sailed to the island.”
“Oh my gosh,” Grace said, truly horrified.
“When the chief of the Ruthvens reached the island, he gave his ultimatum to Lady Menteith. If she would agree to marry him, he would spare her life and those left on the island. But she would not, and so he locked her and all her ladies in the tower. Lady Menteith’s Tower they call it, for it was the mistress of the house and her ain guid ladies and the wee girrrrls that they left to starve there.”
He slapped Grace’s plate down on the table. “Eat up!”
Grace realized her mouth was open. She began to eat her fish and chips.
“Did none of the women escape?” she asked after a time, when there was nothing left on her plate but the inevitable molehill of green peas.
“Not one. They would have had to swim, you see. And the loch is a mile across. And there was the each uisage to consider.” He winked at her.
A mile across and probably cold as outer space. “I’ve heard about the each uisage. And how long have the Ruthvens held the castle?”
“Ever since,” Donnie MacInnes said cheerfully. “And right good lairds they’ve been.”
Grace finished her drink in thoughtful silence and went out to rent the boat from Donald MacLeod for the next day.
This took a bit of bargaining, for the old man was clearly skeptical when Grace told him she planned to row the boat herself.
“And why would you be wanting to paddle about the loch?”
“For exercise,” Grace answered promptly. “I have to work off all the wonderful food I’m eating on my vacation.”
“Vacation? A wee lassie by herself?” The old man’s suspicion deepened.
The only solution seemed to be for the wee lassie to pay a rental fee that was more than the boat was worth. As she left the man of the boats mumbling darkly to himself, Grace knew word of her odd behavior would be all over the village—and probably to the castle before long. She would have to move quickly.
She spent the remainder of the afternoon walking around Eacharnach, learning what she could about the castle on the island and its history.
It appeared that while there were many stories of the old days and Ruthvens long dead, no one had—or was willing to admit to—any information on the current residents.
“Auld sins breed new sairs,” sniffed the woman in the butcher shop. “Not much worrrk to be had there, not like the auld days. In those days they needed a full staff. These days it’s only that rascal Hood to tend the place when she’s away.”
“She?”
A Highland sheep couldn’t have stared more stolidly at Grace.
“Is Lady Ruthven here much?”
“This is her home.”
No contradiction about Catriona’s title. Interesting though not conclusive.
“Hood is the piper we heard on our trip to the castle?”
The woman snorted. “That would be Donnie MacDhomnuil. He must be back.”
Grace finished paying for her soup bone.
Besides Catriona and Peter there was the bald man who was probably Donnie MacDhomnuil, and a redheaded hood. Four and possibly more.
Her next stop was the chemist shop.
The proprietor was a small, jolly man by the name of Donnie MacLean.
“Is everyone here named Donnie?” Grace inquired, puzzled.
The man burst out laughing. “Not the lassies!”
“Are you all related?”
The little man laughed all the harder. Was this an example of the subtle wit of the Gael?
The sun was sinking when Grace trudged up the road back to the inn, passing houses on the hillside where lit windows and smoke from chimneys indicated the citizens of Eacharnach were settling in for the night.
The sudden clatter of hooves sent her to the side of the road. Shaggy Highland cattle trotted down the street accompanied by a small boy
and a black-and-white Border collie. The boy called a greeting to her in Gaelic.
Back at the inn Grace enjoyed a hearty supper, eating alone before the roaring fire. She skimmed a book on Scottish castles, paying close attention to a chapter devoted to mediaeval architecture, while sampling Cullen Skink, which the menu assured was classic Scottish soup. Despite the name, the hearty soup of smoked haddock, potato and leeks was delicious.
“What does the word ‘Eacharnach’ mean?” she asked Donnie MacInnes.
“It’s an old word in the Gaelic meaning a thing that is like a park for horses.”
The soup was followed by an unimaginative but unquestionably delicious prime fillet garnished with mushrooms, potatoes and french fries. Grace drank several cups of the strong, peaty-flavored tea.
“We’ll have snow before the fortnight,” the innkeeper told her, drawing the curtains against the night.
Stars were flung across the night sky like grains of silver sand; their reflection sparkled on the water as Grace dipped the oars in the inky loch.
Sweat beaded her forehead. It might not be poetry in motion, but Grace was beginning to get the hang of rowing. Granted, it was taking about twice as long to travel across as it should have, the oars scooping and splashing in choppy rhythm.
She paused, resting on her oars. The lights of the village looked very far away. The water lapping against the hull of the rocking boat stretched black and bottomless as far as she could see.
She remembered the story of the each uisage. Perhaps even now he galloped miles beneath the surface, hooves pounding the floor of the loch as he searched for fresh human fodder.
Grace wiped her forehead on her sleeve and returned to rowing. Her hands were sweating inside the gloves that Monica had supplied. From her angle of approach she could not see any lights on the island. There was no sign of life except the occasional drift of woodsmoke on the breeze.
At last the boat scraped bottom in a tiny cove on the far side of the island. Grace hopped out, with more alacrity than grace, splashing through icy water onto the rocky beach. Though her eyes had had plenty of time to adjust, the deep shade of the towering pines made the night even blacker.
Dragging the boat into the trees, she stopped a moment to catch her breath. It had been harder than she expected to row across the water. She dreaded the thought of rowing back, but perhaps by then she would be running for her life, and that might supply the necessary adrenaline.
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