The door to an inner room opened, and Mrs. Rossmoran, leaning on her black cane, emerged. Elliot offered Mrs. Rossmoran his arm, led her to the chair, and made sure she settled herself without harm. Her granddaughter Fiona moved to the kitchen, filled a kettle from the pump at the sink, and set the kettle on the small black stove.

“Thank ye, lad,” Mrs. Rossmoran said. “Ye’re a gentleman, even if ye’re kin to McGregor.” She thumped the seat of the second chair with her cane. “Sit there and let me look you over. Your lady wife came to call, but she was with McGregor, and I didn’t want to see him. A lovely creature, is the new Mrs. McBride. Very proper too, paying me a formal visit. Her mother was a Duncan.” Mrs. Rossmoran grunted as she moved deeper into the chair. “Daughter of one of my friends at school. Quite a featherhead was your wife’s mother. Charming, but a featherhead.”

Elliot had nothing to answer to this outpouring. He gave Mrs. Rossmoran a polite nod as he obediently took the seat, and she charged along.

“Juliana’s mother charmed prim and proper St. John into marriage for his money all right, smooth as butter, then she ignored him, bought more clothes than any woman has need for, and completely neglected her daughter. Mrs. St. John let the servants do as they pleased, and mostly they didn’t please to do anything. And so poor little Juliana was left quite to herself. It isn’t good for a child to be alone like that. Oh, she had nannies, a proper governess, and finishing school—her father was not the sort to forget about her education—but her playmates were footmen and maids, her confidants the housekeeper and butler. Any polish Miss St. John acquired she managed to put on herself, never mind that fine academy she attended, which I thought a waste of time and money.”

Elliot recalled how, the few times he’d visited Juliana’s home with Ainsley in his youth, they’d been banished from any room Mrs. St. John might enter. Juliana had pretended she didn’t mind—it was a fact of life that children did not mingle much with their parents—but Elliot had seen Juliana’s hurt when her mother did happen to cross their path and never noticed her daughter in front of her.

“Don’t look so surprised at my knowing all this, lad. I might be buried out here, but I know every Scottish family this side of the country and on up into the Orkneys, and I get stacks and stacks of letters.”

Fiona brought over the tea tray and placed it on the table. “She does, Mr. McBride. Every day, letters and letters. And sends a pile out herself.”

“So I know all about your young wife,” Mrs. Rossmoran said, signaling Fiona to serve Elliot first. “She’s a good lass, from what I hear. I did shake my head when I learned she was to marry Mr. Barclay. Not a good match for her. He’s an incomer without much to recommend him, his family dull as ditchwater. Thank heavens he eloped, but with all things, a piano teacher! Well, may she have the joy of him.”

Elliot accepted his tea. “I’m just as happy he stepped out of the way.”

Mrs. Rossmoran took the cup Fiona gave her in both hands, but she didn’t tremble. “Of course you are. I always thought you and young Juliana would make a couple. Helps that she’s such friends with your sister, and your brother and her father thick in finance. Though why a man has truck with finance, I don’t know. But these days, there’s not much in the land anymore, and bankers and merchants rule the world. I hear you have quite a penny put by.”

“A bit.” Elliot drank his tea. Conversation with Mrs. Rossmoran was proving to be refreshing—Elliot didn’t have to say a word.

“Made it out of the subcontinent, didn’t you? So many go out there to make their fortunes, and they end up destitute, or dead of disease, or addicted to some noxious substance. But that never happened to you, eh? Ye kept your head and made money off foolish Englishmen who wanted you to teach them how to make money there.” Mrs. Rossmoran chuckled. “Wise, lad. When I was a girl, I watched the Sassenachs drive away the Scottish farmers and burn out tenants so they could turn Scotland into one big sheep pasture. Fitting that one of our own took away the money all those sheep made for them.”

It hadn’t been quite that simple, but Elliot didn’t bother correcting her. Her outpouring was lightening his darkness a little.

“So what are you going to do, eh?” Mrs. Rossmoran paused to take a sip of tea. “Young Hamish says you’re mad as a hatter. You look sane enough to me, but Hamish says you’re a raving madman sometimes. My grandnephew likes to exaggerate, but the core of what he says is true. Have you seen a doctor about it?”

“I have. He wasn’t much use.” Patrick had suggested a specialist, who’d listened to Elliot, taken his pulse, said Hmm a lot, and prescribed a course of barley water.

Mrs. Rossmoran sniffed. “Doctors only tell you what you pay them to tell you. I wager he gave you some foul muck in a black bottle that will do you no good at all. Or he says it’s all nonsense and you need to stiffen your resolve. But doctors are too young these days, coming out of schools with highfalutin ideas about what goes on inside the body. They pay no attention to what goes on inside people’s lives, do they?” She patted Elliot’s kilt-clad knee. “What you’re doing is grieving, lad. Grieving for yourself. Because what ye were is gone, isn’t it? You’ve seen too much, and you’ve been hurt too much. The man you were will never come back.”

All true. Every word was true. Hearing this blunt assessment coming out of Mrs. Rossmoran’s small, pursed mouth was both startling and comforting.

“You’ve started off well, though, in your marrying,” Mrs. Rossmoran said. “You stick with her, lad, and you’ll do fine.”

“Aye. I can agree with that.”

Mrs. Rossmoran laughed, showing she’d lost a good many of her back teeth. “I thought you would. Saw the twinkle in your eye. That’s what ye need, lad. Bairns. A good many of them. Ye get on home and get to it.”

Elliot departed not long later, swimming with tea and full of shortbread that Fiona had served hot from the oven. Nothing for it but that Elliot should wrap up half of it to take home with him.

Mrs. Rossmoran might have something, he thought as he climbed along the side of a hill, well under the trees, heading in the direction of Castle McGregor. Bairns.

Elliot always felt better when he was with Priti. How much better would he feel if he and Juliana surrounded themselves with more wee ones, all red haired like their mother? A whole nursery of children for Priti to play with and for Elliot to bask in.

The steps he’d have to take in order to bring in those wee ones made his heart lighter.

His body warmed at the memory of Juliana in the dining room, her body under his on the table, how fine it had been to climb into bed with her later and draw her back against his body. He would have done more if he hadn’t had to spend considerable time calming down McGregor. Tonight he would—

The woods didn’t change, and only silence flooded it. But Elliot halted, every nerve alert.

He scanned the hill that rose to his left, its towering trees cutting off his line of sight in that direction. But he knew. The prickle in the back of his neck told him.

There was a watcher in these woods.

And he was watching Elliot.

The thought rose—Please, not again—but Elliot squelched it. He was mad, yes, but his madness couldn’t make an entire wood go silent.

Woods teemed with life. Birds, beasts, and insects lived out their existence in their particular strip of territory—they were born, raised, ventured from the nest, found mates, raised their own young, and died. All that life made noise.

A silent wood meant a predator, one so deadly that all animals stilled, as Elliot did. That predator might be a bear, a wolf, or more likely these days, a human.

How long Elliot stood unmoving under the noiseless trees, he wasn’t certain.

Gradually, the sounds began to return. A robin called, another challenged. Undergrowth rustled—squirrels or rabbits returning to their business.

Elliot scanned the hill again. Nothing had changed. But the animals knew, as Elliot knew, that the hunter had gone.

He remembered now why he’d gone to the boiler room, his excitement in finding the trapdoor. He remembered what he’d been looking for before his mind had seized him and transported him to the past.

Elliot started walking, fast, faster, until he was running down the slope, back to discover whether he’d been right.



Mahindar informed Juliana that Elliot was not there when she arrived home from her call to the Terrells, but before she had the chance to worry, Elliot came striding in through the open front door.