Before she could talk herself out of it, she hurried along the passageway to the chest and opened the lid. Inside, wrapped in a tartan cloth of the McCrieff colours of brown, lilac and moss green—the colours of the Highlands, Father always said—was a large iron key. She grabbed it, closed the lid and looked all around. There was nobody there. In fact, the castle seemed almost eerily quiet today. At that thought, a shadow swept over her and she started, her heart leaping into her throat as she clutched the key to her chest. A glance out the window showed a huge, black cloud had covered the sun and she laughed at her silly fancy that, somehow, Father knew of her disobedience and was signalling his displeasure. He’d left the castle. He couldn’t possibly know.
Nevertheless, a war waged within her breast. Defiance of her father could result in punishment and yet...that lingering feeling of being constantly overlooked prodded her into doing something that would prove, if only to herself, that she could not so easily be dismissed.
And humming beneath those two opposing emotions of fear and bravado was something else. Something...other. And it was growing stronger. And it was urging her to follow her instinct that this—her fingers tightened around the key—was right. This was what she needed to do...must do. It urged her on. No. That wasn’t quite right. Flora shook her head in frustration...she couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of that compulsion... She concentrated, hard, and then she gasped. And straightened her spine. That gut feeling—her instinct—was not urging her to go into the tower. No. It was drawing her there...beckoning her...
She hesitated no longer. Her instincts had never let her down. She ran to the door, inserted the key into the lock and turned it.
Inside, the windowless room was utterly dark, other than the light admitted by the open door. The room smelled musty and, as her eyes adjusted, she could see it was completely empty apart from a door set at right angles to the outer curved wall. Flora closed the door to the tower behind her and, in the dark, felt her way around the wall—the stone cold and rough against her fingertips—until her questing touch found the roughly hewn frame of the door within the room. It was not locked. She sucked in a deep breath and lifted the latch, the loud grating sound stirring her fears all over again. But the urge to go further...to seek...to, somehow, put things right...was near overwhelming, and she pulled the door open, revealing stone steps spiralling up into the tower.
Light from above lit the way and Flora crept up the stairs, keeping as quiet as she could even though there could be nobody there to hear her. Her breaths sounded harsh in the silence and she fancied she could hear her heart drumming in her chest. At the top of the stairs she halted, disappointed at the empty room that met her gaze. There was no mystery here. She crossed to the window—which at some time had been enlarged from the original arrow slit—and gazed out over the bleak hills and the glens with their pewter-grey lochs to the snow-capped mountains to the north. Then she remembered having seen Father at this very same window and she ducked away in case she, too, might be seen.
She swept the room again and her breath caught in her lungs as she realised it wasn’t quite circular, although the tower itself was definitely so. She frowned, trying to persuade herself she was imagining it, but there was no mistake: the curve of the wall opposite the window was different. And why did a tapestry cover one end of that shallowly curved wall in this deserted tower?
Her feet moved, seemingly of their own volition, to that tapestry. Its faded colours depicted scenes of men doing battle with swords and claymores—a familiar enough sight to one brought up with tales of past ferocious battles between the clans—against the backdrop of a magnificent castle. Without further thought, she pulled the tapestry away from the wall. Dust billowed into the air and she held her nose between finger and thumb and squeezed her eyes shut until the urge to sneeze passed.
She opened her eyes, but they were blurred with tears and, without warning, a wave of sorrow crashed over her. Still holding the tapestry, she rubbed away the tears with her other hand. Behind the tapestry was a simple wooden door. She opened it and slipped behind the tapestry and through the door into a narrow space lit by two tall, narrow windows—arrow slits from which her ancestors had fired upon their enemies, long ago.
Then her eyes dropped and a high scream whistled from her lungs before she clamped her hand over her mouth. She wanted to run, but her legs locked tight. The skeleton gleamed white among the frayed and rotting cloth that had once shrouded it, but had now fallen away to expose the bones. It lay on a stone shelf built out from the wall and Flora could not tear her gaze away as grief, anger and aloneness battered her.
Her gulping breaths sobbed into the silence as she strove to move.
To get away.
To leave that dreadful sense of desolation behind.
The light outside abruptly brightened and a stray sunbeam penetrated one of the arrow slits to touch the skeleton, and a gleam from among the shredded linen caught Flora’s eye.
As if in a dream, she saw her trembling hand reach out. As her fingers closed around a metallic object, she was all at once released from that awful paralysis. She whirled around and ran, never pausing until she reached the sanctuary of her bedchamber. She leapt on to her bed, scrambling back until she was up against the headboard. She bent her legs and clasped her arms around them, resting her forehead on her knees as the tears leaked hot from her eyes and her chest heaved.
A sharp prick in the palm of her right palm finally shook Flora from her terror. Slowly, she released her legs, becoming aware that she clutched something in her right hand. She opened her fingers, hardly daring to look. There, on her palm, rested a brooch fashioned from silver. Her breathing slowed and steadied, and calm gradually overcame her fear. She swung her legs from the bed and crossed to the window to examine the disc-shaped brooch more closely. The surface was decorated with a plant she recognised—a thrift, with its tuft of leaves and its distinctive flowers aloft on slender stems. Two swords crossed at the centre in an X, with the letters R and A at either side.
A drop of blood sat in the centre of Flora’s palm, where the pin of the brooch had pierced her skin. She bent her head to lick it away and, as she did so, her head swam and utter anguish rushed through her. She clutched her hands to her chest until that feeling subsided, then studied the brooch once more, willing it to give her some clue as to what she might do to set everything right. She rubbed the surface with her thumb and felt calm descend as she made a silent vow to take care of it.
She wrapped it in one of her embroidered handkerchiefs and laid it in the bottom of her drawer. Even had she not sworn that vow, she would never dare replace the brooch—the thought of seeing that skeleton again made her quake with terror.
Father must know it is there. Who is it? Why is it in our tower?
On that thought, Flora realised she must go back and lock the tower door before anyone found it open but, after that, she would never, ever venture near the Great Tower again.
But neither would she ever forget what she had seen.
October 1848
The tall, broad-shouldered figure standing before the altar sent shivers crawling up and down her spine. In desperation, Lady Flora McCrieff turned to her father, the Earl of Aberwyld, whose grip around her arm had not relaxed once on the five-minute walk from the castle to the kirk.
‘Father...’
She quailed under that implacable green glare. Then her father bundled Flora none too gently to one side of the porch. Out of sight. Out of hearing.
‘Ye’ll not disgrace me again, Flora,’ he hissed. ‘D’ye hear me?’ He shook her arm. ‘Ye’ll do as I bid ye—for the love of your family and your clan. Think of your brother and your sisters. You owe them this.’
Her stomach roiled so violently she had to swallow several times to