Page 109 of The Midnight Secret

Mary stared back at her with an empty expression. Jayne could see that all hope had gone from her. She had no allies, no defence.

‘...What are you going to do?’ she asked finally.

Jayne took a breath. ‘Let Norman take the blame.’

She let the comment hang in the air.

‘...Wh-why?’Mary breathed, stunned.

‘Because he’s dead, and it really doesn’t matter now if people think that one cruel man killed another cruel man.’

‘But why would you do that?’

‘Because you’re going to do two things for me in return.’ Jayne looked her in the eyes. ‘You can still have a chance to live, Mary.’

Just not happily.

Epilogue

13 May 1931

Rose Cottage, Dumfries House

‘May we come in?’

Jayne peered around the door of the cottage bedroom. It had been crowded with bodies all morning, the women fussing excitedly – none more than Mad Annie, who loved a wedding – as the men waited downstairs with Robert, admiring his vegetable garden and the views back towards the Big House. But now the guests had gone ahead and Effie was standing alone, staring at her reflection in the mirror, just as Jayne had done five years before.

It had taken them all a while to get used to the sight of their ‘strip of wind’ in white chiffon and ribbons, satin slippers on her feet. For someone who had got through the first eighteen years of her life trying to ignore that she was a girl, it was bewildering enough to see herself as a bride – but to wear a crown...Fanny had called it a ‘tiara’ as she had come up from the Big House to do Effie’s hair, carefully pinning it in place, shooing everyone out so she could ‘work in peace’.

‘Oh!’ Jayne gasped in admiration as Effie turned towards her with a nervous look.

‘Does it look all right?’

‘All right?’ Jayne beamed, her hands fluttering to her heart. ‘Effie, you’re a vision!’

‘Let me see!’ Flora cried impatiently behind her, pushing the door wider so she could get through. ‘Oh! You’re like a princess!’ she gasped, her hands rushing to her mouth.

‘Well, she is marrying a future earl,’ Jayne laughed as Flora and Mhairi came further into the room.

‘You’re like a fairy!’ Mhairi exclaimed, lifting the gossamer veil and letting it billow and flutter back down.

Effie blinked back at them, her eyes wide. ‘Am I dreaming? I feel as if I’m in a dream.’

‘It’s better than that, Eff,’ Mhairi said, taking her hand and clasping it tightly. ‘It’s the life you were always supposed to have.’

The four of them stood for a moment, the bridesmaids matching in peach silk and carrying posies of miniature cream roses.

‘...How did we end up here?’ Effie asked, the question coming out as a half laugh, half sob. But her tears were happy ones.

Ever since the earl had invited her to sail back on his yacht ‘as his honoured guest’, Sholto hadn’t left her side. He had put duty before self when the hour of need had come, but his mother, caught for a time in what she called ‘a living death’, didn’t want the same for her son – and she had finally urged him to win Effie back. She had seen Sholto become a shell of himself in those few months after the split, robbed of all joy or interest, and when he had escaped to Edinburgh rather than stay while Lady Sibyl had ‘been passing’ – refusing to return until she had left again – the countess had known a society match could not be forced. For the earl’s part, he hadbeen impressed by Effie’s willingness to help their dear friends, the MacLeods, even after she had been shunned, and he had seen that ‘a rich heart lay beneath her poor coat’. And, after all, he had always had a soft spot for her ‘spiritedness’; her growing legend at Loch Dunvegan had delighted him.

‘It’s at the year’s end that the fisher can tell his luck,’ Jayne shrugged.

‘You’re saying we’ve had a good year?’ Effie laughed, the others too. Had they ever suffered so much? And yet it was a year to the day that she had first met Sholto, catching that glimpse of him strolling down the street – before, an hour later, she was leaping into his boat on account of a wager, and it had all begun.

‘I’d say it was worth it in the end,’ Flora smiled, reaching for Jayne’s hand and drawing her over to stand with them. ‘You know, Jayne, when we were plucking the birds last summer, I said to Eff and Mhairi that we would always be St Kilda girls, no matter where we ended up: Dumfries House, Lochaline, Glasgow or Paris or Quebec...it doesn’t matter. We’re sisters, all of us.’

Jayne felt the warmth in her words. Soon Flora would be her sister in deed as well as spirit, and Jayne couldn’t help but think of the girl she had first loved as her own. Losing Molly had been a desperate blow for the village, a tragedy for Norman and David, and a personal catastrophe for her. All their worlds had unspooled in the aftermath: Lorna might never have found support for the evacuation had Molly survived; David would have become her fiancé, not Jayne’s...Sometimes the guilt caught up with her that she was living the future Molly had been denied. But David argued the opposite: that their love held Molly within it, keeping her memory close.

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