Page 55 of The Midnight Secret

‘Pretty? He’s not a girl!’

‘Coming from the girl wearing a dinner suit.’

She smiled. ‘I think he’s the most handsome man I ever met.’

‘Thank you very much.’

‘I wasn’t trying to be rude.’

‘No, you’re like me – it just comes naturally.’

She laughed, befuddled by his quick wit and refusal to play by the rules. From the moment she had set foot on the mainland, adapting had meant understanding what was and wasn’t acceptable: wear this, don’t say that; dance this reel, play this game; read this book, laugh at the right moment...But Archie Baird-Hamilton deliberately set himself apart from all that, not caring about the done thing. He was a gentleman rebel, a counterpart to what she herself had been labelled by Peony the other day: a noblesauvage.

She tried turning the conversation ontohislove life instead.

‘Who is Miss Bruce?’

He seemed surprised that she had remembered the name the housekeeper had mentioned earlier. ‘She was my intended guest.’

‘Was she the redhead we passed?’

‘The Redhead,’ he echoed, as if it were a proper noun. ‘...Actually, no.’

‘What will have happened to her?’

‘Well, I hope she’s worked out by now that, clearly, I left without her,’ he guffawed. ‘Naturally, I assumedyouwere her.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No, no. It was my own fault. Ought to have come down and checked, of course. I wanted to get ahead of the winds.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Poor girl. I doubt she’ll ever speak to me again.’

‘I’m sure she will, once y’ explain,’ Effie said hurriedly.

He shook his head. ‘She’s quite spirited...It’s probably for the best anyway. Would never have worked.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Her husband’s a crack shot.’

Effie’s jaw dropped open as he smiled back at her with his eyes. ‘...Oh.’

Chapter Fourteen

Archie taught her to fish over the next few days. Not the kind of fishing she had known back home, sitting in a boat with ten men trying to catch ling, but the kind where they stood in a river up to their thighs and flicked a line in rhythmic waves over the water. It was freezing cold and tiring, and she could feel the iciness of the water through her rubber waders, but the first time she had a bite, she jumped up and down so excitedly that the pike wriggled itself off the hook again. When they could no longer ignore their hunger, they sat on rocks on the riverbank, smoothing away the snow to eat the pies Mrs Robertson had cooked for them and drinking tea from a thermos flask.

When they returned to the house in the afternoons, once the light had faded and after restorative hot baths, they met again in the library to talk, read the newspapers and play cards. Effie had been right that first day – tea and a fire really were the greatest luxuries. Archie had been right, too – it was often colder inside the house than out.

For three days there was no improvement in the weather. Northerly winds grew ever worse, squalling and quarrelling the skies, whipping the open water into a frothing cauldron. But on the fourth day, they awoke to blue skies and a sudden loud calm.

Archie watched Effie as she came into the breakfast room. Mrs Robertson had hemmed his old trousers for her and it now seemed perfectly normal to see her in his shirts and jumpers.

‘You want to go,’ he said over breakfast: porridge, followed by grilled mackerel.

‘Well, I do have to leave at some point. I can hardly stay here indefinitely, can I?’ she replied. He said nothing, but there was an answer in his eyes anyway, and she knew he wanted her to stay.

She swirled the cream in her porridge, trying to ignore the sudden acceleration of her pulse, pushing down a feeling that was growing inside her. She loved Sholto. He was the love of her life; she knew that with every fibre of her being. But she also knew that there was an easiness between her and Archie that she had never known with anyone else. He was her in male form. The conversation was always unforced and they laughed endlessly. She didn’t feel judged by him or lacking in any way. Even with Sholto, although she knew he adored her, there was a small but distinct dislocation between them; they couldn’t ignore that they came from two different worlds, nor that to the important people in their lives, that mattered. Everything was just so easy with Archie.

‘I don’t trust it,’ he said, staring out through the tall windows. The view was like a painting, almost unreal in its beauty, ever-changing. Effie could imagine the colours of autumn here, almost taste the salty tang of the summer breeze. Living on the water again reminded her of Village Bay, being shushed to sleep every night by the lullaby of waves breaking upon the shore.

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