Page 56 of The Midnight Secret

‘The wind’s dropped,’ she pointed out.

‘It’s unnaturally still. This could be the eye of the storm.’

She looked at him, knowing they were already in it. Lastnight she had heard his footsteps in the hallway. They had stopped outside her room, his shadow visible as she stared at the tiny strip of light that came under the door. She had braced for the handle to turn, feeling her heart pound against the mattress, knowing what she would say if he did come in. She knew it would not be the first time he had visited a woman’s room at night. But when she saw the shadow move and the light stream in unimpeded again, she understood it was the first time he had walked away.

Sitting here now, she sensed they both knew his secret. He longed for her; she could see it in the weight of his stare, hear it in the pauses between conversations. The things he didn’t say were becoming louder than those he did. She knew he knew women, but he’d never known a woman like her. Something, something soon, was going to break, and it would either be his resolve or hers.

‘All the more reason to act quickly, then,’ she said, stirring her porridge. ‘If we hold our nerve, we can still outrun it.’

‘Why are you wearing that?’

Archie was sitting on the bench in the entrance porch, pulling on his gumboots. He wore a macintosh over his clothes, clearly anticipating poor weather despite the blue skies, and he rested his elbows on his thighs as she came through, barefoot in her emerald evening gown.

‘Because this is all I have to wear. If I turn up at Dunvegan wearing your clothes, there’ll be a scandal. You know, perhaps you should keep some women’s clothes here?’

‘For my next stowaway, you mean?...I’m not in the habit of collecting them.’ His eyes narrowed as he watched her. ‘I don’t understand why it would matter if you were in my clothes.’

Didn’t he? Even aside from his reaction to seeing her in hisdinner suit, she had felt his eyes travelling over her every time he thought she wasn’t looking. She knew that he liked seeing her in his trousers dramatically cinched in with a belt, his shirtsleeves rolled up her arms. He was covering her by proxy, his scent sitting upon her, as if imprinting himself on her. There was an intimacy to sharing layers, and she knew he knew it.

‘...It’s a matter of how it looks.’

‘Ah...Well, we can’t have that,’ he said archly, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t read. ‘We all know how desperately it matters what other people think.’

There was an uncharacteristic bitterness to his words and she felt a fierce disappointment in herself. Caring about others’ opinions was the antithesis of everything that happened between them here these past few days. They had both been their free, true selves. Mhairi had always cared far too much about reputation, but Effie had fancied herself free from all that. But it wasn’t just her own good name she had to think about now – it was Sholto’s too. He deserved her respect.

‘Archie, you know what I mean,’ she said as he abruptly got up. ‘I’m engaged to Sholto. I have to consider how it reflects on him.’

His jaw balled for a moment. He was, in spite of himself, a gentleman. ‘At least put on a jumper.’ He grabbed a navy fishing jersey, rough but windproof, from a basket and held it out to her. ‘I’ll see you down there.’

He walked outside, and she watched as the door slammed shut behind him. A tension had already crept in between them, now that this interlude from both their lives was being forced to a stop. The friendship was being halted in its tracks. She belonged to another man, and he could no longer pretend she didn’t.

She shrugged the jumper on over her dress and followed him, at a distance, down to the jetty. She hopped on board as he ran through his checks; it suited him to be busy, to neither look at her nor make small talk. She shrugged on the cork life jacket instead; it didn’t rub against her ribs this time, thanks to the cushioning of Archie’s jumper.

They cast off into the wind, Archie expertly tacking side to side up the sound, turning the huge helm with ease, his gaze dead ahead. Effie sat beside him, where she had sat on the way out, glancing up at him every few minutes and wishing he would talk to her. But what he wanted to say couldn’t be said, and anything else wasn’t worth saying.

‘Look, seals!’ she exclaimed after a while, spotting a colony sleeping on rocks.

He smiled, softening a little. He loved being on the water too much to hold a grudge, and he began pointing things out at intervals – the fin of a minke whale and then the eyrie of a pair of sea eagles high up in a pine tree, though there was no sign of the birds now.

Effie closed her eyes, her face angled to the sun and basking in its pale, wintry warmth. She didn’t care that the wind made a tangle of her hair. She enjoyed the sounds of the boat: the rattle of the rigging, the flap of the sails, the sluicing of the water, her dress billowing in the wind.

She didn’t notice immediately when the sun went in, but as they passed the wide mouth of Portree and came onto the shoulder of the Trotternish peninsula, theLady Tarabegan to pitch. An army of white horses was galloping towards them, surrounding them on all sides, and she saw from the way Archie’s eyes narrowed, the forward thrust of his jaw, that they were heading into the heavier weather he had feared. He glanced at her, catching her gaze. If he had been rightabout being in the eye of the storm, he was too gracious to say it.

Effie gripped the handrail, feeling the rain being carried in on the wind, striking her cheeks like glass bullets. But the strength of the coming storm increased dramatically as they sailed into Staffin Bay and headed towards the straits of Little Minch. They were fully exposed now to the northerly front, a merciless onslaught. These were the very winds that had always plagued St Kilda, alone in her solitary outpost in the ocean. Effie was no stranger to their wildness, but to experience them on a small boat, surrounded by rising waves...

‘Stay low,’ he shouted, his voice barely audible as the wind whipped it away. ‘Don’t let go!’

Water doused them, splashing over the sides every few moments. Archie widened his stance at the helm, his body bracing as he kept one hand on the wheel and with the other, adjusted the sail. Surprisingly, for all the discomfort they were enduring, she didn’t feel frightened. She trusted his abilities as a sailor; he was skilled and fearless. There was very little this man couldn’t do. He had been born accomplished.

She didn’t feel frightened until she heard the crack. It was like a pistol-whip, sharp above the contralto wind, and she saw how quickly Archie’s head snapped up, the look on his face as he studied the mast.

He visibly paled.

‘What is it?’ she asked, looking up too, but all she could see was a sail at full stretch, the rig clinking wildly on the pitch of the waves.

He didn’t reply. He was struggling with the helm as the boat suddenly started to pull to starboard. ‘We’re losing the mast!’ he hollered, and she saw the sail sag like a bellows without air, her eye catching sight of a deep crack – like the eye of aneedle – at the very top of the main mast. It hadn’t broken away – not yet – but the pressure from the sail was pulling on it, making it wider and deeper...It would give at any moment. Effie could guess what would come next: no mast, no sail, no control.

‘What can we do?’ she cried.

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