Page 90 of The Midnight Secret

Effie bridled. ‘That’s not necessary, sir. I’m just glad to have been able to help.’

Archie smiled at her as the earl and clan chief exchanged another look.

‘So, Miss Gillies, how exactly will we find the cleit in which you’ve hidden the horn?’ MacLeod asked. ‘There are a great many of them.’

‘Oh, it’s not in a cleit.’

‘Where is it, then?’

‘The last place anyone would think to look. I needed to be certain he wouldn’t find it.’ She let her mind fall back into the landscape of her girlhood – the velvet smudge of grassy moors, the grey stone cottages smiling along the street like giant’s teeth, the towering cliffs harassed by thousands of fluttering white birds. She had left so much of herself behind there. To climb the crags one last time...

‘How will we find it?’

‘You won’t.’ Her eyes flashed with steel. ‘I’ll have to show you.’

‘Effie!’

The word was a low hiss. She turned in the hallway to see Fanny’s head peeking around the doorway of one of the servants’ staircases. Effie had excused herself to freshen up before the journey back, although the way Archie’s eyes had trailed after her as she left the room suggested he didn’t believe her.

She hurried over. ‘Fanny!’ she beamed, surprising the maid by embracing her; she too, it seemed, didn’t quite know to which world Effie belonged. ‘I hoped I’d see you!’

‘Come in here so we can talk without been seen,’ the maid whispered, looking furtively around as Effie slipped into the cool, shaded corridor. Fanny closed the door quietly, taking a good look at Effie in her new clothes. She was still clad in trousers and woollens, but they were the clothes Sholto had bought for her on their Grand Tour, and hung differently to the homespun garb in which she’d first arrived at Dumfries House seven months earlier. ‘...You look so well!’

‘Do I?’ Effie asked ruefully. ‘I don’t feel it.’

Fanny gave her a pitying look. ‘We’ve all been keeping up with y’r adventures!’

‘There’s been a fair few, I suppose.’

‘Do y’ know what they’re calling you over on Skye?’ Fanny giggled.

‘Aye, I did hear,’ Effie winced. ‘And it really wasn’t as dramatic as they’re making it sound.’

‘I’d bet it was!’ the maid laughed. ‘Mrs McLennan says drama follows you like a shadow!’

Effie chuckled; the cook had always been the first person to prop her up after one of her disasters and was forever trying to get a hot meal inside her. ‘How is she? How’s everyone? I’ve missed you all.’

‘No, you haven’t! You’ve been living in castles with the aristocracy!’

Effie reached for her hand, not wanting to think about any of that. ‘Honestly – I’ve missed you all. I so hoped I’d get to see you when I came here today.’

‘Poor Henry was beside himself when he came down earlier, saying you’d roared up in a fancy car with Archie Baird-Hamilton, of all people! What the devil are you doing with that rascal? You know his reputation, don’t you?’

Effie didn’t care any more about Archie’s reputation with the ladies than he cared about her humble background. ‘I’ve been told it many times. But he’s been a perfect gentleman to me.’

Fanny chuckled, shaking her head. ‘Don’t be fooled. It’s all an act.’

Was it? Or was he misunderstood? Underestimated? She had sensed his hunger for her on Raasay, but he’d not acted on it. He’d been honest and true to his word, and although she didn’t know if she could learn to feel for him what he felt for her, she was grateful to have him in her life. Sometimes she felt as if their Saturday outings were the only thing keeping her going during the long weeks spent sitting indoors at the factory loom, weaving tweed. It made her despair to think this could be it for her – a life spent caged, married to the grocer’s son or a Forestry man or the postie. She didn’t care a whit about money, but she cared about spirit. She would always fight to live a life of adventure, and Archie, for everything else that he might be – rascal, playboy, cad – was the same.

‘Barra says he was a frequent guest at her previous lady’s house parties,’ Fanny said with a scandalous glee. ‘And that one time, he visited three ladies’ bedrooms in one night...The hallboy was counting.’

‘Oh.’ Effie nodded, remembering Archie’s apprehensive look as she had left the room just now. She wasn’t the jealous one in their relationship. ‘Well, he and I are just friends. I’m not looking to fall in love again.’

‘No.’ Fanny looked at her with wide eyes.

‘...Is he here?’

The maid shook her head sympathetically. ‘Edinburgh. He went a few days ago. I’m not sure when he’s due back.’

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