Page 82 of The Midnight Secret

He turned and looked straight at her, hearing the forlorn note in her voice. She wasn’t being argumentative; some days she really did fear she was never going to know peace and happiness again. ‘At some point you will. The heart needs something to beat against.’ He shrugged. ‘One thing I learned early on,’ he said, ‘is that we have to accept things as they are and not how we want them to be. And you’re in a bad spot. I feel for you both, I do.’

‘...But not so much that you’re not going to chase me?’ she said wryly.

He caught her gaze in his and held it. This was no game. ‘I can’t help how I feel any more than you can. And if I thought you had a shot of being accepted by them and living happily as his wife, I’d stand aside.’ He said it so matter-of-factly, enduring his heartache as she endured hers. ‘You love him, I know, but the truth is, he needs you to be something you’re not and I don’t. I see you for everything that you are, because it’s everything that I am. We’re both outsiders, that little bit too wild. We’re the same.’ He glanced over at her. ‘I know you can’t love me yet – but we both recognize somethingfundamental in one another. Just don’t insult me by pretending we don’t.’

She swallowed. ‘...I wouldn’t.’

He nodded, looking away. ‘Which is why I’ll wait.’

They drove back with aching arms and trembling legs, much like their storm odyssey in theLady Taraas they had sailed down Loch Dunvegan.

‘Such a funny coincidence,’ Archie murmured as they drove back towards the setting sun. The sky was marbled peach and plum, high-vaulted above them like an Arabian tent. ‘Seeing that neighbour of yours in Skye.’

‘Norman? Aye, it was.’

‘I knew the second I laid eyes on him that I’d seen him before. He’s a handsome fellow. Striking.’

‘He’s certainly that,’ she mumbled, thinking of poor Jayne living with a beautiful monster.

Archie must have picked up on her ambiguous tone because he glanced over. ‘You don’t like him?’

‘I’m friends with his wife. She’s a lovely woman,’ Effie said as diplomatically as she could.

‘Enough said,’ he grinned. ‘Poor MacLeod, though, being lumbered with Mathieson’s possessions. I’m sure he would have wanted to burn anything that belonged to that man. He’s every bit as troublesome in death as he was in life.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the police have suspicions that Mathieson was stealing from MacLeod. A rare book of theirs turned up at Dumfries House, where one of his cronies worked.’

‘I know about that.’ Frank Mathieson himself had given the book to Effie, although it was pure coincidence that she had brought it to Dumfries House.

‘Well, what you won’t know – what nobody else knows, because the family is keeping it strictly on the QT – is that the losses run deeper than one valuable book.’

‘What do you mean?’ Effie frowned.

Archie regarded her for a moment. They both knew the information he was sharing was privileged, reserved for the aristocracy’s inner circle only. Finally he said, ‘Have you heard of the Sir Rory Mor horn?’

‘The what?’

He chuckled. ‘It’s a mouthful – and one of the most totemic Clan MacLeod artefacts. Right up there with the Fairy Flag and the Dunvegan Sword.’

Effie shrugged, shaking her head. ‘I’ve never heard of any of those things.’

‘No, you wouldn’t have; they’re of little concern to most other people. But the horn is absolutely fundamental to Clan MacLeod lore.’

‘Why would a horn be so important to them?’

‘It’s no ordinary horn; not to the MacLeods, anyway. It’s an ox horn from a wild bull that a MacLeod chieftain, several centuries back, slew on the way home from a night of carousing.’ He grinned at her, clearly approving of the story; it was the kind of anecdote that should be stitched tohisheels. ‘It’s why the bull is now the motif for the MacLeods – an emblem of their strength and virility – and it’s been tradition ever since that every new chief must drink claret from it, in one pass, to prove his manhood. Some historians date the horn back to the sixteenth century, but there are others who date it right back to the tenth. Either way, it’s ancient – and it disappeared last summer.’

‘What?’ Effie stared at him, feeling her heart begin to thud.

Archie nodded. ‘Why do you think MacLeod’s been kickingup such a stink about getting to the bottom of what happened to his factor? He’s hoping that if they can discover who killed Mathieson and why, they may stand a chance of being able to get the Mor horn back before anyone even knows it’s gone. Ever since the Dunvegan book was found in the possession of Mathieson’s accomplice at Dumfries House, MacLeod has been convinced the two of them had a black-market racket going.’

‘But why...why would anyone want an old book, or a h-horn?’ Effie croaked, trying to make sense of the distant memories that were surfacing. Events that had once seemed innocuous were taking on a new complexion in the light of this revelation.

‘Because the Scots have been flung far and wide over the past century, thanks to the Highland clearances – and now, of course, there’s this economic depression starving the rest of them out. There are thousands of MacLeods, Campbells, MacLennans, you name them, settled in Australia, Canada and America. Some of them have done very well for themselves in their new frontiers, and you wouldn’t believe what they will pay now for a bit of their heritage.’

Effie stared dead ahead, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. Images were rushing at her...What had she done?

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