Prologue
‘Settle down, 8B. Open your copy ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream, please.’
There was the usual murmur of conversation as the class did as their teacher demanded, the occasional groan that they were reading Shakespeare again.
‘Can’t we do something more interesting, sir?’ Josh called out. He was instantly quelled by Mr Lacey’s raised eyebrows.
‘You can contemplate that in detention if you’d prefer, Joshua,’ he said. ‘Shall I add your name to the list?’
‘No, sir,’ Josh mumbled.
Maura didn’t mind Shakespeare. She liked the way his characters spoke, the complex rhythms of the lines, even though she was hopeless at delivering them herself. She much preferred to listen to her classmates, who usually stumbled over the language just as she did but still couldn’t erase the beauty of the words. And of course, Mr Lacey always called on Fraser Bell to read. Maura was sure he could make Shakespeare’s shopping list sound like a sonnet if he tried.
‘Let’s see, where did we get to?’ Mr Lacey muttered. ‘Ah yes, act one, scene one – Athens. Josh, perhaps you’d like to read Egeus.’
‘No,’ Josh growled, too low for the teacher to hear but loud enough for those near him.
‘Bethany, could you read Theseus? Kyle, please read Demetrius,’ Mr Lacey went on, scanning the sea of heads for another victim. ‘Fraser, you take Lysander, and Maura, you can be Hermia. Start at line twenty-three,Enter Egeus, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius. That’s your line, Josh.’
Maura didn’t hear; she was too busy trying to control her suddenly flaming cheeks. She couldn’t say the lines. What was the stupid teacher thinking? He never chose her. Never.
‘Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke,’ Josh said in a flat monotone.
‘Thanks, good Egeus,’ Bethany read, her voice perky. ‘What’s the news with thee?’
There was a heavy pause as Josh took in the length of the monologue he had to deliver next. ‘Sir, there’s like a hundred lines.’
‘Just take them one at a time, Josh. You can do this.’
With a resentful glower, Josh stammered his way through. Bethany had a much smaller speech, and then Maura saw with horror that it was her line next. ‘So – so is Lysander,’ she managed. Her eyes fixed on the next chunk of Hermia’s dialogue, which was at least ten lines.Oh god, she thought weakly as she listened to Josh and Bethany,please let the fire alarm go off before I have to do this.
But there was no divine intervention. Somehow, she stumbled through the words, sweat prickling her scalp. The others delivered their lines. And then Fraser was speaking, and it was as though all the awkwardness in the room was blotted out by his smoothness. The whispering behind hands stopped. Everyone watched him as he brought the words to life.
Maura was so transfixed that she forgot she was meant to be responding, until Mr Lacey reminded her. Flustered, she glanced down. The text swam before her eyes.
‘Deliver your line again, Lysander,’ the teacher told Fraser.
‘How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale?’ he said, glancing over at Maura. ‘How chance the roses there do fade so fast?’
She gulped in a breath, willed her heart to stop thumping in her chest. ‘Belike for want of rain, which I could well be – beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.’
Fraser smiled encouragingly and kept his gaze fixed on hers. ‘Ay me! For aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.’
As the bell rang to save her from further humiliation, Maura understood two things. Firstly, that there was no one in the world who could say those words more perfectly than Fraser Bell. And secondly, she was utterly unworthy of being Hermia to his Lysander.
As her classmates slouched from the room, Maura hung back, hoping no one would notice her and take the mickey out of her terrible reading. But Fraser had stopped to speak to Mr Lacey – he was one of the last to leave too. ‘Nice reading, Mary,’ he said casually as she trailed reluctantly after him.
For a second, her brain froze. ‘It’s Maura, actually,’ she managed. ‘And you were good too.’
But she was too late – the moment had passed. Fraser was gone and she didn’t think he’d even heard.
Chapter OneTwenty-Two Years Later
The last time Fraser Bell visited Craigmillar Castle, he’d been imprisoned for treason.
‘Jacobite Prisoner #4’ had been a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it performance in the television seriesOutlander, although he’d enjoyed declaring one of the English soldiers ‘a stinking stream o’ pish’. The scenes at the fictional Ardsmuir Prison had taken several weeks to film, and he’d got to know the towering ruins of Edinburgh’s other castle well; the pair of gnarled yew trees at the entrance of the courtyard had been a favourite spot to eat his lunch, when the area wasn’t off-limits.
The atmosphere was very different today – no one had brandished an antiquated pistol in his direction, for a start, or called him Highlander scum. The lush lawns surrounding the ancient battlements were filled with large, open-sided marquees, and pastel-coloured bunting fluttered against the cornflower blue June sky. Banners announced that this was ScotPot, one of the biggest ceramics shows in Scotland, while visitors queued to pose for photographs between oversized sculpted letters spelling out SCOT and POT on either side of the iconic arched entrance. And somewhere inside the mêlée of tents and artists and eager pottery afficionados was Maura McKenzie, hopefully doing a roaring trade.
