meant to tell him, but in my own way, and in my own time. But now . . . how am I going to face him?”
Gemma felt a moment’s qualm at the idea of Hazel going home to her angry and disillusioned husband. But surely she was safer there than here, where Donald had been murdered. “Don’t,” she told Hazel. “Go back to London, but don’t see Tim just yet. Pick Holly up from Tim’s parents and go to our house. Then, when Tim’s calmed down a bit, you can meet him on neutral ground.”
“That’s good advice.” Hazel’s smile held a bitter irony.
“I might have given it myself, once. What about you?”
Gemma hadn’t reconsidered her own plans. With Hazel cleared by the police and off to London, there was nothing stopping her from going as well. She could ring Duncan tonight and tell him not to come—she could, in fact, pack her things and get on the train with Hazel.
Except that she found she couldn’t. She had known Donald Brodie, and had liked him, and someone had murdered him, had shot him while she slept a few hundred yards away. She could not—would not—leave it in other hands.
“I think I’ll stay,” she said slowly. “At least another day or two. If John and Louise can’t keep me here, I’ll find a room somewhere else. I want to see things . . . wrapped up.”
Standing, Hazel went to the bedside table and picked up a bottle of Scotch Gemma hadn’t noticed. It was, she saw, the last-issue Carnmore that Donald had given Hazel the previous night. Hazel cradled it, as if it were a living thing, stroking the label with a fingertip. “You intend to find Donald’s killer yourself,” she said quietly, not meeting Gemma’s gaze. “Do you think I would do less for him?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“As long as I know Holly’s all right, I’m staying, too.” She looked up, and Gemma saw an unexpected resolution in her eyes. “I’ll see Donald buried—I owe him that.”
Chapter Thirteen
The friends are all departed,
The hearthstone’s black and cold, And sturdy grows the nettle
On the place beloved of old.
—neil munro, “Nettles”
Grantown-on-Spey, May
Every year, since Livvy had left her father’s house to marry Charles Urquhart, she had come back to Grantown in May and September for an extended visit.
Usually, both Charles and Will had accompanied her, but as Will had grown older, he and his father had several times made their own expeditions.
These annual fortnights had been a necessary and much-anticipated element of Livvy’s life. There was shopping for staples and household goods not readily available in the Braes or Tomintoul, the refurbishing of their wardrobes, the time spent cloistered with her father in his study, the visits with her two aunts and her father’s neighbors, the catching up on the latest in fashion and gossip. Always Livvy had made the transition from coun-
try to town easily enough, but this time, on their arrival in Grantown in mid-May, she found herself restless and out of sorts, unable to settle to any of her ordinary pursuits.
First, there were the condolences to be got through, trial enough, so many months after Charles’s death, even if kindly meant. But as the days regained their ordinary pattern, she felt more alien, rather than less. She began to realize that although she and Charles had not spent much time together on these visits, she had been unconsciously aware of the solidity of his presence, and it was this that had kept the two parts of her life linked together.
Now she was adrift.
She had moved back into the room she’d occupied as a girl, hoping to find some connection with the person she had once been, sufficient unto herself, but that long-ago girl eluded her. The days were lengthening, and she found it difficult to sleep, as she always did at this time of year.
But now, she felt feverish as well, stretched, her senses raw with exhaustion.
Her father insisted that she and Will should accompany him to an upcoming dance at the Grant Arms Hotel, so she filled her time with sewing, making over a gown of her aunt’s. It was a dusky purple, a suitable color for a widow. Livvy reduced the puff of the sleeves and added a bit of lace to make it more stylish; this would, after all, be her first formal outing without Charles.
Her father took Will to the local tailor’s shop to be fitted for evening clothes, his first, and in the evenings Livvy helped him practice his dancing. Will was now, after all, the man of the house. If it was time for Livvy to face the world on her own, it was time for Will to give up boyish pursuits and take his place in Highland society.
None of these preparations, however, eased Livvy’s
discomfort as the night of the dance arrived. It had been seventeen years since she’d appeared in public without the armor of a husband at her side, and she felt as awkward as a girl. She stood just inside the door of the ball-room, watching the dancers glide by in a shifting blur of pattern and color. The air was filled with the scent of perfume, of warm bodies and hot candle wax, a tincture as dizzying as laudanum.
Will swung by her, looking quite the beau with old Mrs.
Cumming on his arm. When had he grown so tall? He had become a man in this last year, in more than looks, and Livvy felt a rush of pride. The girls would be noticing him soon, if they hadn’t already. In fact, Livvy saw one of the Macintosh daughters cast a simpering eye his way, but Will fortunately seemed oblivious. He caught her eye over Mrs. Cumming’s shoulder and smiled, his usually serious face alight with his pleasure.
Then Livvy felt ashamed of herself for indulging her own vanity. She was thirty-five years old, and widowed; she should be past worrying about such things. It was Will that mattered now, with his life spread before him.
But then Rab Brodie spun by her, with his angular sister, Helen, and her pulse quickened in spite of herself. When Rab returned after the next interval and offered her his arm, she hesitated only a moment. There was no impropriety, after all, in dancing, and if a little voice whispered in her ear that by such small steps the mighty are fallen, she pretended not to hear.
Gemma woke to the sound of whimpering. Her first thought was of the children, then, as consciousness came flooding back, she remembered where she was. She sat up, blinking.
It was past daybreak; a pale light filtered in through the
drawn curtains. In the next bed, Hazel tossed restlessly, moaning now. Then the moan rose to a scream, and Hazel sat bolt upright, panting, her eyes open but unfocused.
“Hazel!” Gemma leaped from the bed and crossed the gap between them, grasping Hazel’s shoulder.
“No. No!” Hazel cried out, flinching, and it was only when Gemma shook her firmly that she seemed to realize where she was. She looked up at Gemma, her face streaked with tears.
“It was just a dream,” soothed Gemma, patting Hazel as she would one of the boys. “Try not to think about Donald—”
“No, it wasn’t Donald,” Hazel said, shaking her head.
