I remember trying to feel a sense of loss when the news was delivered to me in Switzerland. I only had the vaguest image in my brain of what he looked like. I missed the concept of having a father, knowing he was there for protection and advice when really needed. It was alarming to realize that at nineteen, I was essentially on my own.

So Binky became third duke, married a dull young woman of impeccable pedigree, and inherited Castle Rannoch. I, meanwhile, had been shipped off to finishing school in Switzerland, where I was having a spiffing time mixing with the naughty daughters of the rich and famous. We learned passably good French and precious little else except how to give dinner parties, play the piano, and walk with good posture. Extracurricular activities included smoking behind the gardener’s shed and climbing over the wall to meet with ski instructors in the local tavern.

Luckily some wealthier members of the family chipped in for my education and allowed me to stay there until I was presented at court and had my season. For those of you who might not know, every young woman of good family has her season—a series of dances, parties, and other sporting events, during which she comes out into society and is presented at court. It’s a polite way of advertising “Here she is, chaps. Now for God’s sake somebody marry her and take her off our hands.”

“Season” is actually a rather grand word for a series of dismal dances, culminating in a ball at Castle Rannoch during the grouse season, to which the young men came to shoot and by evening were all too tired to dance. Few of them knew the Highland dances that were expected at Castle Rannoch anyway, and the bagpipes echoing at dawn from the north turret made several young men realize they had pressing engagements in London that couldn’t wait. Needless to say, no suitable proposal was forthcoming and so, at the age of twenty-one, I found myself stuck at Castle Rannoch with no idea what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

Chapter 2

Castle Rannoch
Monday, April 18, 1932

I wonder how many people have had life-changing experiences while on the loo? I should point out that the bathrooms at Castle Rannoch are not the small cubicles one finds in ordinary homes. They are vast, cavernous places with high ceilings, tartan wallpaper, and plumbing that hisses, groans, clanks, and have been known to cause more than one heart attack, as well as such instant fits of insanity that one guest leaped from an open bathroom window into the moat. I should add that the windows are always open. It’s a Castle Rannoch tradition.

Castle Rannoch is not the most delightful spot at the best of times. It lies beneath an impressive black crag, at the head of a black loch, protected from the worst of gales by a stand of dark and gloomy pine forest. Even the poet Wordsworth, invited here during his ramblings, could find nothing to say about it, except for a couplet scribbled on a sheet of paper found in the wastepaper basket.