You will know by now about my legacy to you, but if you get this letter, it will be the end of a treasure hunt, which you will only have embarked on if the short time we spent together meant as much to you as it did to me. You will have found Eilean Dobhran, my ‘Island of the Otter’. If you want it, it can be yours. Your father will explain. He may be an unsatisfactory father, but I think he is an honourable man who will carry out my wishes. I did not want you to be burdened with the house unless you really wanted it. You still have a choice. There are no binding conditions. If you decide to become the new owner of such an old and probably crumbling place, I ask three things: use it well and love it well and enjoy it. Do you remember me teaching you to recite a poem by Christina Rossetti? Those are still my sentiments exactly. I may or may not know what your choice will be, but I hope one day you find a great love, as I did, to share your life with, and if consciousness survives, as far as I am able, I will send you my blessing and my love.

Luciana

She couldn’t speak. Tears poured down her face. She handed the letter to her father. He read it too.

‘Unsatisfactory father indeed! She had a bloody nerve. What’s all this about a poem then?’ he asked, his own voice suspiciously husky.

She quoted:

‘For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.’

They had met Ian Drummond for lunch in the Sutton Place Hotel, a tall courtly old man in his late eighties. He confirmed what the Reverend Donald McBain had told her. After the death of the Contessa’s parents, despite having begged them to leave the castle to their daughter, as he felt was proper, and not to him, he had inherited Eilean Dobhran. He had never felt comfortable about it, had not welcomed the responsibility or needed the money he could get from the sale of it, and had always kept in contact with his cousin. After the death of her husband, and hearing she was ill, he’d gone over to Italy to discover what she would like him to do with the property and received the extraordinary reply that she hoped he would hold it available, for a twenty-five-year period, for Marnie-Jane Donovan, should she wish to purchase it out of the money she would inherit from the Contessa’s will. He was on no account to get in touch with the young woman himself – it was to be up to her to approach him.