A band had started to play, and Elle noticed a few people moving out onto the dance floor, which she took as her cue to leave. An exhibitionist she was not, and she had two left feet to boot. Although, as she lay in bed and listened to the music and laughter from downstairs, part of her wished she was more outgoing. Aila would have stayed, she thought, suddenly missing her cousin once more.

She tapped out a text to her cousin and took a photo of her room before hitting send. Within a few minutes she had a reply.

What are you doing in a room alone? Go out and find a willing man … or unwilling, it really don’t matter!

Elle gave a small snort, before sending back an eyeroll emoji and reaching over to click off the TV. A few moments later her phone rang and she smiled as Aila’s name came up on the screen. They talked for a good half-hour before Elle started yawning, and the two girls said goodnight. It was what she’d needed after the long day—to hear a friendly, cheerful voice to lift her flailing spirits, and she found herself dozing off feeling a little less lonely.

SIXTEEN

Sixteen

The map was fine—as far as roughly drawn maps with a couple of stick-figure cows in a paddock and a signpost with an unintelligible road name on it went—but despite searching, Elle failed to spot any signposts or cattle anywhere.

Eventually, with no word from Gran, who could have at least summoned a long-lost ancestor or two for a bit of help with the directions, Elle came to the end of the road. Literally. She’d been following a wonderfully old mossy rock wall for a while on the right-hand side of the road, and as she came around the bend, she discovered it ended abruptly in a driveway to a property.

Maybe she wasn’t as lost as she’d thought, then.

Elle drove along the gravel road slowly until she pulled up out the front of a large stone house. As she stepped out of the car, the front door opened and a dark-haired man dressed in a white business shirt and smartly creased dark trousers came out, his face set in a polite but formidable expression. He might have been good-looking in a rough-around-the-edges kind of way if he smiled, she thought as he approached. He stopped a few feet away and looked at her expectantly.

‘Hello, I’m wondering if you can help me. I think I’m a bit lost.’

‘Look, if you’re here for an Outlander tour, you’re sadly mistaken. This is not the castle where Jamie grew up,’ he informed her in a pleasant, perhaps somewhat irritated, voice.