She felt sick. She was trembling. His eyes looked black with madness, crazed with alcohol, for she could smell the whisky on his breath. How long had he been drinking for? Since the news about the evacuation, when he’d learnt he was out of a job? When he’d realized his control and power over her was about to end? He was a man who had lost everything in one afternoon. A man with nothing left to lose.

‘Please. Just let me go,’ she whimpered. ‘I’m not good enough for you. You deserve someone better.’

‘I know,’ he agreed, almost calm. ‘But for reasons my better self doesn’t understand, the heart and body wants you. Only you.’ The twisted smile came back. ‘When I lie with other women, it’s always you I imagine beneath me—’

A scream, a cry of horror, escaped her then. She tried to rip her arm free, terror and disgust shooting through her, but he only held her tighter. Tears were streaming silently down her cheeks and she hadn’t even realized.

‘Please, just let me go. Sholto’s coming. He’ll be here any minute.’

The sneer grew wide. ‘No, he’s not. No one’s coming. But thank you for confirming my worst suspicions. At least I know now that I’m not going mad.’

Going mad? He was mad already! He twisted the skin of her arm so that it burned, felt like it would split. She gasped but he didn’t stop. ‘Did you know, I wait all winter for the snow and the rain and the winds to pass, for the spring tide to bring me back here again; and during those long months of waiting, I think of what might make you happy. The things I might bring to you that will make you smile. But you never do smile. You look at me with that look of yours – like you’re better than me, like I disgust you.’ A sound, almost of anguish, escaped him. ‘Why do you do that?’

‘I . . . I—’

‘I told myself it was because you were green. You didn’t know how to love a man yet. You scarce know yourself as a woman. You don’t dress like one, behave like one. It’s like you want to deny what you are.’

‘I just try to support my father,’ she whispered desperately.

‘Why? He’s ashamed of the way you go about,’ he scoffed. ‘Can’t you see that? He just wants a son like Archie MacQueen, like Ian McKinnon.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Oh, but it is. I see it on his face when you’re standing there in your dead brother’s clothes . . .’ She crumpled at the mention of John; she knew it was true. ‘Which was why I knew that when I came out this time and asked him for your hand—’

Her eyes widened in horror.