She opened the bedroom door and headed for the kitchen, but as she stepped through the lobby, her gaze caught something vast and shiny, something burgundy-coloured, in her peripheral vision. It was just a cursory glance and she was in the other room before her brain had processed that it was a car – and that the man talking to her father was not Norman Ferguson.

He greeted her with a look of relief, and she remembered he spoke not a word of Gaelic.

‘Your Lordship!’ she exclaimed.

‘Miss Gillies, there you are. I was just asking after you.’ The Earl of Dumfries was wearing an expensive suit and a homburg hat. ‘What a pleasure it is to see you again.’

‘And you, sir,’ she said hesitantly, unable even to swivel her eyes and look openly around the room. Was his son here? Outside? It had been 106 days since the sloop’s three-lighted masts had disappeared around Dun – catching a tide, racing a storm – and Sholto Crichton-Stuart had disappeared into the blackness. She’d heard nothing from him since. Lorna had grown used to her loitering by the postal hut whenever a ship came by and the mail was delivered, hoping there might be something for her . . . but a louder silence had never whistled through the Minch. The facts were plain – he had returned to his world and left her alone in her own.

‘As I was just telling your father . . .’ he began, and Effie could only imagine the torment for both men as they waited for her, unable to understand one another. Little wonder the earl seemed pleased to see her. ‘I’m on my way back from a few days’ shooting at MacLeod’s estate, and I thought I would look in and see how you’re finding things.’

I, singular. He wasn’t here, then. The adrenaline that had shot through her body like a bullet slowed to a stop. She felt her body sag with dismay. ‘. . . You thought of us, sir?’

‘Of course. Sir John can talk of nothing else at the moment, naturally. He and I have been discussing . . . certain matters pertaining to the archipelago.’ He smiled obliquely. ‘But it put you in my mind again and I thought, seeing as I was passing, I would look in. I hope you don’t mind the intrusion. I know I ought really to have called ahead.’

‘Not at all sir. You’re always welcome here.’ She tried to gather her wits, to remember the manners her mother had always insisted upon. ‘Would you like to join us for dinner, sir? We’ve plenty.’ Her stomach grumbled, as if in protest at the lie.

‘You’re too kind, but I’m afraid I must leave forthwith for an arrangement in Glasgow that has been long-standing. It is most tedious but nothing can be done.’