She knew it very well. With the livestock shipped out and the paltry harvest already lifted from the ground, natural resources on the island were even more scarce. The battle for survival, always hard-fought there anyway, was tipped in the wrong direction.

It had now been eight days since the evacuation – but she had calculated on a rescue within four.

She pressed her forehead to the wet ground and sobbed. Oh God. What had she done?

Chapter Twenty

‘You’re too late,’ Mrs McLennan said over her shoulder, already carrying the breakfast plates back through to the kitchen, as Effie appeared at the doorway to the servants’ hall.

‘Oh . . . no, I . . .’ Effie demurred, her voice croaky. She had skipped breakfast quite deliberately, standing with her ear to the door as she heard the footsteps of the rest of the maids passing down the corridor, beginning their days. The last thing she had wanted was to share another meal with these strangers after last night’s humiliation. ‘I wasn’t hungry.’

The cook stopped walking as if she’d cursed and stared at her suspiciously. ‘You can’t not eat.’

‘I’m not hungry. Really.’

The cook’s eyes narrowed. ‘This is because of last night. It was too rich and now you’ve got the fear.’

‘No, it’s not that—’

‘Sit down,’ said the cook firmly, walking off with a tut. ‘I thought this might happen.’

‘Excuse me,’ a maid said impatiently, trying to get past her with a large vase full of drooping flowers.

Effie jumped out of her way, almost colliding with a valet coming in the opposite direction with an overcoat. ‘Sorry. Sorry,’ she muttered, hurrying over to sit alone at the long table, out of the way.

The servants moved past her with cold looks. The hall was a hive of activity, with footsteps echoing and voices carrying, the staff already engaged in their duties – footmen carrying in logs and polishing leather boots; maids arranging flowers on worktables, folding piles of laundry, the cooks chopping and stirring, the scullery maid drying copper pans that hung on hooks.

It amazed her that they were doing all this for Sholto. Well, his family, but to think that it required this many people to look after him – them – when over the course of that short week in May, he and his father had survived perfectly well in the factor’s house. They had had no staff, no cooks beyond the minister’s wife’s cooking. They had eaten boiled fulmar along with the rest of the village, bathed in the stream . . .

‘Here.’

She looked up to find the cook holding out a small plate with the brick-red border and ‘DH’ stamped in the middle. On it were two small oatcakes. In her other hand was a glass of milk.

‘Plain enough for you?’

Effie took it listlessly. Her stomach was completely empty. ‘Thank you.’