‘I think there’s only several dozen specimens left in the world, and they’re all in museums.’

‘Aye, well, his lordship does have a long reach.’

Effie didn’t reply. She couldn’t take her eyes off the bird. She had sunk to her haunches and was gazing at it through the glass, assessing the plumage, the markings on the beak, that distinctive shaping of the flightless wings. Was nothing impossible here, in this great house of beauty and grandeur, where a man could live like a king, where Mother Nature bent the knee and the dead lived on?

‘What is going on in here?’

The suddenness, as well as the sharpness, of the voice startled them both. Fanny jumped and Effie lost her balance and fell backwards as they both turned to find the housekeeper darkening the doorway.

‘M-Mrs McKenzie,’ Fanny stuttered, bringing her duster upright like a soldier to attention. ‘I was just dusting.’

But the housekeeper was no fool. She knew exactly what had been going on. ‘If his lordship wanted that . . . that . . . on display, it would be on display, would it not?’

‘Yes, Mrs McKenzie,’ Fanny murmured. She began tickling the cabinets again, but it was to Effie that the housekeeper was directing her look of acute disappointment.

‘The show’s over. Out of here now and get back to work, both of you. Fanny, you’re needed in the white drawing room.’

‘Yes, Mrs McKenzie.’

Fanny followed after the housekeeper’s brisk footsteps, but as she glanced back, her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright with a sense of adventure. Effie wouldn’t have called that an adventure; she’d just have called it getting caught not working. They might be similar ages, but she was beyond girlish games. Life had already shown her what could happen when things went wrong.

She watched as the door closed behind the two women with a loud click, leaving her alone again with the collections of stuffed animals and blown eggs, memories of the last summer playing in her head.

Chapter Twenty-One

She was lost. Navigating a mountain was one thing, a house like this quite another. Everything was so geometric and repetitive – one corridor looked much like another to her eye and she had no idea where to go next. She’d been distracted by Billy’s talk of Mr Weir and Mr Mathieson on the way over, that was the problem. Her brain had stopped paying attention to her feet.

A door to her left was ajar. If she could look in and see what it was, she might get her bearings . . . She peered into the large room, her eyes moving up, down and around, but it took only the merest glance to discern what it was and know that she’d never been here. She wandered in, wide-eyed, automatically setting her socks and boots down by the door as she absorbed the sight of the walls lined with books from ceiling to floor.