It was a moment before Effie realized a man had come to the door of the cottage and was standing there, watching them.

‘Oh hallo there, Mr Felton,’ Billy said, straightening up as he noticed him too. ‘I thought we might find you here. This is Miss Gillies. She’s going to be the new tenant of the cottage.’

‘Along with my father,’ she said, recovering herself. ‘Hello, Mr Felton.’

The man nodded in reply. He looked to have ten years or so on her. He had thick almost-black hair, bright hard eyes, calloused hands and his skin was so like hers – tanned a nut-brown from working outside – that he could have been a St Kildan himself. She half expected to see him barefoot with a few dead fulmars hanging from his shoulders.

‘Miss Gillies is organizing his lordship’s egg collection. Apparently she’s an expert birder and fowler.’

‘Oh, aye?’ The man raised an eyebrow.

‘Mr Felton is the gamekeeper,’ Billy explained. ‘The pheasantry is through the trees back there, a hundred yards or so away. He agreed to take on the restoration of the bothy for his lordship.’

‘I had a little time, seeing as the birds have been placed in the release pens now,’ Mr Felton explained.

‘Oh. I can’t imagine releasing birds,’ she said. ‘My life used to depend upon trapping and catching them.’

‘It’s the thrill of the chase here for his lordship. He likes the sport of the shoot as much as the reward.’

She remembered standing in the game larder the evening before, surrounded by the spoils, Mr Weir’s threats still ringing in her ears.

‘Well, I wasn’t expecting to see you or I’d have tidied the chippings,’ Mr Felton said, glancing behind him. ‘You must be wanting to see in?’

‘If it’s not too much bother.’

‘No. Go in.’

He stepped aside and she passed by. There was a small entrance vestibule on the front of the building, like a nose – somewhere to hang a coat, hat and their ropes (not that they would be needed here, but she couldn’t imagine not having them). It led onto a narrow corridor that ran straight through to the back of the building. Through a stable door, she could see into a garden behind, some fruit trees in the corners. In the house itself, the kitchen followed the same plan as the Lochaline bothy by sitting to the right, but instead of a bedroom opposite, there was a parlour. Each room had a fireplace but the floors were wooden, not stone, and the windows were significantly larger, swallowing the light in great gulps. She stood at the bottom of the staircase and looked up.

A staircase. It was a hitherto unimaginable luxury, but . . .

‘That will be too narrow and steep for my father,’ she said regretfully. ‘He won’t manage it.’