The stables were a short walk, several minutes downhill from the house, but she was still mildly breathless when she arrived, her heart hammering, her adrenaline levels up. She peered around the brick-red doors to find eight long faces nodding over stable doors. But no steward.

‘There you are,’ a voice said from on high.

She looked up to see Sholto standing on a rough-hewn stone mounting block at the far end, beside the enormous horse she had seen him riding the other week. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I was going to be stood up for a basket of eggs.’

What? She blinked, then blinked again.

‘Weir got hold of you, did he? I thought we’d go for a ride.’ He said it casually, as though it was something they’d discussed over breakfast. Not like someone who, during their last proper conversation two weeks earlier, had almost thrown her out on her ear and left her destitute.

She stared at him, mouth agape. He was wearing the riding jacket and tobacco jodhpurs he’d worn a few weeks earlier. If she hadn’t recognized him as a peer of the realm when he’d landed in St Kilda, she saw it now – absolutely everything about him was superior and commanding – but was that because he had changed? Or because she had?

She was too shocked, too confused, to reply. The relief alone that it wasn’t Weir waiting here almost felled her.

He looked her up and down. She was in her usual brown trousers; they were soft and, being baggy, perfectly comfortable for hours spent sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting through almost-identical eggs. ‘Yes, those should do fine,’ he said, slipping a foot into the stirrup and throwing a leg over the horse’s back. ‘You’ve ridden before, haven’t you?’

Effie looked at him as if he was completely mad, beginning to gather her wits again. ‘Where? Where would I have ridden a horse? You know we had none on the island.’

The groom made a sudden move, as if startled by her impertinent tone. Sholto threw a glance down at him, then back at her, and she saw that this was all an act for the servant: his casually offhand manner, resumptive friendliness . . . He didn’t want the groom to detect any of the tension that belied their every look, their every word.

‘Well, if you can tend a bull, you can certainly ride a horse. There’s nothing to it.’ He clicked his heels and his horse obediently moved forward several paces, allowing another groom, who was holding a saddled-up grey, to come alongside the stone block instead. ‘Gannon will help you up. I assume you’re happy to ride astride? All the ladies do now, really.’