He looked back at her, time suspending. She leant forward and kissed him, feeling the tension in his body as her story settled in him like rocks. She felt his wet cheeks against hers, the sweetness of his lips as he drew her closer and kissed her the way he had on the rope, when they had been hidden from the world and nothing and no one else existed. They were still hiding, but instead of clinging rigidly to rocks, she wasn’t afraid now to fall. She let him pull her to the ground, sighing as his hands travelled over her, the lush grass smelling sweet in the night air as the owl in the far-off tree called forlornly for its mate.

Chapter Thirty

‘Effie!’

The voice was carried off by the wind, the sheet in her hands flapping and twisting from her like a naughty child as she tried to peg it to the line. Her hair kept striking her cheeks with tiny whip-cracks, but she merely smiled in reply. Nothing would take the happiness from her heart today. She felt reborn, for once her bare feet not spread on the ground but hovering an inch above it as if she’d been kissed by angels.

But she had been kissed by someone altogether more earthly. She could still smell the grass on her skin, the cool damp soil in her hair and as she had lain beneath him, she had felt as if he had pressed her into the very ground, making a new cast for her so that she would belong here now. Let this be her home!

Her eyes closed, her body falling still as she fell into another memory of last night. At last she understood the fevers that had overwhelmed her friend, Flora talking excitedly in a high, fast voice, eyes burning, as Effie had watched on, cross-legged and cross at her exclusive happiness.

‘Effie!’ Something hard tapped on her shoulder and she whirled round to find her father standing there, regarding her with a quizzical expression. ‘Are y’ deaf, lass? Or sleeping standing up? Billy’s here.’

‘Billy?’ She left the rest of the laundry in the basket and followed him inside. Her father’s lack of English had made him more timid in recent weeks. Felton spoke Gaelic to him, of course, and that was a comfort, but all the new faces, the unspoken pecking order and grandeur of the great estate, left her father overwhelmed.

Sure enough, Billy was standing on the front path, holding a soft bundle wrapped in calico. He had his back to her, his face turned up towards the sun.

‘Hallo there, Billy,’ she said, coming through the hall, her father falling back at her shoulder now.

Billy whirled around. ‘Hallo, Effie. Mrs McKenzie wanted me to bring this over to you.’

He held out the bundle and she took it from him. ‘What is it?’

‘Your clothes. They’ve been washed and pressed.’