‘Sir, if I can just rope you up.’ Sholto held his arms out wide as she carefully wound the rope diagonally over his shoulder and around his torso, watching her all the while. She knew they were both aware of how her body lightly grazed his as she reached over and around him. Her eyes fell to his incorrectly buttoned shirt and it was all she could do to resist the urge to redo it for him, even though she liked it. It felt like this new sense of ‘undoneness’ brought him more within her orbit, as though the isle was rewilding him. ‘There. Now you’ve your harnesses, we’ll join the ropes so you are connected one to the other.’

All eyes were upon her as she expertly knotted the ropes together. ‘And what do you call that join, Miss Gillies?’ he asked, standing close again.

Effie felt her heart skip several beats at his audacity. There was something flagrant in his manner. The factor was right there! But it wasn’t she who was standing by him; she was simply doing what Lord Sholto had asked. The factor could make no complaints.

‘A bend, sir.’

‘Ah . . . In France, I think they called it a figure eight follow-through.’

‘A figure eight follow-through,’ she echoed, trying out his words like they were clothes to fit.

Satisfied with their ropes, she tied her own harness and tested the fixings several times. ‘Ready then, sir?’

Sholto nodded, coming to stand by her.

‘A little space between you is better, sir,’ the factor said. ‘In case of swinging.’

‘Swinging. Right.’ Sholto took a single step to the side.

Effie studied the descent. It was an eight-hundred-foot drop to the water below; the first hundred feet or so being mainly large grassy areas which lay like blankets between rocky outcrops – still too vertiginous to walk down without being roped – before the turf gradually gave way to sharply tilted scree, and then a sheer face of granite.

‘We’ll go together on my word, then,’ she said, looking up at him and trying to sound like a guide in front of the factor. ‘Remember, as yesterday – lean back on straight legs, tilt your body in, small movements. Trust your anchor.’

He looked back, bemused, at the man sitting on the grass, the rope looped around his waist, his legs bent before him, heels dug in. ‘Do you hear that, Mr Mathieson? I must place all my trust in you. Don’t drop me, will you? I’ll be depending on your strength and stability. This is a true compliment of your abilities.’

‘Very kind of you, sir,’ the factor nodded, but he didn’t preen at the flattery as usual, doubtless aware of the risk that if Sholto fell, he might well be pulled after him.