Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
The girl shrugged. “I’ve never heard it called that.” She turned and called over to an older woman who was sitting alone in the conservatory gazing out over the Sound while toying with her gin and tonic. “Morag, have you ever heard the beach down by called Charlie’s beach?”
Morag turned, and Fin saw that she must have been a striking woman in her day. She had strong features and smooth, tanned skin beneath a chaotic pile of thick, dyed blond hair, giving perhaps the impression of a woman in her fifties, although he could see that she was probably nearer seventy. Both wrists dangled with silver and gold, fingers crusted with rings, and she took a sip of her G & T, holding her glass in an elegant hand adorned with long, fuchsia-pink nails. She wore a patterned bolero jacket over a white blouse above diaphanous blue skirts. She was not at all someone you would expect to find in a place like this.
She directed a beatific smile towards them. “I have no idea, a ghràidh,” she said speaking in English, but using the Gaelic term of endearment. “But if I were to take a guess, I’d say it would probably be because that’s where the French frigate, the Du Teillay, landed Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Seven Men of Moidart to raise an army for the ’45 Jacobite rebellion against the English.”
“I didn’t know that,” the girl said.
Morag shook her head. “They teach you children nothing in school these days. Charlie reputedly sheltered in a cove down there called Coilleag a’ Phrionnsa. The Prince’s Dell.” She turned rich, brown eyes on Fin. “Who wants to know?”
Fin lifted his pint and crossed into the conservatory to shake her hand. “Fin Macleod. I’m trying to trace the family who used to live on the croft just below your house.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh. You know who I am, then?”
He smiled. “Not before I got to the island, no. But it didn’t take long for someone to tell me. I’m making a wild guess here, and it’s nothing to do with the pink Merc in the car park. You’re the actress, Morag McEwan?”
She beamed. “A good guess, a ghràidh. You should have been a policeman.”
“I was.” He grinned. “Apparently I should know you from television.”
“Not everyone’s a slave to the box.” She sipped at her gin. “You were a policeman?”
“Just plain old Fin Macleod now.”