Contents (57)
- 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
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sharon Gosling
Toby frowned. ‘Who?’
‘A local developer called Dora McCreedy.’
‘McCreedy?’
‘You know of her?’
‘We’ve met several times. She’s already bought the rest of what was formerly the Braecoille estate, hasn’t she?
‘She didn’t buy it,’ the solicitor corrected him. ‘She inherited it. The rest of the land has been in her family for two centuries. It’s why it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that she would make an offer for the rest of it.’
‘Really?’ Toby said, surprised. ‘The way she talked about it, owning the land sounded like a recent thing. She’s certainly only recently fenced off the forest. The locals weren’t happy about no longer being able to walk through it freely.’
‘No, the ownership isn’t recent at all. That’s part of the sad history of the MacDonald family, I’m afraid. I asked Cullen about it when I first took over the account, because it made no sense to me that the land had been parcelled up the way it had. He told me that most of the estate was signed over as part of a legal settlement in the wake of the fire that destroyed the house. There was no real liquidity to settle the claim that had been brought, and it was quickest way to clear it. The family – what was left of it – was in chaos at the time, understandably.’
Toby frowned. ‘A claim against the MacDonalds by the McCreedys?’
‘Well, there had always been enmity between the two families – who knows why; one of those seams of bad feeling that stretches back in a place like this, where people rarely move far from where they were born. It probably originally had to do with property too – when both families were at their peak, they pretty much divided this valley between them. But this particular rankle was as a result of one of the sons of the family ending up in Australia as criminal punishment for something or other. I believe it was when the lighthouse was being built. He was working for the family.’
‘We came across a mention of this,’ Toby said. ‘His name was Edward McCreedy. For a while we thought he was E.A.M. But if there was a feud between the two families, how was one working for the other anyway?’
‘These things aren’t constant,’ Crosswick pointed out. ‘It’s not as if it’s daggers drawn 100 per cent of the time. Ire fades, then resurfaces, then fades away again. That’s why these things last so long. I imagine at the time there was no reason that they wouldn’t work for one another. Then, when the boy was sentenced, the feud was renewed. The McCreedy family said it was a false accusation and demanded restitution. All ridiculous because it wasn’t the estate that levelled the sentence, but still. It ended with the McCreedys owning that parcel of land.’
‘But… not the lighthouse or the hill,’ Toby pointed out.
‘No, nor the labourers’ cottages or the gatehouse,’ Crosswick added.