A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  PRAISE FOR A MOST EXTRAORDINARY PURSUIT

  “A most extraordinary new mystery.”

  —Susan Elia MacNeal, New York Times bestselling author

  “A triumph!”

  —Tasha Alexander, New York Times bestselling author

  “An utter delight.”

  —M. J. Rose, New York Times bestselling author

  “[A] brilliantly conceived novel.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A witty Edwardian series . . . Gray cleverly integrates paranormal elements, romantic tension, and ancient lore with a spirited cat-and-mouse caper.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This historical will prove to be humorous and entertaining for fans of Agatha Christie–style mysteries, with a dash of the supernatural and Greek mythology.”

  —Library Journal

  “A sophisticated, playful read. Gray’s exquisite prose, superb wordplay, and chemistry between the main characters capture [the] reader’s attention. Those who enjoy surprising twists and turns and a tale that weaves time travel and the supernatural along with women’s rights into a romantic mystery will wait with bated breath for the next installment in this series.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF JULIANA GRAY

  “Extraordinary! In turns charming, passionate, and thrilling . . . Juliana Gray is on my autobuy list.”

  —Elizabeth Hoyt, New York Times bestselling author

  “Juliana Gray has a stupendously lyrical voice.”

  —Meredith Duran, USA Today bestselling author

  “Crackles with chemistry and romantic tension.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “[Gray] truly is the newest incandescent star in the romance firmament.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  TITLES BY JULIANA GRAY

  A Strange Scottish Shore

  A Most Extraordinary Pursuit

  The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match

  (novella)

  WRITING AS BEATRIZ WILLIAMS

  Along the Infinite Sea

  Tiny Little Thing

  The Secret Life of Violet Grant

  A Hundred Summers

  Overseas

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Juliana Gray

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Gray, Juliana, 1972– author.

  Title: A strange Scottish shore / Juliana Gray.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017019954 (print) | LCCN 2017030070 (ebook) | ISBN 9780698176492 (ebook) | ISBN 9780425277089 (softcover)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Historical. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction. | Historical fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3607.R395 (ebook) | LCC PS3607.R395 S77 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019954

  First Edition: September 2017

  Cover art © David Moore

  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To all those who have stood where history was made and felt its echo.

  Contents

  Praise for the Novels of Juliana Gray

  Titles by Juliana Gray

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  There was a time of great prosperity, when riches were abundant upon the land and disease was rare, and even the poor did not starve, but lived unto old age. Still there was great unhappiness, for misery is the lot of mankind, and a certain Lady, whose husband’s greed for treasure knew no limits, went one spring to the seaside with her servants and her only son, and swam in the nearby ocean every morning at dawn. Though the Lady knew great strength and skill in the sea, she wore always a thick, elastic suit to cover her legs and her arms, for this land lay in the far north of the country, and its waters were icy . . .

  THE BOOK OF TIME, A. M. HAYWOOD (1921)

  One

  KING’S CROSS STATION, LONDON

  August 1906

  The man stood near the corner of the booking offices as I emerged from the ladies’ waiting room, pretending to read a newspaper. He was dressed in the kind of comfortable suit of brown Harris tweed with which any fellow might clothe himself for a long train journey, except he wore it awkwardly, stiff and overly buttoned, like a schoolboy given his first grown-up jacket and trousers. His face I recognized. It was plain and wide, the pale skin hung upon a pair of broad cheekbones, and the hair underneath the tweed cap was a raucous ginger: a man I could never forget. I had first seen him in March, five months ago, upon the Greek island of Naxos.

  For an instant, we met eyes. I say an instant, but it felt like a minute or more, so charged was the connection between us, and so deep the shock to my bones. He made no sign of recognition, except for having taken the trouble to transfix me at all, and once he accomplished this act, he folded the newspaper twice, tucked it under his arm, and walked off in the direction of the departure platform, where he disappeared into the thickening crowd.

  According to the station clock, it was now forty-eight minutes past nine, and the Scottish express left King’s Cross station promptly at ten. The air was grossly hot and smelled of coal smoke and human perspiration. At the end of the platform, an enormous green locomotive rumbled and boiled, working up a head of steam; the space between us was a carnival of passengers, porters, carts, conductors, and luggage, and somewhere inside it all lurked the man with the ginger hair.

  My palm was damp inside its cotton glove. I renewed my grip on the handle of my valise—I have always carried my own luggage, whenever possible—and turned to the right, marching toward the first-class Pullman coach exactly midway down the platform. The conductor frowned slightly at my serviceable jacket and hat, at the valise in my hand. I held out my ticket. His face transformed. “Good morning, Miss Truelove,” he said, �
�and might I trouble you to follow me?”

  Thus we boarded the train.

  I cast a final glance down the platform as I mounted the steps, but saw no flash of ginger beneath a brown tweed cap. It was not until I settled in my seat—in a private compartment reserved entirely for my use by my employer, the Duke of Olympia—that I caught sight of him again, walking slowly toward the locomotive, hands shoved in his pockets. I craned my neck until he passed out of view, and then I rushed from the compartment to stick my head from the door of the coach, balancing dangerously from the iron steps while shreds of steam drifted around me. Nearly all the passengers had boarded; the last tearful farewells were taking place, the swift embraces between lovers. For a second or two, a series of baggage carts obscured the man’s back, until he emerged alone, the fringe of hair just visible at his collar, and swung suddenly to the left into a third-class carriage on the other side of the dining car.

  The whistle screamed. The shouts of the conductors rang down the platform. I pulled myself back inside the coach, while the beat of my heart echoed above them all, spinning my blood, and somebody’s hand came to rest on the sleeve of my jacket.

  “Is something the matter, Miss Truelove?” asked the conductor. He was about fifty years old, and his face briefly resembled that of my dead father: kind and serious, bracketed by a handsome pair of muttonchops. I stared at him until the shrill whistle cried again, and the vision went away. The whiskers dissolved, the man’s face reassembled into its plain, haggardly London self.

  “Thank you for your concern,” I said, “but I am quite all right.”

  • • •

  I suppose I must have fallen asleep after I returned from the dining car at half past one o’clock, for when I opened my eyes, a woman had taken the seat across from me. A light Midlands mist drizzled against the window glass, and a note of roses had joined the damp odors of the train compartment. The newcomer was short and somewhat stout, wearing a blouse of fine white silk atop a plaid skirt, and a handsome black velvet jacket over all. Her hair was brown and shining, parted exactly down the middle, and her blue eyes frowned at me, as they usually did. The roses, I knew, belonged to her.

  “It is most unseemly to fall asleep in a public conveyance, Miss Truelove,” she told me.

  I yawned and stretched. “Hardly a fair criticism, from a woman who has always had the good fortune to travel privately.”

  “A head of state cannot possibly travel on a public railway carriage.”

  “I beg leave to point out that you’re doing exactly that, just now.”

  “Ah,” said the Queen, looking wise, “but you don’t believe I exist, do you? A figment of your imagination, as you call me.”

  I was too fatigued to engage in games of logic, so I turned my head to look out the window, where the middle of England presently unrolled in curves of dull, foggy green. “To what do I owe the favor of this audience?” I asked the Queen’s reflection.

  “Some time has passed since last we conversed—”

  “And for those weeks of peace I am wholly grateful.”

  “Don’t interrupt. I want a word with you.”

  “So I guessed.” I stuck my hand by my hip, where it pressed against the side of the carriage, to assure myself that the leather portfolio was still tucked between the two. “I suppose I have misbehaved in some way? Disappointed you by thought or deed?”

  “You already know how I feel about the matter of your employment with the Duke of Olympia. I believe I made that plain when you first took up his offer to direct this little institute of his—”

  “The Haywood Institute is not small,” I said. “Only men’s minds are small.”

  “As it happens, however, I am not here to remonstrate with you about that particular folly, which is beyond our immediate hope of correction. I am here to warn you.”

  “Warn me. Of course.” I turned to face her. “What dangers do you imagine for me this time?”

  “In the first place, your rushing down to Scotland to begin with, when you were safely in residence at the duke’s house in Belgrave Square, however unsuitable the manner of your employment.”

  “The duke has taken up an invitation to a shooting party in the north of Scotland, and requested my assistance urgently.”

  “That, above all, should have warned you off. Any urgent request on the duke’s part is likely to prove unsuitable at best, and dangerous at worst. I don’t see why he couldn’t ask his private secretary to perform this task, since the fellow’s already in his company.”

  “Because—as the duke’s telegram informed me—he has discovered another one of his mysterious objects, and Mr. Miller, for all his admirable qualities, is not especially qualified to assist him in that kind of investigation.”

  “I don’t see why not. I don’t see why he should require a woman to perform this task, when she lacks the strength and judgment of a man.”

  “A quaint sentiment, from a woman who once reigned over half the globe.”

  The Queen lifted her chin and turned it to the window.

  “Besides,” I continued, “the investigation may involve some further exploration of the duke’s particular talent, of which Mr. Miller is—as yet—wholly unaware.”

  The Queen fixed her hands upon her lap and said, “In the second place, you ought to be aware that there is a man lurking on this train who has followed you all the way from London.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You know? You seem remarkably unconcerned.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I do? I am untrained in the arts of spycraft. If the man continues on the service to Inverness, I shall simply report the matter to the duke, upon my arrival.”

  “Well!” said the Queen.

  “If you wish to be of actual help, perhaps you can tell me which carriage he presently occupies.”

  “Number four,” she said, with an air of reluctance.

  “Interesting. He hasn’t moved any closer. I suppose that means he already knows my destination.”

  “I don’t know what it means, Miss Truelove, but the fellow has a suspicious look to him, which I don’t like a bit. You would do well—”

  “I know exactly what he looks like. His face is sewn upon my memory, I assure you. I first encountered him on the island of Naxos, last spring, when I traveled there—if you’ll recall—to free the duke from his captors.”

  “Of course I remember that disaster of an expedition,” snapped the Queen, “which brings me to my third warning—”

  “It was not a disaster. We were perfectly successful in rescuing His Grace from his predicament.”

  “It was a disaster for you, Miss Truelove, for any number of reasons. One of which, I regret very much to tell you, has recently boarded this very—”

  In the middle of her sentence, the door of the compartment slid open, and the cheerfully handsome face of the Marquess of Silverton inserted itself through the opening, spectacles somewhat befogged by the warmth of the atmosphere.

  “Why, hullo there, Truelove,” he exclaimed. “What a jolly marvel of a coincidence. Do you mind if I join you?”

  The Queen disappeared, like the extinguishing of a light.

  • • •

  No doubt you’ve heard of Lord Silverton. His name, after all, figures often in those pages of the newspaper that inform a breathless public of the antics of the rich and the celebrated; they might, for form’s sake, call him by the abbreviated Lord S , but you must know whom they mean. After all, no other Lord S exists who might conceivably be confused with this one.

  I regret to say that the editors of these newspapers have exaggerated neither his exploits nor his general character. If anything, he’s more Silverton in person than in print. His face is dazzlingly handsome, even adorned by that pair of scholarly spectacles, and the top of his head measures nearly six and a half feet a
bove the ground. His magnificent height and his fair hair and golden skin give you the overall impression of the sun, of Apollo, particularly during the summer: an almost stupefying effect. Sitting in that dull compartment, taken quite by surprise, I stammered out something that must have sounded like acquiescence, for he ducked under the doorway and folded himself into the seat across—he carried no luggage at all—and took my hands.

  “My dear Truelove,” he said, fixing me with a pair of familiar blue eyes, “how very good it is to see you. You look remarkably well, all things considered.”

  “Why, what does that mean?”

  “I mean you’ve stuck yourself in London all summer long, working for that damned institute of Haywood’s, instead of enjoying yourself in the good, fresh air of an English summer.”

  “As you have, you mean?”

  “Ah,” he said, squeezing my hands, “just how did you know about my summer? I hope you haven’t been inquiring after me, Truelove. Smacks of attachment, you know. Might raise my hopes.”

  I pulled my hands away. “Don’t joke.”

  “You know I’m not joking. My offer still stands.”

  “I am not going to accept your perfectly absurd offer of marriage, Lord Silverton, even if I believed you actually meant it. Particularly after such news as I’ve heard of you, these past months.”

  “News? News?”

  I turned my gaze to the handsome electric sconce on the wall to his right. “If my information is not mistaken, sir, at least three different women have enjoyed the favor of your company in the months since you swore your eternal fidelity to me.”

  “I protest,” he said, leaning back in his seat, throwing his long arm along the row of headrests. “I did not swear any such nonsense. My eternal fidelity to one Emmeline Truelove was conditional upon her acceptance of my offer of marriage. In any case, dearest girl, that of which you’re speaking was all business. Just ask the dowager duchess. Business, business, business.”

  “You must have been working very hard, then.”