A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  “A few hours.”

  “I slept none. I expect I turned over every word he said a hundred times.”

  “Did you conclude anything?”

  “Only a deep fear, Miss Truelove, that I myself am the unwitting cause of all our misery.”

  I bent my head and closed my eyes, and for some time we stood there, linked by thought and by an intensity of emotion, by our hands knit together, by an experience, an understanding we could not put into words but rather shared voicelessly.

  “You’re afraid for Silverton, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “What pains me,” he said, “what frustrates me, is that I believe I know where he is. Not consciously, of course. But that this knowledge exists somewhere inside my person, and I simply cannot locate it. I don’t have the keys to the door that guards it.” He paused. “Do you understand what I mean?”

  I didn’t reply. As he was speaking those words, I had become aware of something else. I felt a faint tingling enter my palms, like a tremor of very weak electricity, originating from within the duke’s own body and passing into mine through the skin of his hands.

  “Miss Truelove?” the duke said.

  The tremor grew stronger, but in erratic, unsteady, minute surges that channeled all my thought, all my attention into that small area of flesh that connected me to Max. Behind my closed eyelids, a vision flashed and disappeared and returned, in the same tempo as the crackling in my palms: a room, a window, a fine tapestry draped upon a wall of stone. On the tapestry, a long-haired woman rising from the sea. And somewhere—not inside that room but near it, surrounding it—a beloved presence I could neither see nor smell nor hear, but rather felt in my bones.

  “Ah,” said Max, and the electricity strengthened mightily, and the vision clarified before me, and a black, cold wind seemed to gust over my head and down the strands of my hair, lifting them from my scalp, engulfing me, wrapping each nerve in agony that was also rapture; or rather rapture that was also agony.

  I cried out and pulled away. The vision winked out, and I staggered back, clutching the table behind me in order to save myself from falling. The duke dropped into the chair, panting hard.

  “My God,” I whispered.

  Max lifted his head. His expression was shocked, enervated. We stared at each other in a kind of daze. I put my hand atop my chest, atop my heart that beat like the firing of a gun.

  “Are you—” he gasped.

  “Yes. You?”

  “A moment,” he said, closing his eyes, leaning his elbows on his legs and his head into his hands. I wanted to go to him, to kneel beside him and comfort him, but I could scarcely move. My body felt as if it had been drawn through a machine. The duke still wore his peaked cap, and I could not see his face beneath its shadow. Behind him, the library shelves stood full of old books. I could smell the leather of their bindings. And yet, for an instant, I seemed to glimpse a tapestry upon that wall, in place of the shelves.

  I said, with effort, “What—tell me—what were you thinking about, just now? When you—when we—”

  “Silverton.” He paused. “I saw a room.”

  “This room,” I said.

  He lifted his head. Our gazes met, and his eyes widened. “Yes.”

  I cannot say how long we remained like this, staring at each other inside that silent library, while the breeze pulsed gently from the broken window. We were perhaps ten or twelve feet apart, and yet this small distance was that of a gulf, unbridgeable. I made some movement toward him, and he raised his hand as if to ward me off.

  “Don’t.” His voice was raw, as if rubbed with sand. “Don’t touch me.”

  “It won’t happen. Not unless you make it happen.”

  “I don’t know if I can stop it. I don’t know how to control it.”

  “Yes, you do. Max, you do. Don’t you see? This is how it’s done.” My strength was returning to me. A swell of energy rose through my belly and down my limbs, lifting all my vital organs to a strange, sublime euphoria. I straightened from the table and stepped toward him, and at first he made some trifling movement to repulse me, but I knelt and laid my hand on his knee. “This! The force of your concentration.”

  “We don’t know that. The danger—if I misjudge, if I have it wrong, the slightest adjustment—the consequences—”

  “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of it. You can master it. You must master it, Max, you must find a way to master it, because that’s the way to find him. Don’t you see? This force, it’s leading you to him, it’s leading us to Silverton. He’s there. I felt him.”

  “Ah, Miss Truelove.” Max wound his hands together, away from mine. “How your faith—”

  The sound of voices reached us in the same instant. The knob rattled.

  “How strange,” someone said, in imperious female tones, muffled by the thick wooden door. “It seems to be locked.”

  The Lady was much astonished, and demanded the Fisherman return her to her people, for she was proud and did not wish to live in poverty, and missed besides her young son, who was the jewel of her life. So the Fisherman took her with grieving heart upon his boat, and together they traveled the shore of the island, and all the islands around it, until at last the Lady said in despair to the Fisherman, ‘It is no use, for this land is not my own, this time is not my time, and I am lost in this grim place forever . . .’

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

  Five

  For a second or two, Max and I sat frozen—he on the chair, I on my knees beside him, one hand still wrapped around the ball of his immense knee. The doorknob rattled again, and then a brisk knock sounded on the wood.

  “Max!” called the woman. “Are you in there?”

  “Lady Annis,” I whispered.

  “Damn.”

  “Don’t, Max. Please.”

  He lifted my hand carefully from his knee and kissed my knuckles. “Deception only leads one further into difficulty, Miss Truelove,” he said, and he summoned himself, rose with great effort, straightened his jacket, and walked to the door. I had just enough time to rise and fly to the table, to turn aside and gather my composure while Max released the lock and opened the door.

  “Why, there you are!” Lady Annis exclaimed. “Why on earth—”

  The sight of me interrupted her. There was the briefest moment of silence, of awkward comprehension, no more than a second. Max said, “Miss Truelove was assisting me in a scientific experiment.”

  “Naturally,” said her ladyship. “I hope you have reached a satisfactory conclusion? The constable is here.”

  I looked up in time to see Lady Annis step aside, ushering a man into the room. He was elderly, diffident, wearing a rough, homespun uniform of navy blue and his cap in his hands.

  He ducked his head. “Your Grace.”

  “His name is Mr. Eddes,” Lady Annis said dryly. “I’m sure you have a great deal to discuss. I shall tell Mrs. Campbell to send in tea.”

  “Coffee, if you please, Lady Annis,” said the duke.

  “Coffee, of course,” she snapped, and left the room.

  “Mr. Eddes,” said the duke, “may I offer you a chair?”

  “If it’s all the same, Your Grace, I’ll just stand. I don’t wish to take up your time. I understand there’s a shooting party?”

  The duke consulted his watch. “Not for another hour, I believe.”

  “This is the window, right here?”

  “Yes.”

  Max and I exchanged glances as the fellow ambled across the room to the open window. When he reached it, he looked down and whistled. “I don’t guess anyone could survive a fall like that.”

  “Has a body been recovered?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am.” The constable turned. “The fellow was known to you?”

  “Only slightly,” the duk
e said. “And not by name. He told us his Christian name, just before he leapt from the window. Hunter.”

  “Hunter? That’s a strange name, if you don’t mind my observing.”

  “I thought so, too. I thought perhaps it might be an alias.”

  Mr. Eddes reached under the brim of his cap to scratch his forelock. “And you’ve got no idea why he was here? That’s what Mr. Magnusson said.”

  I cleared my throat. “He seems to have been looking for a portfolio of papers I had in my keeping.”

  “And where are those papers now, Miss—Miss—”

  “Truelove,” said the duke. “They were stolen from her room at the North British Hotel, unbeknownst to our man last night.”

  The constable’s eyebrows rose slightly. “A fair important set of papers, then?”

  “They were scientific papers, to do with an institute of which the duke is patron,” I said.

  “And you, Miss Truelove? What do you have to do with the institute?”

  “Miss Truelove is its director,” Max said.

  “Director!”

  “Yes. Those papers contained a number of details regarding a complex scientific experiment, one that Miss Truelove and I are presently in the process of conducting. We believe this man sought to profit from our knowledge, and has unfortunately perished for his trouble.”

  “I see,” said the constable. He looked from the duke to me, and back again. His expression, wizened and rather stupid, seemed not to see anything at all, except perhaps something that did not exist.

  “Thank goodness Mr. Magnusson happened along when he did,” I said, shaking my head.

  Mr. Eddes spoke to the duke. “We’re fortunate, sir, most fortunate you weren’t harmed. I shall ask about the village to see if anyone saw this fellow passing through. But I believe Mr. Magnusson was right, when he said we were well rid of him.”

  “Is that what Mr. Magnusson said?” I asked.

  “Right about. If you can think of anything else, Your Grace, any other detail that might assist us to identify his remains, when they do turn up, I hope you’ll remember me. I won’t take any more of your time.”

  “But—”

  Mr. Eddes turned and looked again out the window, nodded in some sort of strange satisfaction, and doffed his cap once more in farewell.

  “I’ll see myself out,” he said, and left the room, nearly overturning the oversized tray of coffee just then borne through the doorway by an undersized maid.

  • • •

  “You must speak to Lady Annis before you depart with the shooting party,” I told Max as we drank our coffee.

  “Damn Lady Annis.”

  “None of this is her doing, remember.” I poured another cup with a hand that, remarkably, did not shake. “Besides, if you don’t, she will make my life a misery.”

  “Why, whatever for?” he began, and then: “Oh. I see your point.”

  “She paid me a visit last night, before I returned downstairs. I will not say what she told me, or the substance of our conversation. But I must warn you that her affections ought not to be trifled with.”

  He made a noise of dismissal. “No doubt we remain safe from that danger.”

  “My dear sir. Can you not believe the lady might possibly love you for your own fine qualities?”

  “Fine qualities.” He shook his head. “Miss Truelove, I’m under no illusions. I have neither beauty nor charm. What qualities I possess are hardly the sort to recommend themselves to young ladies. I expect, if I canvass Lady Annis in my present state, I shall do my suit more harm than good.”

  I started to interrupt him, but he held up his hand.

  “Nevertheless, there is your honor to consider, and I will not have you made the subject of malicious gossip. I will find her at once and make myself plain. That, at least, I am well equipped to do.” He drained his cup and set it down on the tray, as if girding himself for battle.

  I coughed gently. “Sir, if I may be so bold as to offer a suggestion.”

  “Of course, Miss Truelove. I value your opinion above all others.”

  “Not too plain, if you catch my meaning. Women like a little mystery.”

  The duke knit his brows and made a little groan. “I do sometimes wish we might return to days of yore, when these things were done in the proper manner.”

  “The proper manner?”

  “By proxy. Good day, Miss Truelove. We will consult again when I return.” He turned and made for the door, and just as his hand touched the knob, he stopped and patted his pockets. “Ah! I nearly forgot. See what you can make of this, while I’m gone.” He struck back toward me and pulled a square of folded paper from inside his jacket.

  “What’s this?”

  “Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I remembered what had brought me down to the library at midnight to begin with. Something I spotted inside the chest, when Mr. Magnusson was with us. I didn’t mention it at the time—”

  “Inside the hidden compartment,” I said. “I saw it, too.”

  “Ah, I thought you had. In any case, there was no question of sleeping after all that damned show with Hunter, so back I went downstairs to investigate.”

  I took the paper. “And this is what you found?”

  “Yes. Wedged in rather snugly, but I managed to pry it loose. I’m afraid I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. But I expect you, Miss Truelove, will have no trouble at all.”

  • • •

  A strange expression, falling in love. I have always objected to it. It implies some accident, some want of agency; it suggests a particular moment, a particular action, a particular sensation, a moment, an instant in which you travel—you plunge—that vast distance from indifference to adoration.

  I did not fall in love with Lord Silverton, during the course of our voyage through the Mediterranean last spring. There was no sudden revelation in which I realized he inhabited my heart. I suppose you might say he crept there, inch by inch, until it seemed he had always existed inside me, even before I knew him; as if he had only given his name and his face and himself to an unknown idol I had quietly carried about in my soul.

  Of all the hours I spent by his side, I remember our parting best. By then I knew each dimension of his face, each expression, the exact blue shade of his eyes in every different light, the curve of his lip, the line of his shoulders, the angle of ribs and hips and legs, every smile, every frown, the crinkle of his eyes when he laughed—which was often—the glint of his hair, the size of his ear, the rhythm of his stride, his opinion of Julius Caesar and German wines and American racehorses and Adam Smith, his taste in music (execrable) and his taste in painting (modern), his love for his father, his worship of his stepmother, his adoration for his sisters and brother, his delight in automobiles, his disgust for bicycles, his talent for cricket, his ineptitude at golf, the uncanny operation of his sensory instincts, the merriment of his wit, the melancholy of his interior, the age at which he had lost his virginity, the age of the woman who had relieved him of it, how he took his tea, how he took his women, when he took his bath, each tooth, each hair, each finger, each breath, each strike of his heart; those things he had not told me or shown me, I understood by instinct.

  But as I stood in the sleepy, dusty plaza on Skyros, shaking his hand while the ferry blew its horn behind him, I realized I didn’t know him at all. An hour earlier, I had made a confession to him, laying bare a secret I had never meant to reveal to anyone, and now, feeling the pressure of his palm against mine, the pressure of his gaze against mine, I had not the slightest idea what it meant to him. I had not the slightest idea what I still meant to him.

  Next to me, the Duke of Olympia was making his own farewells. I had forgotten my hat, and the sun burned the back of my head, burned my skin through the material of my dress. The wind was strong and full of salt. Silverton’s hand left
mine, and his head turned in the direction of his valet, who was shouting instructions for the disposition of his lordship’s many trunks. I opened my mouth to say something, to say anything, but of course I remained silent. He turned back once and waved, and I thought how large his hand was, and how competent. I remember wondering what adventures that hand would know, what women it would touch, before I saw him again.

  “Well, that’s that,” said the duke as Silverton made his way gaily up the gangplank, and the sailor began to throw off the ropes. But neither of us made a move to return to the small villa in which we were lodged. We stood side by side, watching him go, and as the boat parted from the dock, opening a wedge of blue water between Silverton and Truelove, I was seized with panic. The blue wedge widened, and the wind blew harder, and I realized I had stopped breathing entirely. I lifted my right arm and placed it across my middle and forced my lungs to act. Max turned and asked me if I was all right.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, but I was lying. I was not all right. I found Silverton’s blond head among the sparse crowd of tourists, all of whom turned to gaze at him as he ambled toward the stern like a negligent prince, shedding charm in his wake, and I knew he was gone. He was disappearing back into the world from which he came, a world as far removed from me as another age, a world to which I could never belong.

  And when the boat had merged into the distant sea, and the duke and I returned to our lodging, I reflected that I had never really belonged to any world. I existed between them, looking inside, observing, passing through as a tourist might, and that was why I felt such sympathy for Tadeas and Desma, at the same time as I envied their belonging to each other.

  Max took my elbow as we climbed the hill, and I remember thinking that casually chivalrous gesture might constitute the only human contact I experienced until morning.

  • • •

  I thought about that parting in Skyros as I contemplated the paper the duke had given me: not because I now experienced the same panic, the same ache of separation—although I did—but because I had the feeling I was glimpsing another blue wedge, another widening gap between me and the world to which Silverton had traveled.