you’d be off soon and we might not get a chance to say our goodbyes.’ She wiped her hands on a rag and tucked the loose strand of hair back into her braid.
He looked out across the bay to where the Kite was anchored. ‘I’ve come to say them now,’ he said. ‘We’ll not be sailing until the morning, but I won’t get a chance to see you again before I go.’
‘Won’t you be able to come to the cottage tonight, then? You know Dad and Ruaridh would love to see you.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. I’ve a few things to do at home. And then I have to be on board early to make ready the ship before we catch the tide.’
It was there again, the unnerving distance between them. She wrapped her arms around him, trying to reclaim a little of the closeness of that night when she’d lain in his arms beneath the stars, but it was as if he’d already left her, his mind anticipating the next brutal journey stretching ahead of him.
‘Och well then, I’ll be seeing you.’ She hoped the familiar words would make him smile, but his expression was still serious as he stooped to kiss her one last time. And then he turned and walked away, back up the beach towards Ardtuath House.
Trying to shrug off the fear she felt – for him, for them – Flora watched him go, hoping he’d turn and smile and wave so she could tell herself that everything would be all right. But he carried on without a backward glance. As he disappeared from view, she reluctantly picked up a wrench and turned her attention back to the job in hand.
She was just finishing up for the day, returning her tools to the store at the top of the base, when she saw the car. The driver and his passenger didn’t notice her standing by the corrugated tin wall of the hut, but their windows were open to make the most of the light and warmth of the summer’s evening, and she saw them quite clearly.
As Alec accelerated, a lock of Diana Kingsley-Scott’s blonde hair fluttered in the breeze, mocking Flora as she watched them drive away.
A surge of fury and humiliation – the culmination of all those times before when she’d felt the shame of her exclusion from Alec’s world – coursed through her veins. Diana couldn’t just have arrived at Ardtuath House out of the blue. She must have been there for a few days and Alec hadn’t told her. Not only that, he’d been avoiding her: it explained the sudden end to his usual evening visits. He’d have been enjoying fancy dinners with his parents and Diana in the dining room of the big house. It stung so much more after the days and nights they’d spent together on the hill. What a fool she’d been, believing his protestations of innocence when Diana had been there in December for the shooting weekend. This must have been going on ever since, and all that time he’d been using her. She wouldn’t be humiliated by him again though. Her fingers closed around the sweetheart brooch in her pocket, gripping it so hard its corners pierced her skin.
She pulled it out and looked at it where it lay in the palm of her hand, where the silver of the laurel wreath was tarnished with a rust-coloured bead of her blood.
She ran up the path to the house, tripping over the roots of the pines in her haste. She didn’t want to see Alec so she needed to drop off the letter before he got back from wherever he’d been going with Diana. To her relief there was no sign of his car, and the outer front door stood open. She laid the envelope containing her note and the sweetheart brooch on the silver salver where the postman left the daily post, so that Alec would find it on his return. And then she turned and stumbled back down the path, thankful for the darkness beneath the trees as it swallowed her up.
After a sleepless night, Flora rose early, before the others were about. Wrapping her plaid shawl about her against the chill of the dawn dew, she tried to ignore the merchant ships that were beginning to manoeuvre into position for the convoy on the far side of the loch as she picked wild raspberries from the tangle of canes growing above the cottage.