he said. “Ma and Pa and all the brothers send their condolences.”
“Tommy,” she said. “Yir a sicht fir sair een.”
“And ye, always,” he said, and held the door for her, then stowed her case in the boot and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I’m surprised ye’re not at school,” she said. “
I’m only home the weekend. Got a major exam Tuesday, so I can’t dally.” He started the engine. “Pity Mr. Harald won’t see me graduate, after all he did to encourage me studies. Of course, ye know he meant me to manage yer new livestock scheme.”
It had been Els’s idea to breed heritage pigs and to put Tommy in charge of the program. “We’ll go right ahead with that,” she said. “Chefs will pay a pretty penny for them.”
He sat taller. When mist filmed the windscreen, he turned on the wipers. They drove through stands of Douglas fir and Scots pines that made the night all the darker. The mist turned to drizzle as they climbed.
“You’re looking a mite fagged, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Tommy said.
“I am that,” she said. Since the closing, she’d slept only a few hours in every twenty-four. A hare ran a zigzag course in front of the car before scrambling up the bank and into the heather. She closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of the Rover: faintly doggy, with an undertone of gun oil.
She snapped awake when they started into the bowl that sheltered Cairnoch House. Its tall windows were ablaze, but instead of the comfort of arriving home, she felt only dread as they crossed the stone bridge over the lake, passed the ruin of the original tower, and entered the empty car court. She took shelter under the portico while Tommy brought her luggage and opened the massive door.
The Great Hall was so silent she could hear the case clock ticking in the sitting room beyond. Neither Burtie nor Harald would have approved of leaving all the chandeliers lit. The suit of armor nicknamed Auld George was missing from the corner where it had stood for generations. The center table, which held a towering flower arrangement, had been pushed against the wall. The scent of lilies filled the room.
“Is anyone here?” she called.
Mary Partridge, who’d been helping out since Burtie became too weak to run the household and was now officially the housekeeper, hurried from the dining room, her clogs clacking on the stone floor. “Fàilte, Miss Eleanor,” she said, and embraced Els, then stood away and clasped her roughened hands together. “Pity the night’s so dreich. I’ll warm up a bite for you.”
“I’d love a bath first,” Els said. “It must have given you a fright, Mary, finding him that way.”
“And him cold as that fire dog, and as rigid too,” Mary said. She stood with her arms crossed and her fists buried in the sleeves of her jumper.
“Ye’ve barely packed more ’n a hankie,” Tommy said, lifting Els’s bag onto his shoulder and taking the stairs two at a time.
“Naw but a wee black frock and city shoes,” Els said. “
If only I’d insisted on staying through supper on Friday,” Mary said. “Even if I couldn’a saved him, at least he wouldn’a been all alone.” She drew a sharp breath and let it out. “We’ll no fin the brither o him in monie a lang day.”
“Sure, and they broke the mold after him,” Els said. She squeezed Mary’s shoulders. Only about five years older than Els, Mary had been an extra in the kitchen, a spare girl at parties, for as long as Els could remember. Now, caved in by worry and loss, she looked old enough to be Els’s mother.
The third step creaked, as it always had, and Els stopped on the landing to survey the Great Hall, the paneled walls lined with portraits of her forebears, laird after laird through two centuries. The only female subject among them was her grandmother, who’d commissioned her own portrait and posed resplendent in her tartan, an heirloom ring on her finger. Hanging next to “The Beatrice,” as the family called the portrait, was a life-sized depiction of Harald with Ajax, his favorite Brittany spaniel, a wide black ribbon tied across the frame. The painter had captured perfectly Harald’s chest-out, shoulders-back stance.
The black ribbon distracted her momentarily from noticing that the two most valuable portraits—those of her great and great-great grandfathers painted by Arthur Melville—were missing and the others had been rearranged, baring dark patches on the