“No, indeed, young man. McGregor and I never saw eye to eye. His wife was my sister, you know.”

Elliot hadn’t known that. “McPherson’s then. Stacy is in great danger, and I don’t want the people after him to come upon you.”

Mrs. Rossmoran planted her cane. “This is my home. If people come here while I’m out, they might harm the place. It’s all I have.”

Fiona watched worriedly from the kitchen. “Please, Gran.”

“Hamish will send stout men to protect it while you’re away.” Elliot took her worn hand in his. “Please. I need you to be safe.”

Mrs. Rossmoran watched him with shrewd blue eyes. “All right, lad. I’ll go to McPherson’s. But any man ye put in here to watch my house had better keep his hands out of the sugar barrel. Sugar doesn’t grow out of the ground, you know.”

“Actually, Great-auntie…” Hamish began.

Mrs. Rossmoran waved her cane at him. “Stop standing there with your mouth open and help me up. Bring all my shawls, Fiona. I don’t trust McPherson to have enough bedcovers to suit me.”

Elliot waited outside to see them on their way while Fellows scouted around the house. When Hamish came out, Elliot caught him by the shoulder.

“I know why your great-aunt said nothing. She does as she pleases. Why did you?”

“I didn’t know.” Hamish glared back at the house, his anger so apparent that Elliot believed him. “I’d have told you, right away. My great-auntie can be powerful stubborn.”

Elliot had no doubt. Inspector Fellows returned, saying he hadn’t found anything unusual near the house—no sign of hunters or intruders. They sent Hamish and his little party to McPherson’s and went off into the woods.



Juliana awoke early in the morning to find herself alone. She wasn’t alarmed—Elliot often rose before she did to begin working with the men on the house.

She went through her ablutions and descended the stairs. The massive chandelier still hung in place. They’d tried to fix the mechanism to lower it to replace the candles, but it was frozen with rust. Juliana had decided that hurrying it for the ball might end in disaster, so she had a man up on a ladder each day, cleaning and oiling what he could.

As she reached the lower hall, she heard a knocking on the front door.

A lady never answered the door of her own house. The footman did it, or a housemaid if a footman was not available.

But neither Hamish nor Mahindar was anywhere in sight. The ladies of Mahindar’s family were not allowed to answer, according to Mahindar, because letting them do so would mean Mahindar hadn’t protected them from intruders.

Juliana ventured to the door, waving formality away. One could not stand on ceremony when one had no servants available. The visitor might simply be one of the guests returning from McPherson’s.

Before she reached the vestibule, however, Mahindar hurried forward in a rush of cloth and soft footsteps. “Memsahib,” he said in horror. “No. Let me.”

Juliana stepped back to let him run past her to the vestibule. He flung open the door to the last person Juliana wanted to see. Mrs. Dalrymple.

“Morning, love,” she said. “I need to speak to ye if ye don’t mind.”

Gone was the stiff-necked pose, the rather superior accent. Though Mrs. Dalrymple wore a well-made morning gown of gray cotton, she no longer looked like the prim and proper middle-class woman who’d tried to ignore everything Indian when she’d lived in India.

Her softly lined face looked more that of a harmless, middle-aged woman who went to the market with a basket on her arm. Also, her strained proper accent had gone, and now she sounded as though she’d come straight from the backstreets of Glasgow.

“Come in,” Juliana said.

Mahindar looked unhappy, but Juliana wanted to hear what the woman had to say. She led Mrs. Dalrymple to the morning room and bade Mahindar bring them tea.

“I won’t stay long,” Mrs. Dalrymple said, sitting in the same chair she had occupied a week ago. “I just came t’ give ye warning. Not that one,” she said quickly as Juliana’s brows went down. “Ye see, lass, I know ye’ve tumbled on t’ us. Me husband came across Mr. Stacy’s death certificate when he was working for the civil service in Lahore. He heard tell that your husband had turned up after being missing, crazy as a loon. So George stole the certificate. When we came back to Glasgow, me husband asked about and learned that Elliot McBride had purchased a house up here in Highforth. I’d never heard of th’ place, but George says we were goin’. He decided that if your husband was out of his wits, maybe George could make you or his family believe he’d murdered Stacy and get some money out of ye.”

“But Mrs. Terrell described you as a friend,” Juliana said, keeping her anger in check with difficulty. “You knew her?”

“Mrs. Terrell.” Mrs. Dalrymple dismissed her with a wave of her hand. “She’s a simple one. I convinced her that her mother and mine had been great friends. Easy to do while I dithered at the post office and managed to steal letters of likely ladies in the area. So Mr. and Mrs. Dalrymple were invited to stay.”

“Well, I am sorry we disappointed you,” Juliana said stiffly. “Neither I nor my husband were willing to pay you any of your blackmail.”

Mrs. Dalrymple winced. “Oh, I don’t like that word, love. Sounds so nasty. Mr. Dalrymple and I, we provide a service. You’d be amazed at the things people get up to—rich ladies who steal from any house they enter, proper husbands who keep a bit on the side, upright clerks and bankers who skim out of the till. They get away with it—theft, adultery, embezzlement, and now we thought murder. The law can’t touch these people, but we make them pay. ’Tis only right—they’ve committed crimes after all.”

Juliana forbore to point out that blackmail was also a crime. In any case, the Dalrymples, or whatever their true names might be, never took the evidence of the wrongdoings to the police.

She grew impatient. “Why did you come to see me today?”

“Well, first I wanted to make my apologies. We had no idea that Mr. Stacy was alive, and your husband entirely innocent. We were so glad to learn it. ‘Emily,’ Mr. Dalrymple said to me, ‘I’m that glad we were wrong about Mr. McBride. He’s a fine Highland gentleman.’”

“What is this warning?” Juliana asked in a hard voice.

“Because we stole the death certificate and asked questions about Mr. Stacy and Mr. McBride along our way here, I’m afraid we inadvertently alerted some very bad men as to their whereabouts. But I wanted you to know that Mr. Dalrymple and I had nothing to do with that. We might ask people for what they can give—a contribution, if you like—to apologize for the wrongs they’ve done, but we never harm anyone. I know you have a man from Scotland Yard staying with you, but if anything happens to Mr. Stacy or your husband, it’s nothing to do with us. That’s why I want to warn you, to put you on your guard. I can tell that you are a sweet, respectable lady, and you and your husband should take care.”

Too late for that. Hamish came barreling down the back hall, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Mahindar! M’lady! Mr. McGregor! Mr. McBride went out to chase brigands in the woods!”

“There, you see?” Mrs. Dalrymple stood up. “Well, I’ve done me duty. ’Tis nothing on me and m’ man, remember. I’ll go and leave you to it.”

“No,” Juliana said. Her sharpness made Mrs. Dalrymple jump. Juliana pointed at the chair. “You will sit down and tell me every detail you know about these very bad men, and you will stay there until my husband and Mr. Stacy come home in safety. Hamish—run back to McPherson’s and tell him all about it.”

“I’ve just been. He’s coming over. And all the Mackenzies.”

“Good. Then wake up every man in this house and tell them to come and talk to me. We are going to find my husband and these assassins and end this, for once and for all.”

Hamish’s eyes rounded. “Aye, m’lady.” He disappeared to do her bidding.



Elliot and Fellows moved swiftly and silently across the land, following the trail Elliot had picked up. Elliot’s tracking ability came back to him as had the steps to the sword dance. Inspector Fellows had been hunting criminals in London for years and could move as quickly and quietly as Elliot.

The trail took them north across the hills and down into the next valley. The ocean was to the east of them, the land sloping out of uplands to farms and flat land by the sea.

Stacy would have led them that way and then doubled back, if Elliot were any judge. The rising sun spilled over the sea, anyone heading east walking into the large ball of light.

Elliot knew exactly where Stacy would head. A twinge of dread went through him, but Elliot motioned Fellows to follow him back toward the hills.

The trees closed around them again, cutting off the view of the cultivated lands and the cottages, civilization gone. The passes from Afghanistan to the Punjab were like that, knives of land that masked the view of anything but the steep cliffs to either side.

However, those roads came out of stark mountains to river valleys of amazing beauty. Elliot had been stunned by the glories that had existed outside the tunnels where he’d been buried, as he’d slunk back home like a wounded animal. Evil should not exist in that much beauty.

It had been cold there as well. Elliot had had only vague ideas of the seasons when he’d been held captive, but he remembered weeks of icy cold wind.

Here, summer made the air soft, but under the trees, cool mist gathered. The feeling of alertness as Elliot tracked was the same, though, the calm wariness, the warm sweat on his back, the controlled breathing that let him walk for long distances without becoming exhausted.

The fact that he was walking through damp leaves in Scotland instead of dry, cold mountains made no difference. Every rock and tree was either concealment or a hidden danger, each an obstacle to be assessed, traversed, then watched. All as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Elliot made for the entrance to the tunnels closest to the edge of the hills. He knew Stacy had used them for cover and likely was there now.

He held a whispered conversation with Fellows about what he wanted to do, and approached the first tunnel cautiously. The entrance could barely be seen, covered with brush, weeds, and a fallen limb of a tree.

But Elliot had scouted these on his many walks around the estate in the last couple of weeks, taking note of every possible entrance to Castle McGregor. He knew he hadn’t missed any.