He left Mr. Fox red-faced and sputtering. His own anger didn’t show on the surface, but it seethed inside. Will Rankin was like a brother to him. They’d known each other since they were infants, when they’d caught minnows in the shallows of the river Feugh where their parents had summer homes. Over the years, catching minnows had graduated into catching salmon. To this day, fishing in the Feugh or in the Dee was a mutual pleasure that neither was willing to forgo. Even though their paths had diverged, they always managed to spend a week or two in the summer months on the banks of their favorite haunts.
A flash of memory passed through his brain: Will, seeing Maddie, his future wife, for the first time as she crossed the stepping-stones on the banks of the Feugh to get to the other side. Will had waded in to help her and had stepped right into a pothole and fallen flat on his face. Now Maddie was gone, and Will directed all his energies and his once considerable fortune to the clinics he had opened in Maddie’s memory. To belittle his achievement was tantamount to declaring war as far as Gavin was concerned.
“Gavin!” a feminine voice called out.
Janet Mayberry waved him over to the card table. She’d been hounding him from the moment he’d arrived, and he’d thanked his lucky stars that he was domiciled a good half mile from the hotel. Janet was an indoors girl. She was afraid of dogs, and where he went, Macduff was sure to follow. Dogs had their uses, he thought ruefully.
“Mr. Massey has had enough of cards,” Janet told him. “And we need another player.”
She had bedroom eyes, a bedroom voice, and a heart that was impervious to love: just how he liked his women, but not tonight.
She pulled on his wrist and pushed him into the chair that the younger Massey had vacated. “Hearts are trumps,” she said, and she dropped her lashes in a parody of modesty.
Because he wasn’t a boor, he picked up his cards and pretended to study them. If he wanted to, he could win every hand, but no one liked a player who could never be trounced. Besides, it wasn’t skill on his part. He barely paid attention to the cards. He was a seer of Grampian. If he won, it would be just like cheating.
He was feeling it again, a whisper-soft brush on the back of his neck. Something was wrong. Not everything was as innocent as it appeared on the surface. His eyes scanned the guests. Nothing stood out. Everything seemed normal. Will, he noted, seemed to be enjoying himself. The widow McCrae, a fresh-faced lass, would have suited Will just fine, had his heart not still belonged to his wife. But even Maddie’s death had not blighted Will’s spirit. It made him all the more determined to make his life count, and Maddie’s as well.
He answered absently to something Miss Mayberry had said, but his thoughts had moved on to Kate Cameron. Was she a distraction, or was she the one?
“Gavin!” Miss Mayberry remonstrated.
Gavin blinked, picked up his cards, and pretended to concentrate.
Kate couldn’t remember when she had enjoyed herself more. She and her old school friends had cloistered themselves in Sally Anderson’s bedchamber, knocking back sherry as if it were water, as they reminisced about the scrapes they’d gotten into when they were schoolgirls. From there they’d moved on to the ups and downs of married life, and her friends had tried, without success, to bring blushes to her cheeks. They were out of luck, she told them. Her work with Dr. Rankin’s patients had robbed her of her innocence. They thought she was joking, but she’d told them the truth.
They had no success with Sally, either. She was soon to announce her engagement to Cedric Hayes, Lord Aberfeldy’s grandson. It was a match made in heaven, so Sally averred. On her marriage, she would come into her fortune. When his grandfather died, Cedric would come into his title. What could be more romantic than that? After the marriage, they would go their separate ways and live happily ever after.
Sally’s outrageous humor had them all in stitches, but when Kate stopped laughing, her mood changed. Sally had had a brilliant future ahead of her. At school, she was the top girl. How could her brilliant prospects have come to such a dreary conclusion?
From Sally, her reflections moved to Janet Mayberry. Janet had never been part of their group. They were schoolgirls in uniform, and Janet had been the envy of their adolescent hearts. She was the belle of Deeside whose parents had indulged her to a degree. She believed that an education was wasted on women. No one envied her now. She was an aging belle who had allowed the bonnets to pass her by while waiting for a top hat to come along. She lived in Perth, but whenever she visited her old home, she was always included in whatever was going. Mrs. Cardno saw to that.
Poor Janet. Her eyes had fairly feasted on Gavin Hepburn from the glimpse Kate had taken of them at the reception. Or perhaps her commiserations were premature? Janet had the tenacity of a predator.
The party was still going on but, because she’d begun to feel chilled, she excused herself and went to her own room for a shawl. She’d forgotten about her maid.
“Elsie, are you still up?”
The girl was only sixteen or so, and fresh off the farm. She usually worked in the kitchen, but her heart was set on becoming a lady’s maid. This was her first try, and she meticulously followed every rule she’d read in
Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management
. Mrs. Beeton’s book was as revered as the Bible in Kate’s house and read far more often.
“I canna go to my bed until you go to yours, Miss Kate. I have to help you undress and press your gown for the morn.”
“Nonsense! I’m not the queen. I can dress and undress myself.” The thought of Elsie’s unskilled hand pressing her gown was alarming. The gown didn’t belong to her but to her sister. “I’m only here for my shawl, then I’ll be going back to party with my friends.” Her eye was caught by an envelope on her bedside table. “What’s this, Elsie?”
Elsie shook her head. “I must have dozed while I waited for you. When I opened my eyes, that letter was on the carpet, just inside the door.”
“Off to bed with you, then.”
While Elsie slipped quietly from the room, Kate slit open the envelope with a pair of embroidery scissors she’d placed in the table drawer by the bed, then held the note close to the oil lamp to see it better. And a vise closed around her heart.
“In Scotland we burn witches,” she read.
She didn’t know how long she sat there in a stupor. It was a knock on the door that brought her to her senses. She gave a start and jumped to her feet.
Sally’s voice. “What’s keeping you, Kate?”
She wasn’t going to tell anyone about the note except Dr. Rankin. He was the only one who knew her secret. Had he shared it with someone else?
The doorknob rattled. “Kate?”
Through the door, Kate said, “I think I’ve had too much to drink, Sally. I’m going to sleep it off.”
Her mind was in too much of a whirl to make sense of what Sally said next, but she heard footsteps retreating along the corridor and heaved a sigh of relief.
She read the note again and again, and each time she read it, her nerves grew tighter and tighter. It was a lie. She wasn’t a witch. She was a normal girl who had an uncanny ability to sense danger, much like a creature of the wild. Isn’t that what Dr. Rankin told her?
Of one thing she was sure. This wasn’t a joke. This was the threat she had sensed pervading the very air she breathed all evening. She could not, would not settle until she’d spoken to Dr. Rankin.
She put the letter back in its envelope and debated for a moment what she would do with it. She had to talk to Dr. Rankin. He would know what to do. She was sorely tempted to throw it on the fire. In the end, she thrust it in her pocket and left her chamber, carefully locking the door behind her.
Gavin sensed her presence the moment she entered the dining room. She was in the same gray gown that she’d worn at the wedding reception and earlier tonight at dinner. She wasn’t the only lady who was forced to wear the same gown two nights in a row. Most guests expected to be home by now and had packed accordingly.
A smile briefly touched her lips, and he turned his head to see the lucky recipient of her favor. He might have known it. Thomas Steele, or Prince Charming, as Will called him, shook off his retinue of female admirers and quickly crossed to her. Her smile was fleeting. Thomas’s smile hinted at intimacy. Gavin watched them with brows drawn as they exchanged a few words. He was on the point of getting up and joining them when she turned from Thomas and began to wend her way toward him.
So she did know he existed. A smile warmed his lips.
“Mr. Hepburn,” she said, doing no more than acknowledging his presence before she moved past him to the next card table where Will Rankin was seated. There was a short conference, then Will got up and escorted Miss Cameron to the hothouse at the back of the dining room. They were in earnest conversation, and Will looked as though he’d received a blow.
“Gavin, pay attention!”
Janet Mayberry’s eyes fairly bored into his. “Sorry,” he said and arranged the cards he’d been dealt. He played out his hand and won the set just to please Janet. When he next looked for Kate Cameron, she was nowhere to be seen, though Will was still with the widow McCrae, looking as jovial as ever.
What in Hades’s name was going on? If there was something between Will and Miss Cameron, why hadn’t Will warned him off? But he had warned him off. He’d been too obtuse to see it.
He picked up his cards and glared at them.
Three
The clock on the mantel struck the hour, startling Kate from her reveries. It was time to keep her appointment with Dr. Rankin. There had been too much noise and too many interruptions earlier that evening when she’d tried to speak to him, so they had arranged to meet later, when the staff doused the lamps and guests were forced to retire for the night. All was quiet. The house seemed to have settled into its nightly mode.
He’d particularly asked her to bring the note. After folding it and thrusting it into her pocket, she scooped up a tartan shawl and slipped soundlessly from the room, then locked the door behind her. There was no need for her to carry a candle. The hotel was not in complete darkness. On every floor, a lamp was lit, but there were enough shadows to conceal her from the porters who patrolled the corridors.
Her steps slowed when she entered the dining room. There were no lamps lit here, but it hardly mattered. In the dark, she could see as well as a cat, and she moved soundlessly to the little hothouse without bumping into a single chair. “Dr. Rankin?” she whispered. There was no response, but she smelled the faint odor of tobacco smoke. Then she felt it—a draft of cold air from the French door that opened to the outside. Evidently, the doctor had gone outside to enjoy his smoke.
Her hand curled around the note in her pocket, and she slowly withdrew it. She would be glad to give it into Dr. Rankin’s keeping. It made her ill to think that some warped mind could hate her so much.
She pushed through the door and hesitated. “Dr. Rankin?” she quavered. The fear she felt was natural, she told herself. It had nothing to do with her sixth sense. Then why didn’t Dr. Rankin answer her? Something else filled her nostrils . . . the smell of strong spirits? Whiskey?
When the door behind her clicked shut, her whole body contracted. The door could not be opened from the outside.
Easy,
she told herself.
Easy.
Maybe a servant had come out to smoke, or one of the guests. Maybe Dr. Rankin had been delayed. She heard a soft tread at her back and she whipped around with a moan bordering on panic.
“Dr. Rankin?”
A shadow emerged from the dark.
This time, her voice quavered. “Dr. Rankin?”
Still no response.
Every cell in her body warned her of approaching doom. Her nerve broke. Picking up her skirts, she dashed through the shrubbery toward the moor.
Fear is a powerful motivator, but terror is even better.
This was the thought that passed through Kate’s mind as she rushed headlong toward the dry stone dike at the edge of the moor. Beyond the dike, near the top of the incline, was the stone where the witches of Deeside were once burned at the stake. But that was three hundred years ago. No sane person believed in witches in these modern times.
That was a lie. She’d been the object of name-calling and ridicule as a child, before she’d learned to keep her mouth shut. She wasn’t a witch, she reminded herself. She was a normal girl with the uncanny gift of sensing danger. As now.
It was dark on that lonely hillside, and though nothing was clear, she saw shadows within shadows and knew when to leap over an obstacle and when to go around it. Cat’s eyes, Dr. Rankin told her. It was merely another indication of her God-given gifts, and everyone had gifts, so Rankin said.
Where was Dr. Rankin? Why wasn’t he here to help her?
She could hear faint footfalls behind her, but sometimes the snow muffled the sound. All the same, she could sense that her pursuer was gaining on her, so she pushed herself to the limit of her endurance. Each labored step taxed her strength. Each breath she took was harder than the last. He’d planned it that way. He’d forced her to take to the higher ground, knowing that she would be exhausted when he finally caught up to her.