Page 16 of Fierce Highland Longing

In what passed for a small mercy, I realized Mara hadn’t even noticed the way the air in the room had shifted; the way it seemed to spin around the two of us, separate from what was outside. She was used to being alone, even in company.

I went up the back hall after midnight.

The room Isla made up for me has a bed, a chair, and a window onto the wall of the next house. Nothing of mine in it.

There were four stones on the sill.

Smooth ones, off the third beach. The flat one at the left with the long one set against it at an angle, the round one out from the pair, the small one below.

It’s the water off the point on a falling tide. The set of the rip, the eddy in behind it, the shoal water on the inside. I’d built the current I can’t swim in on the windowsill of a room I’d be out of the day this ended.

I’ve no memory of putting them there.

I stood with my hand over them and reached for the number, the way you check a pocket. How many days until she gives it to me? I’ve had a running count since the corridor.

Nothing came.

I had stopped counting the days.

She was on the landing with her boots in her hand, coming up from bolting the back door after me.

“You’ll want the front one done as well.”

“Isla did it.” She went up two steps and stopped with her hand on the rail. “You should get some sleep. Whatever’s wrong with you, the sleeping helps.”

She went on up.

I stood in the dark hallway and listened to her footsteps fade.

Tomorrow I’d take her to the moon pool. It was the only place left where the truth might come out without breaking her.

And I was running out of time.

Chapter Seven

The Almost — Mara

Ihavesomethingofyours. I’ve had it since the first night.

Eleven words. I’d built them in bed at six that morning and I ran them the whole way through breakfast—I have something of yours. There’s something in my room. I took something out of the boathouse.

Just a few words, and I’d say them on the headland where there was nobody to hear.

“He went up an hour ago.” Isla had the bucket out on the step. “Nine days now without a blow. Nine. My mother would’ve had something to say about that.”

“Good luck for me. I’ve been photographing in sunshine all week.”

“Aye.” She went on with the step. “Something like luck, pet.”

I left the camera on the bed.

He was at the top of the sixty-one steps with the coat Isla gave him hanging wrong off one shoulder, and he came down four of them to meet me.

“There’s a bird you’ll want. Two of them, on the third ledge.”

“Tavish—”

“Peregrines. They’ve been off the coast three winters, and they’re back.”