Page 114 of A Scot on the Rocks

“The warning signal?” he asked.

“Three quick rings. We stop everything and go through the service passage. Nobody improvises, and nobody goes back for a rope or a lantern.”

He met her eyes. Several days ago, she might have told him she’d find a way to manage the danger herself. Tonight she’d asked each person to agree to the plan and made sure the two men by the outer wall knew how to leave unseen. Jamie had been angry with her at the quay for risking the glen without asking, and she’d done him the uncomfortable kindness of learning from it before he’d worked out how to tell her he loved her.

“Aye,” he said. “And if I forget?”

“I’ll remind you. Loudly.”

The horses clattered over the cobbles beyond the gate. Olivia blew out the little candle beside the lantern shutter, leaving only a dim red glow behind the chapel screen. Jamie wanted, absurdly, to touch her cheek. She was near enough for him to do it, yet the space between them had been difficult ever since she’d told him she was from the future. Men walking on the moon? He couldna fathom it.

“Your place,” she whispered.

Jamie ducked behind the stone arch, and she vanished into the dark with her rope.

Robertson rode into the courtyard with his officers and enough lantern light to make the broken walls shine in the wet. The cart came behind, its iron-rimmed wheels grinding over the uneven stones before the driver hauled it to a stop. One of the horses shied at a rook flapping down from the tower as its rider cursed and tugged hard on the reins.

“Jamie Campbell!” Robertson called. “Come out in the king’s name!”

His voice struck the hall and traveled upward through the ruin. No one answered as Jamie heard the wind stirring in the empty west chamber and a few drops of water falling into the old stone basin near the stairs. A sensible man would have taken one look at the place and gone back to the tavern. Robertson lifted his lantern higher.

“Search it. Start with the cellars.”

The first pair entered the hall with their muskets balanced across their arms. One prodded the ashes with a boot and crouched to touch the cold hearth. Another opened a cupboard so old its door came off at the hinge and knocked against his knee. He swore, then glanced around to see if anyone had heard. Jamie had to bite the inside of his cheek.

The officers moved slowly, lifting their lanterns into window recesses and beneath the remains of a stair. Their boots scraped through grit and broken plaster. Somewhere in the courtyard a horse snorted, but no other sound came from the occupied parts of the castle, and Jamie knew the younger soldiers were beginning to wish for a smuggler they could chase.

Robertson stood beneath the gallery and looked up. “You may as well show yourself. I know there’s a room here still fit to sleep in.”

Jamie kept his back against the stone. Robertson knew more than he’d hoped. Somewhere between the harbor and the quay, the man had been asking the right people the right questions. If Jamie survived the night, he’d need to find who’d answered them and deal with them.

A single knock came from the western wall.

The nearest soldier turned as a second sounded above the broken gallery, then a third behind the stair where the first man had been standing moments earlier. The young officer raised his lantern toward the place he’d just left.

“Who goes there?”

No answer came. A little bell sounded once from the tower, so high and thin that it seemed to drift down through the rain. The man looked toward Robertson. Robertson looked back at him with such contempt that the soldier reddened, straightened his shoulders, and took another step.

The first apparition appeared over the missing section of gallery.

Jamie had watched Sorcha raise the veiled woman a dozen times in daylight, and Olivia had once made him hold her lantern at four different angles until she was satisfied with the light. Tonight the pale figure traveled into the open air with her long garments hanging motionless beneath her, her feet suspended where the floor had fallen away. Her head turned slowly toward the men, and something about the dark space beneath her veil made Jamie’s own skin tighten along his arms.

The older officer dropped to one knee with the beginnings of a prayer. The youngest took two steps backward and struck a pillar with his shoulder, nearly losing his lantern as he crossed himself. Robertson stood quite still, but Jamie saw his fingers tighten around the riding crop.

“A sheet,” Robertson said at last. “Someone has hung a damned sheet on a rope.”

He sounded almost convinced. Then the woman moved sideways through a patch of moonlight, and instead of continuing to the tower she disappeared in the middle of the gallery as though the darkness had opened and swallowed her.

“Find the rope,” Robertson ordered.

The younger officer aimed his lantern up. “Sir, there isna a floor there.”

“I can see that.”

“How did she⁠—”

“It’s a trick.”