Now I see how pale she is, dark shadows staining the pure unblemished skin beneath her eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her voice so tiny I can barely hear it above the breath of the ocean. She lowers her eyes. ‘It seems I’m always having to apologise to you.’
I shrug, knowing that whatever it is she feels, my remorse is greater. ‘What for?’
‘For slapping you.’ She pauses. ‘For not believing you.’
I don’t know what to say. I can only imagine the pain and disillusion that would have beset me if someone had dismantled the belief I have in my own father.
‘It’s still so hard for me to believe that daddy could be responsible for such things. I knew I couldn’t ask him straight out. So I asked the serving staff. At first no one would admit to knowing anything. Until I pressed them. It was my tutor who told me in the end.’
She sucks in her lower lip and seems to be biting on it to control her emotions.
‘Only then did I finally confront my father. He was …’ She closes her eyes in wretched recollection, ‘… he was incandescent. He told me it was none of my business and that I simply didn’t understand. And when I told him that what I didn’t understand was how he could treat people like that, he did what I did to you.’ She draws a trembling breath and I see her pain. ‘He slapped me. So hard he bruised me.’ Her hand moves up to her face instinctively and her fingertips trace the line of her cheekbone. But there is no sign of the bruising now. ‘He had me locked in my room for two days, and I’m not sure that I stopped crying once. My mother wanted to reason with me. But I wouldn’t even let her in the room.’
She lowers her eyes to the ground and I see defeat in the slump of her shoulders.
‘My tutor has been dismissed, and I am confined to the house. I managed to slip out the kitchen door this morning. They probably don’t know I’m gone yet, though I’m not sure I care if they do.’
I step close now and take her in my arms, feeling her tremble as I draw her into my chest and hold her there. Her head rests against my shoulder and she slips her arms around me. We stand like this for an age, breathing in time with the slow beat of the ocean. Until finally she releases me and steps back from my arms.
‘I want to run away, Simon.’ Her eyes fix me in their earnest gaze and I feel the desperate appeal in them. But running away is not a concept that I can easily understand.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I want to leave here. And I want you to go with me.’
I shake my head in confusion. ‘Go where?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Anywhere but here.’
‘But, Ciorstaidh, I have no money.’
‘I can get us money.’
I shake my head again. ‘I can’t, Ciorstaidh. This is my home. My parents and my sisters need me. My father can’t manage the croft on his own.’ The whole notion of it is alien to me. ‘And anyway, where would we go? What would I do? How would we live?’
She stands staring at me, her eyes filled with betrayal and tears. Her face is bleak and hopeless, and suddenly she shouts at me, ‘I hate you, Simon Mackenzie. I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life.’
And she turns and strides away across the rocks, both hands pulling her skirt and cape free of the kelp and the pools of seawater, until reaching the grass where she runs off into the morning gloom, leaving sobs of distress in her wake.
And me with a debilitating sense of guilt.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sime sat bolt upright and wondered if he had really called out loud in the dark, or just imagined it. In the silent aftermath he listened for any sign that he had disturbed Kirsty. But there was no sound from upstairs. All he could hear was his own rapid breathing and the pounding of blood through his head.
He was perspiring profusely, and he pushed the duvet aside. He remembered the story clearly from his grandmother’s reading of it, but dreaming it made it personal in a way that no amount of reading could.
He checked his watch. It was not even midnight. He had slept barely half an hour and all the sleepless hours of the night still lay ahead of him. Endless time to wonder what was sparking these dreams and recollections of his ancestor’s journals. What it was that his subconscious was trying to tell him. Something relating to that first meeting with Kirsty Cowell, and his conviction that he knew her. Of that he was certain. And then there was the ring, and the pendant. The arm and sword engraved in carnelian.
There was only one person in the world he knew who might be able to cast light on that. His sister, Annie. And despite his reluctance, he knew that he was going to have to call her tomorrow.