A Strange Scottish Shore

by Juliana Gray

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Action & Adventure Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

The acclaimed author of A Most Extraordinary Pursuit brings a dazzling voice and extraordinary plot twists to this captivating Scottish adventure...
 
Scotland, 1906. A mysterious object discovered inside an ancient castle calls Maximilian Haywood, the new Duke of Olympia, and his fellow researcher Emmeline Truelove north to the remote Orkney Islands. No stranger to the study of anachronisms in archeological digs, Haywood is nevertheless puzzled by the artifact: a suit of clothing that, according to family legend, once belonged to a selkie who rose from the sea and married the castle's first laird.
 
But Haywood and Truelove soon realize they're not the only ones interested in the selkie's strange hide. When their mutual friend Lord Silverton vanishes in the night from an Edinburgh street, their quest takes a dangerous turn through time, which puts Haywood's extraordinary talents—and Truelove's courage—to their most breathtaking test yet.

Release date: September 19, 2017

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 400

Sample

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2017 Juliana Gray

There was a time of great prosperity, when riches were abundant upon the land and disease was rare, and even the poor did not starve, but lived unto old age. Still there was great unhappiness, for misery is the lot of mankind, and a certain Lady, whose husband’s greed for treasure knew no limits, went one spring to the seaside with her servants and her only son, and swam in the nearby ocean every morning at dawn. Though the Lady knew great strength and skill in the sea, she wore always a thick, elastic suit to cover her legs and her arms, for this land lay in the far north of the country, and its waters were icy . . .

The Book of Time, A. M. Haywood (1921)

Chapter 1

King’s Cross Station, London

August 1906

The man stood near the corner of the booking offices as I emerged from the ladies’ waiting room, pretending to read a newspaper. He was dressed in the kind of comfortable suit of brown Harris tweed with which any fellow might clothe himself for a long train journey, except he wore it awkwardly, stiff and overly buttoned, like a schoolboy given his first grown-up jacket and trousers. His face I recognized. It was plain and wide, the pale skin hung upon a pair of broad cheekbones, and the hair underneath the tweed cap was a raucous ginger: a man I could never forget. I had first seen him in March, five months ago, upon the Greek island of Naxos.

For an instant, we met eyes. I say an instant, but it felt like a minute or more, so charged was the connection between us, and so deep the shock to my bones. He made no sign of recognition, except for having taken the trouble to transfix me at all, and once he accomplished this act, he folded the newspaper twice, tucked it under his arm, and walked off in the direction of the departure platform, where he disappeared into the thickening crowd.

According to the station clock, it was now forty-eight minutes past nine, and the Scottish express left King’s Cross station promptly at ten. The air was grossly hot and smelled of coal smoke and human perspiration. At the end of the platform, an enormous green locomotive rumbled and boiled, working up a head of steam; the space between us was a carnival of passengers, porters, carts, conductors, and luggage, and somewhere inside it all lurked the man with the ginger hair.

My palm was damp inside its cotton glove. I renewed my grip on the handle of my valise—I have always carried my own luggage, whenever possible—and turned to the right, marching toward the first-class Pullman coach exactly midway down the platform. The conductor frowned slightly at my serviceable jacket and hat, at the valise in my hand. I held out my ticket. His face transformed. “Good morning, Miss Truelove,” he said, “and might I trouble you to follow me?”

Thus we boarded the train.

I cast a final glance down the platform as I mounted the steps, but saw no flash of ginger beneath a brown tweed cap. It was not until I settled in my seat—in a private compartment reserved entirely for my use by my employer, the Duke of Olympia—that I caught sight of him again, walking slowly toward the locomotive, hands shoved in his pockets. I craned my neck until he passed out of view, and then I rushed from the compartment to stick my head from the door of the coach, balancing dangerously from the iron steps while shreds of steam drifted around me. Nearly all the passengers had boarded; the last tearful farewells were taking place, the swift embraces between lovers. For a second or two, a series of baggage carts obscured the man’s back, until he emerged alone, the fringe of hair just visible at his collar, and swung suddenly to the left into a third-class carriage on the other side of the dining car.

The whistle screamed. The shouts of the conductors rang down the platform. I pulled myself back inside the coach, while the beat of my heart echoed above them all, spinning my blood, and somebody’s hand came to rest on the sleeve of my jacket.

“Is something the matter, Miss Truelove?” asked the conductor. He was about fifty years old, and his face briefly resembled that of my dead father: kind and serious, bracketed by a handsome pair of muttonchops. I stared at him until the shrill whistle cried again, and the vision went away. The whiskers dissolved, the man’s face reassembled into its plain, haggardly London self.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said, “but I am quite all right.”

I suppose I must have fallen asleep after I returned from the dining car at half past one o’clock, for when I opened my eyes, a woman had taken the seat across from me. A light Midlands mist drizzled against the window glass, and a note of roses had joined the damp odors of the train compartment. The newcomer was short and somewhat stout, wearing a blouse of fine white silk atop a plaid skirt, and a handsome black velvet jacket over all. Her hair was brown and shining, parted exactly down the middle, and her blue eyes frowned at me, as they usually did. The roses, I knew, belonged to her.

“It is most unseemly to fall asleep in a public conveyance, Miss Truelove,” she told me.

I yawned and stretched. “Hardly a fair criticism, from a woman who has always had the good fortune to travel privately.”

“A head of state cannot possibly travel on a public railway carriage.”

“I beg leave to point out that you’re doing exactly that, just now.”

“Ah,” said the Queen, looking wise, “but you don’t believe I exist, do you? A figment of your imagination, as you call me.”

I was too fatigued to engage in games of logic, so I turned my head to look out the window, where the middle of England presently unrolled in curves of dull, foggy green. “To what do I owe the favor of this audience?” I asked the Queen’s reflection.

“Some time has passed since last we conversed—”

“And for those weeks of peace I am wholly grateful.”

“Don’t interrupt. I want a word with you.”

“So I guessed.” I stuck my hand by my hip, where it pressed against the side of the carriage, to assure myself that the leather portfolio was still tucked between the two. “I suppose I have misbehaved in some way? Disappointed you by thought or deed?”

“You already know how I feel about the matter of your employment with the Duke of Olympia. I believe I made that plain when you first took up his offer to direct this little institute of his—”

“The Haywood Institute is not small,” I said. “Only men’s minds are small.”

“As it happens, however, I am not here to remonstrate with you about that particular folly, which is beyond our immediate hope of correction. I am here to warn you.”

“Warn me. Of course.” I turned to face her. “What dangers do you imagine for me this time?”

“In the first place, your rushing down to Scotland to begin with, when you were safely in residence at the duke’s house in Belgrave Square, however unsuitable the manner of your employment.”

“The duke has taken up an invitation to a shooting party in the north of Scotland, and requested my assistance urgently.”

“That, above all, should have warned you off. Any urgent request on the duke’s part is likely to prove unsuitable at best, and dangerous at worst. I don’t see why he couldn’t ask his private secretary to perform this task, since the fellow’s already in his company.”

“Because—as the duke’s telegram informed me—he has discovered another one of his mysterious objects, and Mr. Miller, for all his admirable qualities, is not especially qualified to assist him in that kind of investigation.”

“I don’t see why not. I don’t see why he should require a woman to perform this task, when she lacks the strength and judgment of a man.”

“A quaint sentiment, from a woman who once reigned over half the globe.”

The Queen lifted her chin and turned it to the window.

“Besides,” I continued, “the investigation may involve some further exploration of the duke’s particular talent, of which Mr. Miller is—as yet—wholly unaware.”

The Queen fixed her hands upon her lap and said, “In the second place, you ought to be aware that there is a man lurking on this train who has followed you all the way from London.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You know? You seem remarkably unconcerned.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I do? I am untrained in the arts of spycraft. If the man continues on the service to Inverness, I shall simply report the matter to the duke, upon my arrival.”

“Well!” said the Queen.

“If you wish to be of actual help, perhaps you can tell me which carriage he presently occupies.”

“Number four,” she said, with an air of reluctance.

“Interesting. He hasn’t moved any closer. I suppose that means he already knows my destination.”

“I don’t know what it means, Miss Truelove, but the fellow has a suspicious look to him, which I don’t like a bit. You would do well—”

“I know exactly what he looks like. His face is sewn upon my memory, I assure you. I first encountered him on the island of Naxos, last spring, when I traveled there—if you’ll recall—to free the duke from his captors.”

“Of course I remember that disaster of an expedition,” snapped the Queen, “which brings me to my third warning—”

“It was not a disaster. We were perfectly successful in rescuing His Grace from his predicament.”

“It was a disaster for you, Miss Truelove, for any number of reasons. One of which, I regret very much to tell you, has recently boarded this very—”

In the middle of her sentence, the door of the compartment slid open, and the cheerfully handsome face of the Marquess of Silverton inserted itself through the opening, spectacles somewhat befogged by the warmth of the atmosphere.

“Why, hullo there, Truelove,” he exclaimed. “What a jolly marvel of a coincidence. Do you mind if I join you?”

The Queen disappeared, like the extinguishing of a light.

No doubt you’ve heard of Lord Silverton. His name, after all, figures often in those pages of the newspaper that inform a breathless public of the antics of the rich and the celebrated; they might, for form’s sake, call him by the abbreviated Lord S––—, but you must know whom they mean. After all, no other Lord S––— exists who might conceivably be confused with this one.

I regret to say that the editors of these newspapers have exaggerated neither his exploits nor his general character. If anything, he’s more Silverton in person than in print. His face is dazzlingly handsome, even adorned by that pair of scholarly spectacles, and the top of his head measures nearly six and a half feet above the ground. His magnificent height and his fair hair and golden skin give you the overall impression of the sun, of Apollo, particularly during the summer: an almost stupefying effect. Sitting in that dull compartment, taken quite by surprise, I stammered out something that must have sounded like acquiescence, for he ducked under the doorway and folded himself into the seat across—he carried no luggage at all—and took my hands.

“My dear Truelove,” he said, fixing me with a pair of familiar blue eyes, “how very good it is to see you. You look remarkably well, all things considered.”

“Why, what does that mean?”

“I mean you’ve stuck yourself in London all summer long, working for that damned institute of Haywood’s, instead of enjoying yourself in the good, fresh air of an English summer.”

“As you have, you mean?”

“Ah,” he said, squeezing my hands, “just how did you know about my summer? I hope you haven’t been inquiring after me, Truelove. Smacks of attachment, you know. Might raise my hopes.”

I pulled my hands away. “Don’t joke.”

“You know I’m not joking. My offer still stands.”

“I am not going to accept your perfectly absurd offer of marriage, Lord Silverton, even if I believed you actually meant it. Particularly after such news as I’ve heard of you, these past months.”

“News? News?”

I turned my gaze to the handsome electric sconce on the wall to his right. “If my information is not mistaken, sir, at least three different women have enjoyed the favor of your company in the months since you swore your eternal fidelity to me.”

“I protest,” he said, leaning back in his seat, throwing his long arm along the row of headrests, “I did not swear any such nonsense. My eternal fidelity to one Emmeline Truelove was conditional upon her acceptance of my offer of marriage. In any case, dearest girl, that of which you’re speaking was all business. Just ask the dowager duchess. Business, business, business.”

“You must have been working very hard, then.”

He grinned. “Very hard, indeed. And now I board the Flying Scotsman at York and discover, to my great astonishment, that my own dear Miss Truelove waits for me, prim and lovely as ever, inside a snug first-class compartment right next to the dining car. Like Christmas in August.”

“I wasn’t waiting for you at all, and if this meeting is a coincidence, then I’m the Queen of Morocco.”

“I might possibly have had some inside knowledge.”

“From the duke?”

“The thing is, I’m supposed to be up in Perth at this bloody shooting party of Thurso’s, except I was unavoidably delayed—”

“No doubt.”

“All in the line of duty, Truelove. Anyway, I wired Thurso yesterday to invite myself back in, and apparently Max caught wind of it and wired me, like the good chap he is, to let me know what a charming coincidence was headed my way.” He examined his fingernails. “Perhaps I moved my plans forward a day or two.”

“I’m sorry to have occasioned the trouble, since there’s nothing to be gained from it.”

“Nothing, Truelove? I don’t know about you, but I call an hour or two of privacy in a first-class Pullman coach with the object of one’s affections a very satisfactory achievement indeed. Ah, now you’re smiling, aren’t you? At last. I do like your smiles, my dear. You offer them so rarely.”

“A momentary lapse. I ought to call the conductor and have you tossed out. His Grace reserved the entire compartment for my privacy.”

“Wise fellow. One never knows what sort of scoundrel might gain entrance into one’s compartment. Strike up a conversation and God knows what else.”

“Indeed.”

“And generous of him, too. Shows a proper regard for the comfort of his loyal retainers.”

“I’m not his retainer at all. The duke has a new private secretary, who performs those duties admirably.”

“But you’re running this infernal institution of his—”

“The institute is independent of the duke’s estate.”

“He’s paid for it all, however. And you can’t deny the fact that you continue to live under Max’s roof, despite having resigned your position in his household.”

Somewhere in the course of this exchange, Silverton’s voice lost its jocular tone. His smile disappeared, replaced by a stiff, intent arrangement of his gorgeous features, and though he kept one tweed leg crossed negligently over the other, the hanging foot gave off a series of twitches.

I wrapped one hand around the end of the leather portfolio at my side. “Are you attempting to insinuate some sort of impropriety, your lordship? I should very much like you to make yourself clear.”

“Impropriety? Between you and Max? The two most upright, honorable souls across the length and breadth of jolly England? Perish.” He lowered his palm to the seat beside him and leaned forward an inch or two. “But there is talk, Truelove.”

“Talk? Talk about me?”

“My dear, even you can’t possibly imagine that our little expedition last spring went without popular remark. He is the new Duke of Olympia, after all. Bears the unfortunate honor of being the finest matrimonial catch of the decade. The entire nation is on tenterhooks for every detail about him, and particularly the feminine company he keeps. Surely you’ve noticed.”

I frowned. “But nobody can possibly think he means to marry me.”

“Oh, of course not. They think you’re his mistress.”

“Good God.”

“Absurd, isn’t it?” Silverton turned his head to the countryside passing beyond the bespattered window. “All you’ve done is return triumphantly from the Mediterranean in his company, aboard his private yacht—”

“Confined to my cabin with seasickness.”

“—resign your position as his personal secretary to take up directorship of his personal institution—”

“My capacity at the Haywood Institute is entirely professional.”

“—and take up residence in a handsome suite in his house in Belgrave Square—”

“The suite I have occupied for the past six years, as secretary for the late duke. This is outrageous.”

“Oh, bottle your outrage, my love. I’m only telling you what people are saying. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.” He paused. “Is it true you’re helping him find a wife?”

“He has asked my advice on the matter, and I have given it.”

“No doubt, no doubt. I can just about picture the scene. Lists of suitable candidates, crackling fire, a nice pot of tea between you.”

I suppose I must have blushed, because the smile returned to Silverton’s face. “Well, then,” he said, “any inside word for an old friend? The future of the peerage is at stake, after all. To say nothing of my standing in the wagering book at my club.”

“I am not going to abet you in any sort of wagering, your lordship.”

“Dash it, Truelove. You’re no use at all. Well, no matter. If I had any dosh to spare, I’d place it on the head of that charming daughter of Thurso’s.”

“Hmhm.”

“Ha! I’ve guessed it, haven’t I? Poor Truelove. Don’t feel too confounded. The whole show was blindingly obvious. For one thing, Max might be a capable shot, but he’s hardly enthusiastic enough to trudge all the way to a drafty castle in the far north of Scotland without some sort of additional attraction. And she’s a lovely girl, that Lady Annis. Quite exceptionally pretty. Have you met her?”

“Once, a few years ago. There was a house party at Blenheim. She came with her father.”

“Ah, you see? Charming girl, eh? Beautiful as the dawn, give or take an hour or two.”

“If that’s the case, I wonder you didn’t seek her hand yourself.”

“And who’s to say I didn’t?”

“Because I find it difficult to believe that her ladyship would have refused a coronet so lustrous as yours.”

Lord Silverton folded his arms and gazed at me. His body was so long, he sat at an angle in his seat, and his legs stretched diagonally across the compartment, careful not to crowd mine aside. Still, our knees touched from time to time as the train swayed along the line. The light sometimes reflected in the glass of his spectacles, obscuring his eyes. I had neither seen nor touched this man since April, when we parted company along a dusty path on the island of Skyros, full of grief, and yet the sight of him—the touch of him—was so familiar, he might only have popped out for an hour or two, in order to buy a ham sandwich and a newspaper. Except that my heart was beating rapidly, underneath the pressed gray wool of my jacket.

At last he turned to the window and lifted one finger to touch the folds of the curtain. “I don’t know why your powers of perception should still amaze me, Truelove. I don’t quite seem to have gotten used to you.”

“She will make him an excellent wife, however,” I said briskly. “Her kind always does. She will take to the job with enthusiasm.”

“Of that, I have no doubt at all. And Max?”

“You know his heart is already lost. As long as there’s liking on both sides, and loyalty, and—I suppose—a necessary degree of physical attraction, he will be content.”

“Contentment. What an appalling word.”

“Contentment is all most people long for.”

“Do they? Poor souls. Although I suppose it all depends on what constitutes your idea of contentment.”

“A clear conscience,” I said. “A useful occupation.”

“A useful occupation?” Silverton turned from the window. “How interesting. Do you consider your occupation useful, my dear? I daresay Max enjoys his little hobby immensely, but for Emmeline Truelove to make it her life’s work—”

I said quietly, “You saw yourself what happened on Skyros. You know that was no little hobby. It is a power of extraordinary proportion, and I—we, the duke and I—are desperate to understand it.”

Lord Silverton reached inside the pocket of his Norfolk jacket—the same jacket, I observed, as the one he had worn last spring—and drew out a cricket ball. “And now Max calls you urgently to his side. For what reason? I find myself asking.”

“He can tell you that himself, I expect.”

“He’s found something, I’ll bet. What is it?”

“He didn’t say.”

Silverton tossed the ball in the air and caught it again. “Didn’t he? I suppose these rural telegraph operators aren’t to be trusted. I say, I’m dashed curious to find out what it is this time. What new object has appeared in Max’s universe that doesn’t quite belong there. Aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. I find these anachronisms fascinating. Generally speaking, there is almost always some logical explanation—”

“But not quite always.” He tossed the ball again, a feat he managed without regarding either ball or hand, keeping his attention strictly—and rather unnervingly—upon my face. “Hence this institute of yours. The Haywood Institute for the Study of Time. And your dropping everything to gallop down the length of Great Britain to Max’s assistance.”

“I am always ready to help His Grace to understand the nature of this burden he bears. I—my God, what—?”

But Lord Silverton had already launched himself out the compartment door, leaving only the cricket ball to land on the carpet and roll rather painfully into my right foot.

For a moment, I sat in stupor, torn by the instinct to race after Silverton and my duty to protect the leather portfolio at my side. Then, as if electrified, I leapt from my seat, shoved the portfolio under the cushion, and threw open the compartment door.

He had already disappeared down the corridor. I cast both ways—dining car or second-class coach?—and spotted the conductor, wearing an astonished face. I dug into the pocket of my jacket and drew out a sovereign.

“Sir! The fellow who passed by, the tall one—”

He pointed to the dining car. “That way, ma’am.”

I hurried toward him and pressed the sovereign into his palm. “See that nobody enters my compartment, please.”

Expecting shock, or disapproval, I found instead a certain relish in the conductor’s expression. “With pleasure, ma’am,” he said, and I flew up the corridor toward the dining car, thanking him with a wave of my hand.

Even before I crossed the corridor between the carriages and opened the door, I knew something had occurred inside. I heard the cries of dismay, the urgent shouts. I yanked the handle and discovered a scene far different from the orderly, somnolent atmosphere I had departed an hour or two ago, brimming with hot tea and cold watercress soup. A melee of outrage, of smashed crockery and spilled potage, of white-clad waiters extracting themselves from silk-clad laps, lay between me and the opposite end of the carriage, the door of which was just now swinging shut. I dashed through it all, pushed aside inconvenient bodies, and jumped across fields of sharp white porcelain, reaching at last the end of the car just as the train made a lurch to the left and sent me sprawling into the chest of a corpulent gentleman who seemed to have been ducking beneath the shelter of his table.

“Excuse me,” I said, recovering myself, and then, “Did you perhaps see a pair of men—”

“That way,” he said, and pointed to the nearby door.

I thanked him and pulled the door open, continuing into the next carriage, divided between first class and third. The train began a slow curve to the left, and I swayed into the walls of the corridor, checking each compartment, until I burst through the partition to the third-class carriage, composed mostly of women and children, the children hidden behind their mothers’ skirts. One woman, catching my frantic gaze, lifted her hand and pointed to the door. “Through there,” she said, “God help you.”

On I dashed, through the next carriage and the next—I had lost count of them by now—until I must have reached the last, because I glimpsed the pile of coal in the tender through the window glass, obscured briefly by a flash of tweed.

I ran down the rest of the corridor and wrapped my fingers around the handle of the door, just as the back of a brown tweed jacket smashed into the glass, inches from my nose, and heaved away again. Startled, I jumped back, and then tried again, this time opening the door freely and wheeling about in a cloud of coal dust.

But instead of two men before me, locked in struggle, I saw only one: the bright golden head of Lord Silverton, bent at an angle, while his long arms braced on the railing at the side.

“What’s happened?” I gasped.

His lordship turned swiftly. He had lost his cap and his spectacles, and the bone about his right eye bore an ominous red swelling. “He’s jumped, the bastard. Rolled down the bank and into the woods.”

I hurried to the railing and craned my neck to catch some glimpse of the path behind us, but the train was moving too fast, and the bank was already long obscured. I looked up at Silverton’s frowning face. “Was it the man from Naxos?” I said. “The ginger fellow?”

“How did you know?”

“He boarded the train at King’s Cross. I saw him there, watching me.”

Silverton swore softly and turned his back to the blurred landscape. The coal man stood at the edge of the tender, shovel in hand, staring at us. Silverton ran a hand across his bare head and said to me, “Well, then. All’s not lost. At least we can be certain of two things.”

I turned my head back for one last glance. The woods had thickened alongside, and I saw only a blurred tangle of green and brown, softened by the mist. “What are those, pray?”

“One, he’s bound to turn up again, wherever we’re headed, since he’s taken so much trouble to find us.”

“And the other?”

A deep, horrified screeching had begun as the train applied its brakes, and already I could hear the footsteps of the conductors, running to the source of all this confusion. Silverton seemed not to hear them. He briefly touched the swelling at his eye and examined the pads of his fingers. Though the drizzle had lifted into a mist, his hair was already damp, and dulling rapidly into brown.

“It seems the blackguard is left-handed,” he said.

We stopped for nearly an hour in the middle of the countryside as the conductors investigated the incident and searched for the missing man. Of course they didn’t find him. Silverton answered their questions with his usual