The House Between Tides Read online

  “If you go anywhere near my wife, I will break you both.” Blake’s voice cut the space between them. “You have my word on it.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Where do you think?” Blake raised his eyebrows and barked a laugh. “Do you imagine I had Calum dispose of her in the sea pool? Settling the matter in the traditional way? My dear Cameron!” Cameron looked back at him, thinking frantically but finding himself incapable of thought. Blake’s face was rigid, implacable, but for Cameron there was only one solution, and it hit him hard and sure.

  “Let her come away with me. We’ll leave tonight.”

  Blake’s eyes widened in incredulity. “My God, I believe you’re serious.” Cameron clenched his fists by his sides, willing him to see the rightness of it. “That was the plan, was it? You’d slip off together tonight?”

  “I would have gone. Beatrice would have stayed.” He did not add for now, Beatrice might need that protection.

  Blake sat a moment, digesting this, watching him, and again the silence lengthened. “So this—this little affaire was just for sport, was it, to pass the time before you left?”

  Cameron kept a tight grip on himself. If it would spare Beatrice, let Blake believe it to be so. He looked away instead, and his eyes fell on the limp form of the bird, the female, judging by its size. As ever, Blake’s shot was perfectly placed to do the least obvious damage and so preserve the specimen, and he felt again the stirring of anger. A stranger would not see the wounds on Beatrice either, nor see the emptiness inside. He lifted his head and looked again at Blake, knowing his position was indefensible. “So what happens now?”

  Theo continued to watch him. “What happens now?” he echoed softly, then rose and walked over to the window, looking out to where the sun had disappeared behind the cloud bank, one hand gripping the other wrist behind his back. “My God, if you only knew.” The words were hardly more than a murmur, and Cameron raised his head in enquiry, but Blake continued to stare out at the darkening water before abruptly turning back. “Adultery is a crime in the eyes of the law. Did you know that?” He leant across the desk to confront him, his eyes now hot with fury. “More serious than shooting some wretched bird, I think.” Cameron watched him, unflinching, and Blake sucked in his breath. “I could make things very unpleasant, you know—for both of you.” Then he slumped back into his seat behind the desk, his face drained and haggard, his anger spent for the moment, and he looked aside, as if weary with the matter. “I think you should leave, Cameron. Go now, before I find the thought of seeing you both shamed too tempting to resist.”

  But Cameron could not leave, not now. “Beatrice—”

  “Beatrice is nothing to you.”

  Wrong! She was everything. Sunlight across the strand. The breeze rippling over the marram grasses. The sweet heart of a yellow rose. How could he possibly make him understand?

  Anger had suffused Blake’s face again. “It is as you said. Beatrice stays. You go.”

  “That was before tonight. I can’t leave her here with you now.”

  “You have no choice.”

  No choice? At the quiet words, Cameron felt the net tighten and braced himself against it. “No, but she has.” Blake’s head snapped up again, but Cameron had nothing left to lose. “Do you imagine she will stay with you?”

  “Go.” There was a deeper anger in Blake’s voice now—and something else.

  “How can I?” Cameron looked down for a moment at the dead bird and the eggs. “How long is it you’ve searched for a diver’s nest? Twenty years? More? And the very day you find it, you destroy it.” He took up one of the eggs between his thumb and forefinger. “And now you’ll blow these clear of life, to preserve them, and add to your collection.” He clamped his jaw tight. “But you won’t do that to Beatrice. She loves me, and so she leaves with me.”

  Blake stood slowly and straightened, staring back at Cameron with a new intensity. He was silent for a long moment, then looked down at the dead bird and began to shake his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t think she’ll go with you, Cameron,” he said.

  “She will.”

  Blake’s expression held a new, strange intent. “No. Not when she learns the unpalatable truth.” He made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “For so many years I’ve wanted to tell you, since you were a child. But not like this, Cameron. Not in anger.” Cameron stood still, distracted. What the devil made him look so strange? “But you see, I think she’ll find she can’t. It’ll be too much for her, learning that she’s been bedding her husband’s son.” The room held its breath, as the long-held secret was exposed at last, every beady eye focussed on Cameron, awaiting his reaction. “Incest, of a sort, I suppose. On top of adultery? I think not.”

  Cameron stared back at him, his guts absorbing the kick.

  “You don’t believe me?” Blake raised his brows. “Ask the man you call Father. Or look in the mirror—”

  “No.”

  “Ask him how soon after his wedding you were born. Ask him, Cameron. Because only a few weeks before, I had lain with your mother and she said she loved me.”

  “No!”

  “Ask him.”

  Cameron’s world spun as he stared back at Blake. I believe it is you he wants, not me, Beatrice had said. And Blake’s fevered God bless as he slipped into oblivion the night he had struck her. And as the orbit of Cameron’s world spun out of control, other incidents crowded into his mind, pieces fell into place. And made sense.

  Blake was speaking again. “Once she knows that, you see, she’ll not go with you.”

  The words brought Cameron back to the moment. Beatrice. He must focus on Beatrice. The rest could wait. His eyes locked onto Blake’s, and he felt suddenly calm. “Oh, I think she will, sir. Because I will tell her that if you could leave my mother shamed and in trouble, Beatrice can leave you.”

  Blake shook his head from side to side again like an injured beast. “I didn’t leave Màili. I wanted to wed her! I never knew about you; it was years later that I guessed, when I first saw myself in you. And could never claim you—”

  But Cameron wasn’t listening. “So she left you? And why was that, do you think?” He felt the blood roaring in his head. “Because she loved my father, perhaps? My father, Mr. Blake. Not the laird’s son who could take what he pleased and then throw it aside. Possess or destroy”—he gestured to the dead bird—“was it all you could ever do?” An almost animal sound came from Blake as he staggered round the edge of the desk, but Cameron had not finished. “I love Beatrice. Love her, in a way I don’t think you can begin to imagine. Whatever you tell her, I’ll not leave her here with your cold heart for company. She comes with me tonight.”

  As he turned to go, Blake moved swiftly. Cameron heard him and swung back, looking into his wild eyes as the older man went for him, and he stepped quickly back to absorb the lunge. Stepped back and stumbled against the bag he had dropped behind him, and as he fell, arms flailing, his hand caught the basket which held the diver’s eggs. When they hit the ground, the shells broke apart, revealing two fully formed but lifeless chicks whose eyes would remain closed and whose beaks would never give the wild haunting call which some say is the foretelling of death.

  And as Cameron went down, with all Blake’s weight and momentum on top of him, the side of his head smashed hard against the corner of the granite hearthstone, and then he too lay still and quiet in the empty house.

  Chapter 48

  2010, Hetty

  “Cameron?”

  The name hung there, stark and exposed.

  “But he went to Canada.” Hetty looked from one to the other. “You said there were letters.”

  Ruairidh tore his eyes from James’s rigid face. “Forgeries, it seems.” James looked up sharply. “I sent them to forensics as well, together with letters from Cameron’s earlier trip to Canada. Two different hands, they said, the later ones consciously imitating the others.”

  James sat forward, his e
yes not leaving Ruairidh’s face. “It was Blake. It had to be.” His cousin nodded, and James got up and went over to the window, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and stood there a few moments before turning back to them. “And the locket—”

  “BJS—Beatrice Jane Somersgill. It’s on the Blakes’ marriage certificate.”

  “So. The timeless motive—”

  “Jane?” said Hetty sharply, glancing at James.

  But he was shaking his head and had not heard her. “And because of the building works, Blake had the opportunity to get rid of the body. It was his house, and then he had a network of contacts to get the letters sent back, and”—he gave a harsh laugh—“and he got away with it!”

  Cameron Forbes. That defiant, handsome young man in the photographs. And Beatrice. Hetty watched James’s tense figure by the window. What had become of her? She turned back to Ruairidh. “And no one in your family suspected?”

  Ruairidh shook his head, still watching his cousin. “Far from it.” James caught his tone and looked back at him. “You see, there’s something else.” Ruairidh reached into his pocket. “Last night when I asked Alasdair to put the letters back in Granddad’s old biscuit tin where he keeps them, he pulled out the old newspaper in the bottom. Something about U-boats up here, contemporary stuff, 1944, which he’s doing at school. And underneath it he found these.” He held up two envelopes.

  “You’re joking. From Cameron as well?”

  “No. To Cameron. Unopened.”

  “Good God.”

  Ruairidh placed them on the table. “From two different people, different handwriting on each.” He pushed them towards James. “They’d been left for Cameron when he came back, and it seems to me they’re yours now.”

  James sat looking at the two letters. Then he picked up the nearer and opened it. It was only a couple of sheets, and he read them quickly, his face giving nothing away, then he handed it to Hetty, his voice very quiet. “From Beatrice. Read it out loud for her.”

  The handwriting was faint and spindly, difficult to read in places.

  “My darling Cameron,

  “It seems that the fates were against us and it was not in the great scheme of things that I should be with you. This illness I suffer would have come upon me whether I was with you or with Theo, whether I was happy or discontented. Perhaps it’s divine justice, but I cannot believe that loving you was wrong.” Here the pen seemed to splutter and the ink had run, watery. “The times spent with you were the defining moments of my life, my true salvation, and I would do the same again. My only regret is the pain we must have caused Theo. Between us we used him badly. I had intended to be a better wife, and I do believe that he loved you too.

  “I also regret the shame we caused your father. He has been my rock and my unfailing comfort these last weeks. His faith that you will return has given me courage, and his many kindnesses have been the solace of these last weeks. I love him dearly for your sake and for myself. I leave our son with him until you come back, as I believe you will. Had I known I was carrying him, I would have left with you, I promise you, my love. But I didn’t know, and when I did, I left Theo to keep Johnnie safe, changed my name to hide from him, and waited for you, unaware then that my own time was running out. When I knew, I turned to your father for help—there was no one else—and he did not fail us. I was so fearful that you would come back and find me gone, and never know you had a son.

  “I love to think of Johnnie growing up where you grew yourself, in a place which I came to love so well. And I have no fear of death, Cameron. Your father has promised he will care for me until the end and then take Johnnie home with him. From this I draw my courage. He is everything I grew to love on the island and very dear to me.

  “Kiss our boy for me.

  “God keep you both, my love

  “Beatrice”

  Hetty set the letter down, and there was silence in the room. After a moment, James reached for the second letter and opened it. It was much longer, and he flipped to the last page. “ ‘Your loving father, John Forbes.’ Thought so.” He went back to the beginning, but after the first few paragraphs he grew very still and turned away from them, reading on fixedly. Then he sat with the letter loose in his hand, staring out of the window, and passed it to his cousin. “Your kin, Ruairidh, not mine.”

  Ruairidh took it, giving him a puzzled look, and skimmed the contents, stalled a moment, glancing up at James, read more carefully, and then passed it to Hetty.

  It was a long letter, a letter written by a man to whom unburdening himself had not come easily, but its central message leapt out at her. “She was very young, you see, and had followed a fancy that she was in love with him, but the strength of his passion overwhelmed her, frightened her. When she found she was in trouble, she came to me, asking for help and for my protection, and I would never have denied Màili anything. I would have agreed to any terms, Cameron, any price, and I saw you as a sacred trust. You are as much my son as ever Donald was, and every bit as dear to me.”

  She looked sharply at James, but he was staring out of the window and did not turn his head. Ruairidh met her eyes and nodded in understanding. She read on. “Cameron, I had loved your mother since she was a child and I was in terrible dread that I would lose her. And years later, when she was taken, you were my strength and comfort, for you are the image of her.” Such weighty words, and Hetty thought of the bearded giant who had stood between his two sons, knowing that only one was truly his . . . “I will tell Theo Blake, though I fancy that he knows, and I will tell him that Johnnie is your son, and who his mother is. I cannot rest until I do. I know that you loved Beatrice Blake, even though you ought not to have done, but I do not judge you, my son. I had forgotten what it was to love like that.

  “I know too that she has left you a letter, written years ago when her time was close, and kept safe. Believe me, after she came to me with pains growing inside her, I searched for you, sent letters to the places you stayed before, contacted everyone I could. I pray to God the trenches did not claim you. Donald knows nothing of this, other than that Johnnie is your son, and that the boy’s mother is dead. Deal with that as you think best.

  “I did what I could for them both, Cameron. For your sake, to set it in the balance against other things. I arranged for her to be nursed on Skye and went over every week so that the boy got used to me. And then I brought her body back here, passing her off as kin, and she lies in an unmarked grave beside Màili because they both loved you. I never told her the truth about you, though, as she had enough to bear. I grew very fond of her, and it pains me that her husband could not see what a jewel he had in his hand, hankering still for what we both had lost.

  “And now he is sick in mind and body too, hunted and haunted. You must square things with him as best you can. He was ever a difficult man, but I sometimes I feel that I have robbed him of Màili, who he once loved, of his son, and even of his grandson, and I had the burying of his wife. And I pity him, Cameron, but I cannot change these things now. All my life I have wrestled with my conscience, but I had given Màili my word.”

  She read his touching final words and looked across to James, still staring out of the window. Ruairidh took the letters, replaced them in their envelopes, and sat back, watching his cousin. “Alright, Jamie?”

  James nodded. “Just give me a minute. He squeezed Hetty’s shoulder as he went past her, out into the courtyard, and as the door closed behind him, Ruairidh smiled reassuringly at her.

  “He’ll be fine, it’s a lot to take in. But it explains the DNA tangle.” Briefly, he told her what the report had said. “The results showed a connection between the bones and all three of us, but for different reasons. Some links were common to both you and James, going back to Theo Blake’s father, while others were common to James and me, from Màili Cameron. But the hair in the locket only related to James—it must be Beatrice’s, you see.”

  “She’d given him her locket?”

  “Aye.
”

  She stared at him, following the threads in her mind, and they sat in silence, listening to the muffled sounds of the wind still gusting through the courtyard, then Ruairidh turned to look at the painting again. “There’s a sadness to it,” he said, and bent closer to read the date. “The year Màili Forbes died, 1897.” He paused. “Perhaps it is a sort of farewell.”

  “And yet he gave it to his wife—”

  Ruairidh shook his head and went over to the window. “I’ll go and see if he’s alright.” He took a step towards the door, then stopped. “No, you go.”

  James was standing on the ridge between the two houses, looking across at the remains of Muirlan House, his jacket blown open by the wind, his hair across his face. Ruairidh’s dog had followed her from the kitchen and went up to him now, snuffling at his boots. Hetty saw him look down briefly, then drop his hand to fondle her ears.

  At last he turned and saw her waiting at the bottom of the ridge, uncertain, and he came down to her, drawing her close and holding her. They went back into the kitchen, where he pulled out a chair and sat, looking across at Ruairidh, his face vulnerable, as she had once seen it before. “The one person who comes out of all this well is old John Forbes, gathering up the fallout from Theo Blake’s passions—first Màili and Cameron, and then Beatrice and Johnnie.” He gave his cousin a twisted smile. “And his descendants have kept up the tradition through the generations.” He reached for the whisky bottle and slopped some into his mug. “You’ve done rather better than me in your choice of forebears.” He took a drink and turned sharply to Hetty, his eyes glinting. “And this makes us cousins of a sort, though not close, thank God. And our bloodline, by contrast, is one of seducers, adulterers, murderers, and fraudsters.”

  His face was strained, and she reached out, laying her hand on his sleeve. “But it’s that of lovers too.” He returned her a look, which brought back the warmth of the night.