‘Papa,’ Ellen said again, ‘this is your niece Catriona, come from Applecross.’

Ebeneezer Balfour stared at me from beneath lowered brows. ‘Davie’s girl,’ he slurred. ‘Your father’s dead, and that’s all that brings you to my door.’

I heard Ellen catch her breath at the harshness of his words. ‘Aye, sir,’ I said. ‘That would be right.’

I saw a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. ‘Proud,’ he said, ‘just like your sire.’ He leaned heavily against the wooden table for support and it creaked beneath his weight. ‘We quarrelled,’ he said, slumping down in the big carver chair at the table’s head. ‘Did he tell you that, girl?’

‘He told me nothing, sir,’ I said coldly. I could quite see how that had happened. Uncle Ebeneezer would, I was sure, pick a quarrel with a saint. ‘But I am grateful to have family to take me in,’ I added. ‘Thank you, sir.’

The words seemed to stick in my throat, but I felt I had to force them out. Despite the coldness of Uncle Ebeneezer’s greeting, I did not want it ever said that I was ungrateful to be offered a home at Glen Clair.

‘There’s nothing for you here,’ he said, his eyes hooded. He nodded towards Ellen. ‘Did she tell you? I drink what profits this estate provides.’ He raised the whisky bottle in drunken salute.

‘The smugglers are out,’ Ellen said quickly. ‘Catriona met them on the road.’

Uncle Ebeneezer lowered the bottle again, frowning. ‘I know.’

Ellen started to shred breadcrumbs between her nervous fingers. ‘There were two excise men on their tail. They said that they would call again tomorrow.’

Uncle Ebeneezer gave her a look of contempt. ‘Then you had better distract them, hadn’t you, girl? We want no nose-poker-inners here.’

Unhappy colour flushed Ellen’s cheeks. She did not reply, and a moment later Uncle Ebeneezer took another long slurp of the drink.

‘Ye’ll have had hopes of us, I daresay, Catriona Balfour?’

I looked at Ellen, but she avoided my gaze. Her face looked pinched and cold. “I confess, sir,’ I said, ‘that when I heard I had kinsfolk well-to-do I thought they might help me in my life.’ My tone hardened. ‘But I am no beggar. I look for nothing that is not freely given. I can always return to Applecross and work for my living.’

Ellen looked up, a spark of amazement in her blue eyes. ‘Work?’

‘Aye,’ Uncle Ebeneezer said rudely, ‘’tis what you would have had to do, girl, had your mother not filled your head with foolish notions of gentility and seen that you were good for nothing.’

He reached across me for the bread, tore off a hunk and thrust it into his mouth. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘We want no more mouths to feed here.’

I stood up. In that moment I was so angry that I would have walked all the way back to Applecross there and then had it been in the least possible. Then I caught Ellen’s eye. She was looking at me beseechingly and I remembered what she had said about longing for a friend.

‘I will show you to your chamber,’ she said quickly, grabbing the candle. ‘Excuse us, Papa.’

Uncle Ebeneezer snorted. ‘Chamber! A broom cupboard amongst the rats is the place for Davie’s girl.’

We left him sitting in the dark, gnawing on the remains of the cheese.

‘I am so sorry,’ Ellen whispered, as she dragged me back along the corridor to the foot of the stairs. ‘Papa is always like this when he is in his cups.’

‘What is he like when he is sober?’ I whispered back.

She smiled. ‘Not much better.’ Her face fell. ‘Oh Catriona, you will not leave, will you? Not when I have only just found you.’ She grabbed my hand. ‘Please?’

I felt terribly torn. Already I liked Ellen such a lot, and it was clear she was lonely here in the big, crumbling mansion whose future her father was drinking away.

‘I will have to see,’ I said. ‘I cannot stay here if Uncle Ebeneezer does not wish it.’

She let go of my hand and started up the stairs. ‘I suppose not,’ she said. Her tone brightened a little. ‘You said that you could work?’

‘As a teacher or a companion, perhaps,’ I said, trying not to think about what Neil Sinclair had said about my potential. Suddenly I wanted to ask Ellen about Neil—but that was probably a bad idea. He had said she was delightful. Perhaps she thought the same of him.

‘A teacher?’ Ellen said, as though such an idea were somehow miraculous. ‘Only fancy.’

She threw the door open onto a small bedchamber on the first landing. It was clean and bare, empty of all furnishing but for a table with a jug of water and a bowl and a big tester bed that looked as though it were at least a hundred years old.

Ellen was looking anxious. ‘I cleaned it myself,’ she said. ‘The linen is fresh.’

‘It is lovely,’ I lied. I kissed her goodnight. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I am tired.’

Even so, it was a while before I slept. The linen was indeed fresh, but the mattress was damp, and as lumpy as poorly made porridge. Mice scratched in the wall and the old house creaked and groaned around me like a foundering galleon. There was no peace to be found at Glen Clair.

I wondered about my father and the quarrel he had had with Uncle Ebeneezer. I wondered about my Aunt Madeline, whom Neil had said suffered from her nerves and Ellen had said was an invalid. And I wondered about Ellen herself, and the gentlemen who must surely be queuing up to take her away from all this squalor. Finally I thought about Neil Sinclair, and that I would have something to say to him when we next met. Smuggler or free trader, rogue or hero, he would have no more kisses from me. Or so I vowed.

In which a great many visitors come to the Old House at Glen Clair.

When I awoke the sun was creeping across the bare boards of the floor and the old house was rattling with activity. I rolled over in bed and my back protested. After a night lying on the damp and lumpy mattress I felt stiff.

There were footsteps and voices outside my door, one raised above the others in querulous protest.

‘Where is Ellen? I told you to send her to me. No, I do not require any medicine. It is too cold in this room. Pull up the covers for me. No, not like that, woman. You are practically smothering me!’

A door closed, cutting off the voice abruptly.

I opened my eyes and stared at the frayed cover of the tester bed above me. That, I imagined, had been my Aunt Madeline, the invalid. There appeared to be nothing wrong with her lungs, at any rate.

I swung my bare feet to the floor and reached for my petticoat. Five minutes later I had dressed and was dragging a comb through my hair. Throwing open the curtains, I gazed out at the view and was immediately entranced.

The Old House stood on a promontory between Loch Clair and the smaller Loch Torran, and my room looked out at the back of the house, across a rough meadow that had once been a lawn, where peacocks pecked and prowled. Beyond the little loch the valley opened up in a wide bowl with the mountains, clad in amber and purple, reaching to the sky. I stared—and fell in love with Glen Clair in that moment.

Opening my bedroom door, I could hear my aunt’s voice rising and falling like the peal of bells, even through the thick oak door opposite. No doubt Ellen would bring me to meet her later. But for now I was sharp set, and looking forward to my breakfast.

I did not have high expectations of what might be on offer, but even those were dashed. When I reached the kitchen it was to find Ellen herself stirring a pan of porridge upon the hob. The kettle was whistling. Ellen’s face lit up when she saw me.

‘I did not like to wake you,’ she confided, ‘knowing that you had had so tiring a day yesterday. Here—’ she scooped a ladle full of porridge from the pan ‘—pass a plate.’

The porridge was a stewed grey, and slopped down into the plate in one fat blob. I tried not to blench and picked up my spoon, digging in whilst she poured me a mug of tea.