LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Especially as we’re all a bit daft, in our own ways.”

      That was one concession, Jean thought, he would not have made even a few months ago.

      Either rain or sea spray drifted across her face and glasses, making her squint at the suddenly blurry landscape. But the welcoming windows and cheerful lights still shone, and with Alasdair at her side she walked toward them.

      It wasn’t her step that was springy, it was the ground she walked on—water, peat, layers of cultivation both literal and cultural. Skye, An t-Eilean Sgithanach, the wing-shaped isle, a name to conjure history, legend, and the dubious shores between. She could create multiple articles for Great Scot, the magazine that was partly her investment and fully her employment, without getting too close to Fergie’s more marginal notions, although his notion of making a self-sustaining business of a Scots Baronial white elephant was the point of the exercise.

      “New” being relative in this part of the world—new Dunasheen dated to the early 1600s, when the local MacDonald laird had, after years of conflict, at last dispossessed the local MacLeod laird. He’d then abandoned the old castle and proclaimed his wealth and sophistication by erecting a manor house a la mode. Since then, generations of Lords Dunasheen, MacDonalds all, had renovated, rebuilt, and recreated. Annexes and towers encrusted the original building. Bow windows sprouted from walls, and dormer windows from moss-lined slate roofs edged by crow-stepped gables. Conical turrets called bartizans seemed to hang onto corners by sheer will power but were actually supported on corbels, protruding stones set in decorative tiers. Chimneys both tall and short capped the exuberant, if time-stained, structure like exclamation points.

      Even in the dull light, the stucco-like lime harling that protected the stone walls from the uncompromising elements reflected a sheen of pink. The original had been colored by the bull’s blood used as a gelling agent, Fergie had said, just as the mortar holding together the bare stones of old—eight hundred years and more old—Dunasheen had been coagulated by the eggs of sea birds. You used what resources you had here at the outer rim of civilization, thought Jean. You called in favors from old friends. You promoted your white elephant as a fairy-tale castle.

      The man in the red jacket marching along the footpath toward her and Alasdair must be a product of Fergie’s marketing scheme, moats and drawbridges now making good customers. They met up with him just where the path twisted between fissured, lichen-encrusted boulders, half-concealed by unblooming heather.

      His bulbous nose was red, too, and his square, blunt face was burnished by the wind. Sandy hair streaked with gray fluttered back from his wide forehead. Hunkered down into his thickly padded jacket, his hands thrust into his pockets, he was still taller than Alasdair, who in turn was taller than Jean. But then, most people who were not children or hobbits were taller than Jean.

      The man’s face creased into a triangular grin, wider on one side than on the other, filled with uneven teeth. His oddly pale gray eyes gleamed with humor. “If this was a golf course, it’d be all rough and no fairway.”

      “Oh aye,” Alasdair replied. He and Jean turned sideways, giving the man passing room.

      He maneuvered past, saying “Scuse me, mate” in a twang squeezed against the roof of his mouth. “You too, Missus. Is this the way to the church?”

      He was either Aussie or Kiwi, Jean deduced, her ear for Down Under accents not tuned finely enough to detect the difference. She’d have to ask.

      Alasdair answered, “The old church or the new one?”

      “The one with the crusader tombstones that was burned down by the MacLeods in 1645.”

      Who had surrounded the building, Jean added silently, swords drawn, as the congregation of MacDonalds perished inside—clan conflict fed on religious conflict and vice versa. But the delectable odor of smoke teasing her nostrils this afternoon was that of smoldering peat, implying warmth and sanctuary.

      “Then, no, you’ve gone the wrong way,” said Alasdair. “That path runs from the garden at the western side of the house. The new castle. But you can follow the beach below the old castle round to the left, past the wee promontory, and then climb the brae to the church.”

      Jean assessed the slight pucker between Alasdair’s eyebrows as a mental note: Tell Fergie to lay on directions to the local sights.

      Her own mental note was a selfish one. The horrific events at the old church trumped its historical interest, and she was just as glad the wedding was scheduled for the new one, a charming Gothic Revival folly. Not that she’d sensed more than a melancholy chill at the old church—churches, plural, walls layered atop more walls layered atop ancient foundations—when she and Alasdair had stopped there on their tour of inspection.

      She tried luring the stranger into conversation with, “You’re already familiar with the history of the area, then.”

      “Yeah, I’ve been tracing the family tree. I’m a MacLeod myself. Greg MacLeod, Townsville, Queensland, Oz. You’re at the castle, too?” He extended his right hand.

      “Aye,” Alasdair said, without introducing the topic of weddings. “Alasdair Cameron, Edinburgh.” He exchanged a firm handshake and passed the friendly hand on to Jean.

      To her cold fingers, Greg’s hand seemed almost feverishly warm, slightly damp, and linty from his pocket. “Jean Fairbairn, also Edinburgh, though I started in Texas. But you’ve come a lot further than I have, all the way from Australia.”

      “Not so far, not these days. My multiple-great grandfather, though, came out on a leaky ship. Transported near two centuries ago, and not for nicking a loaf of bread. For murder.” Despite his words, Greg’s grin evened into a rectangle, revealing a few more teeth—Jean wondered if they were issuing extra ones in the southern hemisphere.

      “Murder,” Alasdair repeated, if not amused, then not alarmed, either.

      Abruptly the light wasn’t dull at all. A gleam of sunlight pierced the cloud, glanced off the sea, and swelled like a scarlet wound along the southwestern horizon. Every puddle, pool, and trickle of water in the surrounding moorland glittered.

      Dazzled, Jean said, “After two hundred years, having a murderer in the family seems more exotic than shameful. In fact, I hear having ancestors among the convicts in the First Fleet provides a bit of cachet in Australia these days, when for years it was something you hid beneath the antimacassars. Or was your ancestor in the First Fleet?”

      “Not at all, no. Tormod MacLeod left Skye in 1822. He wouldn’t have had an easy go down under, but he missed out the worst days of Botany Bay. Though I’m starting to think the old guy crossed up the law to get himself a ticket to a warmer climate.” Greg returned his hands to his pockets and his shoulders to a crouch. “But here I am. Blood is thicker than water.”

      “You’ve not chosen the friendliest time of year,” said Alasdair.

      “Christmas in London, though! Lights, music, food, grand museums, galleries. And Harrod’s, Debenham’s, and Burlington Arcade for the wife. Now my credit card needs resuscitation. I’ll have to take out a second one to pay the overweight luggage fees.”

      Jean smiled. Alasdair nodded agreement.

      “Now for Fergus MacDonald’s New Year’s package, a traditional Hogmanay here on the old home ground.” Greg stamped his athletic shoes against the black dirt of the path, producing a slight squish and runnel of brown water. “Bloodstained ground. The MacDonalds and the MacLeods went at it like billy-o, once.”

      “Putting rings on each other’s fingers and daggers in each other’s hearts, to quote some old historian.” And Jean added to herself, oh yes, Skye was conjuring magazine articles. She’d have to ask Greg for more details of his rogue ancestor. In her previous life, she’d learned that putting a personal face on history added entire minutes to her students’ attention spans. The same ploy worked with readers. “Did Tormod MacLeod murder a MacDonald?”

      “It’s not so clear in the old family

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