Read Chapter 17: The Clan Gathering

The morning of the gathering arrived with a sky the colour of hammered pewter, and Eilidh woke to the sound of tyres crunching over gravel below her gatehouse window. She pressed her forehead to the cold glass. A Land Rover had already claimed the forecourt, and beyond it, a thin stream of elderly figures in tartan and tweed were making their slow, deliberate way up the castle drive, leaning on walking sticks and each other, their voices carrying up to her in snatches of Gaelic and laughter.

She dressed with care—a dark green wool dress, sensible but sharp, her restorer’s badge clipped to her lapel like armour. This was not her battlefield, she reminded herself. She was here to observe, to catalog, to be professional. The diary was tucked beneath a loose floorboard in her room, wrapped in oilcloth, and the photograph of Finella’s name was saved on her phone, hidden in a folder labelled “landscape tests.” She was a professional. She could do this.

The Great Hall had been transformed. Long trestle tables groaned under the weight of oatcakes, smoked salmon, and bottles of whisky with labels Eilidh recognised from auction catalogues. Hamish stood at the far end, receiving guests with the stiff courtesy of a man who would rather be anywhere else. He wore a kilt in the MacKinnon tartan, deep green and navy, and a jacket that strained slightly at the shoulders. When he saw her, something in his face eased—a softening around the eyes that she felt like a hand pressed to her back.

She made her way toward him, but before she could reach him, a small woman with iron-grey hair cut sharply at the jaw intercepted her with the precision of a hawk dropping from the sky.

“You’ll be the Grant girl,” the woman said. It was not a question.

“I’m Eilidh Grant, yes. I’m the restoration consultant.”

“Morag MacKinnon.” The woman’s hand was bony and cold, but her grip was fierce. “Cousin to Hamish’s father, though God knows the connection’s thin enough these days. I heard about your fall.” Her eyes, pale as winter ice, swept Eilidh from head to toe. “You recovered quickly.”

“I was lucky.”

“Luck’s a currency that runs out.” Morag released her hand and gestured with her chin toward the crowd. “They’re all here for one thing, you know. To see whether the boy’s finally lost his mind, letting a stranger pull his castle apart.”

Eilidh kept her expression neutral. “The castle is structurally unsound. The restoration is necessary.”

“Necessary.” Morag laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering. “So was the wall that sealed the east wing. So was the silence about your family, girl. Necessary.” She leaned in, dropping her voice so low Eilidh had to angle her head to hear. “Some secrets cut deep. Deeper than the foundations. You’d do well to remember that before you go digging where the dead are still settling.”

Before Eilidh could respond, Morag pressed something into her palm—cold, thin, rectangular. A photograph. Eilidh glanced down. A faded sepia image, creased with age, its corners soft as velvet. A woman stood before the castle’s east facade, which looked newer then, the stone pale and clean. The woman wore a high-collared dress of dark silk, her hair pinned in elaborate coils, and she stared at the camera with a directness that felt almost confrontational. Her face was sharp-boned, with wide-set eyes and a mouth that curved in a smile that was not quite warm.

Eilidh’s breath caught.

The woman looked like her. Not a casual resemblance, not a trick of the light. The same jawline that had always felt too strong for a woman. The same way of holding her chin slightly raised, as if bracing for a blow. The same eyes—grey, direct, unflinching.

“Who is this?” Eilidh’s voice came out rougher than she intended.

Morag was already turning away. “Ask your grandmother,” she called over her shoulder. “If she’s still alive to answer.”

Eilidh stared at the photograph. The crowd surged around her, bodies in tartan and tweed, laughter and the clink of glasses. She felt unmoored, suspended in the thin air of a different century. The woman in the photograph was not a MacKinnon—she was certain of that. She was a Grant. Eilidh would have bet her career on it. The resemblance was too strong, too specific, like looking at a mirror fogged by time.

She shoved the photograph into her pocket just as Hamish appeared at her elbow, his hand hovering near her shoulder without quite touching.

“There you are,” he said, his voice warm with relief. “I’d have thought you’d be in the thick of the whisky by now.”

“I’m working.”

“So I see.” He followed her gaze to Morag, who was now deep in conversation with an old man in a threadbare waistcoat. “Morag’s a terror. She once told my grandmother that her scones were an insult to the MacKinnon name. She was right, but still.”

“She gave me something.” Eilidh’s hand instinctively moved to her pocket.

Hamish’s brow furrowed. “What?”

Before she could answer, a voice rang out from the far end of the hall. “Hamish MacKinnon! Where’s that boy hiding?”

Hamish winced. “Auntie Jean. I’ve got to—” He hesitated, looking at Eilidh with an expression she couldn’t quite parse. “Stay close, alright? I want to introduce you to some of the older ones. They remember things the records don’t.”

He turned and was swallowed by the crowd, leaving Eilidh standing alone with the photograph burning against her thigh. She pulled it out again, angling it toward the light from the tall windows. The woman’s face was younger than Eilidh had first thought—perhaps early twenties, the age she’d been when she’d first started climbing scaffoldings and arguing with site foremen about lime mortar. The woman held a small book in her hands, pressed against her chest like a shield. A diary, perhaps. Or a bible.

Eilidh’s phone buzzed. A text from Hamish: *Dinner seating. You’re at my table. Don’t let Morag corner you again.*

She smiled despite herself, then looked back at the photograph. Her thumb traced the curve of the woman’s cheekbone. In the corner, in faded ink, someone had written a single word: *Finella.*

Eilidh’s blood went cold.

She turned the photograph over. Nothing on the back but the ghost of an old watermark. But the word was there, unmistakable, in a hand that sloped elegantly to the right—a hand she’d seen before, on the final pages of a diary hidden beneath her floorboards.

Finella. The woman who had fought for her inheritance, been branded mad, and erased from history wore Eilidh’s face.

A chill traced its way down her spine. Morag knew. Morag had known who Eilidh was before she’d ever set foot in this castle. And she’d handed her a photograph of a woman dead for over a century and a half, a woman who could have been Eilidh’s great-great-great-grandmother, with a warning that sounded less like advice and more like prophecy.

Some secrets cut deep.

Eilidh looked up. The hall was full of MacKinnons, laughing and drinking and celebrating a lineage they believed was theirs by right. But the true line, the one Finella had fought for, wore Eilidh’s face and stood in the corner clutching a photograph that proved her connection. She wasn’t just a restorer here to repair the castle’s walls. She was a ghost, summoned home by the very stones she’d been paid to save.

She shoved the photograph back into her pocket and squared her shoulders. Across the room, Hamish caught her eye and smiled, oblivious to the sea-change happening beneath his feet. Eilidh smiled back, the weight of a century and a half settling on her like a second skin.