Read Chapter 7: Groundskeeper's Tale

The deer was where Angus had said it would be, lying in the bracken beside the old stone wall that marked the eastern edge of the Blackwood park. Iona crouched, keeping her voice low and steady as she approached. The animal’s flank was lathered, one foreleg held at an odd angle, and its eyes were wide with pain.

“Easy now,” she murmured. “Easy.”

The groundskeeper stood a few paces back, his boots sinking into the wet moss. He was a lean man in his sixties with a face like weathered bark and hands that hung at his sides as if they didn’t quite know what to do when empty. He’d barely spoken since she’d arrived—just met her at the gate, nodded at her cover story about a follow-up visit for the mare, and led her across the field without a word.

“How long has it been limping?” Iona asked, running her hands along the deer’s shoulder.

“Two days. Maybe three.”

“It’s a clean break. Tibia.” She opened her kit and drew out the splint and bandages. “Whoever hit this deer didn’t report it. Was it a car?”

Angus made a sound in his throat—not quite a laugh. “Not a car, lass.”

She looked up. He was staring at the leg, and there was something in his face that made her stomach tighten. Not pity. Not idle concern. Something closer to recognition.

“What, then?”

Angus shook his head. “Just a stroke of bad luck for the creature. You’ll fix it?”

“I’ll do what I can.”

She worked in silence for a long stretch, and Angus stayed where he was, watchful. The deer went still under her hands, almost eerily calm, as if it understood she meant no harm. Iona tried not to think about the logic of that. Animals knew. They always knew.

“You’ve a gentleness with them,” Angus said. “The lady of the house had that. Before.”

Iona’s hands paused. “Lady Isobel?”

“No.” He turned away, and the word hung in the air oddly. “The other one.”

Iona finished the splint, wiped her hands on her trousers, and stood. She should have left then. The deer would recover, and her excuse for being here would be exhausted. But something kept her planted in the moss.

“You mean Clara Blackwood.”

Angus’s head snapped toward her, and his weather-beaten face went careful in a way that told her more than any denial could. “Who told you that name?”

“I saw her portrait. In the house.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then let out a breath that carried the weight of years. “You look like her. I see it now. In the line of the jaw and the way you stand.”

“I’m told we share a bloodline.”

“Aye.” He crouched down, ran a weathered hand over the deer’s flank. “She was the one who found me. Drunk and half-frozen in a ditch in Fort William, twenty years ago. Brought me here. Gave me work. Gave me a life.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he pressed his lips together.

“What happened to her?”

Angus was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. When he finally spoke, it was not about Clara at all.

“Ellis, the old heir. He was a good lad. Kind. Didn’t have the hardness the rest of them carry like a skin. He loved the moor. Knew every path, every burn, every den.” He paused. “They said it was a hunting accident.”

Iona heard the emphasis. “But you don’t believe that.”

“I believe the hill was steep and the light was failing.” Angus stood, and for a moment his sleeve rode up. Iona saw it—a pale, crescent-shaped scar on his forearm, puckered and raw-looking, still fresh enough to be pink at the edges. Not a cut. Not a scrape.

Teeth.

She knew bite marks. She’d seen them on dogs, on livestock, on a collie barely a week past that had been savaged by something that had torn through its flank like paper.

This was the same shape, only larger. Human-sized. Human-shaped.

“Angus,” she said quietly. “That scar on your arm.”

He pulled his sleeve down quickly, but not before she saw his whole body go rigid. “It’s nothing. Old injury.”

“It’s not old. It’s still healing.”

“You should go now.” His voice had lost its warmth. “The deer’s done. You’ve no other reason to be here.”

“Lachlan asked me not to come until after the moon,” Iona said. “He didn’t say I couldn’t ask questions before it.”

Angus stared at her, and for a moment something like fear flickered in his eyes. Not of her. For her.

“You’re Maeve’s girl,” he said. “And you wear her locket. I saw it catching the light when you bent over the deer.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You need to leave this place. Not just the estate. The whole valley. Whatever you’re looking for, lass, it isn’t worth the price.”

“What price?”

But Angus shook his head and turned away, walking toward the treeline with a gait that said the conversation was over. Iona watched him go, the deer breathing softly at her feet, and she felt the locket warm against her chest, a steady pulse of heat that had nothing to do with the Scottish sun.

She gathered her kit and walked back to her Land Rover, but instead of driving toward the village, she took the long way around the estate grounds, past the old boathouse and the tumbledown bothy that had once been a gamekeeper’s cottage. The windows were dark. The door was padlocked. But tacked to the frame, weathered and faded, was a small handwritten sign.

*KEEP OUT. NO TRESPASSING. BY ORDER OF THE BLACKWOOD ESTATE.*

Underneath the words, someone had scratched a single line that had been partially erased by rain but was still legible if you knew where to look:

*She never left.*

Iona stood there for a long moment, the wind tugging at her hair, and then she drove back to the village in silence.

She parked outside the café, needing something warm and ordinary, and pushed through the door. The smell of coffee and baked bread hit her, and for a moment she felt almost normal. Then she saw the board by the register.

Missing posters. A stack of them, held up with a crooked pin.

The face was young—early twenties, bright smile, dark hair pulled back from a sun-browned face. The word MISSING was stamped in red above a date that made Iona’s chest tighten.

*Morag MacIntyre. Last seen one year ago. Full moon. If you have any information, please contact the Fort William police.*

Iona read it twice. Then three times. And something cold settled in her stomach as she reached into her pocket and clicked the locket open.

Inside, pressed against the photograph of her mother’s face, was a faded clipping. She’d found it when she’d opened the box of letters this morning and hadn’t fully understood why she’d tucked it away.

It was a local paper from twenty-six years ago. The headline read: *Blackwood Heir’s Fiancée Dies in Tragic Fall.*

The name beneath the photograph was Maeve Campbell.

And beneath the photograph, small and easy to miss, was a list of names of the search party. One name had been circled in fading ink.

*Morag MacIntyre.*

The same name. The same face. The café’s missing poster was bright and newly printed, but the woman in it had been part of Maeve’s search party a generation ago.

Iona’s hand shook as she closed the locket.

She hadn’t read the letters yet. She’d been afraid. But now she looked at the poster, at the date—one year ago, full moon—and she thought of Angus’s bite wound, of the deer’s broken leg, of the sign that said *she never left.*

She left the café without ordering anything.

Her mother’s letters were waiting at home in a box she had not yet opened. Tonight, she would open them. And if the answers they held led her deeper into the dark, she would follow anyway.