But now, she felt feverish as well, stretched, her senses raw with exhaustion.
Her father insisted that she and Will should accompany him to an upcoming dance at the Grant Arms Hotel, so she filled her time with sewing, making over a gown of her aunt’s. It was a dusky purple, a suitable color for a widow. Livvy reduced the puff of the sleeves and added a bit of lace to make it more stylish; this would, after all, be her first formal outing without Charles.
Her father took Will to the local tailor’s shop to be fitted for evening clothes, his first, and in the evenings Livvy helped him practice his dancing. Will was now, after all, the man of the house. If it was time for Livvy to face the world on her own, it was time for Will to give up boyish pursuits and take his place in Highland society.
None of these preparations, however, eased Livvy’s
discomfort as the night of the dance arrived. It had been seventeen years since she’d appeared in public without the armor of a husband at her side, and she felt as awkward as a girl. She stood just inside the door of the ball-room, watching the dancers glide by in a shifting blur of pattern and color. The air was filled with the scent of perfume, of warm bodies and hot candle wax, a tincture as dizzying as laudanum.
Will swung by her, looking quite the beau with old Mrs.
Cumming on his arm. When had he grown so tall? He had become a man in this last year, in more than looks, and Livvy felt a rush of pride. The girls would be noticing him soon, if they hadn’t already. In fact, Livvy saw one of the Macintosh daughters cast a simpering eye his way, but Will fortunately seemed oblivious. He caught her eye over Mrs. Cumming’s shoulder and smiled, his usually serious face alight with his pleasure.
Then Livvy felt ashamed of herself for indulging her own vanity. She was thirty-five years old, and widowed; she should be past worrying about such things. It was Will that mattered now, with his life spread before him.
But then Rab Brodie spun by her, with his angular sister, Helen, and her pulse quickened in spite of herself. When Rab returned after the next interval and offered her his arm, she hesitated only a moment. There was no impropriety, after all, in dancing, and if a little voice whispered in her ear that by such small steps the mighty are fallen, she pretended not to hear.
Gemma woke to the sound of whimpering. Her first thought was of the children, then, as consciousness came flooding back, she remembered where she was. She sat up, blinking.
It was past daybreak; a pale light filtered in through the
drawn curtains. In the next bed, Hazel tossed restlessly, moaning now. Then the moan rose to a scream, and Hazel sat bolt upright, panting, her eyes open but unfocused.
“Hazel!” Gemma leaped from the bed and crossed the gap between them, grasping Hazel’s shoulder.
“No. No!” Hazel cried out, flinching, and it was only when Gemma shook her firmly that she seemed to realize where she was. She looked up at Gemma, her face streaked with tears.
“It was just a dream,” soothed Gemma, patting Hazel as she would one of the boys. “Try not to think about Donald—”
“No, it wasn’t Donald,” Hazel said, shaking her head.
“Oh, Gemma, it was the strangest thing. I was in our old house, at Carnmore, except that it wasn’t exactly our house. Some things were the same, but others weren’t.”
She frowned. “The kitchen was red, I remember that, and there was a rocking chair by the stove.” Rubbing at her bare upper arms, she began to shiver. “I know that doesn’t sound frightening, but I was terrified. It was as if I was seeing things through someone else’s eyes, and I couldn’t get back to myself. And then—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “Then I was in the distillery, and there was a fire—maybe it was the kilns. I’m not sure, but I was frightened—not as myself this time, but as her—”
“Her?”
“Yes.” Hazel nodded, looking surprised. “I’m sure of it, I don’t know how. She was afraid, and then there was shouting, and blood, and the smell of whisky . . . the smell of whisky everywhere.” She shuddered. “God, I feel sick.”
“What you need is a cup of tea,” Gemma said briskly, padding over to the kettle. She sloshed it, decided there was enough water for two cups, and switched it on. “It’s
only natural you should have nightmares, after what’s happened.”
“Yes, but it . . . it was so real. Not like a dream at all, yet at the same time I knew I was dreaming. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.”
Gemma put two tea bags into the comfortably mis-matched flower-patterned cups Louise had provided.
“Was there ever a fire in the distillery?”
“Not that I know of.”
As Gemma made the tea, she thought of the photo she’d seen in Heather Urquhart’s office, and of the little that Heather had told her about the distillery. “I have an idea,” she said, handing Hazel her cup. “Will you take me to see Carnmore?”
“What?” Hazel stared at her. “Now?”
Gemma glanced at the clock on the bedside table, then opened the curtain until she could see out into the garden.
It was not yet seven, and the sun was shining. “Yes. Why not? We’ll skip breakfast. We could pick up something on the way.”
“But— What about—” Awareness of what the day would hold flooded back into Hazel’s face. “Shouldn’t we be doing something—”
“There’s nothing we can do this morning but wait.”
Gemma had stayed awake, worrying into the wee hours of the morning. As she considered each angle of the case, she ran smack into her own helplessness. She couldn’t call on the firm’s solicitor to learn the disposition of Donald’s will; she couldn’t attend the postmortem; she couldn’t query the forensics results, or the findings of the house-to-house inquiries. Any little morsel of official information would have to come by the grace of Chief Inspector Ross, and Gemma suspected she would do well to get a crumb.
There was a bright spot—Heather had promised to ring
her when she’d heard from the lawyer, and that information might give her something to go on with. And she would chat up the other guests, but she sensed that would be better done when she could get them on their own, and once the police had finished with the property. The presence of the team completing the search of the area would not exactly invite confidences.
As for suggesting that Chief Inspector Ross inquire into Tim’s movements, she had decided to wait at least until Kincaid arrived after lunch, in hopes that Ross would be thorough enough to request London’s help without her having to interfere.
She had rung Kincaid before going to bed, letting him know that Hazel had been released but that she and Hazel both intended to stay on a little longer.
“You don’t have to come,” she’d added, but without much conviction.
After a moment’s thought, he’d said, “You’re determined to have a hand in this case, aren’t you, whether the local force likes it or not.”