Grant had run the Duncairn Hotel for twenty years now. He had moved there from Aberdeen after his wife died, full of ideas to renovate the place and make it popular. Margaret Gordon had initially given him the money to improve the fabric of the building, a Victorian grey granite pile built from the stones of the old castle itself, but his plans to modernise it had met with a veto. No new bar with piped music; no ceilidh nights; no large notice on the main road to bring in the passing trade. She wanted the place to remain a haven of peace for the people who knew it. She was not interested in making a profit, and slowly Jack had come round to her way of thinking and he had come to love this rugged piece of headland with its ever-changing skies. The only solace to his former ambition, the only extravagance he permitted himself now, was the excellence of his menu which was slowly gaining a reputation throughout north-eastern Scotland. There were few evenings in the summer when the restaurant wasn’t full and often at weekends the guests would stay a night or two in the faded splendour of the baronial rooms. But now, in October, the hotel was all but empty.
He ran the place with a minimum of staff. Mollie Fraser and her daughter Catriona actually lived in the hotel, helping him in the kitchen and looking after the occasional guests. In the summer two or three women came up from the village to help, glad of any extra work that was going. But apart from that they coped. He and Mollie had an understanding. They were comfortable.
Behind Neil the room was empty. From the low, broad windows, he could see the top of the remaining tower of the castle, the stone, yellowed with lichen, rising above the trees. Even from here he could hear the soft soughing of the waves below the cliffs.
Grant shrugged. ‘Not a word. Mrs Royland came up here in June shortly after old Miss Gordon died.’ He sniffed. ‘She used to come up here a lot as a lass, wee Clare Gordon. A cute little thing, she was, but now she’s married to an Englishman she hasn’t time for us any more.’
‘Do you think she’ll sell the place?’ Neil dropped the question casually into the conversation.
‘Never. It’s in her blood. Even if she doesn’t come back, she’d not sell.’
‘She’s had an offer for it.’
Grant looked him straight in the eye, suddenly suspicious. ‘How come you know so much about it?’
‘I work for Earthwatch. I don’t want to see this coast spoiled by on-shore drilling, and I don’t want to see this hotel closed. Your whisky is too good!’
Ignoring the compliment Grant pulled himself up on to a stool his side of the bar, and leaned forward. ‘Are you saying there’s oil at Duncairn?’
Neil nodded.
‘And you think Clare Royland will sell up?’
‘She’s been offered a hell of a lot of money, Jack.’
‘I still can’t believe she’d sell.’ Grant shook his head. ‘It would be right out of character.’
‘What if her husband wanted her to? He’s not interested in Scotland.’
‘As to that, I don’t know. I’ve not seen him more than once.’
‘We’re going to fight the oil, Jack. Are you with us?’ Neil watched him closely.
‘Oh, aye, I’m with you. I’m too old to change to the fast-food and fast-women market. Leave that to the boys in Aberdeen.’
‘Even if it means fighting Clare Royland?’
‘She won’t sell.’
Neil scowled. ‘I wish I had your faith in her.’
Grant sat for a moment, lost in thought. ‘Surely it doesn’t matter who owns the land if there’s oil there. The bastards will take it anyway.’ Unprompted he reached for Neil’s glass and refilled it.
‘Maybe, but if the oil company already own the land they want to drill we have far less chance of winning. If, on the other hand, it has belonged to the same family for generations –’
‘For seven hundred and fifty years.’
‘That long?’ Neil said dryly. ‘And if we can shame Clare Royland into opposing any drilling, then we’ll get public opinion on our side. The English public; the public in Edinburgh and Glasgow, they love a romantic tragedy; theirs is the support we need. That and the fact that rare plants and animals and birds live here on these cliffs, with the real threat of environmental pollution – it would all give us a working chance of saving this place.’
He walked around the castle again later, watching as the mists slowly crept landwards across the sea. The stones were passive in the cold sunlight; no echoes this time. He pictured Clare as he had seen her, her hair blowing in the wind, her high-heeled shoes sinking into the grass. Strangely she had looked at home, he realised now; decadent and beautiful, like her castle. If only she had kicked off those damn fool shoes he might even have felt some sympathy for her. He frowned. Was Kathleen right then? Had it become a personal vendetta?
Kathleen had stayed in Edinburgh. She was booked to sing at a club for the week and anyway he hadn’t wanted her up here with him. Somehow she always came between him and the scenery; not intentionally, but as a distraction, a discordant note, in the tranquillity of a landscape of which he felt completely a part. For all her ethnic clothes and other-worldly manner she was a city animal – a beautiful black-haired panther of a woman, who would be as out of place here at Duncairn as a bird of paradise on a grouse moor.
He climbed up into the tower and stared out to sea, feeling the strange throbbing power of the wind and waves in his very soul. Dear God, he had to save this place!
‘What’s wrong with me, Zak? Am I going mad? I don’t understand. I’ve been claustrophobic since I was a child, but like that! In Harrods! With hundreds of people watching! I made such a fool of myself!’ Clare put her face in her hands for a second, then she straightened and looked at him. ‘What is the matter with me?’ she whispered.
Zak sat down slowly and stretched his legs out in front of him. ‘Nothing’s the matter. People often feel like that in crowds. You’re reading too much into a fairly common reaction. Think cool, remember?’
‘Think cool! How can I? The only thing I had to help me was the meditation, and you told me not to do that any more.’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, Clare.’
‘And?’
‘And more than ever I am certain that you must stop doing it. I’ve been talking to someone about you, someone who knows about these phenomena. He agrees that the way you are approaching the exercise is wrong. Wrong for you. It is too risky. I still feel meditation could help you, Clare, but not this kind, please believe me.’
‘Zak?’ She sat down near him suddenly. ‘The nightmares, the claustrophobia. Do they have something to do with Isobel? Is this all connected?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t know, Clare. Everyone has nightmares – they are externalisations of one’s inner fears and worries –’
‘Are my worries that terrible?’
‘They are to you, Clare. But you are facing them with your conscious mind now, and that
