Free The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine

she sat at her dressing table one morning. “Raise your arms to your hair again. As you were. No. Wait! Yes, there.” And he told her he had captured a thousand images of her, reflected in the angled side mirror. “But what will I do with a thousand Beatrices?” he asked, putting aside his camera. “Just one has all a man could ask for.” And he had swept her laughing from the stool and carried her back to the rumpled bed. The poor girl who had come to collect her breakfast tray half an hour later had been mortified.
    Lifting her head now, she saw him from the window, out on the drained sand, walking towards the house, a dark figure backlit by the low sun, and reached for her clothes. She would join him, if only for the last stretch up to the house. Grabbing a shawl, she looked again at the approaching figure and then stopped, the shawl loose in her hand. For it was not Theo, after all, but the factor’s elder son who was striding across the beach towards the house; the long shadows had deceived her. And as she watched she saw him raise a hand to his mouth and heard a piercing whistle, which brought Bess, the brown pointer, tearing from the shore, circling him in delight. He bent and twisted, hurling a stick far out onto the strand. The dog pelted after it, sending up sprays of diamonds from the shallow water, and she found herself wondering if Theo had ever played so lightheartedly across the sands.
    Halfway down the stairs, she met Mrs. Henderson with her breakfast tray. “I was just bringing this up, madam, with a message from Mr. Blake. He’s ridden over to the manse but says he’ll be back for dinner.” Beatrice smiled brightly and thanked her, agreeing that she would take breakfast in the morning room, and entered just in time to see through the window as Cameron Forbes disappeared around the back of the factor’s house, followed by his dog.
    She poured her tea and bit into the toast, looking round,resolving again that a pair of dusty lapwings over the fireplace would be better suited elsewhere. But she must be patient, not try and change things too quickly, and in the meantime she must find some occupation, for Mrs. Henderson’s competency left her with little to do. “We’re damned lucky to have her,” Theo had said, explaining that she had been trained in one of the big houses on the mainland and had returned to the islands “in trouble.” Running Muirlan House for them was child’s play.
    She pulled out a half-finished letter to Emily Blake and picked up her pen. Your brother has not yet dipped brush in paint, she wrote, but spends his days either out on the estate or closeted in his study with the factor’s son. Still settling in, he tells me. Do you think you will come this summer? You mustn’t think you intrude . . . When Theo had first suggested they spend the summer on the island, she had felt a stab of disappointment, hoping he might have suggested Europe. “Venice stinks in summer,” he had said, “and Rome’s full of foreigners.” And something in his face had told her that coming here was important to him. The island is as lovely as you described and I confess that I don’t miss Edinburgh one bit. She paused again, thinking back to the endless, deadening round of social occasion and intrigue, driven as she had been by the cheerless imperative to find a husband as her father careered towards financial disaster. He had led a reckless life, with a circle of ramshackle friends, and his love of the racecourse had never been equalled by his successes there, but her mother’s frank revelations regarding his debts had come as a shock. “Don’t fall for a charming smile, my dear. We must find you a man of substance, and quickly. ” Her mother had made an unequal match, marrying against her family’s wishes, and Beatrice had watched, mortified, as she used all her remaining