Chapter One
When the parcel arrived, Rachel Fisher was lost in a book. She was happily learning more about medieval Scotland, black coffee going cold at her side. All was right with the world. Until the knock on the door.
Knock.
She marked her place with a bookmark -Benson’s, best for books- and then added the tome to the already tottering pile on her coffee table. Two weeks left to get through the entire lot.
From where she was sitting she could read the spines of them all. Norman Chivalry, The Golden Age, Hardmann’s Scottish Clans, The Wars of Independence. All of them four hundred pages plus. A fortnight to finish them all if she wanted to be prepared when her Masters began.
If only she hadn’t been distracted by all the other books over the summer, the ones where knights rescued fair maidens, and the more modern ones where the maidens didn’t need rescuing, thank you very much.
The ones filled with romance that the dry histories of real Scotland could never hope to match. The factual accounts were all, “The Laird married the lady,” and then onto the next generation.
Where was the passion? The wooing? The coy glances across a packed hall? Reality could never match fiction for such things. Maybe she should have studied English Lit instead of Medieval History.
Maybe she shouldn’t have taken on a Masters at all. Stayed at the supermarket and settled into the management trainee course like they wanted her to. She wasn’t sure why she was doing the Masters. What she really wanted was to book a ticket to the Middle Ages. Studying it was the next best thing.
She just needed to focus. Ignore all distractions. Which would be a lot easier if someone wasn’t knocking loudly on the door.
She had started that morning on page one of Hardmann’s Scottish Clans. She was halfwayhalfways through and boning up on the MacGregors when the knock on the door rattled her concentration. The clan was wiped out in the twelfth century but no one knew why. There was a single mention of a barefoot man but it meant nothing to Rachel.
She got up to answer the door and, at the same time, her cell phone rang. She crammed the cell against her shoulder while heading into the hallway.
“Hello?”
“You’ve not forgotten, have you?”
“Ah, the dulcet tones of my ever-furious brother. How are you Alan?” She pulled the door open as he continued. A mailman she didn’t recognise was standing there with a scowl on his face that matched her brother’s tone of voice. She nodded to him, taking the parcel he thrust into her hand as Alan continued berating her down the phone-line.
“I can’t believe you’ve forgotten. The one thing you had to do was turn up and you can’t even be bothered. Christ, Rachel, I don’t even know why I’m surprised.”
“What?” she asked, pushing the front door closed and returning to the living room, dropping the parcel on top of her pile of books. “What have I forgotten?”
She glanced at the parcel. It was wrapped in tartan paper, red and black, a pattern she recognized but she wasn’t sure where from.
The twine that held it closed had come undone and the paper was unfurling like the petals of a flower, revealing a small dark wooden box. The wood was so dark it looked black.
Alan said something she didn’t hear. She was distracted by the intricate M carved into the lid of the box. It looked exactly like the MacGregor seal she’d only just seen in Hardmann’s.
Her finger ran over the letter. Before she knew what was happening, a jolt of electricity sparked from the box, leaping across to her hand. From outside a gust of wind blew in, sending the curtains billowing upward. The air smelled of heather.
Alan was still ranting but had yet to get to the point. “I can’t believe you need to ask. Are you just doing this to wind me up, is that it? If you think you’re getting the house, you’ve got another thing coming. You never cared about her. Why would she leave you anything?”
“Alan, will you wipe the rabid foam from your mouth and start talking sense. What are you on about?”
Reaching down, she tried to open the box. It was locked. Rummaging in the packaging, she saw no sign of a key, or a note.
Who had sent her a box that couldn’t be opened?
“Your mother’s funeral.”
“Sorry, Alan,” she said, the box forgotten. “Say that again.”
“Your own mother’s funeral and you forget. I mean I know I shouldn’t be surprised. You never once picked up the phone to find out how she’s been doing.”
“Funeral? You mean she’s dead?”
“Of course she’s dead. Are you going to pretend you didn’t get my email?”
