Love by the Stroke of Midnight by Raven McAllan (best historical biographies .txt) 📗

A weak moon shone from the east, and showed the gentle ripples on the loch. Nearby an owl hooted, to be answered by another farther away. Trees were ghostly in the semi-darkness, and shadows shifted and changed as the breeze ruffled leaves and bushes.

It was the sort of night where if you did believe you would have all of those beliefs reinforced.

Marcail focussed on the view without really seeing it. She had to sort her muddled mind out. Being at odds with her family hurt. If only she knew what had got everyone so worked up. She might not be able to solve it, but she could commiserate or at least be prepared.

“You will very soon. It’s almost time.”

Clear as mud.

That wasn’t answered. Marcail went back to contemplating the view.

An hour or so later, she threw a cushion at the wall and wondered where the nearest booze was. It was obvious she was too wound up to sleep. The TV had annoyed her, and her current reading matter, a particularly gruesome historical thriller, had to be read with copious amounts of wine for Dutch courage and biscuits to nibble on—just because.

Neither of which she had to hand. A stale nut bar and tap water just wouldn’t hack it.

Of course. Marcail almost hit her forehead with her palm and sniggered.

How bloody dramatic. She needed to get a grip.

However, why hadn’t she remembered? The pantry and the wine fridge. Both of which she could reach unobserved if she used the back stairs and trod carefully. Surely one bottle would be screw top and she could use the tumbler from her bathroom to drink out of.

Sorted. All she had to do was get there.

Easy. She hadn’t spent her teenage years going in and out of the house that way— undetected—for nothing. She had never been caught. Practice had taught her which stairs creaked and how to avoid them, or which part to stand on to negate the noise.

There could always be a first time she got it wrong of course, but she didn’t intend it to be that night. It had been a fair few years since she’d had to use them in a stealthy way, but she hadn’t forgotten how. She hoped.

Should she?

Hell, dammit, why not.

Marcail looked at her jammies, debated for a second, flung them onto a chair and pulled undies and trackie bottoms on along with her Uggs and the old disreputable fleecy sweatshirt that had been her brother’s at uni. The fact it said ‘Teachers Do It By Textbooks’ across her boobs was a bit unnerving, but no one was likely to see it, and it was warm. Very important after nine p.m., when she knew the heating went off. Her jammies were all well and good, and with them on she might, if she were spotted, get away with the ‘I needed a hot drink’ scenario. But then her parents knew what time she’d headed up, so clothes would also work. Plus she felt more in control fully dressed.

She brought her meandering thoughts up short. It was irrelevant. She headed out of her bedroom and to the door that led to the backstairs, once called the servants stairs, or by Blair when they were younger, the should-be-secret stair.

Whatever. At that moment they were her escape route and get-a-drink stairs.

The same dim-watt light bulbs showed the way, the same faded wallpaper showed touches of fluorescent crayon from when Blair had tried to scare the girls with outlines of skeletons that glowed in the dark when he turned off the lights without any warning.

Marcail chuckled to herself as she remembered the wool and cotton spider she and Bonnie had fixed so that when Blair went into his bathroom and tried to turn on the light—they’d removed the bulb so nothing happened—it brushed his hair. They’d managed to add some wisps that felt like a spider’s web and a knot of cotton to mimic a fly.

He’d screamed and sworn vengeance until Marcail had pointed out they would just do something else as well, and it would escalate until they fell foul of their parents’ wrath. They’d agreed on a truce. However, the remnants of the drawings still remained. She traced one with her finger, just as the bulb above her head went out.

Bugger. At least she couldn’t blame Blair, he was miles away, and it was only one bulb. She didn’t think he could have found a way to mess with them.

“I could though, if I wanted to.”

Typical. In cahoots with her brother? If it weren’t bad enough having one of them in her head, now she had them both. And they appeared to agree with each other. Unless her mum had put the wrong sort of mushrooms in the dinner and she was imagining it all.

As she thought that, the other bulbs went out, one by one, until the only light came from her phone, which she’d had the forethought to pick up from her dresser and now turned on.

Probably old age or lack of use. They were after all the old, now obsolete filament iridescent ones of about twenty watts that only illuminated a tiny area each.

But that tiny area mattered.

She didn’t like the almost total darkness, be it at home or not. Marcail muttered under her breath, thankful she was almost at the bottom of the stairs. She opened the door that led into the tiny hall from which the pantry and wine stores were accessed.

And screamed as a large hand clamped on her shoulder.

“Hush now, it’s only me.”

Thank God the voice was familiar, even if unwanted.

Marcail slammed the door behind her and whirled to face Paden.

“What the hell are you doing here? How dare you scare the living daylights out of me like that? Turning the lights off, grabbing me…argh, how bloody juvenile.”

The lights came on as he held his hands up in supplication. “Not me, mo ghaol, I’d not do that.”

“Well someone did, and you’re here, unannounced and uninvited.”

“You sent for me.”

“I did