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world, why should he not spend them in love with this beautiful apparition?
    Patiently he waited for the skiff to approach, breathing deeply the salt air, which was gradually spiced with the scent of sweet woodbine and blackberries ripening under the sun.
    “Come tae me, Taffy, lass,” he murmured.
    I’m coming, he thought he heard the wind whisper back.

Chapter Three
    Kilmartin, 1888
    The darkness’s disquieting dreams had given way to the morning rituals, which included performing one’s toiletries by a small lamp feebly aided by dawn’s faint light. Taffy loved Scotland, but she found this to be one of the more discouraging aspects of rural life. She did not care for early hours, cold baths, or arranging her hair when she was still fumble-fingered—especially this morning, as she intended to call on Bishop Mapleton and wanted to put in a respectable appearance for…well, whoever might see her at Duntrune.
    “My sainted aunt!” Taffy muttered in Gaelic as she wrestled with her hair—which was much toocumbersome that morning. She began to ponder, as the hands on her timepiece swept past the new hour, if perhaps it was time to halve its length. Surely no one needed hair that reached past their shoulders.
    After the long and difficult battle with braids and combs, she arrived at the breakfast table in a dead heat with the tea. Fortunately, her father was preoccupied with reading some repelling, moldy manuscript and did not note Taffy’s near tardiness and suspiciously formal dress as she discreetly slipped into her chair.
    It wasn’t that she was unfilial, Taffy assured herself, but as she had gotten older, she found that she was not open to parental suggestions on how to improve her nature. Nor was she receptive to advice on the manner of her clothing—which, according to her parent, was practically an eyesore for any that had beheld her in “rational dress.”
    It was unusually ill-natured of her to wish to avoid one of her father’s favorite mealtime topics, but she was not in the mood this morning to endure another lecture on the matter. She had come to the conclusion that she wasn’t meant to live up to his ideal of womanhood, and anyway, she had greater thoughts on her mind this morning than her attire.
    Fortunately, other than the ritual daybreak greetings with Mistress MacIntyre, not a wordwas spoken over breakfast, and Taffy escaped the morning table as soon as she decently could. She needed to be out in the open air where she could think without interruption.
    She paused only long enough to grab a short cloak and then hurried from the inn. The morning air was bracing and filled with a salty tang and the scent of wild honeysuckle. She breathed the sea air deeply, already feeling less constrained.
    In the distance was the distinct sound of bagpipes. Taffy listened carefully as she fetched her velocipede. She couldn’t hear the tune plainly, but what snatches there were sounded mournful. It seemed that there was also someone else who didn’t care for being up with the dawn! Mayhap he had spent the night having restless dreams as well.
    The sun, just fully over the horizon, was bright enough that Taffy had to narrow her eyes as she set the velocipede on its lurching course toward the loch. She should have fetched a visor, but it looked out of place with her fancier dress and would mean returning to the inn and possibly encountering her father.
    Her precious prints of Duntrune were secured between slender boards and stored in a mudproof oilskin satchel, which she used for transport on the bicycle. She had not taken the time yesterday to develop the first plate she had exposedat the castle, suspecting that it was ruined, but after her dreams of the night before…
    Taffy shook her head once, and then, recalling her recalcitrant hair, desisted.
    Well, never let it be said that she was one to let the sun go down upon an interesting notion. She decided to take the time to see if anything odd was there on