The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(31)

‘You can use my kitchen sink,’ I offered.

He carried Angus easily against his chest, the way a man might hold an injured child, and as I led them across the white footbridge and up the steep side of Ward Hill I was thinking of little else but the dog’s welfare. But with both of them inside, the cottage felt a little smaller, and I found myself becoming more self-conscious.

‘Sorry for the mess,’ I said, and tried to clear a space for him to lay the dog down on the narrow counter.

‘That’s all right. I’ve seen it worse. Is there a towel in the airing cupboard? One of those old yellow ones will do, don’t use a good one.’

I stopped, in the middle of moving a teacup, and stared at him. And then the gears of memory clicked a notch, and I remembered Jimmy Keith describing his two sons to me. He’d said, ‘There’s Stuie, he’s the younger, and his brother Graham’s doon in Aberdeen.’

‘Your last name isn’t Keith, by any chance?’ I asked.

‘It is.’

So that was why he seemed at home in here, and why he knew his local history. He should do, I thought. He lectured in it at the university.

He glanced at me, still holding the dog’s paw beneath the running water. ‘What’s the matter?’

Looking to the side, I smiled. ‘Nothing. I’ll go get that towel.’ I found the ones he wanted, the yellow ones, tucked in the back of the cupboard, and chose one that was worn, but clean.

He thanked me for it without looking up, and went on working at the wound. He had nice hands, I noticed. Neat and capable and strong, and yet their touch upon the spaniel’s paw was gentle. He asked, ‘Has Dad been telling tales about me, then? Is that it?’

‘No. It’s just that I keep tripping over members of your family. First your brother, and now you. There aren’t any other Keiths running around here in Cruden Bay, are there?’

‘Not counting cousins, there’s only the two of us.’ Still looking down and concentrating, he asked, ‘How did ye come to meet my brother?’

‘He was on my plane. He drove me up here from the airport.’

That brought his head around. ‘The airport?’

‘Yes, in Aberdeen.’

‘I ken fine where it is,’ he said. ‘But when I saw you last week, you were on your way to Peterhead, and driving by yourself. How did ye get from there,’ he asked me, ‘to the airport?’

I explained. It sounded decidedly odd to my own ears, the story of how I had looked at Slains castle and known that I needed to be here, and flown back to Paris to clear out my things and come over again, in the space of a couple of days. But if Graham thought anything of it, he didn’t say. When I had finished, he tore a long strip from one end of the towel and wrapped it with care around Angus’s paw.

‘So, you’re finished with France, then,’ he said, summing up.

‘Yes, it seems so. The book’s coming along well, now I’m here.’

‘Well, that’s good. There,’ he said, to the dog, ‘how is that, now? Feel better?’

Angus stretched his neck to lick at Graham’s face, who laughed and gave the floppy ears a tousle. ‘There now, we’ll clear off and let the lady get to work.’

I didn’t want them to clear off. I wanted them to stay. I wanted to tell him I did my writing mostly in the evenings, that my afternoons were free, that I could make some tea, and maybe we could talk…But I couldn’t think of a way I could say that without sounding forward, and he hadn’t given me any real reason to think he’d say yes, or to think that he found me one tenth as attractive as I found him.

So I just stood to the side as he thanked me again for my help, and he picked Angus up and I opened the door for them. That’s when he stopped and looked down at me, thinking.

He asked, ‘Have ye been to the Bullers o’ Buchan?’

‘The what?’

He repeated the name, taking care to speak slowly. ‘A sort of a sea cave, not far to the north.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Because I was thinking, if you’re feeling up to a bit of a walk, I could take you tomorrow.’

Surprised, I said, ‘That would be nice.’

I was kicking myself for my bland choice of words, but he didn’t appear to have noticed.

‘Right, then. How does ten o’clock suit you? You’ve no problem walking the coast path?’

‘No problem at all,’ I assured him.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Again I was hit with that flash of a smile, and as I looked at it I realized why I’d had that niggling feeling I’d seen Stuart’s face before. The brothers weren’t that much alike, but there was still a slight resemblance, although Graham’s features, to my mind, revealed a force of character, a strength, that had no echo in the face of his more handsome brother.

Stuart might be nice to look at. Graham was the kind of man I couldn’t look away from.

Maybe that was why, when he had gone, the first thing that I did was make a beeline for my workbook. In the section bookmarked ‘Characters’, I wrote three pages, longhand—the descriptive details of a man with eyes the color of the winter sea.

I didn’t know exactly how I’d use him yet, but I had a suspicion that when I began to write tonight he’d turn up somewhere, entering the story with that easy, rolling stride that said he had a right to be there.