Chapter 1
Ten years later
The sun had dipped below the mountains on the opposite shore of the loch, bathing the sky in apricot, sienna and dove grey. Giselle tilted her head back to scan the heavens, a deep sense of peace settling over her.
With the light fading, sunset wasn’t the best time of day to scour the shoreline for sea glass, but it was her favourite.
The visitors were long gone from the craft centre, and she should have left for home too, but this evening she hadn’t been able to resist coming down to the water’s edge.
She was tired, but it was a weariness born of a productive and busy day, and she was pleasantly contented.
A walk would do her good, and while she wouldn’t actively be looking for sea glass, if she happened to find any little gems, she’d be happy.
There were always treasures to be found after each high tide.
The air was redolent with the base-note scents of seaweed and salt, overlain by pine needles and damp earth, and if she concentrated hard, she could detect the faintest aromatic perfume of the heather flowering on the hillsides above.
Giselle wandered over to a rock and sat, her back to the shadowed castle behind, which was partially hidden by the trees, and gazed out across the water.
The loch at Duncoorie was a sea water loch, sheltered from the open ocean by the mountains and a small island at its mouth.
But ‘sheltered’ was a relative term, because in the winter, when storms raged, it became wild and rough, with white-topped waves and dark, angry water.
Tonight, it was calm and quiet, a sleeping sea serpent, whose gentle breaths barely stirred the surface.
When she managed to find enough of the right coloured glass, Giselle would create a picture of that mystical creature.
That’s what she did, painted pictures with glass and shell, driftwood and pebbles, and she was good at it.
She wouldn’t have been invited to occupy a studio in the castle’s craft centre if she wasn’t.
Mhairi Gray, the castle’s elderly owner and founder of the craft centre, had high standards, and Giselle wouldn’t want it any other way.
She should make a move. Dusk would soon fade to night, and Giselle had to walk home.
Her bothy wasn’t far – a thirty-minute walk – but the road was unlit, and although darkness didn’t bother her, twisting an ankle on the uneven path would.
Originally a basic farmer’s hut, the bothy was now a home, and even though it was small, it was hers.
As the gloaming gathered, lights from the village twinkled in the distance and a glow emanated from the cottage near the boathouse.
Cal, the castle’s estate manager, lived there with Tara, one of the crafters.
Giselle envisaged them settling down for the evening, and she looked away, not wanting to intrude on their privacy as she picked her way carefully along the shoreline.
Despite the encroaching dusk, she decided to stay out a while longer because it was such a lovely evening and she had no reason to hurry home.
No one would be waiting for her – she lived alone – and she wasn’t overly hungry yet, having availed herself of a decent lunch from the craft centre’s rather nice cafe.
She ate there most days, so she didn’t have to cook. The kitchen wasn’t her favourite place.
She’d wandered quite a distance when she realised the breeze had picked up, the light had almost faded from the sky and stars were putting in an appearance. The surrounding mountains were black tumps and the water glittered darkly.
The walk had grounded her, book-ending her day as she’d also strolled along the banks of the loch first thing this morning looking for sea glass, shells and interesting pebbles: the tools of her trade.
Relaxed and pleasantly tired, she made her way home.
A few more minutes won’t hurt, Giselle decided, perched as
usual on her favourite rock. Morning came early to Skye at this time of
year, and she’d been drifting along the shoreline for the past hour or
so, but there was still time enough to linger and enjoy her solitude for
a while longer before heading to the studio with her bounty. She’d sort
through her finds, grab a quick breakfast of poached eggs and ham on
sourdough from the cafe before it opened to the public, then go see
Mhairi. The old lady was in her eighties (no one knew for certain how
old she was, not even Cal) but she still took a very keen interest in
everything that went on in the castle and the craft centre.
As Giselle settled her canvas bag more firmly on her shoulder, her thoughts drifted to the smooth oval of black glass nestled safely inside.
It was called pirate glass because it came from old rum bottles, and appeared black until a light was shone through it.
When she’d held this piece up to the sun it had gleamed with a subdued yellow glow, and she’d hugged herself in delight.
Sometimes she knew precisely what she would do with her finds; other times, like this one, she would cache them, hoarding them as jealously as a dragon hoards gold, knowing that one day she’d find the perfect place for them.
Giselle made a note to take it with her when she saw Mhairi later.
The old lady was always so interested in everything, and Giselle enjoyed their little chats and she had a soft spot for her landlady.
Many a time Mhairi had slipped quietly into Giselle’s studio to watch her work, not saying anything, before leaving again just as unobtrusively.
As Giselle picked her way along the crescent of sandy beach, she thought how fortunate she was to have found Coorie Castle and Mhairi, and how privileged she was to live in such a magical place.
Born on Skye, the island was her spiritual and physical home, and she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. This was where she belonged.
Lost in thought, she made her way along the lane towards the long L-shaped building that housed the craft centre.
It was old, although nowhere near as old as the castle, and had fallen into disrepair until Mhairi, due to the financial pressure of keeping the castle running, had decided to bolster the estate’s income by transforming the former barns and service buildings into craft studios, a cafe and a gift shop.
Giselle rented one of the smaller units, since she didn’t require the same amount of floor space that the glassblower, for instance, needed.
As she strolled along the cobbled walkway running the length of the studios, she noticed that several of her fellow crafters had already arrived. One of them was Tara, who made doll’s houses.
‘Any good finds?’ Tara asked, unlocking the door to her studio.
‘A stopper, maybe from a perfume bottle,’ Giselle said, ‘and a piece of pirate glass.’ Then she had to explain what that was when she showed her.
‘And I also found this weirdly shaped pink piece that looks like a shoe,’ she added.
It wasn’t as weathered by wave action as she would have liked, and Giselle was tempted to return it to the sea this evening to allow it to cure for a few more years so that it became more frosted.
If she did, she might never see it again, but on the other hand she might be lucky enough to find it once more. She’d show it to Mhairi first though.
‘Wow, that’s gorgeous!’ Tara exclaimed, gazing at it.
‘Not as gorgeous as that.’ Giselle pointed to an exquisite thatched cottage sitting in the centre of Tara’s window. ‘Every time I walk past, you have another new dolls house on display.’
Giselle was in awe of all the talented craftspeople who worked at the centre.
Not only that, but they were also her found family, as dear to her as her real one.
With her parents in East Kilbride and her fashion designer sister based in Milan, she saw far more of the people who lived and worked at Coorie Castle than she did her family.
When she entered the studio, Giselle took her canvas bag over to the tiny sink in the corner and removed the contents.
As well as the incredibly tactile pirate glass, she’d collected some small pale green fragments, a brown one, several white ones and the pink shoe-shaped one, which had possibly come from an ornament of some kind.
Along with the glass, she’d found a conical shell, a flat pebble with striations of amber and cream running through it, and some small slivers of driftwood.
After carefully washing her finds, she placed them on a scrap of old towel to dry before sorting them into colour, size and shape.
The common glass colours (green, brown and white) were stored in easily accessible trays on her workbench.
These were her bread-and-butter pieces, and were the ones she most often used in her art.
The rarer finds were kept in a cabinet of slim drawers and were used far more sparingly.
The more common the sea glass, the less she charged for her work.
Pictures made using rarer pieces commanded a higher price.
And some, the few precious ones, such as the vivid red heart, would never be used.
In fact, she would never part with the heart from Venice.
Even if it didn’t have a substantial intrinsic value (the glass, she’d subsequently learnt, had been made with gold to give it the red colour), the value to her was enormous.
That heart had set her on the path she walked today.
It was because of that glorious little piece of sea glass that she’d discovered her passion.
Satisfied her studio was ready for her to start work, Giselle went in search of breakfast.
‘You look happy,’ Gillian observed as she took her order. Gillian was the cafe’s manager. A middle-aged cheerful woman, she made the best sourdough Giselle had ever tasted. Gillian winked at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself a fella?’
Giselle raised her eyebrows and gave her a look.