The house had once been a great gray manse, a huge, forbidding place that had been built originally for the local vicar, who came from money. But the vicar hadn’t been able to hack the long, dark winters, and his successor had been a bachelor who had much preferred the original lodgings next to the church, dark and chilly as they were; and now the vicar lived on the mainland and commuted, and the local doctor had the church quarters. And Colton Rogers had bought the Manse, and was restoring the Rock on its land.
The house looked nothing like Flora remembered it from her childhood, when they’d peered at it through the gates and some of the braver boys had scampered up to explore it, or at least implied that they had. Then, it had been dark and forbidding. Now it looked like it had been peeled back to the bones. The windows, while still traditional, were brand-new, no longer rotting in their sills, but gleaming. The stone had been sand-blasted and was a light, soft gray that fit in beautifully with the soft environs of the garden. The gravel was pink and immaculately tidy, the huge front door a glossy black, while miniature topiary hedges lined the windowsills. It was one of the most beautiful houses Flora had ever seen.
“Wow,” she said. Joel looked unimpressed. Maybe it wasn’t all that great to him.
Behind the house were outbuildings, including a huge, incredibly tempting swimming pool complex with a roof that could be pulled back on sunny days (Flora wondered if it was ever pulled back), and a vast number of fancy cars, including several Range Rovers, all polished to a shine. There didn’t appear to be any dogs; probably dogs would make the perfect gardens untidy.
It was the strangest thing: everything looked like a large traditional house, but so much tidier and nicer. There were artfully displayed baskets of lavender, and an old stone well with a gleaming bucket. It felt like a Disney version of Mure—but here they were, on the island, all right, with faintly ominous clouds swirling above them to back this up.
A little maid, who sounded foreign, and was actually wearing a black-and-white costume, answered the door. Flora was astounded—she’d never seen a maid on the island—but once again Joel didn’t react. This must be, she figured, how rich people lived in America, never noticing this kind of thing happening, and completely okay with it. Well, perhaps it was okay, she thought, breathing in the warm, expensive, candle-scented air as they stepped into the spotless boot room, which had rows of green Hunter wellies in every conceivable size, right down to a baby’s. Flora squinted at them, fascinated.
“Hi, hi!”
Out of the confines of the London office, Colton Rogers was still tall and rangy; he looked a little intimidating. He still had the air of the professional sportsman he’d once been, before taking his sports earnings and investing them in a bunch of start-ups in Silicon Valley, at least two of which had become wildly successful.
“Hey, Binder, good to see you again. I’d say thanks for coming all this way, but I don’t think visiting Mure is ever a hardship, is it?”
Joel made a noncommittal noise. Flora wondered what his room at the Harbor’s Rest was like. The nicest one was directly above the bar, which got increasingly noisy as the night drew on. She hoped he liked fiddle music. And very, very long songs about people who came from the sea.
“Flora, isn’t it?”
“Hello, Mr. Rogers.”
“Wanna take a look around?”
Flora almost said, “Sure,” then remembered just in time that it wasn’t up to her.
“We’ve got business to get to,” said Joel.
“Yeah, yeah, but I’m paying for this, right? I’m always paying for you fancy-schmancy lawyers. So I might as well enjoy myself while you bill me up the yazoo, right? Come on, I’ll give you the tour,” said Colton.
He strode out past them into his yard full of shining vehicles, then chose, of all things, a quad bike.
“This is the way to get around,” he said. “Right? Beats that awful London traffic.”
Flora perched on the back, holding her skirt down against the wind, and they set off around the property. Again, everywhere she found herself amazed by the amount of energy and work that had gone into—that was going into—taming the beautiful nature of Mure, and turning it into a neater, more precise version of itself. There was a hand-built trout stream, where they had widened the original burn, made it wend round the prettiest trees, added artificial waterfalls to help the salmon spawn, and stocked it with trout and salmon for fly fishermen to come and pick out of the glittering waters. It was beautiful, but it felt a little to Flora like cheating.
“I get more business done over a bit of fishing than I do in three days of stuffy meetings in air-conditioned offices,” said Colton. “I hate New York, don’t you?”
This question was asked of both of them. Joel shrugged noncommittally. Flora didn’t know what to say; she’d never been there.
“Those scorching summers! Unbelievable. You can’t breathe out there. Nobody can. I don’t know why on earth you’d stay. And those winters! Freeze the breath out of you. Face it: the weather in New York is always terrible. Always.”
“And here’s better?” said Joel mildly.
“Here! It’s perfect! Never too hot! Breathe that air. Just breathe it.”
Obediently they breathed, Joel thinking crossly about money, Flora enjoying the fresh air but wondering why Colton appeared to think it all belonged to him.
“Where do you live?” he asked suddenly.
“Shoreditch,” said Joel. Flora tried not to roll her eyes.
“I was talking to her,” said Colton.
“MacKenzie Farm,” said Flora.
“Which one is that?”
“The one that goes down to the beach.”
“Oh yes. I know it. It’s a beautiful spot.”
“Are you opening the Rock?”
“Trying.” Colton wrinkled his nose. “I can’t . . . My people don’t want to work here. And getting stuff brought in . . . I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
“Why can’t local people work here?”
“Because you all move away,” said Colton, eyeing her coldly. “You don’t really live on MacKenzie Farm, do you?”
Flora flushed, and shook her head.
“How’s it doing? Making a living?”
Flora thought uncomfortably back to what Innes had said about the books.
“But there’s great produce here,” she offered.
“I don’t see much of it. Most of your fish goes straight out the door. Turnips, if you like that kind of thing.”
“People do, done right,” said Flora. “And there’s seaweed. And cheese . . .”
“Cheese? Where?”
Flora bit her lip.
“And there are some great bakers on the island.”
Colton shrugged. “Huh. Well, we were meant to be ready . . . I’ll maybe give them a push.”
The quad bike bumped over several large open areas of wilderness, broken up by new forests. The young trees were host to hordes of deer, more than Flora had ever seen in one place. There were family groups, the little bobbing tails of the fawns, newly born in the spring, dancing up and down, and larger stags crashing through the undergrowth behind.
It was an awe-inspiring sight.
“You can hunt stag here?” said Joel, sounding genuinely interested for once.
“Stag. Grouse. Pheasant. Just keep away from the golden eagles.”