Faith stood beneath the shower and let the water flow over her hair and down her body, absorbing the welcome warmth. Being stranded on a mountain in a cabin in a snowstorm for the night really made her appreciate home comforts such as hot water.

They were lucky that when they woke this morning, the storm had passed, and they managed to hike to the car park at the bottom of the forest where one of Hew’s estate workers picked them up. His four-wheel-drive vehicle was equipped with snow chains, but the ride back to Kindrogan Castle was still hairy on the narrow mountain roads.

The track from the castle to Kinder Vale had been cleared, and as long as there was no more snow before she had to leave the following day, she should be able to catch a train back to Edinburgh in time for duty on Tuesday. She almost wished it would snow again so she could stay a few more days with Hew, to get to know him better. Her initial impression that he would be difficult to make out was wrong, and she very much liked what she knew so far.

Faith sang softly to herself as she washed her hair, then stepped out and dried herself. She blow-dried her hair, dressed in warm clothes, and added a touch of makeup before heading downstairs. On Monday, before he dropped her at the train station, Hew had promised to take her to the veterinary clinic in Kinder Vale so she could meet the senior partner, Greg Coburn. This afternoon, Hew had invited her to walk around the loch to visit his cottage.

She ran downstairs, the weariness from the hiking washed away by the warm shower, and followed the sound of voices. She found herself at the door to the estate office, situated off the hall in the opposite direction to the kitchen. Hew sat behind a huge old oak desk staring at a laptop, with Fergus in a chair beside him.

Hew gave her his half smile as she walked in. She’d first thought his guarded expression meant he was difficult to please; now she realized he was simply wary of displaying his emotions. When he’d confided his past, she’d sensed that the death of Fergus’s mother had affected him deeply. He obviously felt guilty, even though he had known nothing of the pregnancy.

Fergus jumped up and grabbed a bottle from the windowsill. He held it out to her, and she took it with a wry smile. It was the prosecco bottle containing her message she’d tossed into the Caribbean Sea nearly three years ago. Some of the other girls in the Romantic Hearts Book Club had met their life partners through their bottles.

“Oh my. I won’t forget this in a hurry.”

Faith had believed her bottle must be lost in the depths of the ocean after this long, but now she wondered if there wasn’t something a little magical about the whole concept of throwing out a message in a bottle.

She tapped the weathered glass with her fingernails. “Do you believe in fate?”

“I do,” Fergus piped up. “You were meant to meet Dad. That’s why the bottle washed up on Stonehaven beach for me to find.”

Hew laughed. “You’ve spent too much time with Auntie Meg filling your head with romantic nonsense, lad.”

“Faith,” Fergus said, “you and Dad spent the night together in the bothy.”

“Um, yes.” Faith wondered where he was going with this.

“Isn’t that romantic?” He blinked at her as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Faith choked back a laugh.

“Not with Don snoring a few feet away, it wasn’t.” Hew ruffled his son’s hair. “Definitely too much of Auntie Meg’s influence, I think.” He gestured for Fergus to stand up. “Off you go, and ask Auntie Naomi to make a cup of tea for us. I want to show Faith the golden eagle data we have.”

As Fergus stomped off sulking, Faith perched on the swivel chair the boy had vacated and set the bottle on the desk in front of her, eager to find out more about Hew’s work. Clicking his mouse, he brought up a satellite image of the Cairngorms. He swirled the pointer over the many blue lines that patterned the image, then clicked and the lines changed to yellow.

“These blue and yellow tracks represent the flight paths of the two juveniles we put radio trackers on last breeding season.”

Faith leaned in, fascinated by the expanding pattern of their movements as they gradually explored farther from their nest sites.

“It’s easy enough to know where they are during the breeding season, but we had no idea where they would go once they fledged. You can see these two juveniles have roamed quite a way from their parents’ nest site. They visit the feeding stations we put out for them, but they will also be striking out to find breeding territories of their own.”

They talked about the research for a while, and Faith was particularly interested in the health records Hew obtained by not only observing the birds, but also periodically catching them and performing health checks.

“Greg, who I’ll introduce you to on Monday, has actually been up to treat the young male bird after he had a set-to with a fox at one of the feeding stations.”

“Wow.” For a moment, Faith imagined herself up on the fells in the spring, among the budding heather, helping Hew catch and health check the young golden eagles. But that wouldn’t happen, of course. Her contract in the army didn’t end until June, and they could send her anywhere in the world before then.

Fergus returned with three cups of tea and a plate of shortbread petticoat tails on a round metal tray. He set it carefully on the table. Although Faith had eaten lunch shortly before her shower, she couldn’t resist taking one of the melt-in-the-mouth pieces of shortbread. Hew and Fergus did the same.

“Right.” Hew finally shut his laptop. “Time to stretch our legs and wander over to Boathouse Cottage. There’s something I want to show you.”