Chapter 14: The Scottish Highlands and the Storm Petra Did Not Start

The journey north required four days, two coaching inns of varying respectability, one brief and unfortunate detour through a village whose single street had been rendered impassable by a flock of sheep with strong opinions about their direction of travel, and the collective pretense, maintained with considerable effort by all parties, that travelling in close proximity to one's investigative associates was a perfectly ordinary arrangement that no one found awkward in the least.

Miss Chase, who had arranged the logistics with her customary invisible efficiency, had secured a travelling carriage of sufficient size that Petra and Fennwick occupied one side and Stormcroft the other, with Miss Chase positioned between the two camps in the manner of a treaty negotiator who has not yet decided which party she finds less unreasonable. The seating arrangement was never discussed. It simply was. Petra suspected that most things around Miss Chase simply were, having been quietly decided before anyone else had finished forming the question.

Fennwick had brought four books, two sets of annotated charts, and a waterproofed satchel whose existence he declined to explain, which Petra took as a reasonable sign that he had been doing worse-case arithmetic again and had arrived at precipitation.