She blinked. “What’s this?”
“My heart, if you will have it.”
It was indeed a heart—a tiny one, and crowned, and fashioned beautifully of smaller hearts and roses. “Matthew.” Reaching up her hand again, she touched his hair. He leaned down lower still behind her so his jaw was at her temple, and his voice was quiet, just for her to hear.
“I did not lift that out through someone’s window, if you’re wondering. I bought it with my wages, in the ordinary way.”
“I was not thinking—” she began, but she had turned her head to say it, and he kissed her and did not allow her to complete the thought.
And then, in fairness, she had difficulty thinking anything at all.
“Marry me,” he said. He drew back just enough so she could see his eyes, and know that he was serious. “I love you, Lily Aitcheson. I wish to love you always. Take this heart to be my pledge, and say you’ll marry me.”
She could not mind when her own heart had ever felt so full. There was no world but Matthew’s eyes, and in them she could see her own hopes, her own happiness reflected. What other answer could she give?
She took his heart, and told him, “Aye.”
Chapter 24
Saturday, 27 September, 1707
Henry didn’t know what happened after that.
He only knew that by the week’s end, Matthew Browne had gone from Leith, and Lily would not speak of it.
“Fair broke her heart,” he said, and settled back into his chair beside the fire within the front room of the house in Riddell’s Close.
We’d finished with the wine I’d brought, and moved on to a bottle of fine brandy he had found within the cabinet in the corner.
I leaned over to refill our glasses, knowing I was frowning as I asked, “She told you nothing?”
“Nothing. She did speak to Captain Gordon, though. It might be he could tell ye more.”
Sitting there, the room seemed filled with ghosts. I saw them clearly—Lily sitting at the writing table, little Maggie wrapped within the tales of Don Quixote, Thomas Gordon standing framed within the door. I thought it possible that Henry saw them, too, or felt their presence, because when a coal fell from the fire to the hearthstone he paid it no heed, and it was left to me to take the poker up and push it back again, and stir the fire to its former warmth.
I asked, “And where would I find Captain Gordon?”
Henry shrugged. “He was given a commission some years past with our Scots navy to patrol this coast. Ye’ll find him here with regularity. And when he is in Leith, he aye will stop and spend an hour with me.” His tone turned wry. “He still likes bringing gifts. He brought that brandy.” Henry nodded to the bottle in between us. “Our merchant fleet is overdue, and Gordon will be guarding them. He should be here afore too long.”
“All the talk in town is that there will be an invasion by the Jacobites. Perhaps that’s what’s delayed him.”
Henry rolled his eyes and said, “There’s always an invasion. How many times did old King James try to reclaim his crown and have it come to nothing?”
I admitted that was so. “But this is his son, and the country does seem ripe for some sort of mischief, so maybe this younger James Stewart will do what his father could not.”
“I tell ye what,” said Henry drily. “Next time Captain Gordon comes, I’ll send him up to tell ye his opinion of the matter, shall I? Me, I take no part of politics. It’s all a game to them, these great men and their wars, and we’re the pieces they discard when they are done their play. They claim the glory, and we pay the price.”
I was not altogether sure that I agreed with him on every count, for even great men fell in battle, and I knew that Robert Moray sat in prison now in danger of his life while I sat here in comfort, drinking brandy. But I knew what Henry meant.
His mention of the paying of a price turned my thoughts back to Archie Browne, who twisted everything he touched in one way or another, seeking payment.
I’d been sent down here by Gilroy to inquire about one person, and it was the same person whose weak side had not yet been mentioned.
“What happened to Maggie?” I asked.
It was, admittedly, an abrupt shift in the conversation, and Henry looked at me narrowly over the rim of his glass. “No idea. She left here with Lily. I’ve not seen her since.”
“And when was that? When did they leave, exactly?”
“In the spring of ninety-nine.”
A year after the date on the certificate of marriage. “You’re certain of the year?”