Lily felt her hand clench round her letter more tightly. “Barbara believes that ye have a soul.”
That small arrow appeared to strike home, but just as grazing an animal with a missed shot only made it more fierce, Lily’s comment seemed only to make Archie more cruel.
“The bairn,” he said, “might not be Walter’s. It probably isn’t. It would be a shame if he learnt that. He’s so much in love with the lad that I doubt he’d recover from such a hard blow.” Archie’s voice was as smooth as a monument stone, and as cold, and she hated herself then for ever thinking he could have a heart. With the eyes of a man who knew well he held all the cards, Archie looked down once again at the letter she held in her hand and said, “If ye would have me keep silent, if ye would spare Walter the pain of that secret, then burn that.”
Defeat did not mean Lily lowered her head, nor that she gave up thinking. Without saying anything, she moved past Archie to stand by the hearth.
“Tear it, first,” he instructed.
She did as he said. But while tossing the fluttering, pale strips of paper upon the coals, she folded one fragment carefully into her palm and concealed it there, counting on Archie not noticing, since both her hands were curled into tight fists. He’d think nothing of that minor gesture, for it was the way she had always reacted when she sought to hold back her temper.
“There, now. Ye’ve done wisely,” Archie said. “Good lass.”
She turned and, still not answering, walked by him to the door, and Archie moved aside to let her pass, but not before he commented, “I think it would be best if ye did not farewell your friend afore he sails. Ye might forget the terms that we’ve agreed to.”
Lily paused within the doorway. Turning back with head held high she told him, “I do keep my word, when I have given it.” And bravely added, “See ye do the same.”
She did not flee along the passage, although every instinct deep within her urged her to escape. Instead she kept her pace as slow and measured as she could, to show he had no power over her, and that she was not frightened.
But she was.
Upstairs, within the safety of her chamber, that fear rose and broke its chains and made her hands shake as she knelt to ease the wooden chest below the window forward from its place so she could gently pry up the loose floorboard. Underneath, within the shallow, hollow space, she kept the leather purse of silver coins Jamie had given her to use if she had need. To this she added now the ragged slip of paper she’d been holding in her closed hand. She’d torn it carefully when she had torn the letter, so the writing would be well preserved, that she might later make a copy of those two words that made Jamie’s signature.
She had not yet lost all of him. Not yet.
*
Two more full weeks passed before the five ships of the Africa Company sailed with the morning tide in mid-July. Jamie’s ship, the Saint Andrew, was flying the commodore’s pennant and sailed at the head of the small fleet that carried the hopes of a nation within their sealed orders that yet held the secret of their destination. It was said there was no space on the hillsides for miles around for all the people who crowded from Edinburgh’s castle hill right down to Leith’s pier to watch those ships slip their moorings, sails filling with wind as they headed out into the firth.
Lily was not among them.
Barbara, who had passed a restless night with indigestion and was lying late in bed, said, “I should think ye’d rather be out on the Shore and in the midst of the excitement, than in here with me.”
“I’m happy where I am.” Lily kept her focus on the stocking she was mending. “Anyway, I’ll hear the whole report from Maggie, when she does return.”
Lily had not said anything to Barbara of the devil’s bargain she had struck with Archie—that weight was her own to carry—but it scarcely mattered. Barbara always sensed when something in the household was awry.
The chair where Lily sat was drawn up close beside the bed and Barbara had to roll her head against the bolster for a closer view of Lily’s features. Lily tried pretending that she did not feel the scrutiny.
The older woman gently told her, “I ken ye’re not happy. I would warrant he’s not, either. Hold your faith, and he’ll come back to ye.”
She spoke of Matthew, plainly. Savagely the needle stabbed at Lily’s finger and she missed a stitch. “Who is it says I wish him to?”
But Barbara wasn’t fooled. “It was real, the love ye had for one another. It was real, and it was true.” A pause, and then a tiny flash of silver as she reached across to set her simple wedding ring atop the stocking Lily had been mending. “Keep that with ye, so ye’ll not forget.”