Lily said, “Aye,” or something like it, since her grandmother was happiest when Lily made a noise like she was listening. But truly, she was tired, and had no real idea what—
“I only say this,” said her grandmother, “because things will be different for ye when ye are in Edinburgh. Here there is so little true society, that ye and Jamie Graeme and the Moray children can play all ye like and on the level, so to speak, but when you’re living down in Edinburgh, it will not be that way anymore, and ye should be prepared.”
Lily’s sleepiness had vanished. She lay wide-eyed and awake. “Has my daddie sent for me?”
“Aye. He has met a woman that he means to make his wife, and he has written I’m to send you after Lammas Day.”
“To Edinburgh?”
“Aye.”
Lily heard the sadness in that syllable and knew its cause, but she herself could not but be excited at the prospect of a proper home with both her father and a brand-new mother and—too much to even dream of, really—Jamie living near to her, each day. And Lammas was but two more weeks away, which meant she had not long to wait.
She hugged close to her grandmother, who kissed her understandingly.
“It will be different, lass, is all I’m saying. When you’re down in Edinburgh, Jamie will have other friends to occupy his time, and he might not be there the way ye hope, to keep ye company.”
But that was not a thing to fear, thought Lily, and she said so to her grandmother, and told her why.
“He promised me,” said Lily, with the certainty of innocence, “that he would never leave me. And he never will.”
II
Death was a kind of leaving—irreversible and final.
I felt certain, sitting watching her so closely on that afternoon, that she was also thinking the same thing, because when she had finished speaking she stayed silent a long moment…
But here I must pause, for I’ve been told I need now to explain myself to those among you who are thinking, “Surely she would not have told her tale that way to strangers, in such detail, as a storyteller sitting of an afternoon might craft an entertainment for her listeners.”
And you are right. She did not tell it to us in that way.
She told it haltingly. We asked her questions, and she answered, and from there the story took its shape. Some details I did not learn till long afterward, but since my purpose is to write things down for you in all their fullness I have woven everything in place as best I can, that you may have the clearest picture.
I can promise I’ve invented not a word of any part of this tale that belongs to her—that everything is as she told it, or as it was called to memory by those who were there and lived it with her.
That much I assure you, on my honor.
Whether she was truthful in the telling of it…well, that can’t be laid to my account.
And that was, after all, the very thing that I was being asked to judge.
Chapter 3
Monday, 22 September, 1707
She stayed silent a long moment, looking down at her linked hands where they lay resting on the table. All the jewelry she wore was a narrow band of silver on her finger that could not have been worth much in coin, and yet she touched it gently as if it were of great value as she summoned the tight smile that people put up as a shield when seeking not to show emotion before strangers.
“Doubtless you will find it tiresome, hearing of our games,” she said, “but those, for me, were happy years, and I do have fond memories of them.”
Gilroy said, “I should imagine that you would. It is not every child could claim the children of the lairds of Abercairney and of Inchbrakie as friends.”
I thought it might have been my ears alone that heard him put the faintest stress on “claim,” as if to say her story was unlikely, but she’d evidently heard it, too.
Her head came up. “It is the truth.”
Since I was standing in for Turnbull, I was at the head of this inquiry—Gilroy was my junior, and although he worked directly for Lord Grange and was more educated than myself, I reasoned it was better, from the outset, to establish who was in control.
Before he could reply to her I came between them, firmly. “I am certain my clerk meant no disrespect.”
Gilroy glanced at me. One eyebrow might have lifted slightly higher than the other, but he faced her and said, “No indeed. They are fine families both, and you were fortunate.” He inked his pen and made a careful note. “The old Laird of Inchbrakie did have sons, but only one who followed in his footsteps and became a soldier, as you say your husband’s father was, so then your husband’s father must be…”