There was a wooden door he had to pause to open at the bottom, where he called out simply, “Visitors tae see ye!”
Then he ducked aside to let us pass. There were more stone steps—several of them. Mrs. Graeme stumbled and I caught her elbow.
“Careful, now,” I said.
But she had already been caught and steadied at her other side by the tall gentleman who’d come across the narrow room to meet us.
There was daylight here, admitted by a single, small, square window set far back within its deep well in the thick wall of the tower. It revealed a room that, while unwelcoming, was neither dungeon nor a pit, but rather a spare room of stone with a high, vaulted ceiling and a plain chair and small, plain table and an even plainer bed of the variety a soldier might have used when on campaign. There was no fire.
Robert Moray—for I guessed it must be him, there being no one else within the chamber—thanked the guard in the reflexive way men do who have been raised with gentlemanly manners, and dismissed him with a nod as though the guard were no more than a servant bringing him expected guests.
The difference in our stations would have been apparent even without that. He was a man of fine appearance. Prisoner or no, he wore a handsome wig of long, brown, curling hair and although his confinement had affected the condition of his clothing, it could not disguise its quality. His coat alone would likely have been worth more than three of my own suits, and he wore it well and carelessly.
Not knowing how we’d be received, I had a speech prepared. I started, “Mr. Moray, I do offer my apologies for interrupting—”
“My God,” he said suddenly, still holding Mrs. Graeme’s elbow. Moving her a step into the light, he looked down at her face as his own slowly creased into a smile of unexpected pleasure. “Lily!”
*
Two things struck me, sitting in that prison chamber watching Robert Moray: one, that he had keenly watchful eyes that were forever weighing information and would not miss anything, and two, that he was not nearly as calm and at his ease as he would wish us to believe.
He was the eldest of us, past his middle thirties, and in height likely the tallest of us also, yet he’d felt the need to choose a seat that gave him an advantage. He had given the one chair to Mrs. Graeme, and invited Gilroy and myself to sit along the bed’s edge, while he half leaned and half sat against the corner of the table, facing us, the window to his back. This had the dual effect of making us look up at him, and making it more difficult to read his face against the light.
I’d marked his eyes before he took up that position, when I’d crossed to offer Mrs. Graeme my own coat, because the day’s warmth could not penetrate that tower’s walls, and in the shadows of that room the air had a decided chill.
She’d thanked me, and accepted my help as she put the coat around her shoulders.
Robert Moray during this had watched me, closely. “Sergeant…Williamson? Forgive me, but while I’ve met Gilroy several times, I do not know your face. Have ye worked long for Lord Grange?”
Voices like his, smooth and self-assured, came from a lifetime of servants and schooling, though even those had been unable to dislodge the deeper Perthshire accent underlying his more educated tones.
“My employment with Lord Grange,” I’d said, “is only temporary, and in the place of another.”
He had given me one more look, faintly curious, and that was when he’d leaned against the table. It had seemed a move made casually, although I came to doubt that he did anything at random.
Now he looked at Mrs. Graeme. “I am pleased to find ye well.”
“I thank you, Robin. I do wish I found you likeways.”
Seeming nonchalant, he raised one shoulder in a shrug. “’Tis but a small misunderstanding, which I trust will soon be put to rights. Ye need not be distressed.”
Yet he was, I observed. I’d walked too many years upon a razor’s edge myself to miss the telling signs of one who knew his fate was yet uncertain.
He sat a little too straight, making every effort not to let us see the effort that it took. I’d seen men do the same when they kept watch by night and, growing overtired, were determined not to let it show. And while his mind was quick, I did perceive a pause before he spoke, as though he had need of the space to concentrate.
For all his brave appearance, I’d have laid odds Robert Moray was not sleeping well.
It had not dulled his intellect.
He’d clearly had no difficulty following my explanation of why we were here, and his own thoughts had since been traveling on courses of their own. “I did not know that Lord Grange was appointed a commissioner,” he said, “to the Equivalent.”