“’Tis a favor,” he said, “ye may come to regret.”
I thought “regret” was a strong choice of words for a man who chose words with a purpose. It made me uneasy.
Before I could press him about it, he asked, “I mean no disrespect, but is that your best suit?”
Frowning, I told him, “I have one better. Why?”
“Ye’ll want to keep it brushed and ready. People in high places will begin to take an interest in ye, when they learn ye’ve talked to me. And if ye have a sword, ye would do well to start to carry it. There’s often danger in this dance ye’ve just been drawn into.”
I’d have asked him what he meant by that, and why he could not speak in words a man could understand, but it was plain that I’d pry nothing more from him. He’d already gone back to his writing. I stood to the side with my thoughts while he finished his letter.
Having no wax for a seal, he made folds so it sealed itself, much like a puzzle.
Rising, he commented, “You’re very quiet, Sergeant. Have ye no more questions?”
I did have one, in fact. “Where was the place where she was sent?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Mrs. Graeme. When your uncle sent her into service as a child.”
“I forget.”
“I don’t believe that.” I met his gaze levelly. “I don’t believe men like you forget anything.”
We faced each other a long moment. His mouth curved faintly. Then finally he said, “Mr. Bell, in the Canongate. He was a swordslipper. But surely that has no bearing at all on your inquiry?”
I’d not have wished to face those knowing eyes in a courtroom. They gave nothing away, and saw everything.
He didn’t need me to answer. He gave me the letter. “I trust ye to see this delivered,” he said, “to my wife. Janet Moray, at Murrayshall. And, Sergeant Williamson?”
This time there was no smile.
“If ye let harm come to Lily, I’ll not forget that, either.”
He turned away, and our interview came to an end.
III
Looking back, that was the afternoon I might have walked away from the affair.
In fact, on writing all this down, I see so many warnings I let pass, so many open doors that I allowed to close behind me, when I could have simply packed my bag and said farewell to Helen and apologized, and let it end.
There would have been regret.
Still, no man is beyond replacing. Gilroy would have carried on his work without me, Helen might have found another of her husband’s friends to hold his place, and I’ve no doubt MacDougall would have cooked them all a feast to mark my leaving.
To them, I was of passing unimportance. But, to her…
“Why did you stay?” she asked me once, when we were both too far gone past the point of turning back for it to make a difference.
To the uninformed, there was a simple answer: she’d bewitched me.
But the truth was, by that time I could no more have left her than I could have left my shadow when I walked the lamplit streets each evening.
Even with foreknowledge, I could not have left her then, because my heart, which had for so long been a solitary, hardened thing, had lately just begun to warm and beat and come to life. I liked the feeling. Selfishly, I wished to go on feeling it.
I kept on walking, down into the High Street past St. Giles’s, and back up past Forrester’s Wynd, to see that all was well and quiet.
And I did not leave.
Chapter 8
Tuesday, 23 September, 1707
Helen eyed me with indulgence as I came in from my evening walk. “I see you’ve met our upstairs neighbor.”
“Yes. He looks exactly as a Latin master ought to look.”
“He is retired from teaching,” she reminded me, “though I’m afraid he still does talk as though he’s giving lectures. He kept you on the stair so long I contemplated coming to your rescue.”
I’d enjoyed my talk with the old man, and told her so. “He’s taking some books to the stationer’s to sell, and did allow me to relieve him of a couple of them.”
Helen smiled. “You and my husband share a common weakness. Come then, show me what you’ve bought.”
One of my new books she approved of—an illustrated study of the plants of the Americas that, while it was in French, was finely bound and large and full of neat, precise engravings. But my other choice, a good-sized volume of Lord Stair’s Institutions of the Laws of Scotland, she considered a poor bargain. “It is broken at the binding, with the pages coming loose.”