*
From self-preservation, I gave her the chair to my left at the table, for had she been seated across from me I should have found it impossible not to stare openly, much less to concentrate. Opposite me I sat Helen, whom I’d asked to stay for propriety’s sake and to make Mrs. Graeme more comfortable, since I could hardly imagine a woman would feel at ease when being questioned alone by two men. Helen, facing me, was at least not a distraction, although she had arguably the more classically beautiful face.
Mrs. Graeme had freckles across cheeks and nose, not a porcelain skin, and her face was the shape of a heart, not an oval, the whole framed by hair of plain brown that refused to stay in a smooth style and escaped in small curls from beneath the lace pinner she wore to contain it. A cap, I might have called it in my youth, until the girl I’d lost my heart to in those days had set me straight. “How did you get to be the age you are and not know what a pinner is?” she’d asked me while removing it and drawing out the hairpins one by one to set her hair loose, and I never had forgotten. It was not the most convenient memory, for my glance at Mrs. Graeme’s hair, however brief, had left me with a vision of it tumbling loose like that, and to regain my focus I reached for the papers Gilroy spread before me.
He sat at my right hand, which I thought fitting, since he played the role now of my right-hand man with quiet competence.
Much like a schoolmaster setting a lesson, he’d put all the papers in order, so I’d understand. First his summary of all the facts as he felt I should know them, then a declaration from the Commissioners of the Equivalent, and finally two certificates of marriage—one the original she must have given them when she’d applied to them, whenever that had been, and one the copy they’d made from that, both stating clearly the name of her husband—James Graeme—and her full name: Lilias Aitcheson.
The certificate plainly declared they’d been lawfully married at Edinburgh on the second day of January 1698 before the required two witnesses, by a minister whose name was not unfamiliar.
I took time to read through the rest. It allowed me the space to compose myself, and become settled and sure of my footing. Then, taking the marriage certificates, I set the copy aside.
“I can return this to you, now,” I said, and passed her the original. “I’m sure it’s very precious to you.”
“Yes.”
I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Graeme, I’m sure you can appreciate that since the Equivalent money has been brought to Edinburgh, there have been a great many people come forward to lay claim to their share of it, and the Commissioners must examine every case with care. Your husband having lost his life while sailing for the African Company would of course be owed his wages, to be paid from the Equivalent directly to his heir. The Commissioners must then determine clearly if you are in fact his heir.”
I caught the turn of Gilroy’s head toward me, as though he had not expected I’d be able to explain the case so neatly, but while I might not have his education, I was not a fool, and since I had agreed to sit in Turnbull’s place, I would not spoil the prospects of my friend through my incompetence.
Of course, I had not counted on the complicating factor of the woman to my left.
She took in what I’d said, and nodded, and she waited, and we all four sat at the table for a moment in our places as though playing at a game of cards, with no one keen to let the others see their hand. And finally it was left to me to say, “We have a problem.”
In the silence that came after, Gilroy said, to clarify, “The marriage was irregular.”
By which he meant they’d not been married in the Kirk, and by the parish minister, but in a more clandestine way. The minister they’d chosen was not even Presbyterian. I recognized him by his name as one of those devout Episcopalians who, at the Revolution, had been stripped of their own parishes and had since, with the others of their outcast faith, been barred from leading any form of worship, or from baptizing a newborn bairn—or celebrating marriages.
She touched the edge of the certificate with something like defiance. “An irregular marriage is still a legal marriage.”
Gilroy allowed this. “Only this one was never judicially acknowledged.” As though realizing his language might be overly technical, he patiently explained, “You never went before the Kirk to confess it, so that you could be rebuked and pay the fine and have the marriage properly entered in their records.”
Her nod was cool, as was her tone. “It was a failing of my husband’s that he died before we could confess our marriage to the Kirk.”