“Where did you buy that?” he asked.
I could have told him. Had I wanted to, I could have told him everything I’d learned of Lily’s time within the Bell house, her struggles to adapt and settle through that less than settled time, and how she’d been betrayed and presumed drowned that day at Duddingston.
But none of that had any bearing whatsoever on our inquiry. It mattered not to him. She mattered not to him.
And so I only glanced toward the whinger and remarked, offhand, “I bought it in the Canongate, on my way back from dinner at the Earl of Seafield’s.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“He did invite me.” Pausing, I weighed how to best frame my words.
There were questions I wanted to ask that had troubled me since Robert Moray had first set me wondering why the committee had bothered itself at all with this inquiry instead of simply dismissing it for lack of evidence. Why, having made the choice to hold an inquiry, had they then passed it to Turnbull—to me—and not led it themselves? Why would the marriage of two ordinary people be of interest to two great men like the Earl of Seafield and Lord Grange? Had I been more sure of Gilroy I’d have talked about these questions with him, for they turned within my mind and I could find no answers.
But while I had no reason to think Gilroy was my enemy, the fact remained I did not know him. He was not my friend.
So in the end I took the middle ground. “The Earl of Seafield knows of our inquiry.”
“Does he?”
“Aye. I thought it interesting,” I told him. “When Lord Grange spoke of the matter he said only that it wanted some discretion, I expect since it involves a lady’s honor. But the Earl of Seafield told another dinner guest our work was secret.” Looking straight across at Gilroy, I asked in an imitation of his own blunt manner, “Why would he believe it to be secret?”
As we studied one another and I saw the workings of his mind, there was a fraction of a moment when I thought that he might answer—that the wine or something else had melted part of his reserve.
I was mistaken.
Gilroy said, “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”
Which, as answers went, left me completely in the dark.
*
She kept a candle in her window.
I had marked which window was her own when Gilroy and I had returned her to her lodging after we had come from meeting Robert Moray—had it been but yesterday? It seemed much longer. But then, all the times were lately tumbling in my head and it was difficult to hold them in their place.
The claret, too, had done its work, for I could not have said how many minutes had gone by since I had parted ways with Gilroy at the Cross Keys, but the walk from there back up to Caldow’s Land took me past Forrester’s Wynd and I found myself standing now near to the wall at the head of the close, looking up at that one window.
The lanterns that hung in the High Street had all been put out now so they were as dark as the shadows that blanketed everything there in the close and concealed me. The only light I could see came from her candle.
Shining out into the darkness, it assured me I was not the only one awake at that hour, lonely with my thoughts. Had I the right, I would have climbed the stair and knocked upon her door. Instead I forced myself to turn my steps again toward the Landmarket.
And as I did so, something else came with me—a tall figure that detached itself in silence from the deeper shadows of the close, and kept a steady pace with me along the street behind.
I did not turn. It was enough that, from the corner of my eye, I’d glimpsed the outline of the man as he’d passed underneath her window, and his footsteps let me know I had him at my back.
But quietly I stripped the wrapping from the whinger I had bought and felt my fist, from instinct, tighten round the weapon’s handle, as with even steps I strode the final distance up to Caldow’s Land and climbed the curving forestair.
He did not attack me then.
He crossed the street as though that had been his intent the whole time, and passed by without a word, and melted once again into the darkness of the night. But it was some time before I relaxed my hold upon the hilt of my new blade.
Chapter 14
Thursday, 25 September, 1707
I wore the whinger in its scabbard at my side when I went down to Leith with Gilroy in the morning, riding one of the two horses we had hired to make the journey quicker. Gilroy rode well. I was not surprised, since by his own account he’d spent his life around the beasts. I kept behind him, and when we had reached Leith’s Kirkgate, being not inclined to linger in the stables, I dismounted and stood waiting for him just outside the door, my hat pulled low against the rising wind.