Matthew agreed that might work. “But you can’t leave it burning all night, that’s impractical.”
“No, but I could light it when it gets dark, and then leave it a couple of hours,” she suggested. “If anyone asks, I could tell them the dark frightens Maggie. It would be no lie. And Archie won’t mind the cost of the candles so much if he thinks it’s for Maggie’s sake.”
Simon offered, “I can get ye all the candles ye have need of.”
Lily told him, “Aye, because that’s just the way to see that Matthew sleeps at night. For ye to get caught thieving and to end up in the Tolbooth. Could we please have one thing in the house that’s bought and paid for in the ordinary way, not lifted out through someone’s window?”
Walter grinned. “Henry would like that.”
“He would, aye,” said Matthew. “He’s long wanted us to be something we’re not.”
Walter’s grin faded, and he faced Matthew with something approaching defiance. “Nothing wrong with a man wanting better from life. Maybe Henry should come with me next year when I go to study in Utrecht.”
Matthew asked, “Archie’s letting ye go, is he?”
Walter said, “He’d have done it this year, only things were so unsettled.”
Lily knew he meant politically. There had been growing arguments in parliament and elsewhere that, Queen Mary having died last autumn of the smallpox, and King William having only gained his right to rule at all through her, that he should step aside in favor of her sister, Princess Anne, or even let King James come back again.
King William was a hard man and unpopular with many people, and moreover, he was Dutch.
“The Stewarts have their faults, but they are easier to like. They’re our own kind,” was how Barbara had reasoned things. But politics were rarely based on reason.
Walter said to Matthew now, “I’d rather go to Paris, to be honest, and I will if this war ends soon, but Utrecht’s close enough.”
Simon said, “Tell the truth, now. If ye go to Paris, ye would travel on to Saint-Germain and we’d no more have sight of ye.”
He said it as a joke, but Walter’s answer was half-serious. “’Tis possible. Especially now Matthew’s helped to fill the chest to pay my future wages.”
Matthew looked at him. “How’s that?”
“Well, by agreement with the king of France, King James receives a portion of each captured prize and cargo that’s brought into a French harbor. When your ship was seized, a tenth of what was taken went directly to King James.”
Lily turned this knowledge over in her mind, and afterward, when Walter walked ahead with Simon, she asked Matthew, “Are ye certain Captain Gordon didn’t let himself be taken by that privateer?”
“So that King James could claim ten percent profit of what we were carrying? There would be easier ways of supplying your king,” he said, “were you a Jacobite.”
Lily was not so sure. Since the retreat of the soldiers from Ireland and Scotland to France, King James now had a court to provide for and no nation he could raise revenue from in the usual manner, through taxes and excise, so any small profits that he could lay claim to would likely be welcome.
She asked, “There were none of your crew who left ye and went overland, perhaps to Saint-Germain?”
She’d amused him now. “I thought you favored the Jacobite cause.”
“I do.”
“Then why are you so distrustful of Gordon, whatever his politics?”
There simply was no way to tell him unless she revealed what had happened to her as a child that had left her so wary of men who gave gifts to young girls, and although she knew she bore no fault for that incident, she felt the shame of it still, and did not wish to speak of it, nor to speak Mr. Bell’s name.
Matthew glanced at her, neither taking her silence for lack of an answer nor dismissing her concern, but simply offering her reassurance. “I’ve spent much time with Gordon these past months, and he has my trust.”
She knew he did not give that lightly. Lily frowned.
“Don’t worry,” said Matthew. “I like him. I’d follow him anywhere.”
“Aye,” she said. “That’s what I fear.”
*
The second time he went to France with Captain Gordon, Lily saw it coming—saw the restlessness beginning to take hold in Matthew weeks beforehand, so when Gordon brought his pass this time to have it copied, she expected what would come.