Not the man he’d killed—the dates were much older, a century or more older. But Rutledge found himself wondering as he stood there and looked down at it, if Fiona MacDonald had also known about it and in some way had taken comfort from it. A gravestone for a man who had none.

A place to sit on the weedy grass while she remembered a past that had no future. It must have offered consolation as well as privacy to mourn.

He had the oddest feeling that he was right.

But what name had Mrs. Cook found here if her husband was still alive? What memories had comforted her?

He walked through the stones again, searching. There were Campbells and Lindsays, MacBrays and MacDougals, a long list of Highland and Lowland names that had no special meaning to him. He found a Trevor, and thought of Ross, then moved on. Little and Elliot, Davison and Robson, Pringle and Taylor, Henderson and one Gray. Evelyn Gray. He had died as an infant.

It was Eleanor Gray’s father’s name—the man she had called father all her life.

Had she been closer to him than to her mother in spite of the fact that he wasn’t her natural father?

Girls were often attached to their fathers, and if Evelyn Gray had accepted her publicly as his daughter, he would have brought her up to the best of his ability. Even if he had not loved her for her own sake, he would have treated her well for King Edward’s sake. The men had been close friends.

And he might have been the only warmth in Eleanor’s life. Rutledge could not envision Lady Maude holding a squirming child in her lap to read it a story, as Fiona had done with her charges in the Davison household.

But then, he might be doing Lady Maude an injustice. He had met her after the quarrel with Eleanor. Her daughter’s refusal to acknowledge her duty to her blood and heritage had hurt deeply. There might have been a very different relationship between mother and child before that.

Otherwise, why had Lady Maude insisted that he, Rutledge, take charge of this question of identifying the bones?

“She might,” Hamish said, “be wanting to protect her family’s honor—”

Chapter 14

14

RUTLEDGE DROVE TOWARD GLASGOW WITH HIS MIND busy. Hamish was making comments on the evidence as well, but he tried to ignore them.

Such small things—the name on a grave—the Christian name of a woman—the fact that Fiona had told her aunt she was working out her time at Brae . . .

Where had she gone for that brief, unaccounted-for span of weeks?

And did it have anything to do with Maude Cook?