But the letters offered no answers to that. Or to the question of why Fiona had carefully told her aunt lies, and led her to believe that she was with child.

And she hadn’t been.

She had been very forward-thinking. She had woven the tissue of lies well before her aunt had sent for her. In the last letter, there were the words, I must work out my time here, as I promised Mrs. Davison. And Ian shouldn’t travel just now, it will be difficult for both of us. But by the end of the month, we shall arrive in Duncarrick and I look forward to seeing you more than you know.

Fiona MacDonald hadn’t come upon a woman lying by the roadside in the throes of childbirth, taken advantage of an opportunity to kill her and steal her baby. She had known for some time that a child would be born—she had made sure that her aunt had known too. And it meant, clearly, that the infant had been promised to her.

But by whom?

And if there had been no need to kill the mother in order to take the child, who was the woman whose bones had been found on a mountainside?

More important from the point of view of Lady Maude, what role—if any—had Eleanor Gray played? And where was Eleanor Gray now?

No one could say.

Hamish spoke the thought that Rutledge had already considered—and did not want to address now: that the child might have been a temporary gift to Fiona, to keep until the mother was ready or able to reclaim him. Until she had done what she had intended from the start to do, study to become a doctor?

And Fiona, already planning for the child, wanting the child, coveting the child forever, might have decided that she couldn’t bear to give him up.

Hamish added, pain in his voice, “It’s what they’ll say. It’s what they’ll want to believe. Unless the mother is found alive, to bear witness for her!”

Chapter 15

15

RUTLEDGE PUT THE TIN BOX BACK WHERE HE’D FOUND it for the time being, and was already on his way to the stairs, when a thought struck him.

His sister Frances had found in a small cedar chest belonging to their mother the carefully preserved christening robes that the two of them had worn. Wrapped in tissue, these were still white and soft, with lacy bodices and a wide band of matching lace at the hem, small caps frilled with lace and the tiniest of tucks, long ribbons for bows under the chin. Little knitted boots with blue or pink ribbons to tie them. Frances, who seldom cried, had said in a husky voice, “She never held grandchildren—mine or yours. It must have grieved her.”

As if that was the ultimate wrong to the dead . . .