A little color came back into her face. The shaking stopped. But she was beginning to think clearly again too. Rutledge asked once more about the doctor.

“No, I mustn’t call him just now. He’ll see I’ve been crying and demand to know why I was so upset. He’ll tell Alex. And Alex will question Margaret—our maid. You must leave here and I shall say to my husband that you came to ask after my health because you’d found me ill by the pele tower and were concerned.”

“Will he believe you?”

“I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “Yes. I’ll make him believe me. I haven’t any choice. He has held this thing over my head for months now. Since he came home in the spring. And I take the greatest pleasure in not breaking. But sometimes—sometimes the strain is so great, I can hardly breathe. My chest hurts with it.”

“How could he have found out? About the boy?”

“When I had the influenza, the doctor must have told him I’d borne a child. Or when I had the chill, I might have said something in my sleep. I was feverish, I sometimes woke crying out for—for someone. Alex is very clever; he began to see that I had—that there was something I hadn’t told him. How he connected all this with Fiona, I don’t know. We’d been so very careful! But once his suspicions were aroused, I wouldn’t put it past him to go to the inn of an evening and search the family quarters. Who was there to see when Fiona tended bar! There was a christening gown. It had been my grandmother’s. Or perhaps he saw my face when I looked at Ian. So I stopped making excuses to pass The Reivers.”

“That still isn’t strong enough—”

“Yes. You don’t know him. He’s very clever, I tell you! It started when he began asking me where I was in 1916 when he called from London to say he was sent home to recover from wounds. I wasn’t here, you see—and I wasn’t here when he called to tell me he was being sent on to France. Over and over he’d ask where I was, what I was doing, who I was with—until my very silence answered him! It was after that that he must have learned somehow that I’d borne a child. He would bring me small gifts—a blue baby’s shawl. A small rattle for a teething child. A rocking horse he said he’d found in Edinburgh and knew I’d like. The servants thought it was a loving promise of children, when I was better. But I can’t have any more children! The nurse who bathed me— the doctor—someone must have told him there was a child!”