Before Johnston or Hildebrand could move, Mowbray had come across the room to the window, sinking to his knees before it, his face contorted with tears. “Bertie?” he cried, his hands raking the glass. “Bertie? Is it you, lad?”

Robert Andrews the younger turned toward the man at the window, looking at him in alarm. Then he turned back to the ball players and scooped up the ball they had dropped in their struggle. Racing away up the walk toward the street shouting, “Mine! Mine!” he vanished.

Mowbray cried, “No—no—come back! Bertie!”

And at the same time he caught sight of Rosie, being led by the hand into the courtyard by a slightly older child. On such short notice, they’d had difficulty finding girls of the right age…. He stared at her, drinking in the sight of her, a strange look of wonder on his face. Rosie, her hand confidingly in that of the other girl, looked straight at the window and then away again. That same shy smile lit her face.

“Tricia, love?” Mowbray asked, his body trembling as if he had a fever. “They said I’d killed you and left you in the dark for the foxes—”

He broke down then, his eyes turning to Rutledge for one brief moment, in their depths something shining. It was the brief, terrible spark of hope.

Johnston was openly moved, his face wet with tears. Hildebrand swore under his breath, the same words over and over and over again.

Rutledge, ignoring the savagery of Hamish’s anger, looked at Mowbray and told himself that it had had to be done—for Margaret’s sake—for Mowbray’s sake, above all else. He went to the prisoner and touched his shoulder. “They are the children you saw,” he said gently. “The children at the train station. Is that what you’re telling me? The little boy who picked up the ball, and that smaller girl. Are you quite sure?”

“Yes, yes, they’re my children, they’re alive—” His shoulders moved with the sobs racking his lungs, his words tumbling out incoherently. He pressed his face against the glass as the two girls turned and went back the way they’d come, eyes straining for a last glimpse of them. He repeated the words, more clearly this time, as if finding them easier to believe with each breath.

“No,” Rutledge said. “No, I’m afraid they aren’t Bertie and Patricia. Their name is Andrews. Think, Mowbray! Your Bertie would be four now, nearly five. Like the older boy you saw. And the little girl, Patricia, would be seven by now. These two children—the ones who remind you so much of your own two—are younger, the ages Bertie and Patricia were when they died in London.”

“Their mother?” Mowbray asked huskily, suddenly remembering. “Is she out there too?” Raw need gleamed like fire in his eyes.