Reluctantly, allowing herself a last glance out the window, she moved away from the vast door, following him back to the staircase that led down to the servants’ passage on the ground floor. It would be far quicker to step through the door and go straight down the sweeping staircase that led to the gardens, but they would pass Lord Sholto and Lady Sibyl that way and already she was beginning to absorb the assumption that she must be hidden from view.

‘It’s good of you to take me,’ she said, as Billy stepped out into the garden, holding the door open for her.

‘Nae bother. It gets me out of filling the coal buckets just yet and I get to be outside for a wee while.’

‘Have you worked here long?’ she asked distractedly as they walked, Effie glancing around for sight of Sholto and Sibyl, but there was no sign of them now.

‘Seven months. My longest stay yet. I’m usually out on m’ ear after five.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Trouble has a way of finding me.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘Bit like you, I reckon.’

She had thought exactly the same about him but she had no intention of letting him know that. ‘Excuse me?’

He shot her a crafty, sidelong glance. ‘This morning I overheard Lord Sholto bribing Mrs McKenzie into locking the library doors for the day to keep his father out. Minutes later, Mr Weir left in a great hurry with a parcel under his arm addressed to an antiquarian bookseller in Glasgow.’ He glanced at her. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?’

She swallowed. ‘Why would you suppose I do?’

‘Because his lordship was adamant Mrs McKenzie wasn’t to let you know about it.’

She looked at him. ‘But it’s fine for you to tell me?’

He shrugged, smiling. ‘You’re avoiding the question. Why aren’t you to know?’

‘Do you always spy in the corridors, Billy?’

‘You’re still avoiding the question.’

She gave a careless shrug but she knew exactly what Sholto was doing – cleaning up after her mess. Making things right again.

Was the book repairable, she wondered? And even if the pages could be sewed back in, would it still retain its value? Or was it now damaged, and therefore worthless? As she had lain in bed last night, she had mulled over the notion of offering Sholto her copy – a straight swap; that way his father need never know. But there was no way she could see to do that without explaining how she had come to be in possession of such a rare gift herself, and she couldn’t bear to even mention Frank Mathieson’s name. Shame had her in a stranglehold from which she couldn’t escape.

She realized she was lost in her thoughts. ‘. . . So tell me, Billy – have you worked here long?’

He gave a surprised laugh. ‘You already asked me that!’