Lily noticed. Having spent a lifetime walking in the company of boys and young men, first up at Inchbrakie and now here, she had grown used to trailing after them or hurrying her pace. Not that she minded, but she found she liked this touch of grown-up chivalry.

The Paunchmarket curved from the Shore up to Tolbooth Wynd, holding a mix of old, elegant mansions and rougher new houses that rose tall against the late-afternoon sky. Here at its mouth, where it emptied out into the Shore, it was broad, but a short distance in it grew narrow and curved out of sight.

Matthew did not lead her into it. From where they stood upon the Shore, he nodded. “There,” he told her. “Third along, with the green door.”

It was not what she’d envisioned. “It looks like an ordinary house.”

“So does the one you’re now living in.”

Lily accepted that as a fair point. She asked, “How many women are in there?”

He didn’t know. “At one time I think there were five or six. Might still be. None of my business.”

“And where do they come from?”

A shrug. “There’s never any shortage in a place like this.”

Lily felt indignant on behalf of all the women who, like Barbara, had been given little choice in life. “Ye think so little of them?”

Matthew’s head turned at her tone of voice. He lightly put one hand within the hollow of her back to steer her down again toward the pier, and started walking with her as though he did not wish to stand too long in that place where someone might be watching them. “Ye ken nothing about me.”

“I ken much about your mother, though,” said Lily. “She’s the reason I was spared that life, the reason I’m not in that house, so I’d think ye might at least find some respect for—”

“I’m a foundling.” Matthew cut across her speech. His voice was even, but there was an edge of steel beneath. “They reckon I was only hours old when I was left within the church porch by the woman who gave birth to me. But I was wrapped well in a blanket, with a note that begged them please to see me cared for. I was wanted, but could not be kept. That’s what happens,” he told Lily, “when you have a church that blames the woman for her weakness when she trusts a man who promises her much and treats her ill. One thing our mother taught us—and she taught us much—was we should never judge the women who gave birth to us. I never have. I never would.” He glanced at Lily, and his jaw was set in such a hard, defensive line, she wanted to take back what she had said and tell him she was sorry, but she knew he wasn’t looking for apologies. He said, “Nor would any of us leave a woman we had loved alone to face the punishment for what we’d done, but there are many men who would. And when they do, there’s Archie, waiting with his promises.”