She would later learn Archie had been at the house in the Paunchmarket, not far from where they stood, but at that moment it did seem to her that he had sprung from nowhere.

Archie looked at all of them, his features showing nothing of his thoughts, though Lily felt he gave her face a closer study than the others. Nervously she met his eyes, and Archie smiled and looked away, and said to Matthew, “Ye had us fair worried, lad. Your mother will be pleased to see ye home.”

* * *

Simon kept to Matthew’s side as he and Lily walked upon the Links the Sabbath following. Although his eyes were fixed protectively on Walter, walking just ahead of them, his thoughts were fixed upon their problem.

Simon said, “Ye cannot yet be certain Archie kens.”

Matthew accepted this. “But if he does, he’ll hold it for the moment he can twist it to his use.”

“Ye’re past his reach now, surely. Unlike some of us.” The half smile was a rarity for Simon. “No, it’s fine, I’m not complaining. I’m not bothered that he moved me to the Paunchmarket. ’Tis better work than most. The lasses need someone to keep them safe, and we all ken my hands weren’t made for forging. Anyway, Archie could hardly put Walter in charge of that house, could he? Walter has eyes for the one little black-haired lass, he’d never get any work done at all.”

Walter heard that, and turned at their laughter. Ignoring his brothers, he told Lily, “I’ve only been there to deliver account books, that’s all, so ye needn’t be giving me that look.” But still, he was red in the face.

Matthew told him he ought to be careful. “If Simon has seen how you look at the black-haired lass, Archie will doubtless have noticed it, too.”

Which brought them back to where they had begun, with their first problem.

Matthew frowned. “If Archie does ken I’m with Lily, I’m not worried for myself. I’m worried what he’ll do to Lily.”

Lily asked him, “Why should he do anything to me?”

“Because he kens that it would let him have a handle to me, and then he could turn me to his will.”

She was his weak side. Lily shook her head and told him, “Archie isn’t going to harm me.”

“How d’ye ken that?” asked Matthew.

Lily said, “He promised Barbara he would not, and he has kept that promise these ten years. I doubt he’d break it now.”

Matthew didn’t share her faith in Archie’s promises. “I have a different history with them,” he said, with a sideways glance. “I’d sleep better if we found a way for you to let me know each night that you were safe.”

It was Walter who finally proposed that she do what a heroine had done in one of the poems he’d read—set a candle each night in her window, to signal that everything inside the house was well.