“I’d not leave you on your own.”

“Why not? And if you tell me that it is because of my condition, I can’t promise I won’t poison you at dinner,” Helen warned. “I had enough of that this morning, with the fuss MacDougall made about me coming here. ’Tis only the beginning of my seventh month. I’m not so very large,” she asked me, “am I?”

I could not help smiling. “No.”

“Then go and have a walk,” she told me. “I will sit exactly here until my cousin’s free to speak.”

I knew when I was being sent away. “I’ll not be long,” I told her.

Helen said, “Take all the time you like.” And then, more casually, “I do believe that I saw Violet Young leaving just now. You might still overtake her.”

With a sideways look I said to Helen, “I will not go far. You’ll find me with the Regent Murray if you need me.”

Since she had been raised here, I knew she would understand that reference, and her nod and smile assured me that she did.

The Regent Murray, long ago, had schemed against his own half sister, Mary, Queen of Scots, joining with John Knox to raise the citizens of Edinburgh against her. When Queen Mary abdicated, chased to exile and captivity in England, Murray was created regent for her infant son, the young king, but he’d not held power long. He’d been assassinated shortly after by a man he’d wronged, so it was only fitting that his final resting place was where men came to settle their accounts.

His tomb was in the southern transept of St. Giles’s, and being in an aisle of the church left always open, with an access to Parliament Close—where the parliament sat and the lords of the council and session did business—the Regent Murray’s tomb had been used for some generations as a meeting place, where messages were passed, and deals were struck, and debts were paid.

This morning there were several people strolling round the space, together and apart.

I noticed only one.

She wore a simple brown silk gown—most probably the same brown gown that once belonged to Barbara Malcolm, carefully reworked to suit more recent fashions, for I’d learned that Lily did not much like to discard things. She was sentimental.

She looked to be waiting there for somebody, and we were not alone, but I was not about to lose the opportunity to speak to her. I made my bow and wished her a good morrow, and because I feared to compliment the wrong thing, said, “I like your hat.”

She smiled. “It is an old one.”

“I do like it, notwithstanding. I confess I did not see you at the service.”

“I expect we were in different churches,” she said. “I was in the Haddo’s-hold. The houses on the south side of the High Street and the Landmarket belong to different parishes than those upon the north.”

“I see.” A couple moved behind us, arm in arm. I stood aside to let them pass, then said, undiplomatically, “I thought your family was Episcopalian.”