I found a normal smile to show her, feigning interest. “Did you?”

“Yes. He said he did receive my letter—you recall the one I wrote, asking if he would thank the men of the commission for the honor of assigning us this inquiry.”

“And did he thank them?”

“That’s the thing,” said Helen. “He had no idea what I meant by it. He asked the other men who sit on the commission, and they were of no more help, since neither Mrs. Graeme nor her claim had ever come before them.”

While I grappled with the implications of this, Helen seemed to give up any effort to make sense of it.

She said, “Lord Grange must simply have been misinformed. It doesn’t matter. As my cousin says, it’s still a claim that wants investigating, and it’s one less claim that the commission needs to do, for which they’re grateful, and we’ll still have gained the favor of Lord Grange when we’ve completed it.”

She put it thus behind her.

I could not. My mind turned back to the beginning of this week, when Lord Grange had arrived at Caldow’s Land. Now that I thought of it, he’d never actually said that the claim had been passed on from the Commissioners of the Equivalent. It had been Gilroy who’d first told us that.

Gilroy might be lying. I had seen him do it expertly. Or he might be repeating what Lord Grange had told him, in which case Lord Grange was lying—or repeating something he’d been told, by…whom?

And why? Why such deception, for a case of such a passing insignificance? Who possibly could benefit?

Within my mind the voice of Robert Moray drily made reply, At least ye have the wit to ask the question.

Chapter 26

Monday, 29 September, 1707

The guard might have expected me, but it was clear that no one had warned Robert Moray he would have a visitor. He took it in his stride.

Nearly a week had passed since I had seen him, and he’d spent a few days beyond that now in this high-vaulted room without a fire, and with the small, barred window letting in uncertain light. He moved more stiffly, and his features showed the strain. If he had been questioned roughly I could see no outward sign of it, but I knew not all ill use left a mark, and he was not the sort of man who would complain. He was too proud.

He’d been standing at the table when the guard had let me in, midway through washing at the small basin of water they had brought him for that purpose. He was wearing neither wig nor coat, his closely clipped brown hair yet rumpled from his sleep, his Holland shirt well creased and wrinkled, but he still retained an air of calm command, dismissed the guard, and bade me take a seat upon the low, campaign-style bed as though he were at home and in his private chamber and had asked me round to talk over some business matter at his morning audience.