Waiting for me.

And now that my senses were no longer on alert and had begun to function normally—at least, as normally as they could function in her presence—I could tell that something was wrong. All the vibrancy had drained from her and left her looking weary and dejected.

Making a decision, I crossed to the fireplace and stirred the small fire to life.

“Come, sit where it is warmer,” I said. “You’ll catch cold if you stay there.”

I moved the cushioned chair for her, and while she settled into it, I took a twisted paper spill from the container on the mantel and used it to transfer a single, tiny piece of flame from the now-glowing fire across the room to light the candle in the window.

I did not want any interruptions from the other man who I knew might be out there right now watching Lily’s lodgings for a signal of distress. I stayed well to the side, so I would not be seen, then rejoined Lily at the hearth and took the cane-backed chair across from hers.

She knew a reckoning was coming. “It is no use,” she told me. “I’m beyond your help.”

“You said you trusted me.”

“I did. I do.”

“Then trust me now.” I held her gaze. “I don’t believe you ever married onto Jamie Graeme. Did you?”

In the pause that followed, I could feel the strong pulse in my own veins counting off the moments like a clock.

And then she slowly shook her head.

I asked her, “Why? Why take the risk of coming forward with a false claim?”

Lily raised her chin, and her attempt to smile was heartbreaking. “Because,” she told me, “with Archie, there’s always a price.”

Chapter 31

Wednesday, 29 June, 1698

She’d been unwilling to believe, at first, that he had truly left her. On the morning after Lily had watched Matthew walk away—the same morning she’d first arranged to meet with Jamie at the windmill—she had gone to Matthew’s lodgings to convince him to come with her to that meeting, so that he could speak to Jamie for himself and know the truth.

There’d been no answer at his door, and he had not been at the stables in the Kirkgate where the carters kept their horses, nor at work upon the Shore.

Day followed day, and by the end of that first long week of December when she knocked on Matthew’s door it had been opened by a stranger, a new tenant, and another carter had begun to hitch the mare named Lennet to their cart, and Lily knew then Matthew had done more than leave to calm his temper.

“He’ll be back,” Henry had promised her with certainty, but after nearly seven months now even Henry was beginning to accept that Matthew, once again, was gone.

Neither Henry nor anyone else in his family had made Lily feel for a moment that she was to blame.

Jamie felt this was only right. “It’s not your fault,” he’d said. “He was the one who decided to leave.”