Henry cautiously stepped into the close before them, walking its length up and down to look into the shadowy places and see for himself that their way would be clear. When he came back inside he knelt in front of Maggie and quietly told her, “Now, give me a kiss.” She did. “And keep ye warm. And mind whatever Lily says. And be a good lass always.”

“Are ye coming up to London, too?”

“Someday,” he said. “Someday I will.” He held her very tightly. Then he kissed her hair, and let her go, and stood.

Lily had no words that could tell him how her heart felt, but she knew he knew.

She reached for him in silence and he held her for a moment, hard, then set her from him with reluctance. “Go,” he said. “And don’t write letters, he’s too clever. Don’t leave any trail that he can follow.”

“Henry…”

“Don’t look back,” he said, “no good will come of it. I’m going to close the door.”

She knew how much it would have broken Henry’s heart—Henry, who for all his life had wanted nothing more than a real family—to push them so gently from the passage out the door into the waiting night, but still he did it, and she saw his eyes and watched him try to give her one last smile.

Lily did not obey his last words. She looked back. He’d closed the door, as he had said he would. The little house in Riddell’s Close looked lonely and forlorn.

Maggie, too, had looked behind. Her small hand holding on to Lily’s tightly, she said in a sad whisper, “But we did not light the candle.”

“No,” said Lily, looking from the empty window that had been her own for all those years, and was no longer, to the other windows that were watching them in silence. “Not tonight.”

Shivering, but not from cold, she took a firmer hold of Maggie’s hand and turned toward the road to Edinburgh, her steps as soft and swift as though the devil were behind.

Some things were better done in darkness.

Chapter 34

Friday, 3 October, 1707

In the flicker of the firelight, Lily’s face looked sad as she remembered. Sitting curled into her cushioned chair, she said, “I did not know what else to do. There was nobody left to ask for help, not really. They’d all gone.”

I leaned toward her in my chair and took her hand in both of mine. “I’ve not left you,” I said. “And I am not going anywhere.”

She gave my hand a grateful squeeze and let me keep possession of it, so I counted that a victory.

“But,” I said, “you’ve not yet made it clear how Archie came to be involved in this affair. How did he find you here in Edinburgh?”

“How does he ever find a person? He has ways, and I’d grown careless. Maggie had this offer of a teaching job, and oh, you should have seen her. I could not have told her no. I told myself, since we were living very modestly and under different names, perhaps it would not be a problem. And then one day I came out of the Luckenbooths and there he was.” She said it very evenly, although it must have been a terrifying moment for her.