“The duke’s spies know we’ve called off the inquiry,” I said, “and they’ll go straight to him with that information, so in his view you’ll be of no further use. You will be safe from him.”

“But not from Archie,” Lily argued. “He’ll be angry when he hears. He’ll want to meet me.”

“Which is why we need to get you now to safety.”

“Where?”

The nearest place that came to mind was Caldow’s Land, with Helen Turnbull. “We can tell her there were noises in the shop below, and they did make you nervous. She’ll not mind if you do sit with her awhile.”

“And where will you be?” Lily asked me.

“With the Regent Murray, meeting Archie in your place.”

She grabbed my sleeve and told me, “That is not a good plan.”

“Perhaps not, but I do warrant it will work.”

She shook her head a little helplessly, as though aware that nothing she could say would change my mind. “Why did you stay?”

I grinned and said, “Because you asked me to.”

Lily blushed. “That is not what I meant. I meant why did you stay in Edinburgh when you could have been clear of this? It never was your fight.”

“Of course it was.” I felt my grin fade as I told her, “I could not have left you.”

She was too close but she came closer still. “Why not?”

Showing her was easier than telling her. The kiss was light this time, but it did not last long.

Lily pushed me back sharply and said in surprise, “Matthew!”

I wheeled and followed her gaze to the man who had stepped through the door she’d forgotten to bolt. He’d entered by the turnpike stair so silently he was but a grey shadow in the doorway, standing watching us together.

“Ye’re looking after her, are ye?” he said to me. “Anyone could have come in, and the both of ye would now be dead.”

Lily stared at him, and then with her heart in her eyes, she rushed past me and into his arms. “I was so worried! When I did not see you in the street, I feared the worst.”

I looked at them and saw how he was holding her and in that moment my plan changed, and I knew what I had to do.

Emotions were an easy thing for me to hide. They always had been. It was not so difficult for me to hide my feelings then and tell him, “Go, then. See you take her somewhere safe.”

Waiting, too, was something I was used to. While I walked the floor of Lily’s lodging, waiting for the paper to be slipped beneath her door by Archie’s messenger to call the meeting—which I guessed would be tonight—I held my racing thoughts in check.

I idly turned the pages of the book that she’d left lying on the table—the book that I had loaned to her of plants of the Americas, still with my note that marked the page that held the illustrations of the ferns. She’d finished with this now, she would not need it any longer. When I’d done what I must do, I would come back here and reclaim it.