“Aye. The skipper is a friend of his. I shall be very safe.”

“I’d feel better if you sailed with Captain Gordon. Such a dashing man. A widower, I’m told.”

“He is.” The gossip mills ground quickly and efficiently.

“Perhaps I could find him a wife, if you won’t have one.” With a smile she said, “See that you write to us.”

I gave her back the smile, but kept my silence, for I could not promise that I would.

Sometimes friendships forged in war were of a different nature, so dependent on the forces and the pressures that created them that, once you did remove them from that time and place, they never could resume their former shape.

When we said our farewells, before they went downstairs to meet their coach, I realized it was probably the last time I’d see either of them.

Turnbull had been my commander. He was yet my friend. He had earned—and I hoped that he never would lose—my respect. But the truth was, we had very little in common, and I’d not be missed in his life any more than he would be in mine.

I had a few hours to fill before the time of my departure.

I’d arrived at Caldow’s Land with little. Most of what I would be leaving with, I had already packed into my knapsack and the leather portmanteau that I had carried with me now for years. One thing I’d sent down yesterday ahead of me, that would be waiting in my cabin on the ship, was the box of books I’d managed to assemble, starting first with the new volumes I had purchased from the Latin master, and then choosing several from a bookseller and printer in the High Street, before adding in the law book and the illustrated French book of the plants of the Americas.

That last I’d held a little longer than the others, leafing through its pages and remembering when I’d loaned it to Lily, but at last I’d put it in the box and nailed the lid shut firmly.

This was not the moment to indulge in sentiment.

MacDougall found me now within the writing chamber, putting things to rights. I turned.

He faced me with the same distrust. I knew it did not matter to him that I had worked diligently in his master’s place on the inquiry, given Turnbull all the credit, asked for none. Men like MacDougall went through life expecting to see nothing but the worst in men, and so became blind to the good.

He studied me with narrowed eyes. “Ye’re nearly finished, then?”

He wanted me to leave the room. To leave the house. To leave their lives.

I gave a nod and said, “Time I was gone.”

MacDougall grunted. “Ye’ve a visitor.”

I couldn’t think who…?

Gilroy thanked MacDougall. Stepped around him, and dismissed him. He was carrying his file of papers, neatly tied.

I thought I understood how Robert Moray must have felt when I’d surprised him in his prison chamber at the castle that last morning, and, like him, I felt a moment’s urge to simply sigh and ask, “What now?”