Gilroy confirmed this. “Mr. Fearne was but the middleman. The one who found the ships. I found the skipper who transported Matthew. He took other prisoners as well on that same voyage. For the most part, they were Covenanters who’d risen that summer with the Duke of Argyll in his last rebellion. All of them were taken, on that voyage, to Barbados, to be sold as servants for ten years.”

Here Gilroy paused. The house had seemed to breathe and settle once again, but this time Gilroy stood, and crossing to the door he opened it.

MacDougall stood a little distance off, pretending not to have been trying to hear what we were discussing. It would not have been an easy thing to overhear us, for we’d kept our voices quiet, but still Gilroy called MacDougall over.

“I’m afraid,” said Gilroy, “I forgot to post these letters. Do you think that you could do it for me?”

“What, now?”

“Yes.”

MacDougall went, but he was grumbling when he left us. Gilroy waited until we had heard the front door clicking shut, and closed the writing chamber’s door before he carried on, “The skipper who transported Matthew to Barbados did recall him vividly, because he was so careful who he sold him to. He had a lad himself about that age, and wanted to make very certain Matthew would be cared for, so he sold him to a family,” Gilroy said, “whose name was Williamson.”

I handed back his papers and he took them and we looked at one another for a moment.

Then he asked me, as if it were the most natural of questions, “How long were you in Barbados?”

“Four years.” There was not much that I could say about that time. About those people. I had been their servant. I was never family. I’d been shown no kindness.

Gilroy did not press for details. “And from there, the family moved to Long Island, New York?”

“Yes.”

“How did they convince you,” he asked me, “to take their son’s place in the local militia?”

That part had been easy. “They offered to give me my freedom.”

I’d won it, regardless, if not in the way they’d envisioned.

“So you did work for a while in New York.”

“Yes.”

“And then you came back to Scotland,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And met Lily Aitcheson.”

Questions about my own past I might answer, but I grew more guarded when it came to anything dealing with Lily. I felt my jaw set defensively. “When did you know?”

“The day we went to Riddell’s Close.” There was no hesitation. “I have brothers. I could see what you and Henry were, no matter how you tried to keep it hidden.”

So all his talk when he’d begun, about the man in the grey coat and how the sight of him made Gilroy curious enough to ask his stabler about Matthew Browne—that was a lie. I called him on it, and received the calm look in return.