Lord Grange’s brother was the Earl of Mar, a man with close connections at Queen Anne’s court who enjoyed the confidence and private ear of many of the nobles there. As Gilroy answered back with reassurances, it became clear that Robert Moray’s friendship with the earl and, through him, with Lord Grange, had been forged in boyhood when the earl and Moray were at school together.

I found it curious myself that Lord Grange—who’d been roused to come to Turnbull’s house in person to arrange an inquiry for Mrs. Graeme—seemed to have done little on behalf of his old friend Robert Moray, and had not even come to pay a visit to console or cheer him.

But then, I often found men of the upper classes to be mystifying. These were different men from me, and while we walked through the same city, we might never see each other, for we met in different drawing rooms.

If I were taken up and jailed, I’d have no earl to write to at the court in London—none of noble name to stand and plead my case before Queen Anne, or barter for my life within the crooked halls and corridors of justice.

Nor would I be placed and guarded in a tower cell like this one, which although it had but one small window and lacked warmth was, at the least, a plain and proper room—one made entirely of stone, but with a vaulted ceiling high enough to let the air rise, and a floor that seemed to have been swept not long ago, and walls that were both clean and dry.

Not like the squalor of the Tolbooth, where the prisoners shared spaces little fit for beasts, and suffered from the want of freer air.

Mrs. Graeme drew my borrowed coat more closely round her shoulders. Her small action brought my thoughts back to the matter at hand, and reminded me this was a prison—no place for a woman to needlessly linger.

I broke in to the conversation of the other men. “You’ll forgive me, but our time may not be long here, and our visit has a purpose.”

If Gilroy was annoyed with me for interrupting him, he hid it well. He took his pen in hand and waited.

Robert Moray was regarding me with some expression that I couldn’t clearly see because the light was angling down behind him from the small barred window, but his voice, when he began to speak, was pleasant. “I’m afraid that ye will find me of no help to your inquiry.”

I asked him, “You were unaware that Mrs. Graeme and your cousin James were married?”

“Ours is a large family, Sergeant Williamson. ’Tis easy to lose sight of one another. Ye say they wed in January 1698? My studies on the Continent were finishing that winter, and I did not see my cousin in that year. That very summer Jamie sailed for Darien, and as ye know, there is no way I could have seen him after.”