That night, when Lily went to bed, she murmured, “Jean?”

“Aye?”

“Corporal Morison’s a good man.”

Jean said nothing. Only kissed her, very softly, tucked the blankets warm around her, and the small, low-ceilinged chamber that held Lily’s family slumbered into darkness.

Chapter 7

Tuesday, 23 September, 1707

I was alone with Robert Moray.

He had engineered it neatly, asking Gilroy to take Mrs. Graeme up into the open air and daylight. “You can leave me pen and paper, though,” he’d said, “that I might write my wife, to let her know that I am well. She will be worried.”

Gilroy had complied, and Moray, thanking him, had told him, “Sergeant Williamson can wait to take the letter.”

So I’d waited.

It was plain that I intrigued him, but he was too much a gentleman to step beyond the common questions. As he inked the pen, he asked me, “Are ye married?”

“No.”

“I recommend it, though I am not sure my wife would do the same. I fear I rob her of her peaceful sleep, most nights.” He smiled. “I daresay working every day with Gilroy might have much the same effect upon ye.”

“You have known him long?”

“Let’s say I know him well enough to find him most predictable.”

“Yet he surprised you.”

“Did he?” Robert Moray glanced up from his letter. “When was that?”

“When he asked you about your brother John,” I said, “and then your uncle. You did seem surprised that he would ask about them. Why?”

He looked at me briefly, the same way he’d looked at Gilroy, then bent once again to his writing and said, “The more interesting question is, why did the commissioners decide on this inquiry? They could simply have dismissed it outright for a lack of evidence. Why go to all this trouble, and in private? You’ll agree it is unusual.”

I caught that ball and held it for a moment, not quite certain what to do with it. “Perhaps, but surely…what would anybody stand to gain by it?”

He looked at me. “At least ye have the wit to ask the question.”

In the pause that followed, I thought he might be about to give me his views on the matter. But he didn’t.

Sitting back, he asked, “How did ye come to be put at the head of this inquiry?”

I couldn’t tell if he was questioning my qualifications or simply being curious, but I reacted the same way I’d always done when challenged. Squaring my shoulders, I said, “Lord Grange employed my friend Lieutenant Turnbull for this post, but the lieutenant’s out of town. It was agreed, as a favor, that I should stand in as his surrogate.”

“’Tis a favor,” he said, “ye may come to regret.”

I thought “regret” was a strong choice of words for a man who chose words with a purpose. It made me uneasy.

Before I could press him about it, he asked, “I mean no disrespect, but is that your best suit?”