Across from me, a gentleman some years my senior who’d been introduced as Dr. Young had also drawn the line at wearing wigs. Twice now he’d regarded me above his wineglass with the private smile of a conspirator.

I put his friendly gesture down to our shared circumstance of finding ourselves sitting at the middle of the table, marking both of us as men of lesser rank and less importance than the guests who had been seated near the Earl of Seafield at the table’s foot, or near his lady at the table’s head.

Helen held the place of honor at the earl’s right hand. The seat at my right hand was taken by a less appealing guest—a gentleman who drank too much and talked too much—and on my left the doctor’s daughter, who gave her attention to the lady opposite. I feigned an interest in the tennis games of conversation taking place across the table while I tried to focus on the rules of formal dining.

I’d never eaten in a room so elegant. The Earl of Seafield’s dining room was lined with wainscot paneling of quality I’d never seen. Above the doors and elsewhere there were painted decorations meant to fool the eye and look like ancient sculpture, and the high vaults of the plastered ceiling soared in ornate patterns. I felt I had been trapped within an ivory-lidded box for the amusement of some rich collector.

For relief, I looked toward the windows that provided a view south across the slope of private gardens to the reassuring rise of Arthur’s Seat, its weathered crags as sturdy and unyielding on this afternoon as they had been time out of mind.

Dr. Young remarked, “It is a splendid prospect.”

His voice was both cultured and mild and I wasn’t entirely sure he was speaking to me until I brought my head around. He’d been looking out the window also, and now faced me with another of his smiles. I had no gift for social niceties and much preferred to keep apart from shallow talk, but I could not be impolite. I told him truly, “Yes, it is.”

“And brilliant sunshine for this time of year,” he added, “although I do fear the evening will bring rain.”

His daughter turned at that. “Oh, I do hope not! I am tired of dreary weather.”

She said it lightly, not in a complaining way but as a statement. I’d have judged her to be Helen’s age or slightly younger, with brown hair nearly the same shade as Mrs. Graeme’s. Her eyes, like Mrs. Graeme’s, were blue, and yet her features, while attractive, did not have the same effect upon me. I could admire her as I might admire a painting, and remain unmoved.

Her father looked me over. “Are you a relation of the Dr. Adam Williamson who serves as surgeon in Meredyth’s regiment?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir.”

“Where do your Williamsons hail from?”

“New York.”

That surprised them both. “Where in New York?” asked the doctor.