The man beside me drained another glass of wine. “Or throw her in the Tolbooth till he tells you what you wish to know,” was his suggestion. “Failing that, there’s always torture. Properly applied, it will shake loose the tongue of any man.”

Seafield said, “It need not come to that. There are more subtle ways to make men talk.” He turned his head and looked along the table, straight at me. “You’ve met him. Tell me, Sergeant Williamson, what would you judge to be Robert Moray’s weak side?”

I thought I just might know the answer to that question, even though I’d only passed a brief handful of hours with him, because the stories Mrs. Graeme had shared of her childhood had set Robert Moray’s character in such a light that I believed I understood him perfectly: his weak side—and the whole strength of his character—was his need to protect.

But I’d be damned if I’d betray that fact to these men, who were strangers and whose attitudes I’d found so far distasteful, so I only said, “My lord, I’m sure I do not know him well enough to tell you.”

Seafield studied me a moment. In his softly pleasant face, his eyes were shrewd. “Well, every man does surely have one. I am certain to discover it.”

The eyes of every man around the table were now fixed upon me.

Dr. Young asked, “How did you come to make the acquaintance of a Jacobite?”

Before I could say anything, the Earl of Seafield answered, “Sergeant Williamson is presently employed on a commission from a member of our high court. The nature of his work is secret, but it did require him to interview the prisoner.”

If he’d meant to put them off asking me questions, he’d chosen the worst way to go about it, for nothing will spur a man to try to pry open a box more strongly than telling him its contents are secret.

The sleekit man viewed me with unconcealed interest. “I notice you accompanied Lieutenant Turnbull’s wife today. Are you related to that family?”

I could easily have played the game and simply told him no, and let him guess again, and for those moments I’d have been for them a curious diversion, but I’d never much liked playing games.

I said, “I had the honor to serve with Lieutenant Turnbull, sir, at Toubacanti.”

The effect of that statement was swift, though I didn’t know why. The sleekit man glanced at the man to my right, who looked in his turn to the earl.

Seafield’s gaze sliced sideways from my own, and as if some unseen hand had just turned to a new page in a book, the talk moved on to other things.

* * *

“Oh, no, please say you didn’t mention Darien.” Helen laid a hand upon my arm as we walked out together from the earl’s house into the uncertain sunshine of the fading afternoon.

“They asked me how I knew your husband. Why should I not mention it?”