I knew, as the tale was unfolding, that it had not been an apprentice who’d ruined the young lass who’d served in that house before Lily, but then in my life I had known men like Mr. Bell—men who displayed a respectable face to the world while they preyed on the vulnerable.

Such men were masters of concealment. Carefully selecting those most lonely and in want of love, they set about with patience, stealth, and flattery to win their trust. And then betrayed it.

Rarely were these men suspected, even by their families. They strode freely through all levels of society, emboldened by the knowledge those they injured would stay silent out of shame.

I saw that shame pass over Marion’s face.

“When we woke next morning and Lily was not in the chamber with us at the inn, there was a search,” said Marion. “They found the lantern by the loch, and found her hood beside the broken ice. We thought…that is, my father said he’d found her sad and walking in the courtyard, pining for her father, and he’d sent her back to bed.”

“And they believed him.”

“Yes, of course. Although I do not think that Captain Graeme did. He argued with my father, and he never gave him custom, after that.”

I wondered whether Captain Graeme guessed the truth, or whether he but felt himself responsible for leaving Lily here so unprotected.

I asked Marion, “And what did you believe?”

She looked away. “At first, I could not think it possible. She’d seemed content here. But the summer after that, my mother died…” A moment’s pause. “I learned then Lily might have had a cause to be unhappy in this house.” She gathered herself bravely and said, “Still, I did not like to think she would have taken her own life.” And then, remembering, she turned to me. “But now you tell me she did not.”

The way she said those words will always live with me. I hear them still. I hear their hopefulness.

It is no small thing, hope. Without it, darkness wins. My mother used to set me on my feet again and tell me, “Were it not for hope, the heart would break,” and she was right. Sometimes, when all seems darkness and despair, hope is the only thing that does remain for us to grasp—a tree branch beating at the ice within a child’s hand.

And so we make an opening, and day by day press forward, and we hold that hope.

And therein lies its power.

Chapter 13

Wednesday, 24 September, 1707

The Cross Keys had for so long stood in one place on the south side of the High Street that its close was called “Steell’s Close” after its landlord, Patrick Steell—a man who seemed as solid and unchanging as the tavern that he kept. He loved good company, good conversation, and good music, and would often lead the song himself in hearty voice. He’d placed his tavern well to draw a crowd. The market cross stood all but at his doorstep, and St. Giles’s church was his near neighbor, and behind that stood the lofty house of parliament, which would have gone on bringing great men daily past his door had not the Union ended our Scots government in May. In spite of that, so many politicians were his regulars that some would called the Cross Keys “Pat Steell’s Parliament,” and from the sounds that spilled onto the darkened street as I drew near the gilded sign this evening, it did seem that parliament was in full session.