“He was deathly afraid of her, if I’m a judge. It was the only thing he ever showed fear of, and that fear was nigh on to superstitious! Miss Olivia said he didn’t believe in God, but that he believed with whatever heart he had, her death would surely be his death.”

For the first time in a very long hour, Hamish stirred and spoke as clearly as if he’d sat there at the table with them from the start. Or because of the tension that held him like a vise, had Rutledge himself formed the words aloud? Somehow he was never, afterward, sure.

“She’s wrong there, it was no’ her death that brought him down, but Nicholas Cheney’s. And yon lassie not understanding it, and sending for the Yard.”

Sadie looked up at him, her eyes no longer clear and sharp. “Aye, it’s true enough,” she answered. “It was Mr. Nicholas dying. But how could he have left Mr. Nicholas alive? He’d have come for Mr. Cormac with his bare hands the instant anything happened to Miss Olivia. However carefully it were done. That’s all that saved Mr. Cormac for twenty years, Miss Olivia not wanting to see Mr. Nicholas hanged! No, they had to die together. That was the only chance Mr. Cormac had in this world.”

Rutledge had written down her words, and afterward, when he’d made more tea and coaxed her out of weariness and the peace of forgetfulness, with his help she read them over and with a shaking hand, signed at the bottom of the last page.

Now, now he could walk into a courtroom with all the evidence any barrister might need. Except for what Stephen hadn’t trusted to Olivia’s boxes. The FitzHugh family history.

It was late when Rutledge walked through the woods, trying to cope with the emotions that still consumed him, listening to his own footsteps on the path, the soles of his shoes grinding on the gritty flint and earth like the mills of the gods. Slowly but surely—But he didn’t want slowly, he wanted a reckoning now, bloody and final and with vengeance driving it.

And Hamish, ferociously wrestling for control, was losing.

As he rounded the last bend in the trees, there were lights ahead of him. And behind the bright windows, the heavy thunderheads of a storm building. Flashes of reddish gold lightning laced the clouds, dancing among them as the roll of distant sound like guns firing out to sea reached him. Rutledge felt a cleaving tightness in his stomach.

“Before the battle, aye,” Hamish remembered with him, “always the guns. But in God’s name, you’re not in France now, not tonightl That’s a storm coming in fast, and yon house has nae claim on you now. Nor the man in it! Your work’s done. This is no’ your fight, man!”