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muster at Parliament House—he looked, in fact, quite the yokel in his country getup—but he would do well enough for the breakfast table at Laverock House.
    Like Murdo’s bedchamber, David’s faced east. The early morning sunlight streamed into the room, gilding his dark-red hair with brighter flashes of copper and gold. In the instant that he turned away from the looking glass, David could have sworn he saw his brother Drew. Drew’s hair had always been more fiery than his own, and those country clothes were exactly the sort of thing that Drew wore every day.
    The unsettling vision made him turn back to the mirror, thinking to—what? See his brother? Of course he saw only himself, with his paler, citified complexion and darker, fox-red hair. He turned away from the glass, shaking his head.
    The odd moment set him to thinking about his family, and when he took his seat behind the little writing desk at the window that looked out over Laverock House’s kitchen garden, he found himself lifting a letter he’d had from his mother a few days before. He read it through once, then again, imagining her speaking the words she’d scribed in that spare way of hers.
    More than half the letter was made up of questions and advice about his leg. How was his walking now? Had he used the comfrey poultice she’d recommended? He should still be using it once a week, even now that he was walking. Was there a plentiful supply of comfrey at Laverock House? And was he making sure to rub down the whole leg with her liniment every night before he retired?
    His mother had been devastated to learn of David’s injuries months before. And she’d felt bewildered and slighted when he’d told her that he’d be staying at Laverock House, rather than coming home to recuperate from them. He’d had to tell her that Murdo had offered him a temporary position to explain it to her in a way she could just about accept.
    Well, he could write to her now and set her mind at rest on a few matters at least—the comfrey grew like wildfire in Murdo’s garden, and David was positively religious about using the liniment daily—no need to admit that it was applied by his employer’s hand more often than his own.
    While he was dealing with correspondence, he may as well answer the other letter he’d received this week—the one from Elizabeth Chalmers.
    He’d been rather surprised when Elizabeth started writing to him, but he’d grown to look forward to her letters during his recuperation. When he’d last seen her in person, she’d been running into a crowd in an attempt to flee her violent husband, Sir Alasdair Kinnell. It was David’s part in her escape that had resulted in his broken leg, and a fractured skull besides. Elizabeth had got safely away, though, finding their coconspirator, Euan MacLennan, in the crowd and fleeing to London with him.
    Elizabeth’s first letter to David was little more than a tearstained apology about the injuries he’d sustained on her account, but there’d been one sign of defiance. The looping signature at the end of it: Elizabeth Chalmers , her maiden name. Her subsequent letters had shown a woman growing in confidence and happiness. And David hadn’t missed the growing frequency of references to Euan. In her last few letters, Elizabeth had stopped referring to him as “Mr. MacLennan”; he was “Euan” now. And in this latest letter, he and Elizabeth had become an obvious “we”.
    “We have moved again. To Blackfriars this time . It is closer to the press, which is better for Euan since he spends so much time there.”
    David found himself hoping that those casual we ’s meant that Euan’s love for Elizabeth was reciprocated now, or that it would be one day. They both deserved a little happiness in their lives.
    He wrote steadily for an hour, first to his mother, then to Elizabeth. He was just sanding the second letter when the study door opened and Murdo appeared.
    “There you are,” Murdo said, the