I could see from her intense expression that she was mulling this question over seriously. “I don’t know. Perhaps it was the way she held herself. She always seemed so confident, so assured. As if she knew who she was and that she was where she was supposed to be. Do you know what I mean?” Miss Remmington turned to me to ask.
I nodded. My maternal grandmother, Lady Rutherford, for whom my sister had been named, had been like that, and even as a young child it had struck me as something unique. She had died when I was five, but I remembered her vividly: her white hair and laughing blue eyes—lapis lazuli, the same shade as my own—her musical voice. And that distinct presence that was so powerful, and yet soothing, that seemed to say that she had made peace with herself, and nothing you could do or say would change that.
I also recalled the things people whispered about her when they thought a small child wasn’t paying attention. The scandal over her marriage to my grandfather. The unnatural appeal she seemed to have, had always seemed to have, to other men, before her marriage and after. Her family’s lowly origins as Irish nobility. In Ireland, Grandmother Rutherford’s family might have been well respected, with the blood of ancient Irish kings flowing through their veins, as well as that of the transplanted English nobility who took over their land in 1606 under the direction of King James VI and I, but in Scotland they were less than nobodies. Which made the way my grandmother had held herself all the more fascinating, in defiance of them all.
Did Miss Wallace also have something in her past she had overcome? Some hardship that tested the mettle of a person and forced her to accept herself as she was, because no one else was going to do that for her?
Realizing that Miss Remmington was still speaking, I shook aside my own thoughts.
“She also seemed so . . . knowing.” She shook her head in bafflement. “I can’t explain it any other way. It was as if she knew things before you ever told them to her. Nothing, and no one, seemed capable of shocking her.” She reached out to run a hand down her horse’s neck before murmuring, “It was comforting.”
It sounded as if Miss Wallace was good at reading people. But if that was the case, if she was so astute, so aware of the people around her, then why was she now missing? Perhaps someone she didn’t know had surprised her. If so, then that made our search all the more difficult and widened its range considerably.
Of course, there was another explanation. Maybe Miss Wallace had not been taken but gone into hiding of her own accord. And if that was the case, what was she hiding from? What had she discovered or read in the intention of others to make her flee?
I could feel Gage’s eyes on me where he rode to the side and a pace behind Miss Remmington and me. I knew he had been listening to our conversation and I was eager to hear his thoughts on the matter.
“Did you and Miss Wallace meet often?” I asked, wondering how much credence to give Miss Remmington’s observations.
“Twice a week, without fail. Until last Friday, that is. I worried when she didn’t meet me at our usual place, but I know she has responsibilities in the village and at home.” Her face tightened. “I thought maybe she just had other things to do.”
When Miss Remmington said “other,” I knew what she really meant was “better.” That she feared Miss Wallace had better things to do than meet her.
At the top of a rise, we paused to stare down at the village of Cramond spreading out before us. The main road on which we had been traveling paralleled the river on its way toward the sea. Most of the buildings were concentrated on this thoroughfare, their uniform white stone bright in the sun. The Cramond Kirk, with its square, medieval tower and its surrounding kirkyard, stood to the right of the road about halfway down the hill. Through the trees beyond the church, the very top of a stone tower could be seen—the derelict remains of Cramond Tower, Michael told us. At the base of the hill, the road met the firth, pointing straight like an arrow out to the tiny island I had seen from the shore of the Dalmay estate, named for the town it lay so close to.
Lambden Cottage stood on a tree-lined lane at the crest of the hill. The home had evidently been built in two stages and resembled nothing so much as two squat, square blocks offset so that the back half of one connected with the front half of the other. Simple, rectangular windows were all that alleviated the pale gray stone of the fa?ade and the dark black slopes of the roofs other than the stark white door. The Wallaces clearly favored clean lines over fussy colors and shapes.