4075.104 · April 14, 1755 AD
The Father Who Burned His Letters
The household sleeps. Violet dreams beneath thin blankets, Katrina reads past the hour she should, and Effie's breathing has finally steadied into slumber. But Morag Stewart has been waiting—and when her hand touches Elspeth's shoulder by the darkened window, ten months of silence finally break. By the time the embers die, the portrait above the mantel will show a stranger's face: a man who paced until dawn after certain visitors, who burned every letter he received, whose death may have been no accident at all.
I thought I knew my father. Turns out I only knew the version of him that came home for supper.
The chairs flanking the hearth have held the same occupants for as long as Elspeth can remember—her father in the one with worn armrests, her mother in the smaller seat with the embroidered cushion. Tonight, for the first time, Elspeth takes her father's place. The leather still holds the shape of him.
What follows reshapes everything she thought she knew. Angus Stewart was not merely a blacksmith who died in a tragic accident. He was a man who met with strangers after dark, who burned letters with careful attention, who started at unexpected knocks and stared into distances his family could not follow. A man involved in the Jacobite cause—in treason, in secrets, in something that left him white-faced and sleepless after one particular visitor's words.
The accident that killed him may have been exactly that. Or it may have been something else entirely.
By the rain-streaked window, watching Edinburgh Castle's silhouette against the night sky, Elspeth makes a silent vow. She will find out who. She will find out why.
And then she will decide what to do about it.
