Chapter Text
Two men lived in Strathvagan house, though no one would know it from the outside.
Tharkay often thought ruefully that an itinerant lifestyle did not suit one for the process of making a building into a home, and his habits of stealth were far too entrenched to overcome on his own. In the first glorious days after the title was returned to him, he had imagined having help in the endeavor, knowing his friends far better suited the task than he.
But that had been before the news reached him, before he had been forced to turn his energies to a different aim.
For one of his friends was dead, and the other had buried his heart in a fallow field outside Reichenbach.
Laurence had allowed himself to be collected from Nottinghamshire with not even a token protest, not unlike the man who had remained in an unlocked room in a burning city, only because the law had not told him where to go.
But there was one difference; the dowager Lady Allendale kept a closer eye on her son than had those long-ago guards, and it was her Tharkay was at pains to convince. He had spoken at length of the healthy air of the highlands and of the proximity of Edinburgh covert and Loch Laggan, and therefore several of Laurence’s dearest friends.
In the end, she saw through his explanations and asked, simply, “You mean to help him?”
Tharkay did. At that time there had been some hope of such recoveries as he had witnessed Laurence make in the past. “I mean to try,” he had answered.
It had been eight months since then, and nearly a year since the end of the war, and all his efforts had come to nothing. A few had produced superficial results. Some of those had, perhaps, made things worse.
And so now two men lived and breathed and moved through Strathvagan house: a spy, and a ghost.