Page 35 of Christmas Wore Plaid

The laird’s brow relaxed, confirming Brady’s suspicions that he had been prepared for a money proposition.

“Do sit,” the laird said, gesturing to a chair at a side table as he took the opposite one.

Brady set aside his dram and did so while Lady Reginald positioned herself upon a settee. Brady opened his portfolio.

“The lass who ran away was named Colleen Thomson, and she took to prostitution.”

“Goodness,” gasped the lady, her hand splaying upon her chest. “Whatever for?”

“Her family ailed and couldn’t make the rents. My father tried more than once to convince Colleen to return home, but she refused, and as it turns out, she bore a bastard son five years ago. Sadly, she died, and the women of the brothel saw her bairn delivered to the old orphanage, not knowing if Colleen’s family could be found.”

“But the orphanage is now closed. Why, one of our maids took in a lass several months back to be raised alongside her children,” Lady Reginald said.

“A lass?” Brady asked. That’s not what his paperwork from the constable stated. “Did anyone, by chance, take in a lad?”

The laird and lady looked at one another with a thoughtful crinkle to their brows. Then they both shook no.

“No,” Reginald said. “Can’t say anyone did. It was only the lass.”

It wasn’t what Brady had expected, and sadness for the widow knotted his chest.

Brady held out the opened file. “My papers show that a lad, about five years old, was placed here when other poorhouses refused to take them.”

“Your papers are clearly wrong about the sex of the child, but the age and the fact the child was placed here are correct.” Laird Reginald picked up a bell upon a silver tray and rang it. A moment later, the butler appeared. “Please summon Matilda,” he said. The butler bowed once more and retreated to do his bidding. “Tilly is the maid who took in the child, a small lass named Alexandria. She’ll be able to answer any further questions for you.”

Brady nodded, sipping the expensive brandy again while thinking on the expensive whiskies his father used to buy. After his parents’ death, the cheaper the spirits, the better for his dwindling accounts, until it became necessary to cut them from his supply lists altogether.

“Have you thought further about the pamphlet I gave you?” Reginald asked, pulling a cigar from within his coat pocket and placing it between his fingers. “The Americas have much to offer the poorer folk from the outlands.”

Brady nodded. “I’ll put the idea to them after Christmastide. I’m under no illusions, and neither will I lie to them. A voyage to the Canadas is no easy trek, and there’s no guarantee they’ll find a good life there—”

They were interrupted by the door opening again. The butler led in a woman of middle years, her hair pulled back into a bun beneath her lace cap.

“Ah, Matilda,” Laird Reginald said. Brady stood and placed his hands at his back as Laird Reginald made the introductions. “Laird MacInnes is enquiring into the parentage of the urchin you took in from the orphanage in September.”

“I fear the lass in question, Alexandria, is no longer in my care,” the maid said.

Confusion settled in Brady’s gut.

“What happened to her?” Lady Reginald asked.

“She would not speak. I did all I could to try and make her do so, but when she continued to steal bread from the pantry and refused to confess to it, I had to act.”

“What do you mean, ‘act’?” Brady asked, defensiveness tightening his posture.

“Why, a whipping, of course. I cannot very well have a thief in my midst, my laird, especially in these tougher times. She was allowed two meals a day, like the other children, and should have been content with it.”

“A whipping?” Brady questioned. He knew the world wasn’t a pretty place, but he still detested the idea of taking a strap to a child.

“I couldn’t handle her, and one morn, when the other children said she’d stolen more food, she ran away. I let her go, for I’d nearly taken her back to the brothel where she’d been born myself.”

The statement jarred him. Wariness rippled through Brady’s blood. “The brothel?”

“Indeed. The orphanage said she was born to a prostitute but that the woman died.”

“What was this woman’s name?” Brady tempered his voice. He might be livid, but right now, he needed information, and shouting at her wouldn’t get it. His paperwork, the statement from the prostitute to his father, had all indicated a lad. Could they have been wrong? Suspiciously, he considered the child Emerson had taken in. How far-fetched… And yet, that lass looks to be about five years, and according to Emerson, she won’t say a word. She was also as thin as a rail, hardly well-fed, if fed at all, and certainly not staying plump from stealing bread.

“I don’t know,” the maid replied.