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“If I don’t cut it, I’m left with a widowed line at the bottom of this column. If I do cut it, the story’s no good anymore. What would you have me do?” asked Moray, glancing up at Eva and catching sight of Gavin for the first time. “What do you say, Barrett?”

Gavin pushed off the doorframe from where he’d been watching his friends. “That you’d do well to listen to the best editor in Britain. You did hire her, after all.”

Moray grunted, managing to catch the pencil as it slipped off his ear before it clattered to the newspaper-strewn table. “I should have known you’d side with her.”

“Because I’m right,” said Eva, shooting him a dirty look before smiling at Gavin. “What was it tonight? A supper? A salon?”

“A salon,” he said, dropping into a chair opposite the desk and picking up a discarded page. He pointed to an illustration depicting a man and woman strolling in Princes Street Gardens. “This etching is rather good.”

“It is, isn’t it?” said Eva, peering at the paper.

“We’ve commissioned Michael Russell to do a series for us,” said Moray, replacing his errant pencil.

“Lana Russell’s husband?” he asked. “I didn’t realize he did etchings.”

“He’s an artist with rent to pay just like the rest of us. He’ll do whatever brings money in,” said Moray.

Eva rolled her eyes heavenward. “Ignore him. His mood will vastly improve when the front page is done.”

Moray pointed at the huge iron clock hanging on his wall. “It’s nearly two o’clock and we haven’t printed it. This is the third time this week.”

“And whose fault is that?” Eva asked.

Moray just grunted.

“One of the presses broke down earlier,” Eva told Gavin. “By the time it was running again, Moray had dismantled the entire front page with that pencil of his. Now he’s determined to reset it.”

“You don’t have to stay,” said Moray. “Go home to Catriona.”

“I’d just drive her to distraction pacing around until the paper landed on my doorstep, and I’d rather have you annoyed with me than her,” said Eva.

Eva and Catriona styled themselves as widows who shared the financial burden of a home. Few people understood what Moray and Gavin knew: that the two women were in their eyes, if not the law’s, a married couple. They hid it from all but their closest friends, knowing they could weather rumor but wouldn’t survive if anyone could prove the real nature of their relationship, and Gavin and Moray both protected that secret with a familial fierceness.

“What brings you here?” asked Moray as he crossed something out and scribbled in the margins.

“A strange night,” Gavin said.

His friend looked up, the sharp curiosity of a journalist clear in his eyes. “How strange?”

“This is not for print.” One always had to be sure to make that explicitly clear when speaking to Moray, for while the man was most involved in the Lothian Herald-Times, he also owned the wildly popular scandal sheet the New Town Tattler. Moray had expressed more than once how vital it was to keep the Tattler well supplied with tidbits about Edinburgh’s elite.

With crossed arms, Moray leaned back in his chair. “Fine.”

“What our friend means to say is, ‘I’m concerned that something has happened and you’re involved. Please tell me so that I may be of assistance in any way possible,’ ” said Eva.

“He knows that already. Why waste my breath?” asked Moray.

“Why indeed?” said Eva.

“There was an incident at Mrs. Sullivan’s home this evening,” he said, easing into his news as gently as he could.

Gavin didn’t miss the way Eva’s hand twitched toward a scrap of paper and pen lying nearby. Once a reporter, always a reporter.

“Ina was nearly compromised,” he said.

“What?” Eva asked at the same time Moray asked, “What happened?’

“She came across Sir Kier Gowan in the library and he tried to force himself on her,” Gavin said, struggling to calm his breath as he thought about smashing the man against a wall all over again. “He won’t marry Ina to protect her against ruin, so I’m going to.”