Margaret, in astonishment, replied, “I’m sure he would be if he had one.” And, to Barbara, “Who is this?”

But Lily answered for herself. “I’m Lily. I’ve kent Captain Graeme all my life.”

She saw the change in Margaret’s features. “Captain…? Oh, ye mean of the town guard? That Patrick Graeme? Faith, lass, he’s too old for me. My Patrick is, I do believe, his nephew.”

Lily had a flash of memory from her days, so long ago now, at Inchbrakie—of a younger Patrick, son of Captain Graeme’s elder brother George, the old laird’s heir. She had not marked him much because in age he’d fallen in between her friends and her friends’ parents, but she vaguely minded he’d had both the good looks and good nature of the Graemes. “I am sorry,” she began. “I—”

Margaret brushed the matter to one side. “He would think much of your loyalty. Your captain is a colonel now, ye might be pleased to hear.”

“He always was a colonel,” Lily said, defensively.

Henry, who liked anything that had to do with wars and soldiers, found it truly interesting that Lily knew an officer, and would have pestered her with questions had not Archie brought the conversation round again to where they’d started. “Leave the fighting to the fools,” said Archie, turning back to Margaret. “Ye cannot stay here the now, not how ye are. It only takes one searcher from the church to find ye here with ye unmarried and me sheltering ye, and we’ll both have trouble. I need time. But I do ken a woman living in the Canongate who’ll take ye in, and help ye with the birth, and after that…” He shrugged. “We’ll see what your fine man is willing to afford.”

“He will see me cared for, Archie.”

Lily wondered why the younger Patrick Graeme did not simply marry Margaret Malcolm, if she were to have his child. It seemed the simplest and most honorable way to solve the problem.

Later on that night, she said as much to Barbara.

Barbara smiled. “A man like Patrick Graeme of Inchbrakie does not marry someone like my sister. What would put that in your mind?”

“But Margaret’s very beautiful.”

“Fairest flowers soonest fade. And beauty’s not enough to gain ye entry to the world of those who live so high above us.”

There’s a difference between us and them. The Graemes and ourselves. Lily remembered what her grandmother had said. There are some bridges in this life, lass, that ye cannot cross.

And yet, a letter came as Margaret had been sure it would, directing payment for her care and signed by Patrick Graeme, and enclosing for his future bairn a bracelet of small, polished coral beads to ward off any illness.

At the end of June, the bairn was born—a little girl they christened Margaret and called Maggie, fair of hair and face, who waved her tiny fists about as though she would herself do battle with King William’s forces.