Jamie nodded. “Inchbrakie’s not the same without him. Uncle George prefers the town life, so ye’ll almost never find him there. And with my cousin forced to flee to save his neck, the old yew will be waiting yet awhile afore new children come to climb it.”

Lily knew when he faintly frowned afterward that he was thinking of Maggie. It was an easy association to make, not only because he’d been talking of children, but because the cousin he spoke of—the one forced to flee to the Continent last winter—was Maggie’s father.

As everyone had feared, the family of the man Maggie’s father had fought and killed six years ago had finally brought a charge of murder, and because that family was so firmly attached to King William while the Graemes were known Jacobites, Maggie’s father had felt he’d have no chance persuading the lords it had been a fair fight. So he was now a fugitive.

In the beginning, when she’d started having these meetings with Jamie here on the wide sands of Leith, and they began filling in the blanks of their lost years with each other, Lily hadn’t been sure whether she should say anything to him of Maggie.

Yes, they were kin, but what good would it do in the end if he knew that? As Barbara often said, All the truth shouldn’t be told.

But then one day she’d turned up and Jamie had looked at her strangely and asked, “Who was that wee lass with the fair hair ye were walking with, day afore yesterday, down by the pier?”

And she’d never told Jamie a lie. So that day he’d learned about Maggie and the way they were related. At first, he’d wished to meet her, but he had agreed with Lily it would be unwise. Not only would it not be fair to ask the little girl to keep the secret of his being there, but having Maggie meet a kinsman and then have him leave again so soon would only cause the child unnecessary heartbreak.

“She has lost so much already,” Lily said, thinking in silence that Maggie’s deep grief over Matthew was daily the one thing that helped Lily manage her own, for it bound her to someone who not only mirrored her sadness, but desperately needed her not to give in to it. Needed her to remain strong.

Jamie watched Maggie through the spring, into the summer, unnoticed but with growing pride. “She’s a Graeme,” he told Lily one morning early in June. “Ye can tell that she’s a Graeme. Did ye see the way she runs?” And while he’d started off calling her “my cousin’s lass,” he’d since claimed her as “my own wee cousin Maggie.”

He called her that now, underneath the clear sky of a late June morning, with the waves carried in on a quickening wind, curling white at their edges as they came to rest on the sun-warmed sand.

“Ye’ll see that my wee cousin Maggie learns all the tales of Inchbrakie?” he asked Lily. “Tell her the tale of Montrose and the yew. And of Grandfather. And ye and me,” he said, “when we were young. I ken her daddie would do the same, if he were here and were able to. She has a right to ken where she belongs.”