“But,” said Jamie, thinking still, “how did ye ken that we were up the tree at all?”

“Montrose escaped the dungeon,” said the laird with the solemnity of one who’d been admitted to the play of children and knew to respect it, “and discovered ye had not returned, so sent word where ye might be found.”

“We won the game, then,” Jamie said.

“Ye did, at that.” The laird’s voice held a smile. “Although ye might have come down earlier, I’m thinking.”

Jamie glanced at Lily in the growing darkness, and said nothing.

But she would not have him get into any trouble for her sake, so she admitted, “I was feart of climbing down the tree. I could not do it. That’s why we stayed up so long.”

The old laird gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I served with men who did not have the bravery to admit their fear,” he told her. “There’s no shame in it. But surely Jamie could have climbed down on his own and come for help.”

“I was feart,” she said again, head dipping low. “I asked him not to leave me, because I was feart of being up there all alone, and so he stayed.”

The laird was silent for a moment. Then he coughed, and said, “Well, that’s a true friend, that’s what that is. Ye are fortunate, the pair of ye. I’ve had a friend like that myself in life but once, and that same tree did shelter him when he sorely had need of it, and sure I am his arms were there around ye both this evening while we searched for ye.”

Montrose, thought Lily. He was speaking of Montrose, who’d been his greatest friend, the way that Jamie was her own. She held more tightly to the old laird’s hand, liking the feel of kinship.

Lily could remember very little else about that evening, only that she had received no punishment. But when she had been tucked into her bed beside her grandmother that night in their small cottage, and been half-asleep, her grandmother had stirred and told her, “Lily, there’s a difference between us and them. The Graemes and ourselves. Ye’ll mind this better when you’re older, but there are some bridges in this life, lass, that ye cannot cross.”

Lily said, “Aye,” or something like it, since her grandmother was happiest when Lily made a noise like she was listening. But truly, she was tired, and had no real idea what—

“I only say this,” said her grandmother, “because things will be different for ye when ye are in Edinburgh. Here there is so little true society, that ye and Jamie Graeme and the Moray children can play all ye like and on the level, so to speak, but when you’re living down in Edinburgh, it will not be that way anymore, and ye should be prepared.”

Lily’s sleepiness had vanished. She lay wide-eyed and awake. “Has my daddie sent for me?”

“Aye. He has met a woman that he means to make his wife, and he has written I’m to send you after Lammas Day.”