She’d heard the adults talk, these past two weeks. Somewhere in England was a nephew to the king who, while he had no right to sit upon the throne, was making plans to claim it, and the Earl of Argyll—son to that same Argyll who had driven all the games she’d played with Jamie and his cousins—had now landed in the west of Scotland, raising men for a rebellion. While the adults, when they talked, spoke of important-sounding things like freedom and the crown and bishops and the Covenant, one thing alone concerned her: “Will ye have to go away to fight them?”

“No.” Her father’s hand upon her forehead was a reassurance. “No, I’m not that kind of soldier anymore. I guard this town. My sword stays here.”

“And if the earl comes here?”

“He’ll have to get through Captain Graeme and myself afore he does ye any harm, and there’s no chance of that,” he promised. “Get to sleep, now.”

“Daddie?” she asked. “Why do some men not like Captain Graeme?”

“What men?”

When she told him what she’d seen the violer, their neighbor, do—the way he’d spat upon the ground—her father’s eyes flashed darkly with a swift show of his temper, but he held it in and only said, “Some men are fools.”

But that was not an answer, so she pressed him, and he told her that the town guard in its present form had only been created some three years ago, and that there were still people who resented it, and resented even more the tax collected from them for the wages paid to Captain Graeme’s soldiers. And, he said, some wished there were no town guard there at all to keep the peace.

“But those are lawless men, and ye need not concern yourself with what they think,” he told her.

“Cannot ye put the lawless men in prison?”

“Some we can, aye. But there always will be lawless men, the prisons cannot hold them all, so ye must learn to ken them when ye meet them, for it is not by their look alone.”

“How will I ken them, then?” she asked.

“I’ll teach ye how. But not tonight.” Bending, he kissed her again on her forehead. “There, that’s to sweeten your dreams.” He kissed Bessie, too, although she was already asleep, nestled warm into Lily’s side.

Lily sank drowsily into the blankets and hugged Bessie closer. She liked the soft feel of her sister beside her—the comforting feel of her sister’s light breathing against her own neck. Bessie’s curls were not brown like her own, they were golden—so fine and so pale they gleamed white in the light of the candle her father set into its place in the wall niche before he extinguished it, and the house fell into darkness.

Jean was nursing the baby—wee James, scarcely two months old. Lily could hear the small baby sounds. Jean humming quietly, soothingly. Ropes on the bigger bed creaked as her father rolled over to settle himself.