Then she saw what it was they were aiming at.

Robin had reached her. His hands quickly caught her and turned her and pressed her against his warm chest and he covered her ears and his head came down low and he said to her, over and over, “Don’t look now, don’t look, Lily.”

But she had seen.

And for all Robin’s efforts, the sound of the musket fire, when it came, struck just as surely through Lily’s own heart.

* * *

Time did not pause for them, nor wait. Just as the sea’s waves, having come to shore, were too soon overrun by even stronger waves that followed, so it was that not three days had passed since Lily’s father’s death when news came Argyll had been captured and would be brought in to Edinburgh a prisoner.

And two days after that his fellow traitor, Colonel Rumbold, was brought in as well, and carried to the castle.

Then it seemed to Lily that her father was forgotten by the world outside their own house, and that none but those who loved him best remembered he had lost his life, for all the town had turned its mind already to coming executions of these more important men.

Rumbold was brought to trial first, within a week of his arrival, and was executed that same day.

“He faced it well enough,” said Corporal Morison—the soldier who’d most often come to guard their door and help Jean with the heavy work around the house since Lily’s father had first been imprisoned. “I will allow,” he said of Rumbold, “that he spoke with passion, though his words were mostly nonsense. He thinks all of us are equal in our lives, that’s what he said—that he believes there is no man born marked of God above another.”

Corporal Morison smiled as though that thought amused him, and Jean smiled, too, and Lily recalled what her grandmother had said about Jamie’s family. She’d said: “There’s a difference between us and them. There are some bridges in this life, lass, that ye cannot cross.”

Lily wondered whether God had marked the Graemes differently, so they would be higher than the Aitchesons, and have a nicer house. A better life. A happy family.

Jamie came around each afternoon that week to call for her, but Lily made excuses why she could not see him. Finally Jean, when tucking Lily gently into bed at night, said, “It’s not like ye, to not wish to play with Jamie.”

Lily knew in her own heart that she was not behaving fairly to her friend, but neither was it fair, she thought, that he still had his father. She’d lost both her parents now.

She tried explaining this to Jean, who listened carefully, and bent and placed a kiss on Lily’s hair, and told her, quietly, “Ye still have me.” Jean’s hand found Lily’s smaller one, and held it. “Your brother and your sister and myself, we’re still your family, as we ever were. Ye’ll no more be alone.” Her hand squeezed Lily’s, reassuring. “But ye should never turn your friends away when they’ve done nothing wrong and ye have need of them. Especially a friend as faithful as your Jamie Graeme.”