Jean looked stricken. “No. I’d never…” She looked briefly to the wall, then back at Lily, and when she spoke next her voice had calmed. “The damp here made it rust, so Corporal Morison has taken it for safekeeping. He knows the way to care for it. Wee James may wish to have it one day, for it still does carry honor.” Coming close, she smoothed the flying strands of Lily’s hair that had escaped their pins and curled about her cheek. “I’ll never sell it, Lily. I am not so desperate as all that, not with ye giving me your wages. And the ladies with the red booth in the Landmarket are paying me to knit them stockings they can sell on market days. We will be well.”

But it was now September and the colder days were coming and soon Bessie would be needing shoes, and Lily had these past weeks tried to better learn the price of household things, from clothes to coal. Without her father here, she knew, their winter would be difficult.

The booted footsteps sounding at that instant on the turnpike stair were so like his it made her heart jump hopefully. She’d turned before she knew she’d made the movement. But of course, it wasn’t him, and never would be.

Corporal Morison no longer stood on ceremony. Giving a brief knock, he did not wait for a reply but swung the door wide and ducked through the doorway of their lodgings. He made the room seem warmer with his cheerful ways. Like them, he had been in the market that morning, and carried a large, brown fish half-wrapped in paper.

“I’m not bringing charity,” he said to Jean, when she sent him a look. “It’s a Loch Leven trout. Oh, and these.” From his pocket, he drew out a handful of perfect, ripe plums. “Ye’d best eat them afore they turn rotten.”

Even had Jean been inclined to argue with him, it would have had no effect because he had already turned to give his full attention to the children. Bessie clambered on him as he sat, and perched upon his knee as if she were a lady riding sidesaddle and he, obligingly, held up a hand to be her reins and jounced and jigged her while reciting the rhyme he’d made up for her:

“Queen Bess rode north tae Inverness

Upon her dapple grey.

Her guardsmen all went tae their mess

And fetched the mare her hay.

The mare she liked the hay the best

And tossed the queen away!”

Here Bessie giggled as the corporal tossed her high into the air as though the “horse” had thrown her off. It had become their favorite game, and Bessie often made him do it over and over, but today the corporal set her gently on the floor and turned to Lily. “It’s good to see ye, lass. They’ve let ye out the day, I see.”

Jean said, “But we must have her back by suppertime. I would she had more time to rest, she looks too tired.”