He had scooped a dish of walnuts for them from the table for the guests, and set to work now cracking them with a short pewter nutcracker that had sharp points to help scoop out the meat.

“It is not fair,” he said, with feeling. “I’ve no wish to go to school in Perth.”

“The Moray lads did go there. Robin says it is a good place.”

“Ye are not to take my mother’s side.” He handed her a walnut. “And my father does not care about the school. I heard them when they argued, Lily. He said he was sending us away because he could no longer do his work and worry for our safety, when the town had grown so dangerous.”

She ate her walnut, looking from their corner at the warm room filled with friendly faces mingling in the shared joy of the day, and she could see no danger, but she knew the captain was a clever man who rarely made a move without good reason.

Lily tried to find something to say that would cheer Jamie. “At Perth ye will be closer to your grandfather.”

“Aye.” He splintered a walnut. “But farther from you.”

There was no way around that particular truth, and it saddened her, too. “It will only be backwards, though, from how it used to be, when ye were here and I lived at Inchbrakie. We managed it then.”

“I suppose so.” He didn’t look cheered.

Lily tried again. “Jean says we’re faithful friends, Jamie, and so we are, and so we always will be till the end of our days, never matter wherever we bide.”

Jamie considered this. “It would be better still if we were older, and then I could marry ye.”

“Marry me? What for?”

He cracked her a walnut and shrugged. “Because then I could bring ye to Perth with me, and there’d be none who could stop us.”

“That isn’t why people get married.”

“It’s reason enough. Anyway,” Jamie teased her, “who else would ye have?”

Before she could answer him, a group of dancers swung close to their corner and one of the young men broke off from the others, and when a young woman called out to him, “Thomas, do come back, you’ll ruin the line!” he excused himself gallantly, leaving a space that was hastily filled by another dancer who’d been standing by the wall.

The young man named Thomas was not of the guards, but seemed to be a kinsman of Mr. Gordon the vintner, and had been several times now up and down the stairs helping supply the guests while also enjoying himself. He was perhaps twenty years old, with blue eyes and a dazzling smile that she had seen him use to good effect on several of the ladies, but now it was aimed straight at Jamie, and quizzically.

“What are ye doing with those?”

Jamie looked at him, equally puzzled. “With what?”

“My dividers.” He meant the pewter implement that Jamie had been using as a nutcracker, for which he now held out his hand, reclaiming it and giving it a curious inspection.