She offered, “Norway?”
“Norway? Why that? What’s in Norway?”
“Montrose sailed there once, to freedom and to safety.”
“Then he should have stayed there.”
“Aye.”
Someone was coming. She could hear the fall of steps across the grass, and something else—a lighter sound of dragging. Closer and closer the steps came, until the low branches beneath them swayed and there was somebody standing below, and a deep voice familiar to both of them said, “Now, let’s see what new birds I have nesting in my tree.”
The old laird himself. Jamie leaned over and called to him.
The Laird of Inchbrakie replied, “A strange wee bird indeed, that calls me by my name.”
“I’m not a bird,” said Jamie.
“Are ye not? Well then, ye should come down and eat your supper, I suppose.”
He’d brought the ladder, and he set it into place now. Though it did not reach the whole way to the branch that they were on, the sight of those sure sturdy rungs was all it took to steady Lily’s fears and give her confidence enough to ease her way along the branches, finding her way down.
“There, that’s the way of it.” The laird reached up to help her. For a man of his age, he was strong. He lifted her the final distance to the ground and held her there to steady her until her legs stopped trembling.
She had always liked the laird.
He’d had an accident when he was a young man, they said, with gunpowder, and it had nearly killed him and had left a mark upon his scalp. And he’d been a soldier and killed countless men with his own hands. But Lily did not find his face so fearful, and his hands to her had always acted gently, and he had kind eyes.
Those eyes were watching hers now, in the swiftly fading light. “All better, now? Good. Leave that ladder, Jamie,” he advised his grandson, who by now had joined them on the ground. “The gardener will fetch it in the morning.”
Jamie did as he was told. “How did ye ken we’d need the ladder?”
“I did not. But I was certain I would need it. It’s been many years since I last climbed a tree.”
The night was drawing in more quickly, and with one child’s hand in each of his, the old laird turned and started back across the grass toward the castle, where the light now glowed within the ground floor windows.
“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.”