But then one day she’d turned up and Jamie had looked at her strangely and asked, “Who was that wee lass with the fair hair ye were walking with, day afore yesterday, down by the pier?”
And she’d never told Jamie a lie. So that day he’d learned about Maggie and the way they were related. At first, he’d wished to meet her, but he had agreed with Lily it would be unwise. Not only would it not be fair to ask the little girl to keep the secret of his being there, but having Maggie meet a kinsman and then have him leave again so soon would only cause the child unnecessary heartbreak.
“She has lost so much already,” Lily said, thinking in silence that Maggie’s deep grief over Matthew was daily the one thing that helped Lily manage her own, for it bound her to someone who not only mirrored her sadness, but desperately needed her not to give in to it. Needed her to remain strong.
Jamie watched Maggie through the spring, into the summer, unnoticed but with growing pride. “She’s a Graeme,” he told Lily one morning early in June. “Ye can tell that she’s a Graeme. Did ye see the way she runs?” And while he’d started off calling her “my cousin’s lass,” he’d since claimed her as “my own wee cousin Maggie.”
He called her that now, underneath the clear sky of a late June morning, with the waves carried in on a quickening wind, curling white at their edges as they came to rest on the sun-warmed sand.
“Ye’ll see that my wee cousin Maggie learns all the tales of Inchbrakie?” he asked Lily. “Tell her the tale of Montrose and the yew. And of Grandfather. And ye and me,” he said, “when we were young. I ken her daddie would do the same, if he were here and were able to. She has a right to ken where she belongs.”
Lily promised.
“And ye have the money that I gave ye hidden in a safe place?”
“Aye. I’ll see that Maggie gets it.”
Jamie said, “It isn’t just for Maggie. It’s yours as well, if ye have need of it.” He looked at her with brief regret. “I wish it hadn’t happened to ye.”
“What?” she asked him.
“Any of it. I wish I’d been here to keep ye safe.” He stopped walking then, and glanced back at the masts and furled sails of the ships within the harbor.
Lily waited, knowing what was coming next.
“’Tis not a life I like to see ye living, Lily,” Jamie said. “Will not ye come away and marry me?”
She smiled. “Ye cannot always be my rescuer.”
“I can,” he said, as stubbornly as if he held a homemade sword of branches tied together, and it only made her love him more.
She told him so. “But not the way a woman loves a man she’s meant to marry. Nor do ye love me that way. Ye ken ye don’t, ye can’t deny it.”
“People build their lives with less,” was Jamie’s argument.
From habit, Lily touched the place above her heart where she still wore the little silver brooch pinned out of sight beneath her bodice, and she thought of Matthew, and tried not to, and replied, “I don’t want less.” And then to mask her sadness she tried lightening the mood by adding, “Anyway, your mother would be less than pleased to see ye married onto me.”
“My mother would be pleased to see me married onto anyone,” he promised her. “She fears I may follow the path of my brothers.”
“Then she does not ken ye well.”
“And who among us would have thought that Pat would end up as a monk?”
He had her there. His brother Pat, who’d yearned to be a soldier, had at last been given a commission in the army of King James, but having fought a duel and killed a friend, he could not bear the guilt of that one lapse of judgment, so he’d left the field of battle for the monastery and become a Capuchin, known now as Father Archangel.
“And Bobby seems to have a mind to do the same,” said Jamie. “He’s been in and out of monasteries since he went to France. There’s hope yet for William, he’s young yet, and clever, and good with his studies, but I can assure ye my mother would have all the bells rung if I were to marry.” He grinned. “I’ll wear ye down.”
“Ye’ll not. I will not spoil your future, Jamie. I’ll not do it. Ye deserve a proper wife, and bairns. I will be fine and well here, ye’ve no cause to worry.” Lily turned her gaze toward the waves and blinked against the sunlight. “Ye will write, when ye are settled in the colony?”
“Of course.” His arm came round her shoulder, strong and reassuring. “What was it that Jean called us? Faithful friends? And so we are. And so ye said we would be unto death, no matter where we bide.” He looked where she was looking, to the restless water of the firth, and told her, “Nothing’s changed.”