“I’ll teach ye how. But not tonight.” Bending, he kissed her again on her forehead. “There, that’s to sweeten your dreams.” He kissed Bessie, too, although she was already asleep, nestled warm into Lily’s side.
Lily sank drowsily into the blankets and hugged Bessie closer. She liked the soft feel of her sister beside her—the comforting feel of her sister’s light breathing against her own neck. Bessie’s curls were not brown like her own, they were golden—so fine and so pale they gleamed white in the light of the candle her father set into its place in the wall niche before he extinguished it, and the house fell into darkness.
Jean was nursing the baby—wee James, scarcely two months old. Lily could hear the small baby sounds. Jean humming quietly, soothingly. Ropes on the bigger bed creaked as her father rolled over to settle himself.
Lily treasured this time of night. Treasured the feeling of being a part of a family.
There had been so many times she’d envied Jamie, and envied his cousins the Morays, because they’d had brothers around them, and sisters, to keep them from being alone. And now she had that also.
It would have been perfect if she’d had her grandmother here with her, too, but the house was not large. Maybe later this summer, when Argyll was captured and travel was safe, she could go north to visit. But not alone, Lily thought. Not alone.
Not anymore.
Something small landed lightly beside her leg, on the bed, making her startle before it curled carefully into the blankets. The kitten.
She dared not reach down for it, lest Jean see that it had jumped on the bed when it wasn’t supposed to, but silently she wished the kitten good night.
And she slept.
*
When she woke, it was dark. Baby James was in full-throated cry.
From out in the close came the discordant strains of a fiddle, played loudly.
“I’ll skelp him,” her father said.
Jean murmured, “Edward…”
He said, “There are laws against breaking the peace at this hour.”
Lily knew not the hour, but they were not the only ones having their sleep disturbed. She could hear some of their neighbors in Kinloch’s Close calling from windows now, bidding the violer, Watson, to stop playing.
Watson ignored them.
Jean tried to soothe baby James, who cried more lustily. And Lily’s father swore under his breath as he levered himself from the bed.
Jean said, once again, “Edward…”
But he had his breeks on already. His waistcoat. In darkness, he reached for the sword belt that hung on its peg at his bedside, and buckled the straps of it over his shoulder with fingers that, after so long, knew the motions and needed no light. “Jeannie, it is my duty,” he told her. “The town guard is here to keep order and peace, and there’s nothing that’s peaceful nor orderly happening out there the now.”
Lily heard the firm stride of his boots cross the floor, and the door opened in a swift rush of cool air and then closed with a hard, final slam.
There were voices. She struggled to hear them above all the shouts, and the sound of the fiddle that had not yet stopped, and the cries of the baby.
Her father was using the cold voice she hated to hear, though she did not know what he was saying. The strings of the fiddle played almost as though they were making a human reply. And her father called angrily back to it, moving wherever the violer led.
Although he couldn’t hear her, Jean begged, “Leave it now, Edward. Please, let it go.”
But the fiddle kept taunting him, leading him farther away, down the close to the High Street. The music and voices grew fainter, and then came a cry. And then silence.
A terrible silence.
Even baby James stopped wailing, and began to sniffle as though somehow he had sensed the change.
The shouts began as though at a great distance, and the sound of running feet, and of a sudden it seemed the whole town was in their close, with voices rising steadily. A woman keened, and cursed, and called to Jean to come outdoors, but Jean stayed sitting in the bed, the blankets clenched within her fists.
When Lily looked at her, Jean told her, low, “Lie down, now. Wait until your daddie comes.”
Lily waited.
And at length there came a pounding at their door. Jean hesitated, but she rose and went to answer it. The man who stood outside held up a lanthorn, so that she could see his face and know that he was not a stranger.
“Baillie Spense?” Jean greeted him in some confusion. She was trying to look past him, Lily thought, into the close, but he was standing in her way.