Until he was returned to them, they were not safe. Yet knowing that his sword, at least, was with them still, helped make her feel a little better.
My sword stays here, he had said.
It stayed there all that week, and on the Tuesday evening came another knock—this time from men of the town guard—and Jean said, “Come now, let’s go see your daddie, he’s at Captain Graeme’s house.”
Lily’s heart had leapt with hope and happiness. Her feet had all but danced across the cobbles as they’d walked, for surely this meant things were better now, and all their troubles ended. She could not fathom why the faces of the men around them were so grim, nor why Jean was so quiet, unless it was because they had to walk the town’s streets in the nighttime and, as she’d been told so often, streets were not so safe by night.
But she’d have walked through any dangers, then, to see her father.
He’d grown paler, and his face was tightly lined, but his embrace was warm and sure. He gathered Lily in his arms, his head tucked hard against her shoulder, as though somehow the few candles in the drawing room were too bright for his eyes, and he would shield them from the light.
She snuggled close against his chest, and when he told her how he’d missed her and he asked her how she’d been, she answered back with stories of her kitten, and she felt her father’s smile.
“He sounds a right wee sodjer,” he said, giving her small kitten the great compliment of calling him a soldier like himself.
“He’s growing bigger every day. Ye’ll see when ye come home.”
His arms were briefly tighter. “I’m not coming home the now, my Lily. I’ve been called away.”
They were sending him to fight the rebels, Lily thought. She shook her head against his chest. “Ye said ye were no more that kind of soldier, that they would not make ye go.”
His breath fell warm against her neck. “A soldier does not always get to choose, lass.”
“It’s not fair.”
“No.” Pushing back the curls that tumbled hot against her forehead, he half raised his head to look at her with eyes that held a brightness she had never seen before. “It is not fair, it’s not. But I would have ye smile for me, and wish me a good journey, all the same. Cannot ye do that for me?”
Lily tried. Her smile was trembly, but she tried. She only glimpsed the smile her father gave in answer, for he’d leaned in once again to kiss her forehead.
“That,” he said, “will keep your dreams sweet while I’m gone.”
Then it was Bessie’s turn, and Lily sat with Robin Moray looking through the pictures in the atlas of the world that Captain Graeme kept among his books, while in the other corner of the room her father said farewell to Bessie and to baby James and, finally, to Jean.
“Where would ye sail, if ye were able to sail anywhere?” asked Robin.
“Norway,” Lily answered, certain.
Robin raised his eyebrows. “Why is that?”
“Because that’s where Montrose went when his enemies were after him, so it must be the safest country.”
Robin said, “That is fair logic, Lily. You should join me in a study of the law. Norway it is, then.” And he turned the page to show her, in the atlas, where the map of that strange country lay, its long and jagged coastline with its ready, waiting harbors.
Jean was at her shoulder, then. “It’s time to go.”
Her father gave a final hug to little Bessie, who wrapped both her arms around his neck and told him, “Don’t cry, Daddie.”
He squeezed his eyes tight shut as though they pained him, and he blinked them, hard, but they were nearly dry when he hugged Lily. “Be a good girl, mind your prayers, and ye will see me, by and by.”
“I will,” she promised, wishing he were anything at all except a soldier. “I’ll pray every day, for then ye’ll come home safe, and will not die.”
His eyes filled brightly once more with the sheen of unshed tears, the line of his mouth turning downward slightly as he sought to hold it steady.
She clung to his hand. “Daddie.”
“Go, now.”
“But, Daddie…”
He looked at Jean. “Please, take them.”
Gently, Jean took Lily’s hand and loosed it from her father’s, and said, “Come, we have to leave him now.”
The walk home was the longest one that Lily could remember. It was also the first time she did not fear the dark.
For nothing waiting in the darkness could hurt her more deeply than the pain of letting go her father’s hand.