For it was clear to Lily that was what she had become to Jean, the corporal, and her sister and her brother. It was not that they no longer loved her—not so cold as that—but they had formed a family of their own without her, and because she did not share their house and daily lives she had been half forgotten.
Wee James scarcely knew her, he was not yet a year old, and Bessie seemed now so besotted with the corporal that she reached for his hand first and not for Lily’s as she used to do. And as for Jean, it suited her so well to be a wife again with all the comforts of a home and loving husband, Lily could not help but wish her happiness, but even so, to see the four of them together on the loch and laughing, making a new circle that was closed to her and private, caught sharply at her rib cage with a sudden twist of pain.
She bent to tie her skates onto her shoes, being careful of the long, upturned blades, and instantly Marion was there, helping, making sure they were well fastened at her heels and toes, and taking both her hands to guide her first uncertain steps onto the ice.
“No, you glide, like this.” Marion showed her, and Lily tried, feeling off balance and awkward and ready to fall.
After several excruciating minutes of this, Marion’s parents came skating past arm in arm in perfect rhythm, and circling round them came back and divided so Mrs. Bell at one end took hold of Marion’s free hand, and Mr. Bell took hold of Lily’s free hand at the other, and making a chain of four people across they went skating at speed, pulling Lily along with them, Mr. Bell’s hand holding strongly to hers so she was not afraid.
It felt like flying.
“See your cheeks!” Jean told her after midday, with a smile. “They’re glowing.”
They were standing near the shore again and Lily thought it possible she might indeed be glowing, for she felt free and alive inside, as one could only feel after long hours of play outside in the fresh, bracing air of winter.
Jean touched her hand to Lily’s cheek as though she would draw warmth from it, and glanced behind to where the corporal was already gathering the younger children from the sledge. They could not stay. The corporal had to go on duty soon.
When Jean withdrew her hand, the breeze struck cold. She looked at Lily closely. “Ye’re not sad?”
At Lily’s shoulder, Mr. Bell replied, “We’ll not allow her to be sad. Don’t worry, Mrs. Morison, we’ll see she has a birthday to remember.”
It was that already, Lily thought, and yet there was still more to come.
With skating done, they climbed the bank and walked the little distance to a large and ancient inn within the village, where they had their dinner—Mr. Bell and Mrs. Bell and Marion and Lily sitting all together as if they were of one family, and the landlord serving Lily as though she deserved that honor, when in truth it was her daily custom to be in his place, bringing full plates and clearing empty ones away.
The men who sat beside them at the table were a jovial group. The landlord seemed to know them well. Before he served their food he brought to show them, with great ceremony, an elaborate snuffbox set into a ram’s head trimmed with silver and with jeweled eyes, that a former king had gifted to a former landlord many years ago.
The men did drink a toast to it, and to that king’s health and their own, and this led them to talk of the days when King James had come to live a few years since at Holyrood, when he was still the Duke of York and Albany, sent north to manage government affairs.
“I’d never speak ill of our late king,” said one of the men, “but King James is more a Scotsman than his brother ever was. And he’s by far a better athlete. I did see him more than once myself at play at games of curling, right here on this loch.”
“He was more often at Leith Links,” another said, with a quick nod toward a window in the opposite direction to the loch. “He much preferred the golf.”
A third man countered, “He preferred Leith Links because it brought him closer by the sea. The king does like his ships.”
Lily could understand the way the king felt. Ships were always on their way to somewhere interesting. Besides, the king had served for years as Lord High Admiral of the navy, so it would be natural for him to favor waves and sails and sky and open shorelines over lochs that, although lovely, held him inland and confined.
With dinner done, there was one more surprise awaiting her when Mr. Bell announced, “It will be dark soon. Shall we take a room, and stay the night?”
Lily had only once before stayed at an inn, when she was coming from Inchbrakie, and she’d been too tired then to have much memory of it, but she knew it had not been like this. The beds had not been soft with feathers, nor the bedsteads finely paneled. There had been no windows overlooking the inn’s courtyard where the clopping horses came and went between the side lane and the stables.