“Matthew,” Barbara said against his shoulder, and no more than that.
But Lily understood.
Sometimes life gave you back the things you’d lost.
*
Families were curious constructions. Like a child’s house of wooden blocks, you took one piece away and all fell down, or added one and all the others settled into a new shape, creating something different.
All the time that Lily had been living here, it had been Simon who’d been eldest of the boys, but Matthew being nearly a year older at eighteen had now resumed that place with ease, and it changed all their interactions.
Henry wept. It was the first time Lily saw him do that. Even Simon showed emotion, hugging Matthew hard and sitting close beside him that first morning as though unconvinced his brother would not vanish just as suddenly as he’d appeared. And Walter, who was rarely one to sit through conversations, sat with patience, uncomplaining.
Lily, watching how they laughed and talked together, found it fascinating. She had only ever seen the way the family functioned with that one block missing. Seeing it replaced now was a revelation.
She could not say whether Jean and Bessie felt the loss of her so keenly, having had her with them such a little while, but she knew she would always be a missing piece to them as well, and she was sorry for that knowledge. Two years earlier, when Lily had been fourteen and began her monthly bleeding, Barbara had sat down and talked to her of men and having bairns, and in that evening a great weight had been removed from Lily’s life. She’d learned that what had happened between her and Mr. Bell did not make her a whore, nor had it been her fault, and one day shortly afterward she’d summoned all her courage and walked up to Edinburgh to knock upon Jean’s door. But it was opened by a stranger.
No one in those lodgings knew where Corporal Morison had gone, not since the town guard was disbanded and the revolution had called fighting men to battle. They knew only that his family had gone with him.
Time moved onward, Lily knew, and there were few things from the past she could repair.
Which made her doubly glad to witness Matthew’s homecoming, and all the happy changes as the pieces of the Browne family fell back into their places. It appeared that only Archie had been pushed out of alignment.
Outwardly, he seemed as pleased as all of them to have his son returned, but when he looked at Matthew something showed beneath the surface Lily did not understand—a deep discomfort, and a wariness.
She did not wish to know what showed on her face when she looked at Matthew, for she knew she looked at him too often, and not only because she thought him more handsome than his brothers. With the other Browne lads, Lily almost could pretend they were her brothers, too, although they were not true relations. But with Matthew, she knew that would be impossible.
His smile did unfair things to her insides.
He was as tall as Simon, and as broad across the shoulders, and his hair was also brown, but Matthew’s hair curled slightly with a darkly golden undertone that gave it greater life.
Maggie seemed mesmerized by Matthew’s hair as well, and by the buttons of his waistcoat. For the past half hour the little girl had sat upon his knee and concentrated fiercely on the way those buttons fit into their holes, and he had gone on talking through this, unconcerned. And now, when Maggie showed an interest in the hat he’d set beside him, Matthew simply gave it to her, to her great delight, and earned a dry warning from Archie.
“Ye’ll regret that. She’s been chewing everything in sight.”
“It’s a hat,” said Matthew, in a quiet tone that held a challenge. “A thing, an object, easily replaced, that will not ever have the value of a child.”
Between them, Maggie took the hat in her two hands and pulled it down over her head so that she fairly disappeared in it, announcing, “Hat!”
It eased the tension. Matthew lifted up the brim as though to see that she was still inside. “Where did you get your bonny hair?” he asked, and then, to Barbara, “She’s your sister’s child, you said. Did not your sister have red hair like you?”
“She did. But Maggie’s father was a Graeme.”
“Was? Is he no longer living?”
“Aye, he lives,” said Barbara. “I will tell ye later how it is, when there are no small ears to overhear.”
The life of Maggie’s father, young Patrick Graeme of Inchbrakie, had grown complicated. Last year he had married onto a young lady of good birth, but shortly afterward he’d fought a man and killed him, and although the family of the man he’d killed had not brought charges yet, it was suspected that in time they would, being so firmly for King William when those of the house of Inchbrakie were Jacobites.