Nathaniel caught his father's eye. Robbie was determined to pay Pink George back for the shooting of his dog. If all went well he would never have the chance, but there was no good reason to point that out.

"Aye," said Moncrieff, filling the tin cup again. "Giselle is to be married."

There was a moment of surprised silence.

Hawkeye grunted, his gaze fixed on the food before him. "He'll have a struggle on his hands, whoever he is."

"Perhaps," said Moncrieff. "But Horace Pickering is no man's fool."

Robbie sputtered a mist of ale. "The fish-faced seadog is tae marry Giselle?"

Moncrieff inclined his head. "She might ha' done far worse. Now she'll be free o' her faither, and awa' fra' here. I think it will serve her weel."

"Aye," said Hawkeye lightly. "A husband gone to sea nine months out of twelve may suit her just fine." He stared for a moment at Nathaniel, and then grinned as if he knew full well what his son must be feeling: surprise, some curiosity he would not indulge with questions, and relief. He need think on Giselle Somerville no more.

"Perhaps he'll take her home," Moncrieff said thoughtfully. "He has a house outside o' Edinburgh. Have I told ye about the countryside around Edinburgh?"

The others snorted. Angus Moncrieff had asked the Bonners for a single hour to present his case for Scotland and Carryck and had had their attention, day and night, for a good month. He had paid a high price for the opportunity--for a day at least, Nathaniel had wondered if the cold in his chest might kill him--but he made good use of it. And his easy way with a story was welcome in the long dark days of March when boredom and desperation vied for the upper hand.

Moncrieff's histories were told in a long, comfortable ramble. He spoke of kidnapped kings, land grants and treaties, treacheries and lost opportunities, brave men with weak allies, traitorous Norman nobles. There were complicated tales of English perfidy, clan rivalries and border wars, banking disasters, famines and clearings. Moncrieff gave them such a vivid picture of his homeland and its people that Nathaniel sometimes daydreamed of places he knew only by name and would never see: Stirling and Bannockburn, Falkirk, Holyrood.

Nathaniel had heard many of the same stories from his mother, but Moncrieff told them with the voice and vision of the men who had fought the battles. He was so skilled at spinning tales that it was some good time before Nathaniel noticed those subjects he avoided. He never told his own story in any detail, said almost nothing of his own family or his unshakable allegiance to the Carryck line; and in all his recounting of tangled politics and divided loyalties, he spoke of religion in only the most passing way. Stranger still, while they heard of every battle fought with England for independence since Robert the Bruce, Moncrieff never spoke of the most recent and disastrous, the Rising of '45, although he sang of it now and then. When the mood was on him, Moncrieff would throw back his head and sing in a profound, clear baritone so that even the guards playing dice in the courtyard quieted to listen.

The folks with plaids, the folks with plaids,

The folks with plaids of scarlet,

And folks with checkered plaids of green

Are going off with Charlie.

were I more'self sixteen years old,

were I as I would fain be,

were I more'self sixteen years old

I'd go more'self with Charlie.

Nathaniel thought Moncrieff might be unwilling to talk of the Rising out of sensitivity to Robbie, who had fought for the exiled Catholic king and escaped to the Colonies in a complicated set of circumstances. For his part, Robbie seemed content to let Moncrieff's stories lead where they would go without comment. More than once Nathaniel had wished for privacy in which he could ask some very pointed questions out of Moncrieff's hearing.

Most of all, Moncrieff talked about Carryck. Sometimes Nathaniel fell asleep at night listening to the stories, only to escape in his dreams in the opposite direction, to Elizabeth and Lake in the Clouds, to their children, and to the Kahnyen'kehâka, who were truer family to him than any earl in a stone castle could ever be. They had had no word of Otter and no way of knowing if he had made it home, but deep in his bones Nathaniel was certain that he had. He could almost see Runs-from-Bears on the path. He was on his way here, or he was dead.

Nathaniel knew Moncrieff was probably right, that he was a Scot through and through; but it made no difference. None of it--not the farms or fields or mines or titles--had any claim on his heart or mind. He would go home to Lake in the Clouds and never leave the mountain again. Nathaniel could see the same thought on his father's face now.

"You'll be off home to Scotland," Hawkeye said to Moncrieff. "Glad to see the last of Canada, I'll wager. You came a long way and stayed a long time to be goin' home empty-handed. I'm sorry for it, man, but I can't help you."

The narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. "It was worth the chance," he said. "I would ha' gone twice the distance to save Carryck. It will ne'er be the same again."

"Nothing ever is," said Hawkeye, but his tone was kind. He understood what it meant to lose homelands to an invading army that never seemed to lessen, or tire.

"I saw Carryck when I was no' but a lad," said Robbie, almost to himself. "I was on the road tae Glasgow. A summer nicht, and the midges were nippin' aye fierce, but the sicht o' the castle lit up wi' torches was a gey wonder tae behold. It seemed tae me tae be filled wi' a thousand fine folk."