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I shake my head once.

“They lost nothing, while I lost everything.”

For a moment, neither of us speaks. Then his arm shifts behind me slowly enough to give me time to pull away if I wish. I don’t, and he draws me gently against his side.

The warmth of him wraps around me almost instantly—solid and steady and terribly comforting. Something inside me loosens at the feeling, some tight knot I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying all evening. By the time my head settles carefully against his shoulder, I’m almost ashamed of how badly I needed the contact.

His cheek brushes lightly against my hair before he stills again.

“So,” I say quietly, staring into the fire, “I came here as a guest. Or at least that’s what they called it at first. Robert’s father knew the Sinclairs well. Maeve Sinclair and my mother were dear friends. As close as two people could be. So, they had long-standing ties.”

My voice softens despite myself. “When there was no one left to decide for me, Maeve did.” A faint smile ghosts across my mouth. “I think they meant for it to be temporary at first, but…” I shrug lightly against him. “There’s no gettin’ rid of me now.”

A low hum rumbles softly in his chest beneath my cheek. “I, for one, am glad for that.”

The words are spoken simply, without flourish, and somehow that makes them land harder.

I hadn’t realised how tired I was of carrying all of this alone until now.

I settle more comfortably against him, the cotton of his shirt cool against my skin despite the unmistakable warmth beneath it. After a moment, his free hand drifts upward and begins tracing slow, absent circles against my back as though comforting me is the most natural thing in the world.

Neither of us says a word.

After a moment, he leans close enough to press a brief, careful kiss above my temple. It’s light. Almost tentative. I breathe out, slow and shaky, and his arm tightens around me, enough to say I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.

He rests his chin lightly against my hair.

“Was there ever any justification given?” he asks quietly. “Anything at all?”

“That’s the part that still turns my stomach,” I admit at last. “Not that it happened—that’s bad enough—but that it meant so little to the man who did it, and those that fought to protect him.”

I lift my head to look into his piercing blue eyes. “I never learned what words were worth burning a house for,” I whisper. “Or worth tearing apart my family.”

My gaze falls back to the fire, to the way it eats the wood down to nothing.

“But I’ll never forget the man who provoked it all and struck the first spark.”

The name tastes foul enough to spit.

“A vile, soulless bastard… Henry Charles Sirr.”

PART IV

ENTRY TWO

THE JOURNAL OF A YOUNG DREAMER

Keiss, Scotland, 1 August 1798

I write with the London Papers open upon the table.

This first of August has come round, and with it the old turning of the year, yet there is no heart in me for any mark of Lughnasadh. It feels wrong to speak of harvest, or any blessing, while they turn Ireland into a grave.

Every time a new paper comes in, I look first not with grief, but with dread. I search the names for my brother Thomas, and when I do not find it, I am relieved, and then ashamed to be relieved when another man has taken his place on the list.

Yet what else am I to feel?

The names come in, one after another, until a man scarcely knows how to read the paper without fearing what line may meet his eye next. They are set down so coldly there, as if a life were only an item entered into a ledger and struck through. I cannot bear that they should pass before me in that manner and leave no truer mark behind them.