“It is, my lord.”

“And what is your impression of it?”

“I’ve not been able to see much of it, but what I have seen has been very beautiful.”

“‘Not able to see much of it’?”

“Why yes, my lord. I’ve been with my companion at the hotel for the whole time of my stay here, and we could not venture far afield without a man to guide us.”

“So you’ve been here all this time and not seen any of the greatest sights?”

She told him, “I have seen the king.”

He looked at her again as they stepped off the bridge, and stopping for a moment asked, “Are you in a great hurry to return to your hotel? Because if not, we might walk back the longer way along the river. You should at least see something of the place before you leave it.”

Mary said, “I’m in no hurry to return.”

He was an easy man to walk with. Mary wondered what her cousin Colette would have thought, to know that she had traveled all the way to Rome and was now strolling by the ancient River Tiber, with an earl.

He asked her, “Have they arranged your passage back to Paris?”

She would not have thought a man of his estate would take even a passing interest in her own affairs, but she supposed Hugh might have spoken of them, and being a gentleman the earl was merely asking now to be polite. “Not yet, my lord.” It must be soon, she knew. The king, for all his goodness, could not pay their keep indefinitely, and she and Effie surely were a burden to his finances.

“No word yet of your father?”

“No, my lord.”

She did not wish to talk about herself. An hour before this, Mary might have played her practiced part and tried amusing the Earl Marischal with lively conversation, but she no longer had the heart for it—not only because she half feared she might become like Thomson and change shape so often she no longer recognized her true self, but because she only really wanted to discuss one thing.

She asked, “Did Mr. MacPherson go with you, my lord, to the country?”

She felt him glance down at her, but if he thought it a bold or a curious question he did not remark on it, only replied, “Yes, he did.”

“And were you very long away?”

“A fortnight, more or less.”

Which made her feel a little less forlorn, explaining why she had not lately seen Hugh here in Rome.

The earl continued, “I do not believe he much enjoyed the country, to be honest, though as usual he did so well at shooting that the rest of us were forced to stand in awe of him. Except,” he said, “when it was wagered that he could not hit so small a target as a sparrow. You have seen him shoot?”

She had a vivid memory of it. “Yes.”

“So then you know how safe that wager was, particularly since the sparrow was at rest upon a hedge. I laid my money down as well,” he said, “and lost it all.”

“He missed the shot?” She was amazed.

“He did not take it. With the sparrow in his sights he changed his mind and set his gun down, and would not be moved to fire. A thing I’ve never seen him do.”

“Did he say why?”

“I asked him that, believe me, after I had paid his losses and my own. He said that when the sparrow chirped he reckoned it was telling him to save his shot, and so he did.”

“He said that? Those exact words?”

“Yes.”

She thought about the story she had told while they had waited near to Nîmes for Thomson’s fever to subside—the story of the crown prince who’d been exiled far from home and had become a huntsman in the forest full of thorns, and who had nearly killed his father and his sister in disguise until the princess had made use of her enchanted songbird form to sing and stir the memory in the prince’s heart of what he had once been. She’d told him: Save your shot, dear brother. Do not let your heart grow cold enough to kill without a cause.

The earl was walking closest to the river, and the sun was angled low behind him so she could not easily observe his features, but she knew that he could see her own. She bent her head. “Did it surprise you,” she asked, “seeing him compassionate?”

“What actually surprised me was the fact he spared the effort to explain. He does not bother, as a rule.”

Mary matched his dry amusement with a small smile of her own. “You’ve known him long.”

“I’ve been acquainted with him long. I’m not sure anyone can know MacPherson.” He looked at her. “He has not had a very pleasant or an easy life, you understand. Would you like me to tell you what I know of it?”

She nodded, and he told her, in the simple way that men were wont to tell things, without sentiment.

And broke her heart.

Chapter 41

He afterwards walked the hill. But many and silent were his steps round the dark dwelling…

—Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Two

Rome

May 15, 1732

Hugh came from the Highlands near Inverness, born the third son of a weaver. He was but a lad of fifteen in the year fifteen, when the rebellion began and he rose with the rest of his clansmen in favor of King James and marched with his father and brothers and cousins on Preston, just over the border with England.

They came into Preston in early November, proclaiming the king in the marketplace, and for a handful of days all was easy—until they had word that the government of the usurper was sending up troops from the south to attack them. The Jacobites dug themselves in and prepared for a battle. They got one. Hugh’s father fell in the first hours of the fight with the government troops, on a Sunday, while shooting down over the barricades from the upper window of an occupied house. Hugh, lying next to him, picked up his father’s dropped musket and carried on firing.