Prequel to: The winter sea.

Includes reading group guide (pages 465-467).

"In the autumn of 1707, old enemies from the Highlands to the Borders are finding common ground as they join to protest the new Union with England, the French are preparing to launch an invasion to carry the young exiled Jacobite king back to Scotland to reclaim his throne, and in Edinburgh the streets are filled with discontent and danger. Queen Anne's commissioners have begun settling the losses and wages owed to those Scots who took part in the disastrous Darien expedition eight years earlier. When young widow Lily Aitcheson comes forward to collect her husband's wages, her claim is challenged. Adam Williamson, one of the men who's assigned to investigate Lily's case, has only days to decide if she's honest...or whether he's being used as a pawn in a treacherous game. Told in two timelines that interweave the troubled weeks in Edinburgh in 1707 with the tales of a woman who lived through the Killing Times, a revolution, and Scotland's loss of a colony in the Americas, this is a story of intrigue, adventure, endurance, romance...and the courage to hope"--