“Riddell’s Close.” She told him where. And then remembered Archie. “But don’t come to the house,” she said, “the people where I’m living wouldn’t like it. Meet me here, instead.”
“Here on the Shore?”
She nodded. “Over by the windmill.”
“Fine. Tomorrow morning, then,” he promised. “Say, at ten o’clock?” The easy smile of the boy that she remembered flashed behind the features of the man as he bent down to draw her close to him again. “I kent that ye could not be gone. I kent it here.” As Jamie straightened, he tapped his closed fist against his heart. “I’m glad that I was right.”
He still had the same swagger to his walk. The crowd closed in around him until even his fair hair was difficult to follow in the shifting sea of people on the Shore, and Lily stood and craned her neck to see where he had gone.
At last she saw someone she recognized, but it was not Jamie.
It was Matthew. And his gaze was fixed on hers.
When he came across to join her, she could tell that he was jealous. Matthew was not one to hide his feelings, not with her. He nodded at the handkerchief she still held in her hand. “Who was he?”
“That was Jamie. He’s an old friend.”
Matthew scoffed. “A friend.”
“Aye. We’ve not seen each other since afore I came here.”
She could tell from his expression there’d be little point in trying to share details of her history with the Graeme family. Matthew, in this mood, would not be listening, and she was working still to process her emotions after her reunion with her childhood friend. She’d bring Matthew with her when she met with Jamie here tomorrow, at the windmill, and she’d introduce them then, and Matthew would be able to see for himself that Jamie was no rival.
Thinking to reassure him on that point, she said, “He’s going to sail to the colony.”
“Is he?”
Lily said, “And thanks to your Captain Gordon, I fear we may now have to hold Maggie back so she’ll not volunteer for the voyage.”
“Why’s that?”
Taking Matthew’s cold hand in her own, Lily explained how the captain had shown Maggie the two great ships of the African Company, and told the child about colonies. But Lily was thinking more of what Gordon had said about how Matthew was too young yet to confine himself to married life.
Because when Matthew looked over the firth toward Burntisland, where the two ships of the company lay at their anchors, Lily was watching his face, and she saw it—the play of emotions that swiftly ran over his features, from envy to deeper frustration to yearning, then died like a wave come to naught on the sand.
And though her mind tried to reason against it, she knew in her heart then the captain was right.
Breathing deeply to soothe the sharp pain in her chest, Lily said, “Matthew…I have been thinking.”
“Aye?”
“What if we waited? To marry, I mean. There’s no hurry, and I would not have ye regretting your choice.”
His head turned. “And do you regret yours?” He spoke sharply, his brown eyes demanding an answer. His jaw had set into the hard lines that meant he was holding in darker emotions.
“Of course not.”
“And I’m meant to believe that? So it’s just a coincidence, is it, that you meet this…friend…and suddenly, you think we ought to wait to marry? What do you think I’ve been doing all these years? And now it’s, maybe we should wait? Because you see a better prize on the horizon?”
Even as Lily recoiled from the anger in Matthew’s voice, she heard the pain at the back of his words and knew where it was rising from—that hollow well of doubt he carried deep within him that, in spite of Barbara’s reassurance to the contrary, he was a foundling for a reason. That he somehow failed to measure up to expectations, and would always be inadequate.
She doubted there was any cure for such a wound, unless it might be constancy, or love, and love was always worth an effort. She’d misjudged how deeply he was feeling what he thought was her betrayal, and he was misunderstanding everything that she was trying to say. As devastating as it was how quickly things had come undone, she knew their love was strong enough to put it back together in the morning, when his temper calmed.
“I ought to be enough for you,” he said. His voice was low, and there was fierceness in the way he said the words, yet there was also vulnerability.
Though Lily’s view was misting over rapidly with unshed tears, she tried to keep her own defenses fully down so he would see the truth that lay within her heart.