“For Mr. Steckles as well?”
“I believe so. He says he appreciates the quiet out there. Along with farming, he does woodcarving. The heath inspires him, I imagine.”
Melissa started, just realizing that they’d ridden on and were fast approaching Hyde Park Corner.
“Oh, dear.” She threw a glance at Lucian. “We’re almost out of the park.”
“So we are.” He didn’t seem bothered by the end of their ride.
His brow creased. But then she blinked, and wasn’t sure. He glanced about and that didn’t surprise her. The earlier hectic of Hyde Park Corner was worse now, the crowd so thick she wondered how riders or carriages could push through the congestion. Noise had also swelled, the shouts of coachmen, hawkers, and an increasing number of ordinary city folk, tradesmen, and mounted gentlemen, all blended into a cacophony that hurt her ears.
She could only imagine what such a racket did to a Highlander.
A man who, by his own admission, made his home in place graced only by such ‘noise’ as the pounding of waves on rugged cliffs, the rushing of wind across empty moorland, and – she was sure – the patter or lash of rain.
Perhaps as well, the bah’ing of sheep and the soft crackle of a peat fire.
Heaven, to her mind.
Risking a longer glance at him, she supposed he, too, must be comparing his beloved Scotland to England’s greatest city and likely thought Londoners were mad to embrace such chaos, and to plunge themselves into it daily.
She felt crazed herself, but for different reasons.
An unpleasant hollowness was spreading through her. At the same time, she was also aware of a weight on her heart. She knew why…
She didn’t want them to part.
Somewhere deep inside, she suspected in her naked, unvarnished soul, she wanted them to swing their horses about and tear off back down Rotten Row. To gallop on and on, leaving the path to thunder past the clearing where they’d picnicked and then ever onward until they burst from the trees and found themselves magically transported to the ‘pristine remoteness’ of the Black Lyon’s distant Highlands.
It was a perfect plan.
But there was a fault…
She knew exactly what waited for them on the far side of Hyde Park, and it wasn’t Scotland.
The truth was she could go there now, scour the teeming masses, and she wouldn’t find one man willing to stride into a London townhouse dinner, ball, or what-have-you, while wearing a kilt and all the other attendant Scottish regalia that make a well-dressed Highlander such a grand sight to behold.
And if she made such a suggestion, she knew she’d be met with scorn.
Like as not, laughter as well.
She didn’t care.
She only-
“Ho, lass, have a care…” Lucian tugged on her reins, jerking her horse away from the cabbage cart she’d almost ridden into. “We’re almost out of the worst of this mess.”
“Thank you,” she blurted, amazed she hadn’t seen the cabbage farmer.
Then again…
She waved a hand in the air. “Carts, riders, carriages, goats-” She broke off as a young boy herded five goats in front of them. “Everyone seems to be out this morning.”
Her Highlander only smiled and kept his grip on her reins, guiding them expertly out of the traffic.
“I’ll accompany you as far as the corner of the Merrivales’ townhouse,” he said, slowing their horses to a pace closer to a crawl than a walk. “You’ll have to continue on by foot.” He glanced at her. “Will you manage?”
“Of course.” She smiled as brightly as she could. “Crowded as the streets are, everyone is too busy with their own business to concern themselves with me. Though…”
