Through the water-streaked window, a figure in a blue cloak hurried past, head bowed against the wind and driving rain.A woman of familiar height.He stared just because she reminded him of Lise, nothing more than a similarly colored cloak.And then a gust lifted her hood and knocked it back.
Before she could grab it and draw it over her head, he saw honey-brown hair and a familiar profile.
His heart stopped.
It couldn’t be.
Lise?
The ale had addled his wits.He hadn’t had that much, surely.Even if Lise were here, she wouldn’t be racing toward the dock.She would be arriving.
Don’t be a fuddle cap, he told himself.Half the women in England had brown hair and owned blue cloaks.
But then a second figure appeared, shorter and rounder, struggling to keep pace with the first.Familiar dark skirts and brown cloak.
Anna!
Jonathan’s chair clattered backward as he lunged to his feet, his tankard toppling and sending ale flooding across the table.He didn’t care.He was already running, shoving past a startled sailor, hitting the door with his shoulder hard enough to rattle it on its hinges.
The November wind hit him like a fist, icy drops stinging his face.He didn’t feel it.All he could see was that blue cloak, now nearly to the dock’s edge where a cluster of sailors huddled beneath a shelter, gauging the weather.
“Lise!”Her name tore from his throat.
The figure in blue didn’t stop, didn’t turn.The wind had probably stolen his voice.
Jonathan ran harder, his boots slipping on the slick cobblestones.He kept her in his sights at every moment, not even wanting to blink, just in case.If he was wrong, if this was a stranger, he would apologize and accept that he’d truly lost his mind.
But he knew.God help him, every fiber of his being knew.
He passed Anna without pausing and caught up to Lise in a dozen strides, reaching out to grasp her shoulder and spin her around.She gasped, stumbling backward, and Jonathan didn’t think, didn’t hesitate.He swept her into his arms and lifted her clear off her feet.
Both women screamed.
The sound was piercing enough to make him wince, but when he set her down, not releasing her, she looked up at him, her mouth opening with a gasp.Those beautiful blue eyes, the same as he’d been seeing in his dreams, widened.
“Jonathan!”Lise yelled his name.
Relief and joy and disbelief crashed through him in a wave so powerful his knees nearly buckled.She was here.She was real.She was in his arms.
“What?How?”He couldn’t form a coherent sentence.It didn’t matter.He kissed her, right there on the Harwich dock in front of Anna and the sailors and anyone who might be looking out a window.
She made a small sound against his mouth — surprise or surrender, he couldn’t tell — and then her arms were around his neck, and she kissed him back with equal force.
Her maid must have given them a minute, but then she spoke up.“My lord, Fräulein Lise, people are staring.”
Jonathan lifted his head barely an inch, keeping Lise cradled against his chest.“Let them stare,” he said roughly.Then, to Lise, he added, “You’re here.Even though I know you cannot possibly be in Harwich.”
“I was so afraid I had missed you,” she said, which explained nothing.
“Come with me.”Reluctant not to hold her, he threaded her arm through his and kept her close.He didn’t voice his unrealistic fear that she might vanish if he let go entirely.“Both of you,” he insisted, sweeping his glance over Anna.“Let’s go inside before you freeze.”
He guided them back to the King’s Arms, acutely aware of every curious appraisal following their progress.His heart was racing as questions clamored in his mind.How had she found him?Why was she here?Where was Henrik?
Yet all that truly mattered was that Lise felt solid and real and warm beside him.Definitely not one of the nightly phantoms who teased him and disappeared by morning.And she was on British soil.
The taproom had grown more crowded in the brief minutes he’d been gone.More travelers had arrived to discover their vessels were not sailing.Someone had taken his seat by the window.
“Stay here,” he told the women, then went in search of the owner of the whole establishment, a decent chap who’d rented him a clean room the night before and also kept him in pints and chowder that day.
