“Aye,” Boyd said. “I met my second cousin outside the public house and he told me he had a letter for ye.”
“Miss Lovelock.” Alasdair bowed, but did not let his eyes waver from hers.
What a fool she had been.
Even if Alasdair did not want her, could not want her after her ruination, she would never marry another.
Never.
She was seventeen again and he was standing in front of her, unchanged. She was lost. So much so that Boyd had to clear his throat. Loudly. Twice. She came to herself then and looked at Boyd. “Please come in.”
She pulled the door more fully open and stood by it and Boyd entered. Then Alasdair followed and as he passed within inches of her, she reached up and put her hand on his chest.
Her palm flat and pressing on his woolen greatcoat. He was here. He was real. She inhaled.
He smelled of cold air and of soap and of leather.
He halted, stopping just inside the door with her hand on his chest.
She had no control now and moved her hand to the lapel of the coat and grabbed it. She would not let him leave. He would not vanish. She would not let go of his coat. She would keep him here.
She looked up into his worried green eyes, and then a lock of hair fell down in front of his left eye. The same dark-red lock she had found so bewitching almost four years ago. She longed to move it out of the way, but she did not dare take her hand from his coat.
Boyd’s voice went on, apparently not noticing that the two of them were halted at the door. “It has been some twenty years and then I saw him in the street and he was asking about ye. Quite providential, I thought. For him to ask after my betrothed—”
She spoke then. Quickly. Sharply. There was no time to spare anyone’s feelings.
“I am not his betrothed.” She was looking at Alasdair’s right eye, the unobscured one. It was important he understood. Immediately and without constraint. “Mr. Cormack has asked me, Dr. Andrews. I have not answered.”
There was silence except for the whistle of the wind and the peat burning in the hearth.
She was looking at Alasdair and he was looking back at her. His right eye did not look worried anymore. The cold air blew in the open door, but she felt nothing but a current of heat between them. She kept his lapel in her grasp. Still, she imagined that he could not leave if she did so.
“I expect,” Boyd’s bitter voice filtered into her consciousness, “I expect I ken what yer answer be.”
And he walked between the two of them, breaking her grip on Alasdair’s coat and out the door, closing it behind him.
“I have a letter for ye,” Alasdair said and pulled it from his coat pocket and handed it to Arabella, even as he used his other hand to push back the hair in front of his left eye. He was surprised that his voice was so steady and even.
She took it from him.
There was a silence and then they both spoke at once.
“I did not expect—”
“Forgive my intrusion—”
And then they both broke off.
“Ye are taller, I think,” Alasdair said. “From when I saw ye last.”
She smiled. “But still too short. I was seventeen, then. I am almost one and twenty, now.”
“Aye. Nae. I mean. Ye are not too short. Yer height then, as now, suits ye. Perfectly.”
She turned pink. A lovely shade of pink. And looked down.
“I’m sorry to disturb ye. I should leave ye now,” Alasdair said, with a great deal of difficulty. “To let ye read yer letter.”
