Lucy frowned. “Why should they wish to get rid of you?”
Ciaran tossed a pebble toward the water with a sigh. “Because they’re tired of watching me laze about in Buckinghamshire, drinking up all their port and being useless.”
“Well, that’s easily remedied.” Lucy sat up and dusted the sand briskly from her hands. “Don’t be useless.”
* * * *
The following day
Five forty in the morning
“Are you going to scold me again this morning, Lucy?” Ciaran asked, easing himself flat onto his back beside her in the sand.
Lucy studied him for a moment, then lowered herself onto her own back, imitating his posture, even as she knew she’d spend the rest of the day trying to shake the grains of sand from her hair. “Do you deserve to be scolded?”
He stared up at the sky for a while without answering, his arms folded behind his head, then muttered, “Aye.”
Lucy shifted her gaze from his profile to the water. They were both quiet as they watched the first rays of sun peek over the horizon. Lucy closed her eyes against the light, but it continued to press insistently against her eyelids. She didn’t have much time left this morning. “I won’t scold, but I do have a question for you.”
He rolled his head toward her. “What?”
“You told me you’d been in love before. What did it feel like?” Lucy drew in a breath. “That is, how did you know you were in love?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, but his tone was wistful. “I just knew. She was the first lass I ever kissed. I was only nine years old at the time, but I remember thinking I’d marry her someday.”
“Why didn’t you?” Lucy asked softly.
His mood shifted, went darker.
“It was more thatshedidn’t marryme.” He let out a weary sigh. “It’s a long story, lass. There were some difficulties with my family, and we were forced to leave Scotland in a hurry. I haven’t been back since.”
Difficulties…
He didn’t say what sort of difficulties, but he’d stiffened beside her.
A lady he’d known since he was a child, a lady he’d grown up with, fallen in love with—a lady who’d perhaps broken a promise to love him in return. Was she the reason Ciaran’s smiles never lingered for long and rarely reached his eyes? If he was cynical about friendship and love, perhaps it was because he had reason to be.
Lucy hesitated. It didn’t sound as if he wanted to talk about this, but there was one more thing she wanted to know. “Do you ever think about going back to Scotland?”
He didn’t look at her. Instead he grabbed a fistful of sand and watched as it drifted through his open fingers. “Aye.”
Lucy wanted to ask why he didn’t, but she held her tongue. Something in his voice when he uttered that one word warned her not to prod any further.
Chapter Seven
One week later
Four twenty-five in the morning
The next week flew by in a blur of sand, ocean breezes, and plump, stubborn lips quirked in a smile. Ciaran spent every morning on the beach with Lucy, his back flat against the sand, spouting whatever nonsense came into his head.
It was as if he’d known her forever. As if they’d been friends all his life.
She never indulged or coddled him. Instead she scolded and challenged him, needled and poked and prodded until he couldn’t decide whether to tease her, shout at her, or dissolve into laughter. It felt good, all those impulses and emotions fluttering to the surface again, like blood surging under his skin.
The only time in his day he didn’t feel either deadened or restless—the only time he felt he was exactly where he was supposed to be—were the moments when he was with her. During those dark, quiet mornings on the beach with Lucy, he found himself again. Not the man he’d become since he’d arrived in England, but the man he’d been before. The Scotsman who’d spent his childhood running free on the moors. The man who’d fallen in love with a dark-haired Scottish lass, and dreamed he’d marry her one day.
He’d thought that man was gone forever, a ghost wandering the Great North Road, lost somewhere between Scotland and England. He’d grieved for that man—thought him long since dead and buried, along with all those childhood dreams he’d once cherished. But they weren’t dead. The spark had been there the whole time, just buried under layers of scar tissue.
