“I can show you later,” she said, holding the pose, her nose nearly brushing his.
“I would like that,” he whispered.
“Hush, you two,” John said. “Be still.”
She closed her eyes. A secret craving built steadily within her, and she wondered if he felt it too. His hands, where they touched her, grew warm through her thin clothing.
“Wonderful pose, very loving,” John commented, half to himself. “Good.”
Aedan sighed so softly that only she knew. Eyes still closed, not moving, she knew she was deeply, rapturously in love, a tumble likely to go nowhere in the end.
“What was Sir Hugh’s verse about love at first sight, when they first meet?” John mused as he sketched. “Something like—
‘A glance, a murmur, a touch of hands.
Souls entwined, and the need began:
Storm-fierce, falcon-swift, deep as time.’”
“I think so,” Aedan said. “Christina?”
She nodded mutely. Love at first sight—that had glimmered for her when she had first met Aedan in Dundrennan’s foyer, though she did not recognize it. Later, when he had discoveredher on the hidden stairs, she had looked into his eyes and felt the glimmer blow into full light. Something stirred deep between them, and yet she did not know it for what it was.
Now she realized she felt the inexorable, dynamic pull of two souls seeking, drawn together, compelled. She had loved Aedan MacBride from the instant she had seen him, and she tumbled deeper with every encounter.
She thought, or hoped, he felt it too. But he refused to acknowledge it. Given his reasons, she should do the same. But she could not do that now. She sighed, sad and low.
“Tired?” Aedan murmured.
“Not tired,” she whispered. “Something else.”
“Hush. That’s perfect,” John murmured.
Stillness and silence spun out, filled with the scritch-scratch of chalk on paper, the warmth of hands, the mingling of breaths.
*
“Damn it,” Aedanswore low, sifting through the maps and documents scattered on the library table. He looked at his assistant engineer. “There has to be another solution, Rob. Let me see the Ordinance Survey for that part of the moor.”
Rob Campbell, hair gleaming gold in the sunlight pouring through a nearby window, slid the map across the table, folded to highlight the sector in question. “We’ve both been over these maps countless times,” he said. “We can either take the road over and across Cairn Drishan, or take it around the base of the hill—”
“And straight through Effie MacDonald’s kailyard, and other croft yards,” Aedan finished. “I do not want to do that.” He peered at the specific corner on the survey map. “Effie would agree, and the others might too, out of obligation. I have sworn not to oust our tenants—or in this case, impinge upon theirkailyards and kitchen gardens to send coaches tearing past their houses. If the very queen demanded it, I would have to refuse.”
“The better option is through Effie’s property. Going around the other side of Cairn Drishan would take us through a good deal of rock.”
“And require considerable blasting, I know.”
“But the museum has banned using black powder for now,” Rob added.
“I am aware.” Aedan glanced toward a far corner of the library, where Christina Blackburn sat curled in a leather chair, reading in the daylight through a window, her back turned to them.
He sighed and picked up another map to compare it to the first. Taking up a pencil, he sketched the profile of the hill to draw yet another angle of Cairn Drishan. “What if we make cuts here and here,” he said, adding arrows, “blasting in small amounts for a minimum of rubble and debris? The route would be longer and steeper than the one we originally designed, though it might have to do.”
“We could vary the gradient with slight adjustments as we go up the hillside and down again,” Rob said. “The larger blasts would be on the other side of hill, a good distance from the site of the old stone wall.”
Aedan nodded. “If we start immediately, we could finish the route in time for the queen to make her jaunt from Glasgow to Balmoral, with a stop here.”
“It’s possible.” As Rob studied the drawings and gathered up the papers, Aedan took a moment to watch Christina. He wondered if she had heard what they had said, and if she would plot on behalf of the museum—and those muddy old stones—to delay the work.
