The reflected image of the city was extraordinary.
“Look,” Lucy said to him quietly, pointing to the movement you could see as pedestrians walked the streets in the wide panoramic view. “It’s remarkable.”
“Like an enormous magnifying glass.” He bent closer, his body as near as they’d been that day on the archery field.
Lucy tipped her head so she could watch him, and warmth spilled through her veins. She recognized his expression. It was the same way he sometimes looked at her, as if observing something he truly thought magnificent.
When a guide ushered them along, Lucy realized she’d enjoyed watching James’s reaction to the camera as much as the phenomenon of the camera itself.
“What next?” he asked when they’d made their way out of the exhibition and onto the street.
“Your meeting, yes?”
“Not yet.” He glanced at his pocket watch, then shoved it back into his waistcoat pocket. “Give me another place on your list.”
Lucy wasn’t ready for their time together to end either. “We’re close to Calton Hill.”
“Then that’s next.” He lifted his arm again, and they fell in step together.
Lucy led them up the Royal Mile, and though they’d traveled to Edinburgh from one of the most bustling cities in the world, they both gaped at the buildings, shops, and old churches as the visitors they were.
“If only I had time to stop and sketch.”
“I wish you did. Perhaps you can come back.”
Come back.She understood that he meant without him. How could he make plans when his priority was to sell Invermere and return to his business, to London?
She had the fleeting impulse to ask if they might meet again when all of this was done. But he’d offered nothing beyond today, and she was determined to relish the next few hours.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get back in time.” He mistook her lack of reply as worry about Aunt Cassandra.
“I know. Just woolgathering.”
The grade changed as they climbed toward the top of the hill, and Lucy gasped at the city laid out below them in a gorgeous tableau of sandstonebuildings dotted with church spires. Lucy took a few steps to get a better view, and bumped into James, who stood staring at the lovely Stewart Monument.
He wrapped an arm around her to keep her from slipping. “We seem to have a habit of bumping into each other.”
Lucy pressed a hand to his chest, burrowing it under the lapels of his coat to lay her palm over the spot where his heart beat strong and steady.
Looking around, she found they were mostly alone in this spot on the hill.
“Kiss me?”
His fingers traced the seam at the back of her gown, sending shivers down her spine.
“That’s an excellent question,” he said with a husky teasing tone.
Lucy slid two fingers between the buttons of his shirt and a pulse of need swept down her body when she stroked his bare skin beneath.
“And your answer?”
Chapter Fourteen
He couldn’t answer in words, couldn’t wait to taste her again.
Go slow, he told himself, but he was beyond that now.
She was too. Her hands curled around the lapels of his coat, and she pulled him closer as he bent to take her lips. It felt as if he’d held her like this a thousand times before. That’s how right it was to hold this woman in his arms.
