“I’ll tell ye all about it,” Jamie promised. “Later. Are ye living here in Leith? Where can I find ye?”

“Riddell’s Close.” She told him where. And then remembered Archie. “But don’t come to the house,” she said, “the people where I’m living wouldn’t like it. Meet me here, instead.”

“Here on the Shore?”

She nodded. “Over by the windmill.”

“Fine. Tomorrow morning, then,” he promised. “Say, at ten o’clock?” The easy smile of the boy that she remembered flashed behind the features of the man as he bent down to draw her close to him again. “I kent that ye could not be gone. I kent it here.” As Jamie straightened, he tapped his closed fist against his heart. “I’m glad that I was right.”

He still had the same swagger to his walk. The crowd closed in around him until even his fair hair was difficult to follow in the shifting sea of people on the Shore, and Lily stood and craned her neck to see where he had gone.

At last she saw someone she recognized, but it was not Jamie.

It was Matthew. And his gaze was fixed on hers.

When he came across to join her, she could tell that he was jealous. Matthew was not one to hide his feelings, not with her. He nodded at the handkerchief she still held in her hand. “Who was he?”

“That was Jamie. He’s an old friend.”

Matthew scoffed. “A friend.”

“Aye. We’ve not seen each other since afore I came here.”

She could tell from his expression there’d be little point in trying to share details of her history with the Graeme family. Matthew, in this mood, would not be listening, and she was working still to process her emotions after her reunion with her childhood friend. She’d bring Matthew with her when she met with Jamie here tomorrow, at the windmill, and she’d introduce them then, and Matthew would be able to see for himself that Jamie was no rival.

Thinking to reassure him on that point, she said, “He’s going to sail to the colony.”

“Is he?”

Lily said, “And thanks to your Captain Gordon, I fear we may now have to hold Maggie back so she’ll not volunteer for the voyage.”

“Why’s that?”

Taking Matthew’s cold hand in her own, Lily explained how the captain had shown Maggie the two great ships of the African Company, and told the child about colonies. But Lily was thinking more of what Gordon had said about how Matthew was too young yet to confine himself to married life.

Because when Matthew looked over the firth toward Burntisland, where the two ships of the company lay at their anchors, Lily was watching his face, and she saw it—the play of emotions that swiftly ran over his features, from envy to deeper frustration to yearning, then died like a wave come to naught on the sand.

And though her mind tried to reason against it, she knew in her heart then the captain was right.