Breathing deeply to soothe the sharp pain in her chest, Lily said, “Matthew…I have been thinking.”

“Aye?”

“What if we waited? To marry, I mean. There’s no hurry, and I would not have ye regretting your choice.”

His head turned. “And do you regret yours?” He spoke sharply, his brown eyes demanding an answer. His jaw had set into the hard lines that meant he was holding in darker emotions.

“Of course not.”

“And I’m meant to believe that? So it’s just a coincidence, is it, that you meet this…friend…and suddenly, you think we ought to wait to marry? What do you think I’ve been doing all these years? And now it’s, maybe we should wait? Because you see a better prize on the horizon?”

Even as Lily recoiled from the anger in Matthew’s voice, she heard the pain at the back of his words and knew where it was rising from—that hollow well of doubt he carried deep within him that, in spite of Barbara’s reassurance to the contrary, he was a foundling for a reason. That he somehow failed to measure up to expectations, and would always be inadequate.

She doubted there was any cure for such a wound, unless it might be constancy, or love, and love was always worth an effort. She’d misjudged how deeply he was feeling what he thought was her betrayal, and he was misunderstanding everything that she was trying to say. As devastating as it was how quickly things had come undone, she knew their love was strong enough to put it back together in the morning, when his temper calmed.

“I ought to be enough for you,” he said. His voice was low, and there was fierceness in the way he said the words, yet there was also vulnerability.

Though Lily’s view was misting over rapidly with unshed tears, she tried to keep her own defenses fully down so he would see the truth that lay within her heart.

She told him quietly, “Ye are the first man I have loved in this way, and ye’ll be the last. Ye’ll always be enough for me.”

His eyes searched hers, as though he truly needed to believe that.

But he turned from her, and without looking back, he walked away.

Chapter 30

Friday, 3 October, 1707

Ten years had passed, but I could see that Captain Gordon had not forgiven himself. Facing me now across the remains of our supper in the private chamber upstairs at Steell’s tavern, he looked deliberately away and focused on the fire.

“I had no business saying anything,” he told me. “I was younger then, and arrogant, and did not spare enough thought for the consequences of my speech. And so I cost a young couple their happiness, and lost a friend.”

“There was no way you could have known.”

“She never liked me much.” He said it in an offhand way. “I never understood it. After that day, though, she had good reason. She could barely bring herself to look at me.”