She might have questioned that, but Lily held her tongue. They stood in peace a moment longer before starting back, and Jamie, because he was lost in thought, did something out of habit that he had not done with her of late.

He walked a step ahead.

It made her smile, faintly. Lily followed after, fitting her footsteps to his ones in the sand, as though she were a little girl once more upon the sunlight-dappled green paths of Inchbrakie woods, following Jamie on a new adventure. Only this time, she knew she could not go quite as far as he was going.

In the shadow of the windmill, Jamie stopped.

Lily liked the windmill, with its sturdy round stone walls that soared high like a castle turret, and its creaking sails that turned incessantly at work. But from here she saw the bustle of activity along the Shore and pier—the ships and small boats in the harbor, and the larger ships that lay at anchor in the Road of Leith beyond.

Jamie said, “I have to be on board my ship by Monday.”

Lily felt a deep misgiving, standing there within that shadow. “Ye are certain ye do wish to go? They have not even told ye where ye’re sailing to. It may be somewhere terrible.”

“It may be somewhere wonderful. What happened to the lass who wished to sail to Norway?”

“Norway’s not so far.”

He smiled, and took a folded paper from his pocket. “If ye change your mind afore I leave, ye ken where ye can find me. But if ye change it after I have sailed, I leave ye this—’tis a letter stating my intent to marry ye, and signed by my own hand. If ye do take that to the company’s directors up in Edinburgh, they’ll pay your passage to me in the colony.” He put the paper in her hands and folded his own larger ones around hers, holding firmly as he fixed her gaze with his. “And hear me, now. If ye have need of me, whatever ye decide, ye use this letter and ye come to me, ye ken? Marriage or no, if there is trouble here, ye come to me. And bring my own wee cousin with ye. I’ll keep the both of ye safe,” Jamie promised. “We Graemes take care of our own.”

She knew he truly meant it, but she also knew that this was where their paths were meant to separate, so Lily tried to tease him. “And if ye have a wife already? What then?”

“Then we will have a full house.” He grinned, and in that moment he was the boy on the barrels again at Jean’s wedding, who’d wished he could marry her then, too, and take her to Perth with him so they would not be divided. “Anyway,” Jamie said, and his eyes told her that he was remembering that moment also, “who else would ye have?”

He bent, and gently kissed her cheek, and letting go her hands he turned and walked away. He turned back twice along the Shore to look behind and wave farewell, and Lily waved, too, but her smile was hard to hold in place, and without his hands over hers, her own felt cold.