He shook my hand, and wished me well, and headed out into the night. I watched him striding down the close.

In the front room, I found Gordon, holding court. He clapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me again. “I’ve left a few bottles of brandy in the kitchen.”

Gifts, again. I said, “You’d best tell Simon. He will be the only one left living here after we sail tomorrow.”

“Are you taking Henry with you?”

“Aye.” I would not leave him lonely. Not again. “Simon said he would rather stay and keep watch over Maggie.”

Gordon thought that choice very responsible. “I sail tomorrow, too,” he said, “now that I have my men on board again, or nearly all of them. I will be headed north, and I’ll warrant Colonel Graeme will be soon there with our friends. I’ll see he gets word that he’s heir to Jamie’s wages.”

I said, “Make sure he sends a factor down here to collect them—that he does not come himself.”

“I have your warning,” Gordon reassured me, “and I will deliver it.” He looked at me with something of the air of a proud father, though we were divided by no more than ten years in our ages. “I did think you once too young to settle down and marry. I am happy to see I was wrong.”

“No, you were right when you did say it. You were right. I was not ready.” Looking back along the passage to where Lily stood with Maggie, talking now to Mr. Cant, I said to Gordon, very certain, “I am ready now.”

I was.

I’d been the greatest fool a man can be when I was young. I’d walked away from someone who had given her whole heart to me, and there’d not been a day since then that I’d not missed her touch and felt regret, and I knew well that I did not deserve to have her offer me her heart again.

And yet…

Sometimes life gave you back the things you’d lost.

Upstairs that night, in the small chamber where we had shared our first kiss, I stood with Lily, arms wrapped tightly around one another, saying nothing, doing nothing, feeling that we’d come full circle.

This, I thought, was my beginning.

I was Adam.

“You’re the first man I have loved,” she said, her voice not much above a whisper, and it was as though she knew I needed those words then. “The first man and the last man. You will always be enough for me.”

Then she kissed me. Then my wife reached up to me and kissed me.

“Come to bed,” she said.

I did. But first, I leaned to blow the candle out. It was not needed anymore.

I knew that all was well.

VIII

I was a younger man when I first met her in our house in Riddell’s Close—though I should tell you in all fairness that was not the first time I had ever seen her, for her face had lived within my mind and memory from the moment I dropped through that window into the Bells’ kitchen, turned, and found her looking at me through her tears.