‘To celebrate my imminent engagement,’ she finished, still waiting. She then gave an exasperated sigh to show him that he was hopeless. ‘By giving me some token to commemorate the event.’
‘A gift?’ Her audacity startled a smile from him and a momentary loss of control.
‘My gift,’ she said, firmly. ‘You cannot have been away so long, missed birthdays and Christmases and a possible engagement, and brought me nothing. Must I search your pockets to find it?’
He thought of her hands, moving familiarly over his body, and said hurriedly, ‘Of course not. I have it here, of course.’
He had nothing. There had been the gold chain that he’d bought for her in Minorca and then could not raise the nerve to send. He had carried it about in his pocket for a year, imagining the way it would look against the skin of her throat. Then he’d realised that it was only making the memories more vivid, more graphic, and had thrown it into the bay.
‘Well?’ She had noticed his moment of confusion and was tugging upon his lapel, an eager child again.
He thrust a hand into his pocket and brought out the first thing he found, an inlaid wood case that held a small brass spyglass. ‘This. I had it with me, very nearly the whole time. At sea they are dead useful. I thought, perhaps, you could use it in the country. Watching birds.’
Any other woman in London would have thrust the thing back at him in disgust, pointing out that he had not even taken the time to polish the barrel.
But not his Evie. When she opened the box, her face lit as though he had handed her a casket of jewels. Then she pulled out the glass, gave it a hurried wipe against her skirt to shine it and extended it and put it to her eye. ‘Oh, Sam. It is wonderful.’ She pulled him to the nearest window and peered out through it, looking as she always had, into the distance, as though she could see the future. ‘The people on the other side of the square are as clear as if I was standing beside them.’ She took it away from her face and grinned at him. The expression was so like the way he remembered her that his heart hurt. She was standing beside him again, so close that an accidental touch was inevitable. He withdrew quickly, ignoring the flood of memories that her nearness brought.
She seemed unmoved by his discomfort, sighing in pleasure at her improved vision. ‘I will take it to the country, of course. And to Hyde Park and the opera.’
He laughed. ‘If you actually need a glass in town, I will buy you a lorgnette. With such a monstrous thing pressed to your eye, you will look like a privateer.’
She let out a derisive puff of air. ‘What do I care what people think? It will be so much easier to see the stage.’ She gave a sly grin. ‘And I will be able to spy on the other members of the audience. That is the real reason we all go to the theatre. Nothing in London shall escape me. I share the gossip the next day and show them my telescope. In a week, all the smart girls will have them.’
‘Wicked creature.’ Without thinking, he reached up and tugged on one honey-coloured lock. She had not changed a bit in his absence, still fresh faced, curious and so alive that he could feel her vitality coursing in the air around them.
‘Let us go and watch something.’ She took his hand, her fingers twining with his, pulling him back into the house and towards the doors that led to the garden that had been their haven.
And he was lost.
He ought to have known better. Before coming, Sam had steeled himself against temptation with prayer. His plan had been to resist all contact with her. Just moments before, he had assured her father that he would be gone. And yet, at the first touch of her hand, he had forgotten it all and followed her through the house like a puppy on a lead.
Now he sat at her side on a little stone bench under the elm as she experimented with her new toy. It was just like hundreds of other happy afternoons spent here and it reminded him of how much he missed home, and how much a part of that home she was.
Evie held the spyglass firmly pointed into the nearest tree. ‘There is a nest. And three young ones all open mouthed and waiting to be fed. Oh, Sam, it is wonderful.’
It was indeed. He could see the flush of pleasure on her cheek and the way it curved down into the familiar dimple of her smile. So excited, and over such a small thing as a nest of birds. But had she not always been just so? Joy personified and a tonic to a weary soul.
‘You can adjust it, just by turning here.’ He reached out and, for a moment, his hand covered hers. The shock of connection was as strong as ever. It made him wonder—did she still feel it as well? If so, she was as good at dissembling as he, for she gave no response.
‘That is ever so much better. I can make out individual feathers.’ She looked away from the birds, smiling at him, full of mischief. ‘I clearly made the best bargain out of your empty pockets today, sir.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If you had reached in and pulled out a snuff box, I’d have had a hard time developing the habit of taking it. But a telescope is very much to my liking.’
‘Was it so obvious that I did not bring you anything?’ he asked, sighing.
‘The look of alarm on your face was profound,’ she admitted and snapped the little cylinder shut to put it back into its case. ‘But do not think that you can get this away from me by distracting me with a necklace. It is mine now and I shan’t return it.’
‘Nor would I expect you to.’ He smiled back at her and felt the easy familiarity washing over him in a comfortable silence. With six years, thousands of miles travelled and both of them grown, none of the important things had changed between them. She was still his soul’s mate. At least he could claim it was more than lust that he felt for her.
She broke the silence. ‘Tell me about your travels.’
‘There is not enough time to tell you all the things I have seen,’ he said. But now that she had asked, the temptation to try was great and the words rushed out of him. ‘Birds and plants that are nothing like you find in England. And the look of the ocean, wild or becalmed, or the sky before a storm, when there is no land in sight? The best word I can find for it is majesty. Sea and heaven stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions and us just a spot in the middle.’
‘I should very much like to see that,’ she said wistfully.
He imagined her, at his side, lying on the deck to look at the stars. And then he put the dream carefully away. ‘Wonderful though some times were, I would not have wished them on you if it meant you saw the rest. A ship of the line is no place for a woman.’
‘Was naval life really so harsh?’
‘During battle, there was much for me to do,’ he admitted evasively, not wanting to share the worst of it.
‘But you helped the men,’ she said, her face shining when she said it, as though there was something heroic about simply doing his job. ‘And that was what you always wanted to do. I am sure it was most gratifying.’
‘True,’ he agreed. He had felt useful. And it had been a relief to find a place where he seemed to fit, after so much doubt.
‘If it made you happy, then I should like to have seen that as well,’ she said firmly.
‘Most certainly not!’ He did not want to think of her, mixed in with the blood and death. Nor did he want to lose her admiration, when she saw him helpless in the face of things that had no cure.
She gave him a pained look. ‘Have you forgotten so much? Was it not I who encouraged you in your medical studies? I watched you