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“I can’t. I run a loop: hotel, airport, hotel, airport. Can’t turn around.”
“How long will it take to get back to the hotel?”
He shrugged. “An hour.”
I had wasted so much time already, another sixty minutes felt like a lifetime. “There’s no one else on the shuttle. Please, won’t you go back to the hotel?”
“I’m supposed to run the loop.”
“It’s so important, please.” I looked around, needing to find a way to convince him to bend the rules. “Will you do it in the name of love?”
He made a face like he didn’t believe in love. Not enough to risk his job, anyway.
“Will you do it for Clan Stewart?” I waved my scarf in the air, proving it matched the one on his rear-view. He sighed but shook his head. I looked out the windshield at the buildings rushing by, every block we passed taking me farther from the only man I wanted.
The man I loved.
I checked my pockets. “What about for forty-seven pounds?”
At the next signal, the driver flipped on the blinker and made a series of turns to take us back to the hotel. I could have kissed him, but I’d acted crazy enough already. My heart felt lighter now that I was headed the right direction. I’d let life carry me along on its waves for too long. It was time for me to take charge. I knew what I wanted, I just needed to reach for it.
When we pulled up to the hotel curb, I pressed the bills into the driver’s hands.
“I’ll take the forty-seven quid,” he said, tucking the money into his pocket. “But I did it for Clan Stewart.”
I grabbed my luggage, leapt off the shuttle, and rushed into the lobby. Bea, Rupert, and Lewis stood at the front desk looking at train schedules when I blew in. They shuffled over as I made a desperate search of the lobby and restaurant.
“What are you doing back again, dear?” Bea asked. “Did you forget something?”
“Yes, and I need to find him right away.”
She processed that with a slight jolt, then smiled as though everything had gone according to her design.
“It’s just like I told you, all you needed was to find the right one. It’s like Rupert and I.” She smiled at her husband, and they went right back to making heart-eyes at each other. “We were strangers when we got on the same train in Edinburgh, and by the time we reached London, we were in love.”
“Yes, but have you seen Duncan?” I’d already heard this story twice over and didn’t need the replay. I only wanted to find my man.
“He said he was walking up to the castle,” Lewis said.
“How long ago was that?”
“Right after your shuttle left, I guess.”
“Thank you.” I shifted, ready to run out the doors, but I couldn’t pull my luggage all through Edinburgh. I turned to Bea. “Could you?”
She put a hand on my luggage. “Leave it, dear, leave it.”
“Thank you,” I said again. I dashed out the hotel doors, Rupert’s rallying cry ofGo, go!ringing in my ears.
Only, I didn’t know where to go. I looked up and down the street, hoping Duncan might still be close by. I couldn’t see him or the castle from this vantage and wasn’t quite sure where to go. I went straight to a man selling newspapers on the corner and asked for directions to the castle.
He pointed along the street, and I sprinted that way. Dashing by beautiful stone buildings like the ones I’d admired so often, I didn’t have time to take anything in. I kept an eye out for Duncan, and avoided the cars on High Street. It was too busy, too crowded, too much of a long shot, but I had to try.
I reached a barricade where vehicle traffic ended and the lane narrowed, but I kept on. I’d begun to doubt the newspaper man’s directions, but the castle finally rose up in front of me.
I paid my admission and accepted a map, then jogged through the gates. People crowded all around, gazing down at the city from the high vantage, reading bronzed signs set into the castle’s stones, and taking pictures of themselves standing on an ancient rock. Any other time, I would have happily joined them, but just now the views meant very little. I only had one thing in mind.
Finding him wouldn’t be easy. The castle wasn’t a single building but a series of them, and he could have been inside any one. Too late, I realized I had no way of knowing if he’d even gone inside the gates.
