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Then, she smiled at him.
‘Thank you for reminding me. I don’t think often of home. It seems so...unreal. Now, how does one descend from the Devil’s Seat? It strikes me it is much easier to climb up than down.’
‘You don’t climb. You jump.’ He demonstrated, ending in a crouch on the sand, and turned to grin up at her. She stared down at him in dismay.
‘There must be an easier way. Do turn your back and I shall slide down carefully.’
‘Why should I turn my back?’
‘Because I am likely to end up in an ignominious heap at the bottom and I prefer to have no witnesses.’
‘It would be ungentlemanly of me to leave you to such a fate. Step over on to that next rock and give me your hand.’
‘Why?’
‘Trust me.’
‘I finding trusting no one to be a prudent way to live, Your Grace. Do kindly turn around.’
‘No. Give me your hand.’
‘I am beginning to see precisely what you meant by horrid behaviour.’
‘Very well. Go ahead.’
He turned and waited, alert to any sounds of slippage.
‘Benneit?’
‘Yes?’
‘I think I will need some help. It did not look quite so high from below.’
She stood with one foot outstretched, as if about to dip her toe into the water. From this vantage point he could see again the elegant line of her stockinged ankle and calf disappearing under the darkness of her skirts. His hand twitched at the sight, his body tightening.
‘Benneit?’
He forced his gaze up, annoyed at this recurring foolishness. He held out his hands and after a moment’s hesitation she leaned forward and placed her hands in his.
‘Now close your eyes and jump.’
‘Jump?’
‘Trust me.’
She breathed and jumped. She was so light it was easy to swing her on to the sand as he had done for Jamie a dozen times. Like Jamie, she laughed, her gaze rising to his, all her apprehension flown in the pleasure of the moment.
‘I felt like a bird!’
He was about to jest that sometimes she looked like a watchful grey sparrow, but at the moment she didn’t look at all like one. She looked alight, no longer merely Jo, but Joy. Now he could see the happy girl she had been, daydreaming and helping her father with the chaos of children that must have been as drawn to her as his Jamie was.
As he was...
Her lips were parted, a strand of hair fluttering across them, beckoning. He could almost feel the soft brush of that strand against his own lips, silky warm and scented with roses. Could almost feel the slip of his fingers as he tucked it behind her ear, the moment before his mouth would find hers.
That kiss felt inevitable, as inescapable as the tide. He was already drawing her towards him, when she took her hand from his to brush away the hair flicking at her cheeks.
‘Jamie will be so happy you have returned. We thought you would return tomorrow and he has been on his best behaviour after his promise to you when you left.’ Her words were so practical and disconnected from his momentary loss of sense he felt a dozen times a fool for his strange lapse. He let go of her other hand and began walking up the shore with her.
‘He has missed you very much,’ she added after a moment.
‘I missed him as well,’ he answered, his throat tight against the need to ask if she had missed him, too.
Because he had.
At the foot of the cliff path he stopped. She did not look at him and he was almost glad.
‘You go up by the Sea Gate, but I must stop at the stables for a moment. Tell Jamie I will join him for luncheon and that he and Flops are to leave me something to eat. I’m hungry.’
Chapter Eighteen
Jo stared at the shelves in the small dressing room adjoining her room.
‘Beth...’
‘Yes, Mrs Langdale?’
The maid’s carefully subdued excitement was answer enough, but Jo asked the question anyway.
‘Beth, where are my clothes?’
‘Mrs Merry had Ewan take the other dress to Widow McManus, the one without the mud stains. She said you wouldn’t be needing it now you have new clothes.’ The maid’s voice practically glided off the last two words, full of soulful yearning. New clothes.
Not just new clothes, but colourful clothes. Not a grey in sight, not even lavender, though there was a lilac blue folded neatly under a pale creamy yellow and, on a shelf of its own, was a gown in an exquisite pale orange shot with gold thread that glistened even as she watched, taunting her. She caught her hand halfway towards this marvel and snatched it back.
