The Firebird

His voice was quiet. ‘So, what happens now?’

I stumbled on the answers. ‘Well … I guess we try to sort it out, somehow. I mean, it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, I expect, but—’

Rob’s head came around and he cut me off. ‘Will ye stop doing that?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Answering questions afore I can ask them.’

His smile stopped my heart. Then my own heart replied with an answering smile as I realised what I had just done.

You did ask it, I told him.

If I had not loved him before, there was no way I could have resisted the way that he looked at me now.

Aye. His thoughts flooded into my mind like the river below us, and left no more corners of emptiness. Maybe I did.

He reached for me then, and he wrapped his arms warmly around me, and kissed me – a long, thorough kiss that stole most of my power to concentrate. When it had ended I drew back to look at him.

‘Rob?’

‘Aye?’

‘I still have to go back to London.’

‘I ken that.’

‘I’m sure I can get things arranged with Sebastian so I can work partly from Scotland, but that might take time.’

Rob repeated, ‘I ken that.’

‘I mean, it might take a few months.’

Then I heard my own words, and I suddenly realised how closely they followed the last ones that Anna and Edmund had said to each other. I knew Rob had noticed it, too, because I saw the smile in his eyes as he lifted one hand to recapture a strand of my hair that had feathered away in the wind. As his fingers closed round it, he brought his hand warm to the side of my face, and his touch held a promise.

‘I’ll wait,’ he said, gently, ‘for you to come home.’

And to my satisfaction, that was the last thing he was able to say for some time.