The long golden rays of the setting sun touched them with brightness, but it was only a shallow reflection, not the lamplight he had hoped to see. He couldn’t bring himself to walk up to the door. She was in good hands, wherever she was. He could only wish her a speedy recovery. And time would see to that. He could still remember the shock of recognition as she lay there injured in the broken and twisted wreckage of her carriage. He’d been too busy then to deal with the image that was burned into his memory. Seeing her whole again would change that. “Aye,” Hamish said. “But she isna’ coming back to London straightaway. She was already leaving it, ye ken.” Analyzing his own feelings, he realized that the uppermost emotion that day had been fear. Fear that she was terribly injured. Not pity or compassion or anger at the waste of a life. He had been in love once. And it hadn’t worked out.
