Page 72 of Forget Me Not

“We’ve done a lot of things,” Lucas said under his breath.

Julia slipped her hand from his and moved to walk beside Aldric. “Was this horse theft part of one of your famous plans?”

“Of course it was.”

She looked back at Lucas, though she remained several paces ahead. “I very much like this group of yours. I suspect we are going to get into a great deal of trouble together in the years to come.”

Years to come.Years. He liked the sound of that.

Digby moved to Lucas’s side and said so only he could hear, “This is more the Julia you described to us over the years. I am enjoying finally meeting her.”

“She is a delight, isn’t she?”

Digby gave him a little shove. “Go make up sweet to your wife.”

“Doing so won’t ruin whatever secret plans the lot of you have concocted?”

“Not in the least.”

That was enough reassurance for Lucas. He hurried toward Aldric and Julia and took her hand once more. “We’ve made this trek more recently than any of the others,” he said. “Do you think we can beat them to the top?”

“With our eyes closed.”

“Careful there, Our Julia,” Kes called out. “He is an impressionable child.”

Lucas and Julia walked swiftly up the trail. How easily he could imagine her at his side in the Peak District and those mountaintops in Scotland, the Rue Des Barres and Champs-Elysées in Paris, the high meadows of Switzerland. But she’d not ever expressed any interest in traveling or adventures. She’d even said she was happy only in the quiet confines of home. She had told Lucas himself that she was not the adventurous type. She’d told Kes she preferred being at home. He didn’t know how to reconcile that difference in them.

Quite without warning, a gust of cold wind burst around a bend in the mountain trail. Lucas pulled Julia to him and tucked them up against an outcropping of rock.

Julia held tight to his coat. “Heavens, that is brutally cold.”

“We need to get you a warmer coat, sweetheart, and not merely for these treks. It’s colder here than in Collingham.”

She leaned back a little. “This scarf is helpful, though.” She held up the end of it, but the wind snatched it away. It flew upward, entangling itself out of reach in a bramble bush above the trail. “Oh bother.”

“Never fear, Julia. I’ll fetch it.”

“It is up those rocks though. There’s no trail leading to it.”

He tossed her a look of feigned arrogance. “I don’t need a trail.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. The wind had died down, but it was far from warm. He’d grab her scarf and return quickly.

Scrambling up rocks was not so difficult as it had once been. He didn’t ever attempt to scale sheer rock faces, but he certainly didn’t require smooth paths and a handrail. One handhold, one foothold at a time, he climbed upward. With ease born of practice, he reached his destination and grabbed hold of her scarf, then wrapped it around his own neck, wanting both hands free to make the descent back to Julia.

“Your scarf, my lady.” He knelt in front of her, holding the scarf up in both hands as if presenting a tribute to a queen.

She set her hand not on the scarf but on his cheek. “What if you’d fallen?”

“I’ve made much more difficult climbs, my dear. There was very little risk.” He stood. Her hand dropped to his chest, and she didn’t pull it away.

Lucas gently and carefully set her scarf around her neck once more, tying a loose knot so the wind wouldn’t whip it away so easily. He slipped his hand around hers, lifting it from his chest, and kissed her gloved fingers.

Julia rose up on her toes. “Thank you for returning my scarf.” She kissed his cheek, then didn’t step back.

Hesitantly but hopefully, he set his free arm around her. She settled against him. He held her, there on his mountain, the wind swirling around them. He’d seen some of the most breathtaking vistas in the kingdom and on the Continent, but that moment, that spot, rivaled them all.

And then the Gents arrived and ruined it all.

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