She forced herself to slow her steps, deliberately breathing in the cool air, and walked the remaining distance with measured leisure.
When she parted the hanging branches of the willow, Andrew was already there. He looked at her, his expression unusually still.
"You are early."
Eliza held his gaze, the quiet truth settling between them, stripping away the convenient excuse of coincidence.
"So are you."
A long pause stretched under the shade of the tree. It was the first time either of them had acknowledged, without the safety of humor, that they were deliberately seeking each other out. When they finally spoke, the conversation was softer, more deliberate.
Eventually, Andrew broke the quiet. "My brother's guests begin departing tomorrow. Our season here is ending." He looked down at the water. "The family goes to Edinburgh for a few obligations, and then I will accompany the Duke south."
"My aunt and I are also traveling to Edinburgh in the morning," Eliza said softly, "before we continue on to Bath."
There it was: the perfect, entirely acceptable moment for either of them to simply say, "I hope we shall see each other there." It would require nothing but basic social courtesy.
Neither of them said it.
To ask would be to assume they had a right to continue what had started under the tree, and neither was willing to risk the familiar boundaries they had constructed around themselves.
When Eliza finally excused herself to return to the house, she walked back up the hill with a heavy, unfamiliar sensation in her chest. For the first time in her life, she was not looking back because she was sad to be leaving a beautiful place. She was sad at the possibility of leaving a person.
Edinburgh was a world of sharp contrasts to the quiet margins of the loch. The tranquil silence of the highlands had been replaced by the steady clatter of carriage wheels over cobblestones, the bright glare of chandeliers, and the ceaseless hum of polite society.