Lyn Stone - Gifts of the Season - A Gift Most Rare / Christmas Charade / The Virtuous Widow

What kind of blasted understatement was that? He certainly wasn’t in love with Sara any longer, not the desperate way he’d been six years ago, but “rather handsome” didn’t begin to explain how he’d felt seeing her again. Where he’d simply grown older, she had somehow grown even more beautiful, her girlish brilliance burnished and refined by experience and time into a softer, more womanly elegance. She’d tried to hide it in those hideous clothes—shrouding herself in grim black and white, her bright curls skinned back beneath a plain cap—but how could she disguise the sunny blue of her eyes or the generous curve of a mouth made for laughing and teasing and lavishing with kisses?

Oh, aye, she was still Sara, still beautiful, still desirable, and still wretchedly, hopelessly unattainable.

“Ah, well, every man must pick his own poison,” said Albert blithely as he once again reached for the bottle beside his chair. “And here I thought you were taken with that saucy Talbot girl, the fine plump one making kitten’s eyes at you over dinner!”

Revell grimaced. He’d scarcely noticed the young woman sitting at his right until she’d freed her foot from her slipper and brazenly tickled her stockinged toes up and down his calf.

“No, don’t scoff,” said Albert. “I’d wager you’d find a warm welcome from that one, no mistake. But if Miss Blake’s the sort that catches your fancy, Claremont, well, that’s a different kettle entirely. I’d no notion that was how you felt.”

Thunderstruck, that’s how Revell had felt to discover Sara there beside him. Bowled over and blasted and for once so completely unable to trust his own emotions that he’d looked away, down to the little girl holding her hand.

And Sara—hell, Sara had ignored him as if he didn’t exist.

“That is her name, then?” In Calcutta she’d been Sara Carstairs. No wonder he’d not been able to find her since. “Miss Blake?”

“So she is called.” Albert shrugged carelessly, pouring the brandy in a sloppy arc into his glass. “Missy-Miss Priss Blake.”

Revell’s fingers tightened on the arm of the chair. When he’d returned to Calcutta from visting the mines in the hills, eager to announce their engagement, he’d been told that Sara hadn’t waited for him. The governor’s wife, who’d been appointed to tell him, had been as kind as possible, her voice full of pity. Sara’s father had died of a sudden apoplexy brought on by the record heat and dust of that last summer, and before the poor gentleman was scarce buried in his grave and his estate settled, Sara had eloped with a cavalry officer and sailed with him back to England.

It had, thought Revell, been the darkest day of his life.

“You are certain she’s unwed?” he asked now, praying that Albert was too far in his cups to hear the ancient disappointment in his voice. “There’s no, ah, Mr. Blake?”

“Not in this life.” Albert grinned, sinking even lower into his chair. “Mother wouldn’t have permitted it, not in a governess for Clary. She’s Miss Blake, evermore. Oh, she must have a Christian name somewhere, as well, but I’ve never heard it.”

“Why in blazes not?” asked Revell. He wasn’t exactly angry at Albert’s attitude, but it did, well, rankle since it was Sara they were discussing. Not that she needed a champion. Whatever she’d done since he’d seen her last, she’d proven herself perfectly capable of looking after herself without him—though, mercifully, without that dashing phantom cavalry officer, too. “The lass lives beneath your own roof, doesn’t she?”

“She’s a servant, Claremont,” said Albert firmly. “I don’t have to know her name. The house servants are my mother’s responsibility, not mine. I say, perhaps you’ve lived too long among the heathens if you’ve forgotten how things are here at home.”

“Perhaps instead I didn’t stay away long enough,” said Revell testily, rising to his feet. Albert was right. England wasn’t India, and the past couldn’t be undone and twisted into the present just because he wished it so. “I thank you for the brandy, if not the advice.”

But Albert waved away Revell’s thanks, frowning a bit as he leaned forward in his chair. “I meant what I said about my mother and the servants, Claremont,” he said earnestly. “She won’t take it well if you try to tumble Clary’s governess. There’s no dallying with any of the servants in this house.”

Revell smiled wearily, his hand already on the latch of the door. “Ah, but you’re forgetting who you’re warning, Albert, aren’t you? Because I never dally at anything.”

He left then before he’d say more, or worse, to his well-meaning host. God knows he’d said enough already, and with a muttered oath directed at his own sentimental idiocy, he turned away from the stairs to the bedchambers and instead down the long, darkened gallery. As tired as he was, he knew better than to try to sleep now, and his hollow, echoing footsteps, seemed to mock his loneliness.

Who the devil would have guessed that Sara would be hiding here at Ladysmith of all places, lying in wait to turn him into a babbling, belligerent imbecile? If he’d any wits left he’d make his excuses and leave at daybreak, out of deference to the Fordyces and Sara, too.

Hell, he should leave now, and with a disgusted grumble he threw open one of the tall double doors that led to the terrace and the paths to the gardens beyond. In summer this would be a favorite trysting place, with beech trees curving over the terrace, but in late December the branches were shivering bare and unwelcoming, the pale moon stretching their long, skeletal shadows across the snow-covered paths.

Though there was no wind, the air was still icy, sharp enough to make Revell suck in his breath and hunch his shoulders. Yet in a way he welcomed the cold. This, at least, was real, and slowly he walked across the terrace to the stone railing, his shoes crunching lightly on the crusty snow.

Against so much pale snow and moonlight, it was the inky-dark shape that caught his eye, the whipping flicker of a black cloak as the wearer tried to scurry away from him. Even with the hood drawn forward, he knew who it must be, and in three long strides he had cornered her against the terrace’s low balustrade. With a little yelp of frustration, she tried to twist past him and the hood slipped back, letting the moonlight fall full upon her startled face.

“Sara,” he said, a statement and a question and a greeting and a wish and a prayer combined into the single word that was her name. “Sara.”

She swallowed, and though she raised her chin with a brave show of defiance, he saw how she trembled. He understood. He was trembling, too.

“My lord,” she said. “Good evening, my lord.”

Of course: what the devil had he been thinking, anyway? “Good evening, Miss, ah, Miss Blake.”

“Quite.” The single word came out in a small cloud, warmed by her breath in the chilly air. No matter how hard she was trying to maintain the same severe governess’s face that she’d worn earlier in the drawing room, she was failing: her eyes seemed enormous and liquid as she gazed up at him, the moonlight making spiky shadows of her lashes across her cheeks. “Quite, my lord.”

He cleared his throat, then tried to turn the grumbling growl into a cough, painfully conscious of every sound he uttered. What in blazes was he supposed to say next, given so little encouragement? Not that he should need it, of course. The time for careful wooing and well-considered words, or even the most casual flirtation, was long past for them. Now all that was needed was a modicum of genteel chitchat, same as he would venture with any other young lady, or an old one, for that matter.