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

But then no other lady was standing here before him with her lips parted, the lower one so full as to be nearly a pout, the one above arched like a bow, a mouth that was unforgettably familiar to him, and once had been unforgettably dear, as well?

“It is, ah, a most fine prospect, is it not?” he asked, then nearly cursed himself again for being a half-wit. They were standing on a sheet of crackling frozen snow beneath bleakly leafless branches, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a Sussex winter. Even in the moonlight he could tell that her nose was red with the cold, and that the first trembling he’d thought he’d caused was, on more honest, less flattering consideration, simply shivering. “Allowing for the season, that is.”

She nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Exceptionally fine, my lord, for the season.”

In silence he thanked her for not pointing him out as the idiot he was. Silence seemed safest.

But then she seemed determined to be safe, as well, lowering her gaze from his face to the buttons on the front of his coat.

“I could not sleep, my lord,” she began, her words rushing swift with agitation. “That is why I’m here. Not because I followed you, or…or wished to engage you. I must beg you to understand that what was…was once between us is long done, my lord, nor do I wish it otherwise.”

“No,” he said, the weight of that denial heavy as lead. “That is, yes, what we shared in Calcutta was long ago.”

“Yes, my lord.” Another swift, small nod, that was all. “No one here knows of that past, and I would thank you greatly not…not to share it.”

Damnation, was she so shamed by having known him?

“I came outside, here, so I would not disturb Miss Fordyce with my restlessness,” she continued, her words still tumbling one after the other. “There was not—not any other reason than to calm myself. What other could there have been, my lord?”

“That is why I am here, as well,” he said with false heartiness, unwilling to be outdone no matter what it cost him. “A breath of air to clear the head before bed. That is all I sought by coming here, neither more nor less.”

She sighed once, and shrugged, little wisps of hair drifting free around her face. The haste and urgency seemed to drain from her, and with it went the reserve that had been her best defense.

“Ah, my lord,” she said softly, “then you have found what you wanted, yes?”

“I suppose I have,” he said gruffly, longing to brush those stray strands aside as he tried not to consider any other deeper meanings to this conversation. “Found what I desired, that is.”

“I am glad,” she said softly, at last returning her gaze to meet his. “You are happy?”

He hesitated, wondering how honest he should be, not only with her, but himself. “Happy enough, I warrant.”

“Then I am happy, too,” she said, but the bittersweet longing in her eyes didn’t agree. “A true Christmas miracle, yes?”

“A miracle?” He swept his arm through the air, desperately trying to clear the unexpected peril from this conversation. “Surely not here in this cold and cheerless place.”

She tipped her head to one side, skeptical. “Since when do miracles require sunny days like new seedlings in the spring?”

“They did for us in Calcutta,” he said. “Do you remember how even the mornings in the summer would be so infernally hot that we would stay awake all the night, then go riding before dawn, when it was still cool enough for the horses? We found miracles aplenty there in your garden on Chowringhee Road, with the peacocks and the palm trees, gold spangles on your gown and yellow plumes in your hair.”

“Chowringhee.” The shared memory reminded them both of other intimacies shared, of love and passion in a faraway world ripe with sensual possibilities, and her sudden, wistful smile with the single unbalanced dimple caught him by surprise. “Ah, Rev, you always were a dreamer, and a rover, too. You never could stop searching for whatever magic lay over the next mountain, could you?”

“I never have, Sara.” He smiled, too, their years apart slipping away as they used their given names. “Although dreaming and roving are not precisely the most admirable qualities for a man.”

“For you they were,” she said promptly. “You never were like the other greedy cadets and Company nabobs in their red coats, Rev. You saw the rare beauty in India, and not just the gold to be stolen away.”

“You know too much of me, Sara,” he said softly, “and too well at that.”

“Too much, too well,” she repeated sadly, and as suddenly as her own smile had come, it now vanished. “I know too much of you, and you know too little of me.”

“Then tell me, Sara,” he urged. “For the sake of what we once shared. Tell me where you have been, how you have come to be here, what makes you happy or content. Tell me whatever you please, and I swear I shall listen. You said yourself there’s no better time for miracles than Christmas.”

But she shook her head, drawing the hood of her cloak forward over her face and closing him out, as well. “Forgive me, but I must return now to Miss Fordyce. I would not have her wake and find me absent.”

“Sara, wait, please.”

“Good night, my lord,” she said as she turned away. “Good night.”

My lord. If she’d struck Revell with her fist, she couldn’t have made her feelings more clear, and he drew back as sharply as if she had. He watched her hurry away from him to the door, her black cloak swirling around her white skirts, and he did not follow.

What in blazes had he been thinking, anyway, presuming like that? Did he really believe that a handful of tattered old memories would be enough to overcome the reasons she’d had for leaving him in the first place, or his own doubts about reopening a part of his past that he’d thought permanently—and painfully—left behind? Fate might have brought them back into one another’s lives, but not even fate could undo whatever had happened in between.

For that, quite simply, would take another miracle.

“Miss Blake?” Lady Fordyce paused, the pineapple raised in her hand. “Are you unwell, my dear?”

“No, my lady,” said Sara quickly, pulling her thoughts back to the small, sunny room that served Lady Fordyce as her personal headquarters, and where, with Sara’s help, she was busily marshaling her troops and resources like any other good general preparing for a major engagement. “The pineapples will be a most handsome addition to the sideboard.”

“I was speaking of ribbons, not pineapples,” said Lady Fordyce, frowning with concern. “Are you certain you are well? You are most distracted this morning.”

Sara flushed, likely the first color to come to her cheeks all day. “Forgive me, my lady,” she said hurriedly. “If I am distracted, it is only the usual happy confusion of the season.”

Skeptical, Lady Fordyce’s frown remained. “More likely it is Clarissa’s fault, fussing and worrying at you over what she’s to receive for Christmas.”

Sara only smiled wanly. If she looked only half as exhausted as she felt, then she was fortunate Lady Fordyce hadn’t sent her directly to bed and summoned the surgeon.

But how could Sara look otherwise, considering the miserable, sleepless night she’d spent after leaving Revell on the terrace? She’d truly believed she’d purged him forever from her thoughts and heart, yet the moment he’d smiled at her and begun talking of Calcutta, she’d once again felt that familiar warmth of joy and excitement begin to swirl through her body, the rare happiness that Revell alone had given her, and she’d realized how hopelessly weak—weak!—she still was.