Gifts of the Season: A Gift Most Rare / Christmas Charade / The Virtuous Widow

“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.

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.

Chapter Three

“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.”