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

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.

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.”

“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.

In six long years she hadn’t learned one blessed thing, not where Revell Claremont was concerned. She might as well be done with it now: throw herself into his arms directly, and beg him to trample on her heart and abandon her again.

“I trust you would confide in me if something were truly wrong, my dear, wouldn’t you?” asked Lady Fordyce gently, settling the pineapple back into the basket on her desk so she could rest her hand on Sara’s shoulder. “You would tell me if there was a matter I could remedy?”

Oh, yes, thought Sara unhappily, of course she’d confide in Lady Fordyce. Governesses for young ladies were supposed to possess unblemished and virginal reputations. She’d never told the Fordyces that she’d spent most of her life in India, or that she’d been forced to leave in a rush of disgrace, let alone spoken of her unfortunate entanglement with Lord Revell Claremont. How could she, when any part of her sorry tale could cost her her place—a place she couldn’t afford to lose—even with a kindhearted mistress like Lady Fordyce?

“If there were any ills you could remedy, my lady,” she said with careful truth, “then I should always come to you.”

Lady Fordyce beamed, and gave Sara’s shoulder a fond little pat. “I am delighted to hear it. Ladysmith has always been a happy house, free of secrets and intrigue, and I would like to keep it so. Now, Christmas or not, surely it must be time to begin Clarissa’s lessons today?”

With a swift curtsy Sara hurried from the room, down the hall toward the library. She’d already decided that her lesson today would feature Hannibal’s ancient journey across the Alps, and she hoped to find a book with illustrations to pique Clarissa’s interest enough to make her forget the coming holiday, at least for a moment or two, and make her stop daydreaming of Rev Claremont.

With fresh determination she marched into the library. A small fire glowed in the hearth to take the chill from the room for any guests who might venture into it, but Sara was sure she’d have the collection to herself. She certainly wouldn’t see Albert Fordyce, or Sir David, either. The current generations of Fordyces were not readers and neither were the majority of their friends and houseguests, and often weeks would pass when no one beyond Sara entered this pleasantly crowded room with the tall bookcases and old-fashioned chairs. Carefully she now pulled a large book of Roman history from the shelf and opened it on the leather-topped table in the center of the room, flipping through the heavy pages filled with text to find the illustrations. At last she came to one she sought, the Carthaginian general Hannibal leading his elephant-borne troops across the Alps, and she leaned closer to study the details of the print.

“Miss Blake,” said Revell, his broad shoulders suddenly filling the doorway to the library. He cleared his throat, low, rumbling, and thoroughly self-consciously, as if he needed one more way to announce his arrival. “Good morning, Miss Blake. I did not expect to find you here.”

“Nor I you, my lord.” Startled though she was, she was resolved to be cool and reserved, a model governess with her hands clasped neatly at her waist. Besides, this time they were in the library, and there wasn’t a single moonbeam in sight to addle her wits or to give him unfair advantage.

Not that he needed any. To her dismay he was every bit as handsome here in the bright morning sun as he’d been by the enchanting moon.

“You shouldn’t be surprised at all to find me here,” he said, leaning one arm against the frame of the door. “Unless you, too, have chosen to believe whatever drivel you hear said, particlarly about me carousing until all hours of the night with most mythical stamina.”

“I’m hardly in the position to hear fashionable gossip, my lord,” said Sara, striving to sound aloof rather than merely prim. Being a governess and therefore largely invisible, she had, of course, overheard a great deal about the infamous Lord Revell, none of which she wished to repeat to him now. “The only rumors I’m likely to hear in the schoolroom regard new kittens in the stable, or what special pudding is planned for supper.”

“It’s nothing more than the usual nonsense.” He sighed mightily. “Because I lived so long abroad, I am deemed a restless wanderer and no longer quite English. Because I chose to learn the languages of the men with whom I conducted business, I have become somehow wicked and untrustworthy. Because I took care to defend myself against bandits and thugs, I have in turn become as dangerous as they. But then you know how suspicious Englishmen can be of anything that they do not immediately understand, don’t you?”

Tugging on the cuffs of his shirt, he smiled so wryly it was almost a wince, and to her amazement she realized that this lengthy explanation was really a sign that he was as nervous as she. He must be sure he was rambling, babbling on like this, and cursing himself in silent misery, but she found it…endearing.

“People will always see what they wish in others,” she said softly, knowing that sad truth from her own experience. “Especially if what they imagine is more exciting than the truth.”

“Exactly,” declared Revell. “Which is why Albert Fordyce fully expects me to go racing about the countryside on one of his skittish overbred nags, laying a breakneck siege to every squire’s equally skittish, red-faced daughter in the county simply for the sport of it.”

“You wouldn’t?” she asked, unable to keep from teasing him in the face of such indignation. “You disappoint me, my lord.”

“Well, yes, I disappoint everyone, don’t I?” he said as he finally came to stand beside her at the table. “Don’t you remember how it was your father’s library that drew me to your house in the first place?”

She did. Her father’s library had been her favorite place in their house and she had spent endless hours curled in a tall-backed wicker chair near the window to catch any breeze while she read and dreamed of the impossibly distant fairy-tale lands of France and England.

She’d been sitting in that same chair when she’d first seen Revell coming through the doorway with her father. She had not wanted to be interrupted, and had tried to hide, pressing herself more tightly into the chair’s curving back and holding her breath to sit perfectly still.

But Revell had spotted her anyway and sought her out, and as soon as he smiled, she’d forgotten instantly about hiding. She’d never seen a more handsome British gentleman in Calcutta, and she’d been as dazzled as every other female in Calcutta by that smile. But it wasn’t until later that afternoon, after they’d quarreled—so violently that her father had scolded her for being inhospitable—over the symbolism in Voltaire’s Candide, that she’d realized that she would love Revell Claremont, too. He had been as fascinated by her bookish wit as by her newly blossoming body, while she had found the handsome gentleman who was equally accomplished at kissing and listening irresistible.

But while the library might bring back bittersweet memories, hearing Revell mention her father only robbed Sara of her composure, forcing her once again to consider Hannibal to hide her confusion and uneasiness. Her poor father’s death had changed everything. If only the circumstances around it had been less clouded, then she wouldn’t have had to leave Calcutta so hastily, or change her name, or become a governess to keep herself from starving. But how much of this sad truth did Revell know, and how much would he forgive?

“Did you know I bought your father’s copy of Candide at the auction of his things?” Revell continued, running his fingers along the leather binding of the open book on the table before them. “The one you’d left in the garden, where the dew had dappled the cover? By the time of the auction, you were already gone, of course, but still I wanted something to remind me of the days we’d shared.”

“You came back to Calcutta in time for the sale?” she asked, stunned. “But you couldn’t have, not when they told me that you—”

“Here you are, Miss Blake!” exclaimed Clarissa, the holiday-red ribbons in her hair bobbing as she skipped into the library. “Mama said I should find you here, and I—oh, Lord Revell, why are you here, too?”

“And a fine good day to you, too, Miss Clarissa,” said Revell, deftly covering Sara’s confusion. “As you can see, I am helping Miss Blake prepare your lessons for today.”

Clarissa’s cheerfulness vanished, and she heaved a dutiful sigh that must have begun at the tips of her slippers; clearly she’d been hoping for an explanation with more interesting possibilities. “What sort of lesson, my lord?”

“We shall be continuing to speak of ancient generals, Clarissa,” said Sara quickly. “I’ve found a picture here in one of your father’s books to show you how Hannibal used elephants to cross the Alps to reach Rome.”

“Truly?” asked Clarissa with more interest as she crowded next to Sara to look at the open book. “I do like elephants, with their funny long noses.”

“It’s a pity the artist hadn’t the slightest notion of how an elephant should be ridden, however,” said Revell critically, also crowding next to Sara on her other side, and effectively trapping her between the little girl and himself.

Although he continued looking down at the illustration instead of her, he let his hand brush against hers, doing it as if by accident so she couldn’t shift away without making a scene. Carefully he pretended to trace the line of the elephant’s trunk with one finger, but Sara knew better. Even that slight touch was enough to send a shiver of sensation racing up her arm, a shiver she most decidedly did not wish to feel.