Page 48 of A Merry Christmas
“My brothers mean to take down the greenery tomorrow,” Joshua said, because a gentleman must say something as he learns to be brave. “The house will look very dull.”
“I admire a thing that does not pretend to be what it is not.”
They walked the length of the terrace in companionable quiet. Twice she thought he would speak; twice he did not. The second time she spoke for him, not to hurry but to solve the earlier riddle. “You said our mothers were meddling.”
“They did,” he said with a faint smile, “and I find I am grateful to be easily managed.”
They reached the end of the terrace, where a little bough of mistletoe had been tucked into the lintel. A sprig still hung there, absurd and audacious, its white berries dull in the starlight.
Merry looked up and laughed, but her laugh came out as a breath rather than a sound. He looked up too. The mischief of the thing lay between them like a delicate trap. She felt the balance of the moment shift. One step would spring it—or save it.
“Do I imagine,” she said, and her voice trembled in a way thatmade her cross with herself, “that there is something more than there is?”
“No,” he said at once. “You do not imagine.”
She let out the breath she had not known she held. “Then I am not mad?”
“You are not mad.”
“Only foolish,” she said, attempting a smile.
“Brave,” he corrected, but he did not step away when they stopped.
He stood very straight, as if he had come to attention. “Merry,” he said quietly, “if I am honest, I have come to admire you greatly. I find I cannot look at a day and not wish to put you into it. You deserve someone who values you as you are, and I aspire to be that man.”
She felt tears threaten, quickly rejected them, and paced once the length of their little shelter. Words poured out before she could tidy them. “I should like to explain. It may appear I am fickle. I am not. At the time, I had no hope of a better match. I thought myself already on the shelf. I thought Barnaby to be a door to a different world, and I was foolish enough to be grateful for any door that opened.”
He listened without flinching, which was how a man should listen. “I might be your second choice,” he said, almost lightly, “but I would offer you the protection of my name nonetheless.”
She stopped and faced him. “But you are not my second choice.”
He went very still. “No? There is another?”
She almost laughed then, from nervousness and joy together. “You mock me when I would lay my heart before you?”
“Indeed not,” he said, and something like relief moved across his features. He took one step nearer, enough to bring the starlight into his eyes. “But I am going to kiss you now.”
He raised his hands and set them to her face with a care that made them feel like a blessing. The first touch of his mouth was light. The second found its courage in the first. He kissed her as if he was learning every bit of her and wished to know by heart. It was nothing like Tremaine’s cold kiss. It was steadier, warmer, and in its warmth there lay a promise—that he would not take what was not given and would treasure all that was. In fact, the two men were not comparableat all, she told herself in irritation, and she would stop thinking about that horrid man whilst Joshua’s lips were upon hers.
When he drew back, he rested his forehead against hers. Their breath mingled and made a small cloud between them that broke and vanished and formed again.
“And indeed,” he murmured, almost against her lips, “I will beg an answer of you since you seem to enjoy taunting me.”
“Tit for tat,” she said, smiling now without fear, “but I will not accept you merely for the protection of your name.”
“No?” He sounded entirely ready to be improved by instruction.
“I would accept you for your heart as well, if you please, since mine already belongs to you.”
He gave a sound that might have been a laugh and might have been a prayer. “I can think of no better Christmas gift.”
“Happy Christmas, Joshua,” she whispered, and then, remembering what he had once said, corrected herself with a little tilt of her head. “Or perhaps that should be Merry Christmas instead?”
“I shall prefer it always,” he said.
Then he looked at her—really looked—and some soft restraint in his eyes gave way. He bent again and kissed her once more, longer, deeper this time, as if sealing something sacred between them. The world seemed to fall away—the cold air, the faint music drifting from the house, the snowlight trembling over the terrace. There was only the quiet thud of her heart and the steady warmth of his hands.
When at last they parted, he kept his brow resting against hers. “I love you, Merry,” he said quietly, as if the words had been waiting years for air. “I believe I have for longer than I understood.”
