The From Paris With Love And Regency Season Of Secrets Ultimate Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

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       CHAPTER TEN

      CHARLOTTE’S FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS ever had been the one she’d told Nico about when they’d been snowed in and Gran had cooked sausages on sticks over the open fire in the drawing room.

      Maybe, some time in the future, somebody would ask her about her least favourite Christmas and she knew that, coincidentally, it would also be one of the rare, truly white ones.

      This one.

      She stared out of the V-shaped gap in the snow piled on the sill of her latticed window and there was the eerie, early morning light that only a thick blanket of snow could create. There was nothing to disturb the perfection of the Christmas-card scene in the gardens of Highton Hall. The footprints on the lawn below had probably been made by a fox but if her grandmother had seen them in years gone by, she would have told a small Charlotte that they were the tracks left by Santa’s reindeer.

      The thought should have brought a poignant smile to her face but instead Charlotte felt the lump in her throat get bigger.

      She had never felt this…bleak.

      This lonely.

      This…empty.

      As if she’d lost something huge that she would never have back again. Like her heart? Or maybe it was part of her soul. The part that she’d shared with Nico. Yes. That’s what it felt like. He had brought light into the darkest part of her being and, by touching it, it had somehow become his, even if he didn’t want it.

      Was that what love was? Giving away the most important part of yourself?

      No…Charlotte found her picture-perfect view becoming blurry. It was finding someone who recognised that part. Accepted it. Made it better than it had been before simply by being there.

      And it wasn’t one-sided, that had been the clincher. Nico had shared that part of himself with her. The lonely little boy who was still there deep inside. The one who’d been hurt and had seen people he loved get hurt, and was determined to never be the cause of such hurt himself.

      Nico thought he didn’t know what he needed. That he couldn’t possibly make the right choice of a person to be with for the rest of his life. He thought he was incapable of falling in love.

      And maybe he had the kind of strength to hold himself back from that kind of surrender but it was blindingly obvious what he needed.

      A tiny robin, its bright red breast a decoration in itself, fluttered into view and landed on the windowsill, tilting its head and to give Charlotte a cheeky glance.

      ‘He just needs what we all need,’ she informed the robin. ‘To be loved.’

      The robin fluttered off like an echo of laughter.

      As if it was that simple…

      It was. Charlotte had found that person, hadn’t she? She had given him that part of herself she could never give to anyone else.

      But it was that impossibly difficult at the same time.

      Because finding someone that you connected with at a soul-deep level wasn’t enough. They had to feel the same way or it could never begin to work.

      And Nico didn’t feel the same way. How could he when they’d only known each other for a couple of days?

      But he didn’t even want to see her again. Good grief, he’d told her that she could leave the ring with his secretary, if he wasn’t around.

      It had meant nothing. A bit of harmless pretence to make an old lady happy before she died. Repayment for the imagined debt of losing her laptop. A bonus of a one-night stand as well?

      Charlotte forced herself to move. She couldn’t stand here dwelling on how miserable she felt. It was Christmas Day after all. And her toes were freezing. Dressing quickly, she chose clothes for warmth, donning black woollen leggings and an oversized crimson pullover on top of a black bodysuit. No doubt her grandmother would expect her to change for dinner but that was a few hours away yet and it would be warmer downstairs when the open fires were stoked up.

      Maybe Christmas dinner wasn’t so far away after all. The rich aroma of roasting meat caught Charlotte’s nostrils as she went downstairs. Betty, the cook, must be busy in the kitchen, probably under Gran’s strict supervision. Charlotte would probably be given a laden plate of bacon and eggs and an admonishment about the perils of laziness and sleeping in.

      The Christmas tree in the huge foyer of this grand old house had coloured lights twinkling merrily and there were gifts beneath, enticingly wrapped in pretty paper and tied with bows of satin ribbon.

      It looked like one of the festive pictures that had played against the wall of that Venetian restaurant…good grief, only three days ago? On the evening when she’d given in to the temptation of pretending that Nico was her lover. When she’d accidentally become ‘engaged’ СКАЧАТЬ