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

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СКАЧАТЬ be Miss Blake, could she? Neither husband, nor followers, not since she’s been with the Fordyces. I tell you, my lord, she’s a good, quiet lass, and a credit to this house.”

      “That is all, then,” he said softly, and turned back to the window. Sara and Clarissa must be inside now, for the haphazard trail of their footprints through the snow led to the kitchen door in the yard below. Soon he could venture back to the schoolroom, and be sure to find them there.

      And then what? He’d learned more of Sara’s past from the maidservant, true, but he’d also realized he didn’t want to ask any more such questions. It had been one thing to make inquiries when he’d no notion of where she was, but quite another when fate had so conveniently placed her once again beneath the same roof. Now he should be asking her himself, directly and without guile; anything else seemed distastefully like spying, and Sara—Sara deserved better than that from him, no matter what happened next.

      Still gazing out at the flurried footprints in the snow, he lightly touched the waistcoat pocket that held the sapphire ring. She could talk all she wished about Christmas miracles, but surely finding her again like this, across six years and three continents, was as truly miraculous as anything he could ever have dreamed.

      Perhaps this is why he’d been drawn so inexplicably to Ladysmith. Perhaps some subtle tug of fate had made him trade London and a liquor-sodden bachelor Christmas with Brant for another chance with Sara. Living in India had loosened his distinctly English faith in a world based on logic and reason, and made him trust more to the mysteries of fate.

      But not even that could explain why Sara had abandoned him the first time, or why he seemed so damned eager to let her do it again. He thought he’d sensed the old magic between them again, but for her part, she hadn’t exactly been overjoyed to see him. Pleased, yes, but not overjoyed, and not at all eager to trade her life as a governess for one with him—a sobering, if not downright depressing, thought. Yet he couldn’t deny that when he was with her, he felt happier, younger, more content and yet more excited, too, more at peace with himself and the world.

      He might even still feel in love.

      He gave the box with the ring one last rueful pat. All he could do was ask Sara for the truth, and let the rest fall where it would.

      And believe with all his heart in miracles.

      Never had Sara doubted that Revell Claremont was an extraordinarily accomplished gentleman. He rode well—both horses and elephants—shot well, and was as skilled with the short, curved blade of a Gurkha’s kookree as he was with an English cutlass. Unlike most sons of dukes, he had survived on his own since he was fourteen, and made his first fortune before he’d turned twenty-one. He was as well read as any university man, spoke five languages with ease and grace and swore in several more, and while he could demonstrate all the politesse of a career diplomat, he could also be a ruthless negotiator and trader, as able to conduct business in a rough tent with Bengali brigands as he was with the equally cut-throat factors of the East India Company.

      But as Sara soon saw, he was hopeless—absolutely, abjectly hopeless—with a pair of scissors, a pot of paste, and a pile of colored paper squares.

      “Not like that, my lord,” said Clarissa, scowling down at the tiger’s head, newly attached at a peculiar angle to his body and oozing a fatal blob of paste from his throat, or what should have been his throat if his head had been placed more accurately. “You’ve put it on all wrong.”

      “I have?” Revell stared balefully at the tiger, heedless of another paste blob smeared across the sleeve of his superfine coat. He had insisted on sitting beside Clarissa at the child’s table, his oversize frame hunched forward and his legs bent awkwardly to fit the short chair. “I thought he had rather a rakish air about him.”

      “No, he doesn’t,” said Clarissa crossly. “It’s just wrong.”

      Considering the discussion complete, she reached across Revell and pushed the offending head into a more anatomically pleasing position, using her small thumb to wipe away the extra paste.

      “There,” she said, propping the tiger to stand upright. “Now he’ll do. Mama is most particular, my lord. She doesn’t want her ballroom cluttered up with any old rubbish, and she’ll tell you so, too.”

      “I doubt she would tell Lord Revell quite as rudely as you have, Clarissa,” said Sara. She didn’t dare look at Revell, sitting there with his knees beneath his chin and the most wounded look imaginable on his face, or risk giggling out loud. “He has been most kind to offer his help, you know.”

      “Well, he hasn’t helped at all,” declared Clarissa, hands on her hips and without a morsel of gratitude. “First he cut the ear off that lovely elephant you’d drawn, then he didn’t wash the red paint from the brush before he put it into the blue and made it all nasty and purple, and then he tried to ruin this tiger, too, by putting the head on so crooked.”

      “Clarissa,” warned Sara. “I believe Lord Revell deserves an apology from you for that.”

      Revell sighed. “No, I don’t,” he said humbly. “I did muddy the paints, exactly as Clarissa said.”

      “That’s not the point, my lord.” As sternly as she could, Sara frowned at Clarissa. “Clarissa, an apology.”

      “Very well.” Now Clarissa was the one to sigh, flopping her hands at her sides to duck the slightest possible curtsy. “Forgive me for speaking so rudely to you, my lord. You didn’t mean to be clumsy and bumbling. You just were.”

      “I know,” admitted Revell as he tried to scrape the paste from his sleeve. “It’s quite a problem with me, isn’t it? But perhaps Miss Blake can help me. Surely there must be some task you’ll trust me with, Miss Blake? Something that not even I could ruin?”

      Though Revell’s expression remained serious and properly penitent for Clarissa’s sake, his eyes sparkled with such amusement that Sara realized he, too, was dangerously close to laughing. The blobs of paste and ruined paint were like another secret they shared, another connection—albeit an untidy one—and she felt such a warmth of fresh affection swirling between them that she couldn’t keep from smiling.

      If they had wed as they’d planned, they could be husband and wife in a house of their own, instead of guest and governess in this one. They could be laughing with their children, making plans for their Christmas together, sharing the paint and paste and mangled elephants, trust and love and happiness.

      Oh, Sara, Sara, take care! A smile is not a promise for the future, nor an explanation for the past, and not once since he found you has he mentioned love….

      “He could make the paper chains to hang over the looking glasses, Miss Blake, couldn’t he?” suggested Clarissa. “Even babies can make those. Here, my lord, it’s quite simple. You cut the strips of paper and loop them together like this.”

      She demonstrated importantly, showing Revell exactly how to make the chain’s paper links tie into one another, as if she were a conjurer revealing a complex trick. “You do have to use the paste again, my lord, but it goes inside, where no one will see if you use too much.”

      “As you wish, memsahib,” said Revell, dutifully bending over the strips of colored paper with more success than he’d shown with the animals; as Clarissa had noted, even a baby could make paper chains.

      But Clarissa’s attention had already bounded forward. “What did you call me?” she asked. “Mem what?”

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