Snowbound Surrender. Louise Allen

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      Tonight, it was a shock to see her in her mother’s place, in a gown of ice-blue silk, with the family jewels at her throat. There was nothing unusual about her attire. In style and expense she looked none too different from the women he had courted in London while trying to forget her.

      But he had not found himself intrigued by the way the candlelight settled in the hollows of their shoulders, nor were his eyes drawn to the shadow between their breasts that disappeared into the bodice of their gowns. Sitting across from Lucy, he had to struggle not to stare at her like a starving man in front of a feast.

      Though he had loved her no less, he’d spent much of the last five years thinking of Lucy Clifton as a child, pretty but naïve, and in need of sheltering. But the woman at the table tonight was controlled, intelligent and beautiful. Worst of all, she intrigued him in a way that he hadn’t expected. He wanted to sit with her and have her tell him everything he had missed while he had been gone and how she had become even more wonderful than he remembered.

      ‘I swear, this dinner was the best we have had,’ said Fred, interrupting his thoughts. ‘Well done, Lucy. Well done.’ As the last of the pudding was taken away, her brother clapped his hands, beaming down the table at his sister.

      Lucy blushed prettily in response. ‘I hardly deserve credit for it. The menu is the same every year and Cook and the kitchen maids did all the work.’

      ‘All hail Cook, then,’ he said with another grin, raising his glass in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Perhaps it is simply the company we keep this year and that we are eating without the threat from France, thanks to our friend, the fearless Major Gascoyne.’ He applauded again, this time directing his approval to Jack.

      Jack’s feeling of contentment evaporated at this hyperbole. ‘Really, Fred. It is not as if I brought down Napoleon single-handed.’

      ‘Since Wellington is not here to receive it, you must accept the gratitude of the nation,’ Fred said with a shrug. ‘A toast to Major Gascoyne.’

      ‘Here, here!’

      Now the whole table was raising their glasses to him and he had to fight the desire to run.

      ‘Now you are embarrassing Jack instead of me,’ Lucy said, drawing the attention away from him as if she had sensed his discomfort.

      ‘I cannot help it,’ Fred replied. ‘I am simply glad to see that he has returned safely.’ Then he looked to Jack. ‘It is good to have you home, old friend.’

      ‘And good to see you, as well.’ Jack was surprised to find that it was not quite a lie. He had cursed the fellow often enough, while in Portugal, for without Fred’s impetus he’d have never gone to war. But now that he was home, he realised how much he had longed for his friendship.

      He took a hurried sip of his wine to fight a wave of sentimentality. Perhaps it was rich food, the smell of the yule log burning and the fresh greens brought into the house at the darkest time of the year that made one prone to such open displays of emotion. His throat closed as if in a prelude to tears. This, all of it, was what he had missed when he was away on the Peninsula, the homey familiarity of it.