The events of the last hour flitted around Elizabeth’s mind like snowflakes. Each time she caught and held one, it simply melted away. Nicholas’s face as he betrayed her. Mary’s gasp of shock and surprise. Delacroix’s deathly stillness at Mary’s bedside. Winterbourne dragging Nicholas into the corridor. The shouting and the noises of a fight. She recalled someone helping her to her chamber and sending for one of the maids. A kindness to be certain, for her eyes still refused to see past the blur of tears she stingily refused to shed. Nicholas’s hateful confession—the harsh, merciless expression on his face, she remembered with excruciating clarity. Her ears fairly rang with his words, save when her mind’s litany of No, no, no! blocked out everything else.
Her calves began to cramp. She looked down and saw she still sat with her legs tucked beneath her as she had after the maid braided her hair, helped her into her nightdress, and tried to put her to bed. Wincing, she unfolded her legs from beneath her and rose from the window seat. Smatterings of snow beat against the windowpanes. It had slowed considerably, which meant the roads might well be cleared tomorrow. Their guests would arrive from the inn. Delacroix’s guests. She would not be mistress here. She would not be mistress anywhere. Not now.
From her place of honor amongst the delicately embroidered lavender, yellow, and green pillows on the bed, Georgiana stared at her from bottomless onyx eyes. A few weeks after that most Perfectly Dreadful Christmas, a parcel had arrived at Sterling Manor. Georgiana had been returned to her wrapped in sheets and sheets of tissue paper with a note tucked in her porcelain hand.
Hide her well. Mama would not understand. I do.
“Oh, Michael,” Elizabeth sighed. She retrieved her old friend from the bed and padded into the sitting room. The maid no doubt had suspected she would not sleep. The fire had been built up, and a tray with cakes and a fresh pot of tea sat on the low table before it. Elizabeth fetched a quilt from a stand in the corner and wrapped it around her legs once she’d lowered herself into the rocking chair before the hearth.
She’d been so angry with Michael the day Mama had taken Georgiana. When he’d returned their father’s last gift to her, all of the anger had burned away, for a time. She’d imagined his joining the cavalry to be a great adventure, another of his efforts to ignore his duties at home. Whilst her brother went off with his friends to play at war, Elizabeth had no choice but to run the estate, make do with what monies he sent them, and deal with Mama’s constant efforts to marry her off and spend money they no longer had.
When Nicholas came to Sterling Manor to tell them Michael was dead, her guilt had been beyond belief. And Nicholas, unnaturally pale and badly wounded, had insisted on being the one to tell her. His grief had been as great as hers, and now she knew why. He’d sent Michael to his death. The money was nothing to him, everything to them, and he’d handed the guineas over for her brother’s commission with no thought to the consequences.
Worse, he’d lied about it. A lie of omission, but a lie nonetheless. She forced herself to remember every moment of his pronouncement. His handsome face drawn in sharp edges, no softness to hide the carved cheeks and brow, the patrician nose, the lips she knew to be soft and demanding in the same moment, and his eyes—icy blue and bleak. He’d stood so tall and straight, an officer delivering bad news to his troops and daring them to flinch. His hands, those long, powerful hands he’d run over her body in such adoration, had clenched and unclenched at his sides until he finally closed them so tightly they’d gone white.
A sting of hurt lanced her heart. Hurt for him, who had made her think he cared for her and had proven it all a horrible prank in the space of only a few days. His face pale and tight, his hands furled to the point of injury—these things pricked at her memory. His eyes so hopeless and in such … what? Anguish? Elizabeth reached for the cup of tea she’d poured and forgotten.
No. He didn’t care. He’d decided Michael must go with them, and he hadn’t given her one thought. He felt no pain. He’d said it himself. He’d killed Michael. He’d said it in that cold, imperious, lifeless voice. She’d heard that voice, seen that face with the heat of a June morning rising off the cobblestone drive and the pale blue of a motionless sky behind him. He’d risen from his sickbed and made a dangerous journey to tell her his friend, her brother, was never coming home again.
“Oh, God,” she murmured. “What am I to do?” She’d had little luck with the Almighty in Christmases past. One would think at this time of year, He’d listen a bit more closely. The evergreen and holly garland around the slab table across the room glistened beneath the candles burning in a pair of silver candlesticks over the manger scene she’d placed with such care. There was an answer there somewhere. Pity her heart was so mangled it couldn’t make it out.
A rap or two at the door stirred her from her musings. “Come in.” It really was annoying to sound like a frail heroine in a horrible novel, when one wanted nothing more than to plant the entire world a facer.
The latch clicked, and a hand crept round waving a large white handkerchief. Elizabeth fought the urge to laugh. “Come in, Lord Winterbourne.”
He stepped inside, his tawny hair mussed, his jacket and waistcoat askew, and the handkerchief still clutched at half-mast. “Is it safe?”
“I daresay it is,” Elizabeth said with a Drury Lane sigh. “I left my pistols in Brighton.”
“Thank God for that.” He sat in the armchair across from her and perused the cakes the maid had left her. “You have been provoked to violence and rumor has it you are a crack shot.”
“Miss Tidings is far more violent than I and she has already threatened to shoot your father.”
“Splendid. I shall have to gift her with a brace of Mantons for Christmas.” He popped a little lemon cake into his mouth.
“Is she well? I mean, I fear our little Christmas pantomime unsettled her.” She knew Mary was as surprised as she, yet it was Nicholas’s face she saw. Nicholas standing in that doorway, alone in a room full of people.
“She sent me to look in on you. She is fine. Delacroix is with her.”
And Nicholas was alone. Why did she care? He deserved it. He was not to be trusted, the great Major St. Gabriel ordering all of their lives.
Winterbourne had stopped eating, a rare occurrence, and he was studying her with the strangest expression on his face.
“You weren’t the only one who needed to escape your mother, you know,” he said softly. Winterbourne not eating was disconcerting. Winterbourne serious was … she didn’t know what it was. She’d never seen it.
“Sterling was not as strong as you, Elizabeth. He’d been your mother’s darling for so long he didn’t know how to be anything else.”
“He could have learned. Had he stayed at home and managed the estate, he could have put Mama in her place.”
“Do you really believe that or is it what you hoped would happen?”
There was no need to answer when confronted with the truth. No matter how much it hurt.
“Serving Wellington was the making of him, Fair Lizzie. You saw him when he came home on leave. He’d changed. He had purpose.”
“He paid a terrible price for it.”
“It was his price to pay. He chose to pay it.”
His words landed like a blow and nearly struck the air from her body. She’d lived with her brother for sixteen years and yet, perhaps she never knew him at all.
“Had he not gone to war he might never have met Mary. He might never have known love. You like her, I think. Would you have wanted him to miss the time he had with her?”
“No. Of course not.” She hardly knew what to say. Everything turned over and over in her head. The manger scene caught her eye.
“Mary loved him,” Winterbourne said with uncharacteristic sincerity.
“I know. I’m glad he knew love. I see it in her eyes when she speaks of him. I hear it in her voice.”
“I see it and hear it in you, Lizzie. Every time our reluctant Lord Leistonbury walks into a room.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Why was he saying these things? Her heart was broken. How could she forgive Nicholas after all he’d done?
“It’s the only thing that does matter.” Winterbourne left his chair and moved to the window.
Not even snow beat against it now, only darkness. What did he see?
“Love is like,” he turned and looked at her, a boyish smile on his face. “Daffodils after a storm. The sky runs black ink over the blue, the thunder growls and the rain beats and beats them into the ground and you fear they will never be the same. But when the rain stops, they stand up, shake their heads, and even if they’re battered and bruised, they know they will endure because that is what they do. They endure.”
Somewhere in his recitation, Elizabeth stood up. The blanket fell from her legs, and Georgiana landed on it. “How did you …Where did you hear that?”
“Ask Lord Leistonbury.”
“What are you talking about? I wrote that to Estelle. How did you hear it?”
He picked up Georgiana and placed her in the rocking chair. “I see the beautiful but silent Georgiana made it home.”
“Georgiana? Michael sent her to me. After the house party. Tell me how you knew what I wrote?” She grabbed his arm and gave it a shake.
“Sterling didn’t send Georgiana.” He squeezed her hand and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “It was always you, Fair Lizzie. For Nicholas, it was you as long as any of us can remember.” He walked to the door. “And if you want to know how I knew about the daffodils, ask him.”
Rooted to the delicately patterned Aubusson carpet in the middle of the room, Elizabeth stared at the door he’d left open. In her head, words and thoughts and images clanged together like pots and pans tumbling from the kitchen ceiling. Her world made no sense, not a single thing in it stood still long enough to contemplate. But her heart, her battered heart stood up and shook its head. Impossible. Improbable. She might pay a terrible price for what she was about to do. But it was hers to pay. Forget the whole world. Elizabeth wanted to plant Major Nicholas St. Gabriel, the Earl of Leistonbury, a facer. And then she wanted to know exactly how he felt about her.
Elizabeth ran into the corridor. She looked right and then left. Sprawled in a chair at the end of the corridor, Winterbourne nodded toward the west wing. “Green bedchamber.”
She walked calmly past him.
“Give no quarter, General.”
Nicholas shifted the pillows behind him and leaned forward to rub his leg. A few of the letters he’d been reading threatened to slide off the coverlet onto the floor. He rescued them and tucked them back into the small wooden chest he’d dragged from Ciudad Rodrigo to Waterloo. Once he’d read each one for the last time, he’d leave them in the little sitting room for Elizabeth to find. He had no right to them, especially after this evening’s events.
He picked up the page he’d been reading. The words blurred. He wanted to go to Elizabeth. Her revulsion and anger at his betrayal struck at him with the force and precision of a blacksmith’s hammer. Every pulse of his heart brought her face to mind and shook his body to the core.
It had worked. He’d wanted to drive away whatever tender feelings she had for him and he’d done a bang-up-to-the-mark job. She was free and in time, she’d thank him. She’d make a life with Delacroix, and perhaps in time, she’d forgive him enough for Delacroix’s sake to at least speak to him when they met. Ever selfish where Elizabeth was concerned, he would take it. A hello every now and then would be enough. Bollocks. He almost believed that. He stared at the unread page once more.
A light, insistent tap at the door interrupted his misery. Probably Winterbourne with a bottle of brandy and a plate of tarts. He’d had as much Christmas cheer as he wanted for this Christmas and any Christmases in the future, thank you very much.
“Happy damned Christmas, Winterbourne. Now go away.” The door opened with a faint click. He set about opening another letter. “Meddlesome mother hen.”
“Meddlesome? You have no idea. Mother hen? Not yet. And I’m not going away until I say what I have to say.”
“Elizabeth.” Nicholas stopped breathing. With her arms folded across her chest, she was a glorious figure in a sheer white nightdress and a furious expression on her face. An avenging angel in her bare feet—and she was in his bedchamber.
Wait. Elizabeth was in his bedchamber. He was lying in bed wearing nothing but a dressing gown and an instant cockstand.
His head tried to move in several directions at once. Letters, her letters to his sister, littered the coverlet. He needed to get the letters before she saw them. She needed to get out of this room. What the devil was she doing in his room?
“What are you reading?” She bent to pick one up from the floor. Which afforded him a lovely view of—
“Give me that.” Nicholas leaned forward to take it from her. And promptly fell out of bed. “Damn!” Agonizing pain shot up his leg. Worse. Letters cascaded off the coverlet on top of him.
“Nicholas,” she cried and knelt beside him. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” He tried to cover his injured leg and keep her from retrieving any more letters. “What are you doing here? You can’t be here.”
She plucked one letter from his lap and then another. His body hummed with awareness. The scent of jasmine and roses drew him to the long braid hanging over her shoulder. A vision of chestnut hair draped over his pillow flashed before his eyes.
“You have no right to dictate my whereabouts, and these are my letters,” she accused.
“What?” Did she have any idea how diaphanous the firelight made her nightdress? He couldn’t think. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be speaking to him. He’d send her away. Now.
She sat down on the floor and began to collect the letters into little stacks. “These are my letters to Estelle. How did you get them?”
“She sent them to me.” He hadn’t meant to tell her. He hadn’t meant to tell her about Sterling’s commission either. He’d done it for her own good. His twisted leg began to throb. The angry red scar peeked out from his dressing gown. “You can have them back. I was going to leave them for you. Put them in that box and go.” He clutched the side of the mattress and started to pull himself to his feet.
She huffed, rolled her eyes at him, gathered the letters, and put them on the bedside table.
“Idiot,” she muttered as she moved behind him and shoved her hands under his arms. “Up,” she grunted.
Once he was on his feet, he steadied himself and turned to face her.
“Sapskull.” She hit him in the chest. “Liar.” Another hit. “Arrogant.” Another. “Manipulating” She shoved him and he stumbled to sit on the bed. “Overbearing.” Her fist landed on his shoulder. “You made decisions for all of us and then decided how we would feel as well.”
“I know, dammit!” He struggled to his feet and walked to grip the marble chimneypiece with both hands. He had to or risk throwing her on the bed and keeping her there until all the guilt and sorrow he knew was burned away in her arms. His forehead came to rest on the cool, carved marble of the mantel. “I know.”
He heard her footsteps behind him. With a shush of muslin against leather, she seated herself in the fireside chair and tucked her feet beneath her. She waved a sheaf of worn pages at him.
“My letters?”
He didn’t dare look at her. She was speaking to him. He’d decided in his soul she’d never speak to him again. And now he hoped.
“Estelle sent them to me.” Her scent, the sound of her breathing—he was greedy for them. “She found them so beautiful and entertaining and witty, she thought I would as well.”
“Did you?”
He needed to see her face. And when he did, his heart kicked into a clumsy gallop. “Those letters saved my life, Elizabeth. They saved all our lives.”
Her eyes widened. She lowered her feet to the floor. Perfect, dainty toes peeked from beneath the hem of her gown. “I don’t understand.”
“My sister did.” He lowered himself in slow stages to his knees in front of her chair. “Your letters kept us from running mad. You gave us England, Elizabeth, in little moments on every page. And you gave Estelle the world outside her sickroom. I made decisions for you, for everyone I hold dear. I told myself I was taking care of my responsibilities. You didn’t talk. You simply did it. You took care of Estelle. And you took care of me. Because of those letters I lived. And because I lived so did my men.”
“But not my brother,” she said softly.
He bowed his head. He’d had such hope. “No. Not Sterling. I decided he would come to war with us, but I couldn’t keep him safe.”
Dainty fingers threaded through his hair in gentle caresses. He shivered at every stroke.
“One of the things I’ve always admired about you is your ability to command—a room, a group of ruffian bachelors, your temper.” Her voice brushed over the top of his skin in waves of snowflakes and fiery embers.
He tilted his head to press his cheek into her palm. If the memory of her touch was all he took from this Christmas, he’d count himself the most fortunate of men.
“You’ve tried to control everything and everyone for so long because you don’t know how to do anything else.” She bent forward. Her breast brushed against his face. Her lips moved against his ear. “Life isn’t safe and the mighty Major St. Gabriel can’t make it safe no matter how many orders he gives.”
Nicholas’s eyes snapped open. His fierce Little General pinned him with pools of iron mists. Whatever made him think he could command this woman? Whatever made him think he could deserve her?
“You lied to me.”
“I never wanted you to hate me, Elizabeth. It was selfish of me.” He couldn’t lie to her anymore. Not when she touched his scarred cheek and studied him like some elfish angel. “I took Sterling from you because of my own arrogance. I thought I knew what was best for him. And he died. You struggled to look after the estate and your mother, and it was all my fault.”
“My brother didn’t lose his life because you bought his commission. He lost his life because he decided to live it. Which makes him the braver man, my lord.”
“What?” Nicholas’s entire body thrummed. He’d sorted through her every expression. He’d committed each one to memory. Never had she looked at him like this.
She cupped his face in her sweet hands and touched her lips to his in the most tender of kisses. “Forgiveness is an act of bravery and hope, Nicholas. You made yourself responsible for Sterling’s death and you decided how you would pay for it, but you decided for me as well. Can you forgive yourself, forgive yourself enough to love me?”
He kissed her with a hunger born of staring at a feast forever out of reach. “I fell more in love with you with every letter you wrote,” he gasped as he somehow managed to get them both on their feet. “I never thought I was good enough.” He leaned his forehead against hers.
She slipped her arms around his neck and laughed. “You’re an earl, for heaven’s sake.”
“I’m a man, Elizabeth, with flaws inside and out. You deserve better.”
“I want you, Nicholas.”
He nearly groaned at the sensation of her body pressed to his. “You deserve perfect. You’re perfect.”
“I’m perfectly ordinary and you know it. And you’re perfectly dreadful. And I love you, Nicholas, flaws and all.”
He didn’t know what he should do. So he did what he wanted to do. He kissed her.
Elizabeth’s body simmered with new sensations. Nicholas plundered her mouth with his lips. He tasted, he sipped, he tugged her bottom lip between his teeth, and when she squeaked in response, he laughed. It vibrated against her lips and rumbled over her breasts to burst into her heart like a Catherine wheel, all sparks and light. His tongue flicked along the seam of her lips. She opened to him, only a bit at first and then in a sharp gasp as his hands gripped her bottom and he pulled her snugly to his hips.
She memorized his every move and mimicked it in kind. Every gasp she drew from him, every groan, thrilled her. She ran her hand under his dressing gown and explored every amazing sculpted line. His chest was broad and crafted of hot skin over hard muscle. She plucked at one nipple and he shuddered. For some reason she wanted to taste him. She pulled her lips from his, ran them down his neck, nipped his collarbone, and kissed a trail to the hard knot at the center of his nipple.
Suddenly she was being carried in uneven haste and deposited with great care onto his bed. Nicholas began to pull his dressing gown from his shoulders, but stopped and gazed into her eyes with such fierceness and love she forgot to breathe.
“I’m an arrogant, overbearing arse, Elizabeth. I am not the man who danced with you six years ago. I can’t let you go. Not now. I’ll fight anyone who tries to take you from me. I love you, but if you have any doubts—” Whatever he intended to say was lost.
His magnificent chest, scarred and marked with wounds of honor, heaved with desire. She knew it was desire. Her own body burned and panted it with every breath. She tugged the sash of his dressing gown free and pushed the heavy brocade fabric from his shoulders. Her fingers could not resist. She ran them over his arms, his chest, down his flanks. A long saber slash ran down his left thigh, across his knee to the top of his foot. He flinched when she touched the puckered line of it. When she allowed her perusal to travel back up, she barely stifled a gasp.
“Elizabeth?” he rasped.
She wrapped her fingers around him. Soft skin over stone hard muscle. Oh. My. She sat up on her knees, never letting go, and ran her lips lightly over his.
“No doubts, Nicholas,” she murmured. “It’s Christmas. I know exactly what I want.”
“Thank God,” he groaned.
Before she knew it, he had whipped her nightdress over her head and flung it across the room. Elizabeth knew she blushed from head to toe. Then she saw Nicholas’s face.
“You’re beautiful, Elizabeth.” He caressed the underside of her breast with his knuckles. And when he bent his head to taste her there, she bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out. Nicholas pushed her onto her back. His mouth explored every inch of her body. She went from embarrassed confusion to a heavenly haze of warmth and shooting sparks of sensation everywhere he kissed, everywhere he touched, everything he licked or caressed.
She stroked his hair as he worshipped her breasts, and she could think of no other words to describe the nips and gentle suckling he applied until she had no sense of her body at all—only the things he did to her, the rising excitement he made her feel.
It felt odd when his hand moved to the spot between her legs. He stroked and soothed, all the while kissing her and whispering such wonderful things against her lips. And when he moved between her legs and pressed himself against her entrance, a primitive and heavenly instinct made her move against him.
“Elizabeth, my love,” he murmured. Over and over he said her name. She dug her fingers into the sinews of his back. A little sting and they were suddenly hip to hip. His eyes locked with hers.
“Good?” he asked in a strained voice.
“Yes. Odd. But, oh. Oh my.” He’d begun to move inside her, slowly at first and then a bit faster and then back to slow. And once she got over the strangeness, something else began to bloom inside her.
He grinned at her, actually grinned. He had hardly smiled at all since Waterloo. And now he was grinning and his eyes were alive as they hadn’t been in such a long time. Elizabeth marveled at the power she had, at the unspeakable closeness between them. She caught the rhythm and moved with him, awkwardly at first and then they were one. His hands meshed with hers, their fingers intertwined, and every beat of his heart pulsed against her palms.
“Don’t close your eyes, my love,” he gasped. “Look at me. Tell me you forgive me. I will do anything. Anything.”
She looked until blinding light burst inside her into every color imaginable. She flew into the summer sky of his eyes. He groaned her name and shuddered again and again. No bells rung on Christmas Day sounded as clearly and sweetly as the sound of her name on his lips.
Nicholas bowed his head onto her breasts.
“I never dreamed, Elizabeth,” he whispered against her heart. “All those lonely nights on battlefields on foreign soil I hoped, but I never dreamed of this. I don’t know how—”
“Hope, Nicholas.” Elizabeth traced his scar as he raised his head to meet her eyes. “With all of my lists and preparations and tumbling footmen and all my anger about Michael’s death, I forgot.”
“Forgot what, darling?”
“Hope. Christmas is about hope and forgiveness and—”
“And love, Elizabeth. Against all odds, even when a man has no hope of deserving it, enduring love.”