‘Meow.’
Giles looked down to where Fred had hooked his claws into the cloth of his breeches. ‘I have fed you. I have given you a fresh sawdust box. You are warm and your mistress will be home soon. I even put up with you sleeping on the end of the bed and snoring all night. What more do you want?’
The cat gave him a disgusted look, removed his claws and stalked off down the hall. Giles shrugged, let himself out and surveyed the depressing view in front of him. The heavy rain had been replaced by a steady drizzle from low cloud that shrouded the Vale like a sodden blanket. The snow had dissolved into muddy slush wherever it was not protected and the trees and bushes were bedraggled and dripping.
The prospect of the walk in front of him was not pleasant. Giles told himself to show a bit of backbone and set off down the path, using the stout stick he had found in the woodshed. The ice remained in treacherous patches and he had no intention of breaking a leg on the way down.
The damp air was still cold and that at least was welcome after the almost sleepless night he had passed. It was all due to that damned cat snoring, of course. He was doing the right thing and Julia’s cool, smiling reaction as he left confirmed it.
There are no stars tonight.
And Miss Jepson, well meaning, interfering, wanted a good match for her young neighbour, that was all her words to him had been about.
He opened the gate without a glance at the apple tree and its hidden mistletoe and made his way along the lane. There was smoke rising from the chimneys of the other large cottages that he passed and at the end of the row, where the dwelling was more a house than a cottage, two men were clearing the front path. Giles hailed them and they came down to the gate. He glimpsed livery beneath their topcoats and scarves.
‘Good morning. What is the best way down to the village, would you say?’
‘Good morning, sir.’ The taller one doffed his hat. ‘Just along the way you are going and there’s a bend and you’ll meet the road. It’s steep, sir, you’d best watch your footing, but it’s a sunken lane and protected by the woods, and the snow doesn’t usually lie deep.’
Giles instinctively reached for a coin to tip them, remembered he had none and trudged on. By the time he reached the first cottages at the foot of the hill he was wet, cold, bruised from falling, and feeling he had gone several rounds at one of the more stringent boxing saloons.
There were enough people around to direct him past the pond and stocks on the green to Beech House. He pounded on the door knocker and found himself face-to-face with an unfamiliar butler, presumably hired with the establishment.
‘I’ll thank you to go round to the service entrance, my man. I assume you’ve come for work clearing the snow.’
Giles decided he was tired of scratchy livery and carpentry, footman’s duties and snow. He drew himself up and looked the man in the eye. ‘I am Lord Missenden. Sir Felix is expecting me. I assume there is a room prepared and my luggage unpacked. I require a hot bath as soon as I have spoken to Sir Felix.’
Just over an hour later—bathed, warm, comfortable—Giles lounged in a deep armchair, surrounded by his four friends. From a room at the back of the house came the sound of feminine laughter and someone playing the pianoforte.
‘So what happened?’ he demanded.
Felix waved the others into silence. ‘These idiots got down to the village as the roads became impassable, realised once they asked where they were that they had made a mistake and were sent along here. We had to assume you were safe enough, even if causing an uproar—the cottages up there all had lights in the windows, apparently. Anyway, to cut things short, Mrs Fanshawe was routed in no short order—rumours of my massive debts were more than enough to make sure of that. It seems she’d have put up with almost any kind of bad behaviour if I had money.’
‘So where are they now?’
‘Gone, first thing this morning as soon as the word came that the turnpike was clear to the next town at least.’
‘So your sacrifice was in vain, old fellow,’ Hal Woodley said with a grin. ‘Did you cause a scandal? How’s the frostbite? I do hope we haven’t ruined your marriage prospects.’ He stared at Giles. ‘Now what have I said?’
‘Nothing.’ Giles forced a smile. ‘I was taken in by kindly cottagers, warmed, clothed and fed.’
‘It sounds as though you had the best of the bargain,’ Woodley said. ‘Felix is a wonderful host, no doubt about it, but dodging scheming females under the mistletoe is confoundedly wearing, you have to admit.’ He gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘We can all look forward to the New Year free of parson’s mousetrap.’
‘Yes,’ Giles agreed. ‘That’s a welcome prospect.’
Five days had passed since Giles had left Beech View and walked down to the village. There had been no word, of course, but Peter and John, the footmen from Falconer’s, the end house, reported seeing him on his way past and then added the news that Sir Felix Wheaton’s party was still in full swing at Beech House and they were rumoured to be seeing in the New Year in style.
Miss Jepson and Miss Margaret dropped by to see her daily, so kind and concerned, without quite saying why, that Julia wanted to scream. They had hired help from the village while Annie was regaining her strength and so Dorothy returned to Beech View, bringing with her more news of Beech House, gleaned from a shopping trip down to Lower Bourne.
‘They are doing themselves ever so well. Mr Poulton, the butler, says they brought crates of wine and brandy with them and he’s had to place orders with all the local farmers because they’ve been eating so well. And Sir Felix brought a fancy French cook and there’s some really pretty young ladies with lovely gowns, so I hear from Jen Potter, who helps in the kitchen. I wonder if they’ll have dancing tonight, seeing as it’s New Year’s Eve.’
‘I am sure they will,’ Julia said, stabbing herself painfully in the thumb as she darned a pair of stockings. ‘How pleasant for them.’
She insisted that Dorothy go down to the village in the afternoon before the light went to see in the New Year with her family. ‘I have been invited to Bluebell Cottage,’ she reminded her.
When the clock struck eight she dressed in her blue-velvet evening gown and did her hair, feeling that she was putting on armour against the kindness of her friends. She was certain they had guessed she had fallen in love with Giles and they sincerely pitied her for it, even as they made careful remarks about wild young aristocrats, their habit of toying with helpless females and the importance of preserving one’s reputation at all costs.
I am not a helpless female, she thought rebelliously as she fastened her best pearl necklace around her neck and put on her pearl earrings. And I love him. And if I had thought he loved me... But he did not or he would have said so and he would not have gone.
‘Wouldn’t he, Fred?’
Fred, his eyes fixed on a promising hole in the skirting board, ignored her, although he did condescend to come downstairs and join her by the fireside as she waited for the clock to strike eight, the time when Julia would make her way along to Bluebell Cottage.
The rattle of the front-door knocker took her by surprise. Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast, she realised as she stood and picked up a candlestick. The last time the knocker had sounded Giles was on her front step in a state of nature, poised to set her comfortable little world on its head.
But, of course, this would be a message from one of the other cottages—good wishes, no doubt, or a small seasonal token. She opened the door wide, a smile on her lips, and froze.
The man standing in front of her was the same, but this was undoubtedly Lord Missenden the Viscount, hat in immaculately gloved hands, his broad shoulders supporting a fashionable caped coat open to give a glimpse of a crisp neckcloth and silk waistcoat.
There ought to be words, some kind of polite social remark or perhaps a lightly turned joke about history repeating itself, but she could only stare at him until she finally managed to croak, ‘What?’
‘I have come, Miss Chancellor, to invite you to see in the New Year at Beech House.’
‘But...I am promised to Bluebell Cottage.’
‘Sir Felix’s carriage is already there. I explained to him that I owed the ladies hospitality, so they, and Annie and the baby, will be conveyed down in comfort. The staff at the house are eager to meet young William.’ As he spoke a carriage drove past, heading back towards the lane to the village.
‘But...’ It seemed the only word she could manage.
‘I can only offer you a curricle, which seems a rather chilly choice for the last night in December, but I have come to tell you, Julia, that the stars are out again. I think we can see them better in the open.’
‘The stars?’ She put out a hand and drew him into the warmth, closing the door on the cold night.
‘The stars and the magic. There is something I very much want to say to you, Julia, and I want to say it in the starlight. Will you wrap up warmly and come with me? I had to leave you before I could understand what I was feeling, you see, and I am hoping you will forgive me for that.’
Suddenly she could move, could speak, could feel. ‘Yes, I will come and, no, there is nothing to forgive because I needed time to think as well.’
He waited patiently while she ran to find her cloak with the fur hood and her muff and gloves, set the guard around the fire and told Fred to be good, then he took her arm as they walked down the path, a little slippery with frost. But there was no need, she thought, her feet were floating above the ice.
The curricle was at the gate, already turned, two horses patient in the shafts. Giles helped her up, then drove in silence to the lane and turned uphill. ‘I found this viewpoint, right over your chimney tops,’ he said as he reined in.
‘Oh.’ The view was breathtaking, as clear as it had been that night they had looked out from the window. But they were higher now and the sky was a bowl of black velvet above them, spangled with light.
‘The stars are back, Julia, and I do not think the magic ever went away.’ Giles dropped the reins, but the horses stood still. ‘I did not understand how I felt, only that it was an ache in my heart and, when I left you, that the ache became torment. My friends were joking about wild plans and adventures, about avoiding parson’s mousetrap, and I realised that all I wanted was to be with you, to start building something wonderful for the rest of our lives. I love you, Julia. Will you marry me?’
There was no need to think, no room for doubts when the sincerity was warm and true in his voice.
‘Oh, yes, Giles. I love you so much and I thought it would be so wrong to marry you.’
Then his arms were around her and he was kissing her, holding her so close that she could feel the beat of his heart. How long they kissed, she had no idea, but then the curricle moved and Giles released her as he found the reins. ‘I should not keep them standing in this cold. Or keep you out in it either.’
‘No. Let us go down and let them go to their stable. The magic will come with us, I think.’
‘Now that we’ve found it,’ Giles agreed, ‘I do not think it will ever leave us.’ He linked his left hand with her right and drove downhill towards the lights and the laughter and a new year filled with love and magic.