The more time Meg spent with Lucien, the harder it was to bear their time apart. What had begun as an hour or two of tutoring sessions had now become long, lazy afternoons that started around noon and lasted until well after sunset.
As the days grew shorter, so too dwindled what little time remained. Christmas was coming, and then Lucien would be going. There would be no more reason to come to this cozy little study nook. No reason to spread a blanket on the stone floor and place a basket full of food from the castle buffet in the center. No reason for romantic, post-tutoring indoor picnics beside the tower’s big glass window, because there would be no Lucien to share any of it with.
You’ve known that from the beginning, she reminded herself as he refilled her cup of mulled wine. Don’t be greedy. You never expected to share private moments with him at all.
But she was greedy. She did want more. And the things she wanted weren’t things he could give her. She wanted him to stay here in Cressmouth, with her. She wanted to be more important than the French aristocracy. Meg of the Christmas Megs, scandalous spinster with no trace of a reputation and no path to riches. She wanted to matter anyway. She wanted to matter to him. She wanted to be enough.
As he handed her the warm mug, his knuckles brushed hers. The slight contact heated her more than the wine. She wanted more.
So did Lucien, because he cupped her face with his free hand and claimed her mouth with a soul-stealing kiss. It was everything she wanted and everything she feared. She did matter. He didn’t tell her so in words, but with kisses like these, with longing glances, with the way he touched her hand or cheek or shoulder when he had no reason to, except for the same hungry yearning beating in her chest every time she looked at him.
She also knew she wasn’t enough to keep him. How could she be, when perfect Cressmouth wasn’t enough, when the expanding families of his siblings and their new lives here weren’t enough? She wasn’t just Meg of the Christmas Megs. She was the Meg of this particular Christmas, and this Christmas only. Meg of November and December and five days of January.
And then she would be Meg of his past. Meg of his slowly fading memories. Meg the girl that he used to know.
None of which stopped her from matching every kiss with the same passion he showed her. If all they had was right now, she for one did not intend to squander a single moment of it. Fingers in her hair? Yes, please. Torrid kisses until they both gasped for breath? Absolutely. She wouldn’t even mind using this blanket for reasons significantly less chaste than a picnic. She not only kept the door locked in hopes of impending debauchery, she even took the necessary precautions to ensure the only after-effect of lovemaking would be a great memory.
Instead, Lucien broke the kiss, slowly, the pad of his thumb caressing her cheek before he pulled away.
A tender smile softened his features before he turned toward the basket to put away what was left of their plates of cheese and bread and fruit.
Smiling. Her sulking, scowling, glaring, implacable Adonis wore an arrogant, self-satisfied smile because he’d been kissing her. Meg’s heart skipped and her thoughts scattered.
Was it any wonder her chest felt like a thunderstorm raged inside, fierce and powerful, beautiful and dangerous? What they shared between them was all those things and more.
Lucien glanced out the window. “The sun is setting.”
Meg nestled next to him. Sunset was her favorite time of day.
It used to be because twilight meant her cousin would come home from the dairy, and Meg wouldn’t be lonely anymore. But Meg hadn’t been lonely since she and Lucien began filling their days with each other. Now sunset was when study time ended, and having fun could begin.
Sometimes that meant talking. Sometimes that meant kissing. And sometimes that meant leaning against each other before a pink-and-orange stained sky, watching the occasional flutter of snowflakes drift down to the rolling evergreen fields below.
“Why is the snow always so beautiful?” Lucien murmured in English.
Meg tried to keep her grin on the inside. He’d been doing that more and more lately: accidentally continuing to speak in English for a short while, even after their study sessions concluded.
She didn’t want to point it out and risk making him self-conscious—or horrified—but the diminishing pauses between words and the times when he spoke English without realizing it meant he was starting to think in another language, rather than the exhausting effort of translating in one’s head.
Due to interactions with family friends and years of long hours in the smithy, Lucien’s passive exposure to English had given him a large enough working vocabulary to understand meaning from context. But recognizing foreign words was one thing. Being able to recall and reproduce them at will was another thing entirely. A feat he conquered a little more every day.
Most of what remained was building the confidence to speak this new language with others.
“Everything is beautiful, when viewed from the top of a castle,” she replied.
He raised his brows. “You are beautiful from any angle.”
Before she could respond, he stole a quick kiss.
Had she thought this man difficult to please? Lucien was utterly, ridiculously, breathtakingly easy to please. He’d accepted Meg when she’d done nothing ladylike to deserve it. Found her beautiful despite a general appearance best described as well suited for life on a farm.
He loved his family wholeheartedly and unconditionally. Accepted his brother’s English bride as a new sister. Welcomed his sister’s new family as if they’d always been his niece and nephew, vied neck-and-neck for the title of Favorite Uncle. He even spoiled a fat pig as though it were a house pet, treating Chef like one of the family.
The person who had never been able to please Lucien was Lucien himself.
If only he could see how marvelous he already was. How wonderful he always had been.
“Look.” He pointed through a far corner of the window. “We can see the dairy.”
Meg’s breath shook. Seeing the dairy was a daily occurrence she’d once taken for granted. Being forced to move yet again, even to the next village over, was going to be incredibly hard.
“I wish there was something I could do for Jemima.” Meg twisted her hands with worry. Her cousin needed the nursery for her growing family, but Meg worried that the growing family would also need the money they would no longer receive once Meg wasn’t there to pay rent. “There is so much to do to get ready for a baby.”
“I don’t know much about babies,” Lucien admitted in French. “I suppose I should fathom it out before I start begetting heirs.”
A teasing comment about being available to help practice the pleasurable acts of baby-making was on the tip of Meg’s tongue, until the image of whom he’d beget his heirs with filled her mind.
Lucien did not only dream of returning to France. He dreamt of taking a French bride, making a houseful of French babies.
The reminder shouldn’t make her feel so gutted. Lucien had always been open and clear about his aims, his motivations. Meg had known from the start that she wasn’t what he was looking for. She was never what anyone was looking for. She was a good time whilst on holiday, before gentlemen returned to their real lives far away.
She hadn’t even minded, until now. Being able to indulge occasional discreet liaisons had been one of the single greatest advantages of being a twenty-eight-year-old spinster with no reputation to protect. She could choose. She could chase. She could decide.
And then she could wave her fingers and say goodbye.
But this time, it wasn’t so easy. She’d yearned to make a few naked memories in Lucien’s strong arms from the moment they’d first crossed paths, but she’d never dreamed of this. Picnics in a castle tower. Long afternoons of baring their souls to each other under the guise of practicing a new language. Kisses that weren’t a prelude to hurried intercourse in a strange bed, but a featured act in and of themselves.
She didn’t want to wave goodbye to any of that. She wanted to hold tight and never let go.
But she knew it could never happen.
Their differences were more than him wanting to be Parisian haut ton and her aspiring to stay right here in a rural village. More than him wanting a new life and her wishing she could keep hers just as it was.
Even if none of that were true, and Meg actually wished to be some man’s wife, Lucien believed in the same stark class disparity that people like her parents had started a revolution against. Lucien believed he deserved the best comforts in life due to the happenstance of his bloodline. The same happenstance that meant people like Meg and her family did not deserve ballrooms and education and comfort.
As unjust and distasteful as she found such views, Lucien would be appalled to learn just how far her family had gone in their quest to disrupt the status quo. Her father had risked every penny on investments he hoped would provide a better life for his family, but the coal mine had been a last resort. Before that, he’d been out in the streets, protesting shoulder-to-shoulder with other fathers who could never rise through the ranks because there were no ranks at the bottom.
Aristocrats like Lucien’s parents were the reason farmers like Meg’s family could never win a better life.
And desperate rebels like Meg’s father were the reason Lucien had lost his parents.
His family might not have chosen to be born with the blue-blooded advantages of High Society, but men like Meg’s father had enthusiastically chosen to tear the nobility’s advantages to shreds by any means and at any cost.
Lucien would never forgive her if he found out.