Buch lesen: «Gifts of the Season: A Gift Most Rare / Christmas Charade / The Virtuous Widow»

Chapter One

Ladysmith Manor, Sussex

December, 1801

Six years had passed since she’d seen him last, yet with a lurch to her heart, she realized she’d know him anywhere.

With her hands primly clasped to help mask their trembling, Sara Blake leaned closer to the tall window, her breath lightly frosting the glass as she gazed down at the gentleman in black climbing down from his carriage to the snow-dusted drive. She remembered when he’d not been so sober and somber, another Christmas when he’d worn a peacock-blue coat that had made his eyes even brighter as they’d laughed together, he the handsomest man in the governor general’s ballroom.

Six years. How she’d loved and trusted him then, with all the fervency that her seventeen-year-old heart could offer! He wore his dark hair cropped shorter now, another change to follow the fashion. But as the wind ruffled it across his brow, she remembered how soft those curls had been to touch, how she’d relished the silky feel of them beneath her fingers when he’d bent to kiss her.

“You do know who that is, don’t you, Miss Blake?” asked Clarissa Fordyce with all the relish of her much-indulged eight-year-old self. “That’s the gentleman that Mama didn’t wish us to invite here for the holiday, until Albert insisted.”

“Young gentlemen like your brother often have friends of which their mothers do not quite approve,” said Sara, striving to keep her voice properly objective, the way a good governess’s should always be, even as the old fears and questions were making her palms damp and her heart race. “Learning to make wise choices in companions is not always an easy skill to acquire.”

“This one wasn’t wise at all,” declared Clarissa soundly. With fingers sticky from marzipan, she pressed her plump hands to the glass, eagerly studying the man who was certain to be the most interesting among her mother’s guests this week. “Albert says everyone calls him the Sapphire Lord, and that he was the wickedest devil in all of India!”

“Mind your words, Clarissa,” chided Sara as her cheeks warmed with a guilty rush of old memories. How could he still affect her like this after so much time apart? “No lady concerns herself with what ‘everyone’ says. I’m sure the gentleman has another name by which you shall be expected to address him.”

“Yes, Miss Blake,” answered Clarissa promptly, but without the slightest pretense of contrition or remorse as she pressed closer to the glass. Far below the gentleman was climbing the clean-swept steps, his traveling cloak fluttering back from his broad shoulders as Albert Fordyce hurried forward to greet him. “His true name, Miss Blake, is Lord Revell Claremont, and I shall be perfectly respectful to him on account of him being Mama’s guest, and his brother being a duke, and because Albert would thrash me if I didn’t. But Lord Revell does look like a wicked devil, doesn’t he?”

Yet when Sara looked down at Revell Claremont, she saw infinitely more. She saw the man she’d once loved not just with her heart but her soul, as well—but she also saw her own long-gone innocence, and the end of a fairy-tale existence in a faraway land. She saw betrayal and heartbreak and the sudden loss of everything she’d held most dear, and a scandal she’d hoped she’d forever left behind with her old name and life, half a world and two oceans away. She saw her past disclosed and her father’s shameful crime curtly revealed, her dismissal from this house swift and inevitable and her future once again made perilously uncertain. Revell Claremont had abandoned her to fate before, when he’d claimed to love her, and she’d absolutely no reason to believe he’d do otherwise now.

Ah, Merry Christmas, indeed.

Revell stood before the fireplace with his legs slightly spread and his hands outstretched toward the flames, pretending to concentrate entirely on the fire until he heard the footman’s steps leave the room, and the latch to the bedchamber door click gently closed behind him. With a sigh of relief, Revell finally let his shoulders sag, and his sigh trailed off into a groan of exhaustion. He hoped his manservant Yates would return soon with the bath he’d ordered, and a parade of maidservants with steaming pitchers of hot water from the kitchen.

Blast, but he was tired, clear through his blood to his bones and his soul. Traveling did that to a man, and Revell hadn’t lingered in one place for more than three nights at a time in over a year. Restless as last summer’s leaf in the wind: that was how his older brother Brant had described his wandering, and Revell couldn’t disagree. He couldn’t, not really, not when it was the cold, honest truth.

But then what did Brant know of restlessness, anyway, snug in his grand house in London with his brandy in his hand? Revell had been the one their father had cast the farthest from home, less like a twisting leaf than a worthless penny minted from tin instead of copper. Yet since then Revell had made himself into a wealthy man with the fortune to match his title, a man with power and influence and the awestruck respect of others, exactly the sort of man that, as a boy, he and his two brothers had sworn they would become. Certainly Brant had succeeded, and George, too, and he’d never heard either of them complain of their lot. If restlessness and loneliness were the price to be paid for their success, then so it had been.

Revell shook his head, resisting the lure of the old bitterness, and spread his fingers to take in more of the fire’s warmth. He’d been away so long that he’d forgotten how cold Sussex could be in December, or maybe this chill, like the weariness, was only another sign of getting old. He frowned at his reflection in the looking glass over the mantel, half expecting to see his thick black hair streaked with white or his sharp blue eyes turned rheumy with age. He would, after all, be twenty-eight next month, and he shook his head again at how quickly time had slipped by.

From habit he reached into the inside pocket of his waistcoat to find the small curved box, the gold-stamped calfskin worn from touching, and with his thumb he flipped open the lid. At once the cluster of sapphires inside caught the dancing light from the flames, flashing sparks and stars of brilliant blue as he turned the gold ring this way and that. For six years he’d carried this betrothal ring with him, close to his heart, a constant reminder of the one woman he’d thought had been destined to wear it, the only woman he’d ever love, the one who’d spoiled all others for him.

Love. With a muttered oath, he snapped the little box shut and shoved it back into his pocket, wishing he could thrust aside her memory as easily. God knows she’d been able to forget him fast enough, vanishing from Calcutta without explanation or regret or even one last bittersweet word of farewell.

Six years, yet in an instant he could still recall the rippling merriment of her laughter, the way her eyes would grow soft and her cheeks flush when she looked at him, the cherry-sweet taste of her mouth welcoming his.

His dearest, darling Sara….

Six years, hell. He was growing old, and foolishly sentimental, as well, dreading his own company and memories so blasted much that he’d accepted Albert Fordyce’s invitation to come here to Ladysmith. They’d been at school together, true, but Revell hadn’t seen Albert for years until they’d met by sheerest coincidence last week outside Drury Lane. The promise of a Christmas goose and rum punch and mistletoe in the doorways, a roaring great yule log in the fireplace and a masquerade ball for Twelfth Night: that was all it had taken to lure Revell here for a fortnight of weighty cookery, squealing fiddle music, and tedious entertainments with red-faced country squires and their bouncing, plump-cheeked ladies.

And none of it would be enough to make Revell forget Sara, not by half. Nothing ever was.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

For what must have been the thousandth time in this past hour, Sara glanced at the tall case clock that, bedecked with a spray of holly and red ribbon for the season, stood in the corner of the drawing room. Only five minutes remained until seven, when, without fail, Lady Fordyce would marshal her guests for the short procession to the dining room table, and Sara and Clarissa would begin their own little procession upstairs to the nursery for their more humble meal.

Now four minutes were left: could fortune really be smiling upon her like this? Her heart racing, Sara smoothed the small muslin ruffle on the end of her sleeve. If Revell were like the rest of the guests gathered in this room, then he’d be staying at Ladysmith through Twelfth Night. Their paths were bound to cross before then—the manor was simply not so large a house that it could be avoided—but the longer the meeting could be postponed, the better. True, it was unforgivably rude for Revell not to have come here to the drawing room to greet his hostess before dinner on his first night, but for Sara it meant another day and night when her secret was still safe.

Three minutes. There was, of course, also the chance that Revell wouldn’t recognize her. Sara knew she was much changed since he’d seen her last. Her sorrows showed on her face, and the plain, serviceable way in which she dressed did little in her favor. Besides, as Clarissa’s governess, she was not much different nor more visible than any other family servant. Although she’d been standing here beside the window for the past hour while Clarissa had been petted and indulged by the others, she doubted any of the elegantly gowned ladies or handsome, laughing gentlemen had noticed her at all. She could only pray that Revell would do the same.

“Miss Blake,” said Lady Fordyce, sweeping toward Sara. She was a tall, handsome woman, kind and good-natured, who lavished upon her two children with the same fondness and devotion that her husband Sir David doted upon her. “I believe it is time for Clarissa to retire for the evening.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Sara with an efficient small curtsy to mask her relief. She’d be able to escape with two minutes to spare. “Clarissa has found the holidays most exciting.”

“I should blame her brother rather than the holidays,” said Lady Fordyce with an exasperated sniff as she watched her children. Held high upon Albert’s shoulder, a delighted Clarissa was shrieking Christmas songs as loudly as she could, pumping her arms up and down like a military bandleader and not at all like a young lady.

“Albert,” said Lady Fordyce sternly. “Albert! Please lower your sister directly so Miss Blake can take her upstairs!”

“Mama, no!” wailed Clarissa as Albert promptly set her down on the carpet with a shush of white petticoats. “It’s not time, not yet!”

“Alas, Clarissa, it most certainly is,” commiserated Sara as she took Clarissa’s hand. “Come now, kiss your mama good night.”

Clarissa’s face crumpled with disappointment as she appealed to the solemn ring of grown-up faces gazing down at her. She was the only child at present in the house, a position that she occupied like a little queen among her courtiers. But even queens could be banished, and Clarissa knew from sorrowful experience she could expect no reprieve from her mother once dinner was being served.

“And a kiss for me, too, Clary,” said Albert heartily, the way he did nearly everything. Although still in his twenties, he was already well on his way to being a model bluff English country gentleman, more fond of his dogs and his horses than the leather-bound books in his father’s library. “Who’s my only sweetheart girl, huh? Who’s my best darling sister?”

“That’s because I’m your only sister, Albert,” said Clarissa, but she kissed his ruddy cheek anyway. “As you know perfectly, perfectly well.”

“Your sister, Fordyce?” said a deep, low voice that Sara had thought she’d never hear again. “How could such a charming little sprite have you for a brother?”

Automatically Sara’s head turned in response, her heart racing and her feet urging her to flee. Revell was standing so near to her that she could see the tiny half-moon scar, pale against the clean-shaven shadow of his jaw.

Did he see that in his looking glass each morning and remember the night he’d come by it? How he’d cut himself as he’d climbed over the high wall that had surrounded her father’s grand white mansion on Chowringhee Road? Did he still recall how often he’d visited her—no, stayed with her, and loved her the glorious night through! Did he touch that scar now and remember her, how he’d slid over the rough stucco and through the thicket of trees and vines to reach the teak bench where she was waiting for him, there in the velvet heat of an Indian midnight?

“Little miss,” continued Revell, oblivious to Sara as he bowed to Clarissa. “I am honored.”

Fascinated, the girl slipped her hand free of Sara’s and stepped forward, spreading her skirts as she dipped coquettishly before this new admirer. All other conversation stopped while everyone listened and watched, curiosity turning them into eager, avid spectators. Word that the famous—some said infamous—Lord Revell Claremont had joined the party had raced through the house earlier, but this was the first real glimpse of him that most of them had had.

He did not disappoint. Though he smiled warmly enough at Clarissa, his eyes betrayed no emotion, and even standing still he seemed to have the restlessness and grace of a wild tiger, barely contained in impeccable black evening dress and white Holland linen.

Later Sara would overhear the whispers: how the ladies admired the splendid width of his shoulders, the intriguing aura of danger he wore as comfortably as his waistcoat, and the size of the cabochon sapphire—at least as large as a pigeon’s egg!—that he wore in a ring on his right hand, while the gentlemen noted the harsh lines fanning from those chilly blue eyes and the ruthless set of his mouth, souvenirs of living too long in a pagan place like India, and to a man they resolved never to cross a coldhearted bastard like Claremont.

But what Sara saw now was how all gentleness had vanished from Revell’s face, and how the hardness that had replaced it made her wonder sadly if he ever laughed anymore, or even could.

Lady Fordyce glided forward, resting one hand protectively upon her daughter’s shoulder while holding the other outstretched to Revell. The unspoken message in her posture was unmistakable to Sara; Lady Fordyce took her position and her responsibilities as the most prominent hostess in the county very seriously, and Revell had already grievously erred by coming down to the drawing room so late.

“Surely,” began Lady Fordyce, “you must be Lord Revell Claremont, yes?”

Revell nodded, lifting her hand to kiss the air over it. “Surely I am, my lady.”

“Then just as surely you may now take Lady Lawrence into dinner, my lord,” said Lady Fordyce, pointedly withdrawing her hand. “We are most honored by your presence here, my lord, but I do not wish to keep either my guests or my cook waiting.”

He bowed again, and turned toward Lady Lawrence, an older widow in lavender silk who was clearly as terrified as she was titillated to have him as her dinner companion. The others fell in by rank with their accustomed partners and followed through the arched door festooned with holly boughs, leaving Sara and Clarissa behind.

“Ooh, Miss Blake, didn’t I tell you!” exclaimed Clarissa with relish. “That Lord Revell is a wicked devil, isn’t he? He didn’t even tell Mama he was sorry, because he wasn’t!”

“Hush, Clarissa,” murmured Sara, still gazing toward the now-empty doorway. “It’s not fitting for you to speculate over Lord Revell’s character.”

They had stood not four feet apart, and he’d not noticed her. Not a glance, neither a smile nor a frown, no acknowledgment whatsoever that she’d ever meant anything to him that was worth remembering. She hadn’t dared hope their first meeting would happen with so little consequence. For now, anyway, she’d escaped.

But how was it possible for a broken heart to break again?