by Erica Ridley
Lucien knew what kind of life awaited him back home, just as Meg knew the kind of life she intended for herself. They could not be more different. Cultural differences might be a hurdle, but class differences were irreconcilable. They’d both seen it firsthand.
But even if they could surmount all those obstacles, he and Meg would soon have far more than a mere social chasm between them. They would be a sea apart.
This kiss was just another desperate attempt to hold onto something they both knew they could never have.
Chapter 11
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 reputatio
n 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.
Chapter 12
Sunday was Lucien’s favorite day to be inside the smithy.
It was the one day of the week when it was closed; when there was no obligation for anyone to be inside of it at all. No demanding customers, no confused apprentices, just Lucien working on this or that for the sheer fun of it.
Granted, the only reason it was fun at all was because he was doing it for Meg.
Not that she knew he was voluntarily spending time in the smithy, or what he was doing it for. The reason—like so many reasons these past two months—was her. She was his first thought every morning and his last thought every night. She was the reason that, after eighteen years dreaming of the day he would finally leave England, a tiny part of him didn’t want to go.
No, that wasn’t quite true. All of him wanted to go. None of him wanted to leave her.
There was no sense hoping she’d come with him. The thought of moving a few miles away was enough to put her into a panic. She loved Cressmouth. And she was English. She would no more abandon her motherland than he intended to give up his. He knew what it was like to resent the very world around him. He liked Meg too much to ever want her to feel that way about him.
A shadow fell into the open doorway, and Lucien glanced up to see Wilson, the man who handled the local post. Although Lucien recognized him, Wilson was not a frequent face at the le Duc farm. Until recently, the entire family lived under one roof. Even now, if Lucien’s brother-in-law wished to send a message, he’d dispatch one of his footmen to deliver it. Wilson only tended to appear when his carriage required servicing.
Today, he was on foot, a letter outstretched in one gloved hand.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully. “An item came for you.”
Lucien accepted the letter with his usual noncommittal grunt, then remembered he was now proficient enough to at least handle a transaction like this with some semblance of grace.
“Thank you,” he forced himself to mutter in English. “It must be cold out.”
Wilson stared at Lucien as though he’d grown horns made of carriage wheels.
The back of Lucien’s neck heated. What had he botched? The grammar? The pronunciation? The—
“Downright balmy,” Wilson said, his usual laugh lines returning. “The sun’s not hot enough to melt the snow, but it makes for a splendid day outside. I’ve no doubt every child in Cressmouth is currently running amok in the castle park.”
Lucien inclined his head. “Thank you for the warning.”
Wilson grinned at him, tipped his hat, and continued on his way.
Lucien’s heartbeat sped as a sense of victory flooded him. A dozen words at best, and he’d nearly sent the postman into a dead faint in the process, but he’d done it: Lucien had just had his first solo conversation in English with someone who wasn’t his family.
Or Meg. Who sometimes felt like part of his family. He couldn’t wait to tell her.
That was, to tell her about the conversation in English. Not the way she jumbled up all his feelings inside.
He pulled off his leather gloves and broke the seal to the letter. If he’d thought its contents might return his galloping heart to a more sedate pace, he was sorely mistaken. This was it. The letter he’d been waiting for!
Lucien’s hands shook as he read its contents a second and a third time. Thanks to his distant relation to the duc d’Orléans, who had become king in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat, Lucien’s petition had been answered.
The court had provided a date in February to hear him speak, and would then rule on the possibility of returning the le Ducs’ lost familial lands, thereby restoring their rightful place in French society.
Elation buoyed him. It was finally happening. The family home, the old vineyard, everything they’d lost in the revolution would belong to the le Ducs again.
Well, everything except their parents. Some things, once lost, were gone forever. But Lucien had fought his hardest to regain everything that could be won.
His siblings might not plan to return now, but this gave them options for the future. It gave their children options, and so on for generations. It was Lucien’s duty to see this through, to provide the very best for his family.
He looked at the date again. The first of February. That was more than enough time to set sail the sixth of January as planned, and travel straight to see the king. Lucien hoped the vineyard was still in working condition, and that his childhood home was not in need of too many repairs. The sale of the smithy had paid handsomely, but Lucien still needed to live off that money for the foreseeable future. Once the house was livable and the vineyard profitable, he would never need to worry about poverty or having a roof over his head ever again. His life would be—
Almost perfect.
He swallowed hard. The beginning of his sparkling new life meant the end of his current one, here with Meg. His chest tightened. He folded the letter carefully and slid it into his waistcoat pocket next to the tickets home that he never let out of his reach.
It was morning still. Far too early for afternoon lessons. But with confirmation that everything he’d worked for was finally coming true, the one thing he desired most was not to waste a single moment that remained.
Which meant he was done with the smithy.
Lucien was going straight to Meg.
He hung up his leather apron, donned his winter outerwear, and retrieved a parcel before readying the phaeton.
When his brother had first painted the carriage with French flags, Lucien had not been amused. He was as patriotic as any Frenchman, but they hadn’t had money to waste on nonsense. Red, white, and blue paint was just as unnecessary as the dandified frippery Sébastien insisted on clothing himself in, whenever he wasn’t in the smithy.
But his petit frère hadn’t meant an
y harm. He’d been doing something Lucien had long denied himself: attempting to enjoy the life they had now, rather than devote all his energy to an unknowable future.
Lucien lifted the reins. He did know the future. It was there in his waistcoat pocket. The ship would sail the sixth of January. The audience with the court was the first of February. In the meantime, he could finally enjoy the present guilt-free. And all he wanted was Meg.
He turned his horses toward the dairy just in time to see Meg and her cousin returning from a stroll.
Lucien pulled alongside them. “Fancy a drive?”
Jemima merely shook her head, as if the sight of taciturn Lucien le Duc speaking English and soliciting rides like a hackney driver wasn’t unusual in the least. “Not this time. You two go ahead.”
Meg arched a brow. “I see you’ve decorated the carriage.”
He held out a hand to help her up.
“Is it too subtle?” he whispered. “I’m thinking of adding ‘WE ARE FRENCH’ beneath each flag in large letters.”
“But would you write it in French or English?” she countered. “A true Frenchman would write in French, but if you do so… your intended audience won’t be able to read it.”
“Existential crisis.” He clutched his chest. “I will need to ponder long and deep on this.”
She fanned her bosom. “I love things that are long and deep.”
He tried to send her a quelling glare. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Because I might get it?” She folded her hands together and assumed a pious expression. “Dear heavens above, in the name of all that is bosomy and heaving, if you could grant my sultry cavern of moist pleasures the opportunity to personally welcome Lucien’s engorged maypole of sinful delights—”
He burst out laughing. “Am I to understand you finally reached the climax of your book?”
“Many, many times,” she assured him. “I can read it to you later, if you like. Just the good parts.”