Alas, Merry made the decision for him.
As she whipped around, her skirts snapped loudly about her ankles. “Shall we?”
Did he imagine that she lifted her saw and pointed it in his direction for an overlong beat before turning and starting at a determined clip for the front door?
The butler, Blake, emerged from the shadows and drew the panel open.
Wind gusted through the front door with a blast of cold. She was mad. “We are going out in this?” He hastened his steps to catch her.
“I am going out in this,” she called, her voice carrying in the winter quiet, made all the louder by the dearth of life in London at the holiday season.
He hurried to pull on his gloves. The leather articles, however, did little to chase away the chill, and in a bid to bring some warmth to his freezing digits, he rubbed his palms quickly together.
From out of the corner of his eye, he caught the sideways peek Merry stole in his direction, and he forced his arms back to his sides.
Why… why… the chit hadn’t anticipated he’d accompany her. She’d expected he’d find the frigid temperatures and the threat of snow hanging in the early morn sky reason enough to return to the comforts of his familial residence and set himself up with a paper and a glass of brandy to warm him.
And in any one of the thirty-four years before this, Merry would have been correct in her postulation.
But that had been before he’d gone and made a mess of his life and his happiness. Now, he didn’t give a jot for propriety. “I’ll hand it to you, Merry Read,” he said as they locked in a matched pace to whatever destination she’d planned. “You are nothing if not determined and tenacious.”
She smiled. “Th-thank you.” Her voice trembled slightly from the cold.
“I didn’t intend it as a compliment.”
“Well, it w-would be hard to take it any other way. What is the al-alternative? That I’m indecisive and given to vacillating?” She gesticulated wildly with her saw as she spoke, and he ducked sideways as that gleaming metal came entirely too close to his left arm.
“Well, I have no intention of leaving.”
“Hmph,” she muttered, her huff of annoyance stirring a little cloud of white.
Unfortunately, the pair of young footmen following close at their heels also had little intention of leaving.
And he didn’t know why their presence should so annoy him.
Liar. You know. You know very well. The last thing he’d anticipated or wanted was to share his and Merry’s outing with anyone, particularly gossiping servants. Quite simply, he found himself enjoying her company, and her barbs, and challenges, when he hadn’t enjoyed… well, really anything since he’d tried to repair his relationship with Josephine Pratt.
Only, the pain that usually came from the memory of his folly and her and what could have been… didn’t come.
“You’ve not said where we’re going,” he noted as they moved at the steady clip Merry set through the streets of Mayfair.
“Because you’ve only just asked. Green Park,” she said, continuing to swing her arm as they walked.
“Here.” Luke reached for her saw. “Let me carry that.”
Merry’s steps slowed, and there was a softening in her eyes.
“It is mostly an act of self-preservation.” He immediately wished to call back that admission, for just like that, he’d quashed all the previous warmth in her eyes.
With a roll of her eyes, Merry held out the saw. “You’re in-s-sufferable.”
“I’d wager that’s not the first time that charge has been leveled at me,” he conceded, raising the edge of the blade to his brow in mock salute.
A sharp bark of laughter escaped from her, the expression of mirth tinkling and bell-like. “Have a care, or you’re going to c-cut yourself.”
“Ah, so that was not your intention, then?”
She laughed again.
He’d never been responsible for another person’s mirth. Not like this. Not free and unrestrained and fulsome and sincere. Even with his former betrothed, their exchanges had been restrained. The lone embrace they’d shared had been equally restrained. Now, he found himself wondering what it would be like to take Merry Read in his arms.
No doubt she’d be a woman who kissed and made love with the same abandon she showed at their every interaction. And through the cold of the morn came heat that spiraled through him, a desire to discover those truths for himself.
“I don’t recall you like th-this,” she said as they entered Green Park, and for one horrifying moment, he believed she’d seen the wicked path his thoughts had traveled, thoughts that included her and him, together.
“And how is that?” Unnerved by how much Merry Read’s opinion meant to him, he kept his gaze trained carefully forward.
“Teasing. Lighthearted. Cheerful.”
They reached the entrance of Green Park, and he was grateful when she looked to the footmen who’d reached their sides. She favored the pair with a smile. “Here you are.” Reaching into the pocket sewn along the front of her cloak, she withdrew two small sacks and placed them in their hands. “Some flat chocolate discs covered with nonpareils,” she whispered. “I snuck some from my mother’s kitchens before I came to London.”
For the adoration in the young men’s eyes, she might as well have handed them the moon and a sprinkling of stars to go with it.
“Thank you, ma’am,” they said in unison.
“Thank you, Lawrence and Eaves. We shall call for you when we require your assistance.”
Luke proved himself a bastard once again, for resentment burned in his belly at those shared smiles.
Luke stared after the young lads as they took themselves off. “Lawrence and Eaves,” he murmured. “You gathered that after less than a day in my household.” He’d not known their names in the years the young men had served in his employ.
Merry shrugged. “The better question is why don’t you know?” She looked squarely at him. “There’s always time to learn about the people around you. Why, you know my name,” she pointed out.
He frowned. “You’re not…” A servant.
“Just a servant?” She glanced his way.
Phrased that way, he heard the smugness in it. “I didn’t mean… What I was saying…” Only, what had he been saying?
“Yes?” she prodded.
Yes, her father was his family’s steward and her mother his family’s housekeeper, and both her siblings were employed by his family. But she wasn’t at all the same. “You played freely with my brother,” he said on a rush. And how he’d envied them both. “You had free rein of the estates.”
“And you think that somehow makes me different than Lawrence and Eaves?” she asked, amusement lacing her tone.
It did.
“It doesn’t,” she said, as if hearing his silent protestations. “It does not change that I’m still just a servant. I’m no different than Lawrence or Eaves or my mother or father or any other man, woman, or child in your employ.” She stopped and put herself in front of him, halting his forward strides. “People do not cease to be people because they are born outside your illustrious ranks, Luke,” she said with a matter-of-factness that stung more than had there been malice. She spoke so pragmatically, as if she merely recited the simplest of facts that the whole world should be in possession of but which he’d somehow failed to gather. “Just because people serve you doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be seen.”
Her earnestly delivered words brought Luke to a slow stop, and he stared off sightlessly into the distance as a long-distant memory whispered forward.
“But I like Willis, Mother.”
“There are no buts, Lucas. Willis is a servant, and you don’t play with servants.”
“He’s a boy.”
“He is a servant,” his mother insisted tersely.
Luke glared at his mother and his silent father. “Ewan plays with him.”
His father at last spoke. “Ewan will not be earl
one day.”
“You are correct,” he whispered, and it was hard to say who was more shocked by that quiet admission, him or the woman beside him. Back in the moment, he looked to Merry. “My father and mother schooled me early on in my responsibilities.” A lone snowflake floated past, followed by another and another, until a soft swirl of white filled the air and dusted the ground. “Every expectation, every rule, everything from what I was to eat or not eat, on to who I was able to interact with was carefully specified.” Those born of his station would have likely received a similar elucidation. There were those who existed within the nobility… and everyone else. As such, he’d been reared on that principle. It had shaped him and his every interaction. Never before had he questioned the wrongness of it… until Merry. However, blame didn’t belong to his parents, it belonged to him for having blindly followed. “I’ve been a fool, listening and following expectations without ever thinking for myself.”
Her eyes widened into enormous pools that put him in mind of warmed chocolate.
Luke slashed his spare hand in the direction of where the footmen had stood when Merry had temporarily relieved them of their responsibilities. “They’ve been part of my household staff for two and a half years now,” he said, his words tumbling quickly over each other. “Two and a half years. Nine hundred and twelve days. And how do I know that?”
She opened her mouth, but he finished over her.
“Because I’m the one responsible for the finances and the ledgers detailing matters of business. Business, Merry. Business.” His voice crept up. “And I’ve not known their names.” He rocked back on his heels. “I’ve moved through life focused entirely on estate business and matters before Parliament, and well, there’s never been time for those details.” Even as that admission left him, he caught the conceit and self-absorption behind it, and along with that came an increasingly familiar sentiment—shame.
As she led them from the graveled path, through the grass, onward to a copse of trees, his strides grew quicker and more frantic. “And what has my devotion to rank and status gotten me?” His elevated voice carried throughout the gardens. “One brother whom I no longer speak with, the other brother whom I almost never speak to except for discussions on familial business.” It wasn’t every day that a man looked at himself, truly looked at himself, and saw that he didn’t like who he was. He didn’t like who he was, at all. And yet… closing his eyes, he tilted his head up toward the sky.
How very invigorating it was to simply own who he was and what he’d allowed himself to become.
Merry lightly squeezed his arm, bringing his eyes open. “Most noblemen will go their whole lives without changing,” she said quietly. “Without seeing servants as people or seeing any worth in those born outside their ranks, and yet you have.”
He laughed bitterly. “You heap praise where it’s undeserved.”
Her lips twitched at the corners, and she tightened her hold upon his forearm once more. “If you consider that praise, then there’s been a dearth of compliments in your life.” She softened that with a smile. Then the earlier seriousness returned to her expressive features. “I only speak the truth, Luke.”
Luke. She’d called him by his Christian name, and how very right it felt wrapped in her deep contralto.
“I daresay this is the beginning of a friendship between us.”
She laughed softly.
“You find that so very amusing?” he asked on a frown, equal parts hurt and offended. He’d not had a friend in his life, and having hung himself out there, vulnerable as he now was, left him with a strange little ache in his chest.
“Forgive me,” she said, her smile promptly dying, and he fought to keep his features immobile as she ran an astute and piercing gaze over him. “I’m not laughing at you, but rather, at the improbability of knowing one another for nearly the whole of our lives and only now choosing to begin a friendship. Why… you didn’t even know I was alive until yesterday morn,” she inaccurately pointed out before striding off toward the neat row of evergreens twenty paces ahead.
You didn’t even know I was alive.
Let her to her opinions. Luke beat the handle of the saw against his thigh and stared after her. He’d already hung himself out there, and all he’d managed to garner was a healthy degree of embarrassment. So why was it so very important that she know the truth? That he’d not been a total bastard. At least not as a young boy, he hadn’t. That aspect of his character had come later, with years of tutelage at the hands of his father and tutors.
“You and Ewan always played battledore. He was rubbish at it, and you never wanted to beat him on three, so you played to five sets.” He paused. “And you always won,” he called after her. The winter quiet exaggerated the volume of his voice.
Merry’s forward steps continued, but slowed and then stopped altogether.
“You hated playing spillikins on the mahogany floors,” he said, “because there was not enough challenge in it, so you always played in the gardens, just off the graveled path that led to the boxwood maze.”
Stop talking. Just stop this instant. So why did the words keep coming? “You and Ewan played hopscotch along the watering fountain, and both tried to get one another to miss a step and tumble into the fountain.” He stared over the top of her head. “You never did,” he said softly to himself. A sad little chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Ewan always did. And I was and remain certain it was intentional. That he loved taking a swim…” Stop. Just stop.
This time, he managed to quell the flow of memories.
Ever so slowly, Merry turned and faced him. The expression she wore was stricken.
Another blast of wind gusted around them, pulling at her plait and dusting her midnight tresses with a faint coating of white that gave her the look of some magical, winter wonderland creature.
Luke clenched and unclenched his hands, his left palm gripping the handle of the saw hard enough that the wood bit through the thick fabric of his leather gloves.
He’d been wrong.
With her lips parted and her wide-eyed gaze upon him, he’d never been more exposed and vulnerable than he was in this very moment.
*
Everything Merry had believed about Luke Holman, the painfully serious Lord Grimslee as a boy, had been a lie.
Of their own volition, her legs drew her back over to him.
She stopped with just two paces between them so she might better see the slightly heavy, angular planes of his face. His lips were tensed and strained white at the corners. His clear blue gaze was guarded. Wary.
“But… but… you never played with us,” she said.
“No.” Doffing his high, fur-trimmed hat, Luke beat it against his thigh.
Every expectation, every rule, everything from what I was to eat or not eat, on to who I was able to interact with was carefully specified.
It hit her with all the force of a fast-moving carriage.
“You weren’t allowed,” she whispered. “That is why you didn’t speak to me. Or play with me. Because you were instructed not to.”
A muscle rippled along his jaw, the tension there palpable, and her fingers ached with the need to smooth it away.
“I wanted to,” he confessed.
And her heart buckled.
How wrong she’d been about Luke Holman. So very wrong.
For she’d thought he felt himself above her. She’d thought him too serious and studious to partake in the children’s games she’d played with Ewan.
Only to find she hadn’t been invisible. Rather, Luke’s parents had insisted he live a life devoid of a child’s pleasures.
Now, she thought of him in a new light, as a lonely boy whose entire existence had been dictated to and for him. A boy who’d never been able to simply be a boy and who’d instead dutifully followed the rules set down by his parents, while wishing for more. Wanting for more.
She thought of herself as she’d been just two days ago, chatting and laughing with her sib
lings about Luke, all the while failing to see him as a person… and worse, not considering what had shaped him into the person he was.
Mayhap that was why he wished to join her, then. Mayhap he wanted to steal moments from now that he’d been denied for his thirty-four years before now. In this moment, with all he’d revealed, she found herself seeing him in a new light. Or, really, seeing him for the first time. Mayhap that was why, despite her earlier resolve to be rid of his company, she found herself relenting.
“Christmas trees,” she said.
Luke cocked his head, sending a lone curl falling over his brow, softening him.
“That is why we’re h-here.” She gestured through the whorl of snowflakes to the rows of evergreen ahead. Merry huddled deeper into the folds of her cloak. “When your brother and I were small, we came upon a story of Martin Luther and how one Christmastide season he decorated the branches with candles.”
Luke looked from her to the trees and then back to her. “Are you saying we are here… to decorate a tree?” He spoke slowly, one trying to puzzle through the peculiarity of that telling.
Her lips twitched reflexively. “No, we aren’t decorating the tree here.” She gestured to the saw in his hand, and he followed her pointed glance. “We’re going to cut one down and decorate it at your family’s household.”
His mouth moved, giving him the look of a trout out of a water. With a soft laugh that stirred a breath of white from the cold, she beckoned him forward. “Come.” She started through the rows of trees, eyeing the options around them. The viscount she recalled would never dare enter Green Park to cut a tree down. He would have seen not only the process, but the intended result, as inane.
The crunch of snow and gravel indicated Luke intended to join her.
Not for the first time, she wondered at just what accounted for the drastic change that had befallen him in her absence. The only certainty was that she enjoyed this newer version of Luke. Around him, she didn’t feel as if she was nothing more than a servant, which was what she was and what she’d been treated like by every lord or lady she’d come across in her travels of the Continent.
“I confess to not understanding it all,” he said as he fell into step beside her. “It’s hardly logical.”
A Winter Wish Page 5