A Winter Wish

by Christi Caldwell

  “As I was saying, we have to sort through which inventory of the greenery and flowers we have to be used for the holiday décor. Now, here.” She slid another sheet across the wood table, and as he picked it up, Merry proceeded to fire off instructions. “If you could search out the following items and somehow list them so I know what I have to work with and what I might still need to order.” With that, she set to work on whatever other task commanded her attention.

  He was forgotten.

  Just like that.

  Giving his head a shake, determined to put her from his thoughts and channel his energy into the task before him, Luke looked down at the paper in his hands. Name after name of plants and flowers and trees and shrubs all stared back. Luke looked around the expansive gardens. How in blazes did she expect him to make sense of any of those—

  “Here,” she said. Not lifting her head, she slid a notebook and a small leather tome across the desk.

  Picking up the latter, he skimmed the title. A Guide to Proper Plants, Shrubs, Greenery, and Floral Works for all Seasons for Every Noble Household.

  He flipped through the leather volume. Illustrations of various plants and flowers and their names filled the pages.

  “I’m never without it,” she said, scribbling furiously away at her notes. “I trust you’ll find it helpful. Oh, one more thing.” With her spare hand, she held out a small pencil and notebook.

  “What am I to do with those?”

  “Inventory.”

  Inventory? He, who’d not be able to pick out lilac from lavender, would be tasked with identifying and listing them? And yet, pride prevented him from humbling himself any more than he already had. Particularly to a woman who’d been trying to rid herself of his help. For the first time since he’d gone and broken his own heart in the name of propriety, he focused not on a scoundrel’s pursuits, but on the unlikeliest of tasks.

  Neatly stacking the two books Merry had provided him with, Luke consulted her list and then checked it against the leather volume. There were no fewer than—Luke silently counted the unnumbered columns—twenty-three items.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ah, this proved an interesting development. He wasn’t so very invisible, after all.

  “I trust it should be fairly obvious,” he said, noncommittal in his reply, deliberately evasive, and he found an unholy glee in the little frown he caught from her out of the corner of his eye.

  “It’s not at all.”

  Luke briefly looked up. “I’m developing a strategy to complete the assignment you’ve given me.” He paused. “Unless you’d care to join me.”

  “No!”

  That denial exploded from her with such ferocity, he grinned wryly. “I daresay I’m offended.” And he would have been, had the virago, in her honesty of reactions and responses, been like all the fawning friends his family kept company with.

  A pretty blush stole across Merry’s cheeks. “Forgive me,” she said unconvincingly. “It has nothing to do with not wishing to work with you.”

  A strangled laugh shook his chest, that rumble of mirth so unfamiliar these days, so unexpected.

  “What?” Merry asked defensively.

  He strolled over to her workstation and froze. Odd, for all he’d noted about Merry Read through the years—her tart-mouthed tongue, her spirit, her laughter, her penchant for exploration—never had he noted the whispery hint of apple that clung to her skin. Had she always smelled of an orchard at summer? Or had it been sometime after she’d gone traveling that she’d adopted that exhilarating fragrance? Even in the greenhouse, surrounded by lush scents, hers stood out. And enticed. Tempted. Fighting that quixotic pull, he set down his small pile. “It is the law of ‘the obvious.’”

  Merry cocked her head at a little angle that put her confusion on endearing display. “What?”

  “It is universally known that there is truth to every word spoken,” he murmured. As such, she’d all but confirmed she didn’t want him around. Luke laid his palms upon the table and leaned forward, erasing more of the space between them. “Given your statement, I’m to take it you wish to have nothing to do with me.”

  To the young woman’s credit, she didn’t deny it. “If you’re to be here—”

  “Underfoot?”

  “That is your word, not mine, my lord,”

  Ah, so she sought to erect formal barriers between them. Why? Why, when after yesterday he felt closer with her than he ever had… anybody. “Surely we’ve already established that we should call one another by our Christian names?”

  “I’d at least ask that you do not distract me from my task, my—Luke.”

  My Luke. Even with the slight hitch in the flow of Merry words, he felt warmth stir at the intimate endearment—no matter how inadvertent it happened to be.

  “And is that what I was yesterday?” he murmured, taking another step closer. “A distraction?” A memory surged forward, of her claiming his mouth in a kiss that had shattered his soul and rocked his reason.

  Her cheeks exploded with color. “Yes.” Her voice emerged slightly breathless. “No.” Her eyes formed round circles.

  He waggled his eyebrows.

  “Not in that way,” she said quickly.

  Luke lowered his lips close to her ear. “And what way is that, Merry?” he teased. Or he’d meant to.

  A great shift occurred in their exchange.

  Merry wet her lips, drawing his eyes to the perfect bow of her mouth. “Not… not… in the way you are implying or suggesting,” she whispered, and yet her body arched toward his in a natural sway that belied her protestations.

  He’d been betrothed, but never had there been any grand passion between him and Miss Josephine Pratt. She’d been exciting and made him smile because she was an unconventional lady, but the air hadn’t come alive between them as it did in this moment. With this woman. And yet, her words… were her words.

  “I will leave you to your work,” he said quietly. Did he imagine the spark of disappointment that blazed to life in her eyes? Or did he simply see that which he wished to see? He returned to the task she’d charged him with. Gathering up his materials, he wandered deeper into the greenhouse. As he walked, he circled off the more obvious plants and flowers he was familiar with.

  Ivy

  Holly

  English boxwood

  Red and white roses

  Mistletoe

  Pear tree

  Of her list of twenty-three, there was a total of five—six, if one wished to count the various shades of roses she sought—that he was certain of.

  Over the next hour, he wandered the expansive room, marking off the items as he found them and learning about new-to-him flowers. As he wandered each row, perusing his mother’s gardens, he occasionally stole a glance back to where Merry worked.

  Wholly engrossed in her task, she sat perched on the edge of her stool, her shoulders bent forward as she frantically recorded her words.

  As he watched her, he searched for some hint of the playful girl who’d been unable to sit still. Because of that natural exuberance, she’d always been a perfect pair for Luke’s brother Ewan. With the passage of time, she’d matured. She’d found a balance between playful and no-nonsense work, and both proved equally entrancing.

  “Are you always this intent as you work?” he called out.

  “Yes,” she said, not so much as breaking in the pace of her writing.

  When he stopped before her, she looked up questioningly.

  “I’ve located your flowers.”

  Surprise lit her eyes, transforming them from an otherwise ordinary brown to one that sparkled and gleamed.

  And then it hit him.

  Another droll grin brought one side of his mouth up. “You were giving me work to distract me, weren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say it quite like that,” she mumbled, shifting damningly on her stool.

  The minx.

  He folded his arms, her books, still in his hand, dang
led at his elbow. “You didn’t trust I’d complete it either, did you?”

  Her blush was bright enough to match the red roses that grew along the back of the greenhouse.

  “Why are you so determined to reject my help?”

  “Because you’re a lord,” she said, not missing a beat. “Because gentlemen do not join servants coordinating household affairs.

  Why did the idea of her serving in some lord’s household fill him with outrage and other emotions he couldn’t identify in that tumultuous moment?

  “And why shouldn’t I be with you? Because I’m the stuffy, proper Holman brother?” He’d simply accepted that was his makeup. It was how he’d been born, and then he’d been all but fed reminders of those expected qualities all his life, as if they had been food to sustain him. And they had.

  Until now.

  “Well, let me tell you, Merry Read. I don’t give a bloody damn if you’re the Queen of England or… or…” A servant in my employ. Only, he couldn’t bring himself to say it, even as that was what she was.

  Merry stared at him questioningly.

  “Or a pickpocket from St. Giles,” he said instead. “I am having a damned good time being with you and don’t intend to leave.” Suddenly, the fight went out of him. Because he didn’t want to be with her like this. He wanted her to want his company. “That is… unless you’d rather I leave you alone. In which case, I’ll honor that request.”

  The idea of leaving and not sparring or engaging with her any further left him hollow. Because with her, he came alive inside, which was altogether different than the past months he’d spent in mourning over losing the woman he’d admired. With Merry, he was, for the first time, alive.

  And he didn’t want this feeling to end.

  Chapter 7

  Merry had offended him.

  That realization came not from anything he’d said, or even anything that had been underscored in his tones.

  Rather, it came from the slight tension at the corners of his lips, which bespoke… regret.

  I am having a damned good time being with you and don’t intend to leave. That is… unless you’d rather I leave you alone. In which case, I’ll honor that request.

  He’d given her the out she sought.

  Because he would. Because he was the honorable, responsible, respectable viscount.

  I’m the stuffy, proper Holman brother.

  Luke had spoken as a man who knew well and what he was. He’d spoken as though his character were the greatest of flaws.

  And yet…

  Regret was a sentiment she was all too familiar with for her own yearnings in life, and as such, she easily recognized it in another. It wasn’t, however, pity or regret that accounted for this weakening inside. This need to go against all her better judgment came from one simple, but not insignificant, truth—Merry wanted to be with Luke.

  “Forgive me,” Luke murmured. He dropped a deep bow, one better suited for a lady of his station than the daughter of a servant and the woman who’d one day serve in his household. “I will leave you to your efforts.” He turned on his heel and started for the front of the room.

  She briefly closed her eyes in a bid to keep up her barriers around this man.

  Do not.

  Let him go. For the more time she spent with him, the deeper and deeper under his spell she would go.

  It was best that she was nowhere near a man like Luke Holman, the Viscount Grimslee, whose embrace she’d dreamed of since their lips had first met.

  All her efforts proved futile.

  Unleashing a silent stream of steady curses, she forced her eyes open.

  “I wouldn’t say you are the stuffy, proper Holman brother,” she called after him, and Luke abruptly stopped. As he turned back to face her, her heart did a leap in her breast. “You were the stuffy, proper Holman brother, though.”

  They shared a smile, and it was as though the impasse was broken, and a wall came down between them. One she feared would never, and could never, be put back in place.

  Nor do I want to go back to the aloof strangers we’ve been to each other over the years. There’d come time enough for panic and fear at the implications of that truth, but she’d not have that intrude on their exchange now.

  When he reached her side, Merry motioned to the other stool, and held a hand out for his completed work.

  “Have we reached a truce, then, Merry?” he asked as she looked over his notes.

  “It depends on how helpful you remain and whether you interfere with my work here,” she said and softened that with a wink. Merry opened her mouth to deliver some other flippant reply, but her gaze locked on his face, and all coherent thought fled.

  She’d known Luke nearly all her life. So how had she failed to note the cleft in a deeply squared jaw? Or the perfect slash of his noble nose, better suited to the stone renderings of David in homes she’d worked in over the years? And more… how had she ever failed to note the beauty of his features? Feeling his questioning stare, she swiftly directed her attention to his completed notes.

  And found herself knocked off-balance not by the realization of his masculine beauty, but by the work he’d done.

  She flared her eyebrows. His record-keeping was nothing short of meticulous. Knowing the impeccable student he’d been, that, however, was not the reason for her shock.

  In an hour’s time, he’d not only identified the flowers and greenery she intended to use for the holiday décor, but he’d also created a keyed map so that she might locate each item in question.

  “I trust it meets with your approval?”

  From another man, those words would have come as smug. “Very much so.” And yet, looking up from his work, there was something so very endearing about him and that question he posed, as if he were still the exceptional student of his younger days around whom she’d never known how to be. Only this… there was a vulnerability to him that made him very much human and not the icy, aloof figure she’d taken him for.

  “And what have you been seeing to while I was otherwise distracted?”

  “It wasn’t solely meant to dis—” Merry stopped at the playful glimmer in his eyes. That twinkle did the strangest thing to her heart’s natural cadence. “Oh. You’re teasing.”

  “A bit, I was,” he whispered and favored her with a wink.

  That sweep of long, midnight lashes from this man had no right to send her heart knocking another frantic beat. Why must he be teasing? It was altogether impossible to keep her wits about her when he behaved thusly. Her cheeks fired several more degrees. What madness was this? A thirty-year-old woman, and here she was blushing like a schoolgirl—because of her employer, at that.

  Luke availed himself of her notes, that presumptuous commandeering of her materials a necessary reminder that she sat beside the future head of this and every household held by the Earl of Maldavers.

  Only, seated before him now, Merry didn’t feel like a servant. Rather, she felt as though she sat beside someone who saw her as an equal.

  It is merely because you knew each other as children.

  When he didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched on to the length where awkwardness rose up, Merry sought to fill the void. “I’d only a short while to decide how to organize the household before your family’s guests arrive,” she explained, evoking that reminder of his rank for the part of herself that enjoyed his company and knew the dangers in that closeness.

  “In the hour I found twenty-three flowers and plants, you coordinated seating arrangements for a dinner party, assigned the servants responsible for decorating which rooms, and assembled a list for the Yuletide feast?” He glanced up from her notes, and at the admiration in his gaze, she shifted in her seat. “Is there nothing you cannot or do not do?”

  “I’ve simply seen to my responsibilities.”

  “Your responsibilities?”

  And with the genuine confusion underscoring that question, it occurred to her. “You do know why I’ve returned
to England?” she ventured.

  “I… no.” Several lines creased his brow. “I don’t.”

  For a moment she hesitated, because when he found out her ultimate role here… in his household, surely this beautiful exchange would come to an end. And with it, an end would come to the teasing and being treated not as one there to serve, but as one to speak to as an equal. Her heart ached because she’d not realized how very much she’d missed simply being a person and not just an employee.

  “Merry?” he asked when she didn’t answer.

  “I’m to take on the role of housekeeper.”

  His mouth moved, and it was three attempts before he got words out. Or, as the case would have it, one word: “What?” He cut in before she could speak. “For whom?”

  He didn’t…know? “Why… you.”

  “Me?”

  She might as well have taken the family broadsword down and cut his legs out from under him for the shock in his tone.

  Merry nodded again. “As such, you shouldn’t be working with me. I’m to be working for you.”

  And there it was. The discovery and, along with it, this sudden, blasted urge to weep. “My mother is to retire soon, and I will step into the role of housekeeper.”

  Merry’s body tensed, and she braced for Luke’s abrupt departure.

  Only… he didn’t abandon his chair. His expression darkened. “You’ll be my housekeeper.”

  She tried to make sense of the displeasure that burned within his eyes.

  For what reason should he take offense?

  Taking advantage of his distraction, she plucked her pencil from his fingers and started upon her plans for the music room.

  Luke covered her hand with his own, staying her movements. She stared at their hands practically joined, her palm callused and ink-stained and his immaculate, though there could be no doubting the strength and power in his long digits. They radiated heat. Nay, their practically joined fingers burned like the bonfire she’d danced around as a girl upon his family properties. She looked up, and that same fire blazed from within the fathomless depths of his blue eyes.