Candle in the Snow

by Olivia Drake

  “And as nimble as a wee fairy beneath the moon of May,” he went on, walking toward her. “Might I have this dance, miss?”

  Without awaiting a reply, he spun her around in time to the faraway music. Astonishment tied Chelsea’s tongue. Though his steps didn’t precisely follow the waltz she’d learned, he moved with the confidence of a gentleman. The gloom hid his features, and intensified her awareness of his hand at her waist. Never before had she been held so intimately by a man. She felt breathless and giddy as he swung her around. A queer fluttering warmed her insides, and suddenly the night vibrated with promise, like a wish about to come true.

  The dance carried them around wing chairs and tables, then past the long row of windows. Here, the faint starlight touched strong and handsome features, framed by thick black hair. He gazed down at her with an intensity that lifted her girlish hopes to the stars. Afraid she was dreaming, Chelsea lowered her eyes to his maroon coat. The shiny gold buttons bore the Quincy crest, and a telltale knot of braided cord draped his right shoulder.

  Scandalized, she jerked free. “Why... you’re a footman!”

  “You wound me, m’ lady. I fancied me a man admiring a pretty colleen.”

  He took a step closer. She retreated until her back met the drapery. “Come near me again and I’ll scream the house down.”

  He stopped, palms upheld. “Faith, now don’t be getting your dander up. I’m only a poor Irish lad who’s lonesome for a bit of gaiety. I thought we were kindred spirits in that.”

  Chelsea felt mortified that she’d mistaken him for a gentleman. Kindred spirits, indeed. It was a bold presumption coming from a servant, yet somehow his endearing grin inspired trust.

  “I’ve not seen you before,” she said slowly, studying him in the shadowy light. “You must be the new man I heard the maidservants whispering about.”

  “Sean Devlin, at your service.” He swept into an exaggerated bow. “Her ladyship, bless her kind soul, took me from the workhouse and saved me from an early grave.”

  He didn’t appear as if he needed saving from any-thing, though now she noted a leanness about him, the hungry look of a hard life. And despite his air of confidence, Sean Devlin couldn’t be much older than herself.

  “Lady Quincy is wonderful. Why, she took me in, too...” Chelsea stopped. Why was she confiding in him?

  “So I heard,” he said. “She found you, a wee babe, on the doorstep of her charity hospital in Chelsea.”

  “You’ve been gossiping about me?”

  “Now, don’t go high and mighty again. I saw you strolling in the garden yesterday, and I only asked who you were.” Lowering himself onto the casement, he patted the cushion beside him.

  She loathed the thought of returning to her empty bedroom. Yet it was highly improper for her to visit with a man unchaperoned, let alone a man who was her social inferior. “I can’t—”

  “You can. Faith, I want to hear more about the fairest colleen in Londontown.”

  His smile radiated a charm that made her legs wilt. She sank onto the window seat. “I’d rather hear about you,” she ventured.

  Sean spoke freely about moving from Ireland to London as a lad of eight, his parents’ quest for a better life and their untimely death, and his subsequent harsh life on the streets. Fascinated and appalled, she knew that but for Lady Quincy’s intervention, she might have shared such hardship. Despite his coarse background he displayed an innate courtesy. His easy manner soon had Chelsea pouring out thoughts she had shared with no one else, the painful awareness of being a part of the Quincy family, yet not a part, the veiled antipathy shown her by the three Quincy daughters, and the diligence with which Chelsea had worked at her studies as a way of securing Lady Quincy’s esteem.

  All the while she was intensely aware of him. She sat straight so that not even her skirts brushed him, yet she felt his warmth mingling with the cool breeze from the opened window. In the starlight, his eyes gleamed a dark and unsettling blue. The night air grew thick with tension. She gripped the folds of her gown and glanced down at her lap, looking anywhere but at him.

  “I must go,” she said, stiff with confusion. “I shouldn’t be here and neither should you.”

  “You fret too much about shoulds and shouldn’ts.”

  Sean leaned over and brushed his lips against hers. The sensation evoked a strange breathless excitement in her. While she sat trembling, unable to speak, he sauntered from the room.

  Chelsea tried to summon outrage that a footman had taken such liberties. But her conscience whispered that she bore the blame as much as he. A true lady would never have put herself in such a compromising position. By being alone with him, she had displayed a loose moral character. Henceforth, she would treat him with chilly disdain.

  Yet through the long summer months, each time she heard an orchestra play, she remembered her time with him. While the family ate dinner, Sean waited on the table and flashed her that heart-stopping grin. When she went calling with her ladyship, he opened the carriage door and surreptitiously brushed her hand. Once, when she sat sewing in the library, he entered and closed the door. She straightened, her heart pounding. Did he mean to kiss her again? But he only asked her to read him a letter from a cousin in Ireland.

  A pang of surprised concern stabbed her. “You must learn to read,” she urged. “You’ll never rise above your station without schooling.”

  He frowned. “Faith, Chelsea, is that how you measure a man? By how much book-learning he’s had?”

  The rare glimpse of his defensive side, his vulnerability, reached deep inside her. She tried to deny the way he made her heart pound, the unseemly impulse she felt to touch him and to relive the magic of his kiss. She cared for him, Chelsea assured herself, only out of a natural sympathy for the less fortunate.

  As summer waned, Daphne became betrothed to the Earl of Huntsborough, a match as brilliant as the ones her sisters had made. Feeling lonely amidst the whirl of wedding preparations, Chelsea dreamed of the day she would have her turn.

  One autumn afternoon, Lady Quincy called Chelsea into the drawing room. Lucille, the eldest daughter, sat beside her mother. Lucille had always given herself airs over the lowborn Chelsea. It had been a relief four years ago when Lucille had married and moved away.

  “It’s time to settle your future,” Lady Quincy said, her smile as kindly as ever.

  Excitement tingled inside Chelsea. “Yes?”

  “I believe we’ve found the perfect situation. Lucille has been so generous as to offer you the post of governess to her dear little Edward.”

  The bottom dropped out of Chelsea’s stomach. Lucille had often taunted her about being denied a come-out, but Chelsea had kept blind faith in Lady Quincy’s generosity. “Governess? But... what about my debut... my chance to marry...?”

  Consternation on her elegantly wrinkled face, her ladyship stared. “Oh, my dear. I never imagined ... Surely you can’t have believed you could assume a place in polite society?”

  Her compassionate expression only heightened Chelsea’s shock. Their class difference opened like an unbridgeable chasm. She glanced at Lucille’s smirking face. No! Chelsea thought in wild denial. She could never work for such a haughty employer, could never resign herself to the empty life of a spinster.

  Devastated by betrayal, blinded by tears, she ran from the room, straight into Sean’s arms. He drew her into the butler’s pantry and held her close until her sobbing subsided. When she explained what had happened, fury tightened his handsome face, a fury that turned quickly to resolution.

  “You’ll not wither away in bondage to that harridan,” he declared. “Better you should marry me.”

  Stunned, she huddled in the strong circle of his arms. Crazy feelings tumbled inside her: longing and hope and need. She shook her head in bewilderment. “We’d never make do.”

  “ ‘Tis a poor man I am,” he acknowledged, his mouth twisting in bitterness. “I can’t give you fancy trappings, but I can keep a roof over
your head and food in your belly.”

  The pain dwindled to a warm fathomless ache. “But... you don’t love me.”

  His harsh expression softened and he stroked her cheek. “Ah, but you’re wrong, Chelsea, m’ love. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you, a wood sprite dancing by herself in the starlight.”

  The declaration left her reeling. Suddenly with all her heart she wanted to belong to him, wanted to shed the past and meld their futures. With all the pent-up passion inside her, she’d kissed Sean and let him talk her into eloping to Gretna Green.

  Now, as Chelsea walked alongside the rural road, her shoes crunching the frozen grass, bittersweet remembrance constricted her throat. She had never been able to forget how it felt to make love with him, the fierce rapture of linking their bodies and the mellow sweetness of lying in each other’s arms. Even now, her loins throbbed with a ghostly hunger for the past.

  Praise God he was alive. Alive!

  She squelched an errant surge of joy. Of course she wouldn’t wish him dead. Nostalgia for the brief happiness they’d once shared accounted for her wild pleasure at seeing him today.

  She took a deep breath of cold air and slowly released it. Their marital bliss had endured scarcely more than a fortnight. They’d lived off his meager savings while Sean searched for employment. Loath to work again in the demeaning role of servant, he came home one day and proclaimed his intent to seek his fortune in the goldfields of America, where a man’s achievements were limited only by his character, not by the circumstances of his birth.

  Chelsea had been aghast at the notion of gallivanting thousands of miles to a foreign country rife with outlaws and savages. She wanted to stay in England and become a lady, to rise above her orphan roots. She offered to educate Sean, to help him find a respectable post. He rejected her plan and insisted that a wife should obey her husband. Furious, she said she wouldn’t waste her life in a shantytown. He threatened to leave without her. Tom between hurt and anger, she retorted that she’d made a terrible mistake; she ought to have taken the governess post and lived with the gentry. She threw her wedding ring at him and declared the marriage was over.

  He’d stormed out of their humble lodgings in London. At first she didn’t believe he was serious, and she left a candle burning beside their bed so that when he returned, he wouldn’t stumble in the darkness. She’d say I’m sorry. He’d say the same. Then he’d do all those delicious things to her body and her heart.

  But he never came back. Until today.

  Fresh tears welled in her eyes, but she dashed the moisture away. With each step down the country lane, she felt her scattered emotions solidifying into a tight knot of anger. The devil take Sean Devlin! How dare he saunter back into her life and try to pick up where he’d left off! As if she were still an impressionable girl, craving love and a dashing adventurer to soothe her hurts.

  I despise you... I don’t ever want to see you again.

  The memory of her outburst whispered through the bleak sunshine. Now that he knew the depths of her antipathy, surely he would go back to his beloved America. She would likely never see him again. Why did the thought carve a hollow place inside her?

  Because he’d destroyed her future, she told herself bitterly. The law permitted divorce only for adultery, not desertion. To prove his culpability, she would have to track down some nameless hussy Sean had slept with. No doubt the rascal had seduced many.

  The very notion turned Chelsea’s stomach. Sir Basil would never marry a divorced woman, anyway. Like it or not, she was well and truly wed to a reckless man who made his home thousands of miles away.

  A low stone fence marked the grounds of the academy. In the distance the tidy complex perched like a brooding hen atop a low hillock. A few girls in their regulation gray coats and bonnets strolled the barren lawns.

  Chelsea hesitated, one hand clenching her parcel, the other resting on the wrought-iron gate. The pantomime rehearsal would begin in an hour. But she shouldn’t put off what must be done.

  She turned abruptly and set out across a pasture, the stubble from last July’s haying crackling beneath her feet. Normally she would take the longer route back toward the church and around the lane. But today impatience dogged her. She must face this unhappy task. Now that the shock had worn off, she knew better than to hide the past.

  A short time later, she walked up the drive leading to Sir Basil’s manor. The stately stone dwelling had an ancient ambience, the aura that came from housing gentlefolk for centuries. This could have been hers, Chelsea reflected, as she mounted the steps to the front door. Her children might have played on these lawns. Her children might have known a time-honored heritage. The sour taste of loss burned in her throat.

  Winchester answered her knock. Uttering his customary grunt of greeting, the old retainer took her wrap and parcel, then led her down the dim and musty hall. Stuffed birds perched inside the tall glass cases lining the walls. Poor things, she thought involuntarily. Trapped, just like me.

  The library doors stood ajar. A man lounged in a blue wing chair near the window. His sharply handsome profile and broad shoulders made her heart shudder with shock.

  Sean!

  Rising, he inclined his dark head to her. Even if his eyes weren’t steady and probing, she would have guessed his determined mood from the way his jaw tightened. So he hadn’t stormed out of her life again. A confusing meld of consternation and pleasure thickened her throat.

  “A timely entrance, m’ love,” he said. “I’ve just finished introducing m’self to your... former fiance.”

  His audacity drove the paralysis from her limbs. “Dear God, surely you haven’t come to blows—”

  Chelsea hastened into the library. To her relief Sir Basil stood, hale and blustery, by the fireplace. He must have recently come in from shooting, for he wore a checked cap, tweed hunting garb, and Wellington boots. His ruddy face with the tidy gray mustache bore an expression that was more disgruntled than heart-broken.

  “Terrible turn of events,” he grumbled. “Terrible.” He turned to Sean. “Not that I’d wish you dead, old chap.”

  Sean gave a grave bow. “ ‘Tis sorry I am to be the bearer of such tidings.”

  “Humph.” Sir Basil began to pace. “Who will keep up my lists of birds, I ask? Who will catalogue my specimens? Who will copy my articles for The British Ornithologist?”

  “Ah,” Sean said, “so Chelsea worked for you.”

  She met his speculative stare. He wouldn’t understand that marriage was a bargain; for the sake of children and an impeccable background, she’d gladly play the secretary. So why did she feel suddenly discomfited?

  “The change in circumstances needn’t interfere with your work, Sir Basil,” she said. “I can continue to transcribe for you.”

  “I think not.” Sean took a firm step forward. “M’ wife will be a trifle busy from now on.” He looked at her, his lashes lowering slightly in smoldering promise.

  Unbidden heat flashed through Chelsea, a sensation she attributed to anger. Busy, indeed! She clamped her lips and silently counted to ten. It wouldn’t do to make a scene... not here, at least.

  “I say, Mrs. Devlin,” Sir Basil said musingly, “perhaps you could recommend someone else.”

  “To marry you or secretary you?”

  He looked taken aback by her vehemence. “Why, a secretary, of course.”

  Chelsea drew a calming breath. This wasn’t his fault. “My husband’s resurrection must be as much a shock to you as it was to me. Your London agent swore—”

  “Incompetence!” Sir Basil shook a liver-spotted fist. “Incompetence is the bane of this world. Why, the housemaids cannot even dust my cases properly. Nor can the under-footman keep the fires burning at the temperature necessary to preserve my specimens.” He aimed a glare at the low blaze in the hearth.

  Hands in his trouser pockets, Sean wandered to one of the glass cases stacked nearly to the cornices. “A grand collection, to be sure. Did you shoot
all these birds yourself?”

  “A fair number of them.” Sir Basil clumped to the display. “The others I procured from dealers and correspondents all over the globe.”

  Sean studied a small dark bird, its wings spread in perpetual flight. “Faith, this one looks like a shag. I recollect seeing them when I was a lad in County Wicklow.”

  “Ah. Phalacrocorax aristotelis. A marine bird, nesting on the rocky coasts of Ireland.”

  Fuming, Chelsea listened to them discuss the migratory patterns of various seabirds. Neither man seemed to care that they’d rudely excluded her. Sir Basil’s middle-aged features lit with zeal as he gestured at the stuffed birds. Odd, she thought, in the year she’d worked with him, she’d never noticed him ever regarding her with such unabashed devotion. Odder still, the realization aroused only a vague pang inside her, more of hurt pride than the agony she’d once suffered over losing Sean. She didn’t understand the dizzying sense of liberty that suddenly lifted her spirits, as if she’d sprouted wings and could soar out of this decaying manor...

  Sean swung toward her. “You look positively shaken, m’ love. Might you need a breath of fresh air?” Before she could reply, he addressed their host. “Thank you for being such a sport.”

  “Come back anytime, old chap,” said Sir Basil, offering a hearty handshake. “Be delighted to take you shooting on the estate. Delighted, indeed.”

  Winchester glided in, carrying their wraps; Sean put his coat on, then silently held her parcel while she donned her mantle. His features remained sober, though laughter lurked in his eyes. His deft management of Sir Basil made her steam with resentment. She ought to insist on staying, yet the awkwardness of remaining daunted her.

  “I’ll clap that cheating vulture in gaol,” Sir Basil groused, as he saw them to the door. “Never you fear, Mrs. Devlin, I shall recover my ill-spent money.”

  The instant they walked outside and the door clicked shut, Sean said, “Oh-ho, so he paid the agent who prematurely reported my demise.”

  “It was a token of his regard for me,” she said, stiffly descending the stairs. “He was most anxious to marry me.”