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Authors: Theresa Romain

BOOK: Season for Surrender
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Chapter 10
Containing One Berry Too Few
“You've found mistletoe, Alex? That's excellent. Can you reach it?”
Louisa handed Alex a small knife and watched him stretch up to slice branches from the dainty twining plant. His dark greatcoat swung about his body, the shoulder capes catching bits of breeze and jumping up, as though they wanted to look over his shoulder.
Louisa shouldn't have been surprised that they'd spotted their festive quarry so quickly. Pairs of guests had taken off in all directions, but Alex and Louisa had headed away from the firs and pines. On a hunt for mistletoe, which dropped waxy smooth and evergreen from its host tree, one would notice it most easily amidst bare-branched trees that had lost their leaves for winter.
In a small clearing not far from the folly where they'd sat and drunk that afternoon, the trees were tall, shadowy bones against the evening sky. And the bunch of mistletoe they'd found was huge and riotous; it must have been growing for years.
“Damn.” Alex drew his hand back swiftly, then studied it. “Good. Didn't cut through the glove.”
Louisa stepped closer. “What happened? Is the knife not sharp enough?”
He shook his hand out, flexing it, and regarded her with a thin-lipped expression. “I don't have my quizzing glass with me.”
Louisa understood in an instant: in the low light, with the haziness of his close vision, he wasn't able to cut accurately. “If you'll help raise me up, I could cut the mistletoe.”
Alex passed the knife from one hand to the other. “Impossible.”
“Impossible because you think yourself insufficiently strong, or because you think me excessively heavy?”
His nostrils flared, but he didn't smile. “Unwise, then.”
“Because you think yourself insufficiently careful, or because you think me excessively clumsy?”
“My dear muffin, you will please cease your retorts.” He poked the tip of the knife into the pale bark of the silver birch that hosted the bunch of mistletoe they sought. “I'm thinking only of your reputation. It's not wise for you to allow a man to put his hands all over your person.”
Louisa shivered and clutched at the edges of her cloak. A chilly mist was beginning to creep around them, smoke-white and damp. “It's not an act of flirtation, Alex. It's an act of ambition. If we're to win the challenge, we need as much mistletoe as possible.”
Picking with the knife point, he carved a tiny pit in the birch bark. His dark face was a study in concentration, all hollows and shadows. “You want to win the challenge?”
“Of course I do. It was my challenge.”
She wove her gloved fingers together as a sweet tingle shot through her body. If she won, she'd have to claim kisses. It would be dishonorable not to. This was her strategy: forced boldness, forced bravery.
It was easier than taking all the initiative herself. And if she was fortunate, the result would be the same. Triumph. Every pearl-white mistletoe berry was an opportunity.
“If we win”—she swallowed—“whom would you kiss?”
His body went still for one second—two—three. Then with a
scritch
, he dragged the short-bladed knife down, slicing the tree. “Whom would
you
kiss?”
“I've not decided,” she lied. Her heart thumped with more than usual force; her fingers went cold from the bones outward.
He began to score thin lines in the bark, like rules on a paper. “Not Lockwood, surely.”
“Not Lockwood,” she agreed.
“Pellington's a decent fellow. He wouldn't try more than you wished him to.”
“Lord Kirkpatrick is very romantic,” Louisa said through bloodless lips. “Surely he knows what to do with a kiss.”
A sliver of wood the size of a fingernail flipped free. “I wouldn't know,” Alex said, studying his work with careful attention. “In any case, we might not win.”
Louisa tugged her cloak around her again, shivering as though the mist had suddenly slid through her. “Nonsense. You always win your wagers.”
He muttered something, then turned his face away and dropped his hands to his sides, leaving the small knife sticking out of the birch's trunk.
“What was that?” Louisa pressed.
“Xavier always wins,” he said, too loudly. “Everyone knows that.”
Louisa would have given much to see the expression on his face. Was it closed? Angry? Wistful?
Whatever it was, he didn't want her to see it. So she let him have his distance. With a quick yank, she pulled the small knife free.
“If you want to keep your perfect record,” she said in a brisk voice, “you need to raise me up so we can cut this mistletoe.”
He didn't respond at once; his shoulders rose and fell. But when he turned his face back to Louisa, his smile flashed bright.
“Here we go, then, muffin.” Before she knew what he was about, he'd clasped her on either side of the waist and raised her up from the ground.
Oh, my Lord.
Even through the thick layers of her cloak, gown, stays, petticoats, shift—the pressure seemed indecent. His hands were only inches from her breasts, from her untouched parts; he held her up, supporting her, in control of her body.
She shut her eyes, letting the feel of his hands claim her senses.
“Are you intending ever to cut down the mistletoe?”
Her eyes snapped open again. Alex was looking up at her, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat. “Do let me know,” he said, “if you require a rest. I myself could stand like this forever.”
“Hush,” she said, thankful for the cover of twilight to hide her blush. With a few slices of the knife, a great mass of mistletoe came free and tumbled to the ground in a rustle of branches.
Alex lowered her at once to the ground and stepped back. Louisa crouched to study their spoils. “A good find,” she said. “If we win, we shall be positively kissed raw.”
He made a choking sound.
“Let's see if we can find some more.” She stood, clutching the bunch of mistletoe in one hand. “Surely we've already used much of our hour, and this won't be enough greenery to secure our victory.”
“Wheeling will ring a gong back at the house when the challenge has elapsed,” Alex said, referring to his butler. “But I do think the hour is almost up.”
A cold sting bit Louisa's cheek; then another. She shielded her face with her free hand. “Sleet?”
Alex held out his hand, palm up, and squinted into it. “I think so.”
Louisa held out her own hand; two tiny beads of ice smacked her palm almost at once. “Indeed. We'd better head back to the house at once, then. I've no desire to be caught in sleet.”
Alex took the mistletoe from her, then studied it at arm's length. “We might have a chance at winning with this. It's full of berries, and as big as a dog.”
“A puppy, at the very least.” Sleet slapped her on both sides of the face at once, and she raised the hood of her cloak. “Ouch. Yes, we'd best take our chances with our mistletoe puppy. Would you like your knife back?”
He accepted it, sliding the blade into a leather sheath before pocketing it. Louisa turned one way, then back. “Which way is the Hall? We've gone back and forth so much, I've lost my bearings.”
“This way.” Alex laid the fingers of the hand not currently gripping a mistletoe puppy under her elbow, guiding her onto a faint path she'd overlooked.
“Though the sleet is driving us back to the Hall early,” he said, “you can't deny that it's picturesque.”
“It's much more festive than the sight of dead grass,” Louisa granted.
“I commissioned it myself,” said Alex. “I couldn't let a Christmas pass without some sort of wintry precipitation. What sort of host would I be?”
“A host that doesn't wish his guests to get stuck on the road to church in the morning, and doesn't require his servants and tenants to have the extra work of shoveling their animals free?”
He slanted a sideways glance at her. “What an impossible paragon you describe. Besides, I hardly think most of the guests will be eager to roll out of their beds for a church service tomorrow.”
Louisa missed a step; Alex caught her elbow as she stumbled. “Are you all right?”
She shook her arm free. “Yes. I just hadn't realized you didn't plan to go to Christmas services. My family always does.”
“Ah. But you chose to spend Christmas away from them, didn't you?”
“Yes, I did.” She walked a few more steps, considering her reply. “I thought it was time to go my own way for a while. But that doesn't mean I wish to abandon everything familiar.”
“A goose for dinner? Greenery in the hall? We shall have all that.”
She walked on, her feet crunching over beaded sleet as it fell more thickly. The hood of her cloak constrained the world to a tunnel, straight ahead and dim. She couldn't see Alex. She couldn't see anyone.
“I think,” she decided, “I should like to attend mass all the same. My aunt will likely go with me. What time is your service?”
“I don't know,” came Alex's voice. “Wheeling could tell you.”
Louisa nodded. They were almost free of the trees now; soon they'd see Clifton Hall on its rise, its windows aglow with lamplight. From ahead, the low note of a gong sounded thin and clear.
“That's the end, then,” she murmured.
Even if she and Alex didn't win, she had risen to her own challenge. She'd held her own amidst the other guests earlier, managing occasional wit. She'd organized a wager. And she had enjoyed it, this stolen hour with Alex.
Her belly flipped; his warm hands still seemed to press at her waist. He was close enough to her that she could imagine the swift progression: they'd stop walking, turn to each other. His hands would slide around her again, as natural as turning the next page of a book. And how would the story continue then?
She would draw him close, if he would let her. She'd tell him what it had meant for her to leave her family at Christmas; to join games and make wagers. She was trying to leave fear behind and find her own way.
It was horribly difficult.
She wanted to tell him all that, if he could stand to hear it. If
she
could stand to hear it. She didn't know where this path would lead her, but it had a much more significant destination than Clifton Hall.
Which way do you want to go?
She stopped walking. As if yoked to her, he stopped, too. They turned to face one another.
Sleet stung her face as the wind cut beneath her hood, and she squinted against the chill. Alex set his hand under her elbow and drew her forward, one step, then a quarter turn.
“Louisa?”
“Yes,” she said. She didn't know if she was responding to her name, or giving him permission.
She was Lady Irving's niece, wasn't she? She didn't need to grant permission for him to take what he wanted.
She
could take what
she
wanted.
She didn't want to let herself think; “the woman that deliberates is lost,” Joseph Addison had written in
Cato
. Yet the habit of parsing everything was bone deep, and she would feel more lost if she did not deliberate this. If it were not a conscious decision, but a raw impulse, would it mean less?
So she chose to reach for his hand. She chose to intertwine her gloved fingers in his. She watched as his eyes widened, as his other hand dropped its weight of mistletoe and reached for hers. His expression was like that of Michelangelo's
David
: wary, coiled, determined.
The failing light made him look ruthless, slicing every slope of his face into a sharp angle of shadow. Surely such a man would allow nothing to be taken from him that he did not wish to give.
She wanted to kiss him, to give this gift to herself. Boldness. Pleasure for its own sake. With a tug at his hands, she pulled him across the space that separated them. Their clothing snapped and whipped in the wind and sleet, greatcoat and cloak as eager to touch as the people who wore them.
That was all it took: one tug, and some cord of propriety snapped. He lowered his head, and their lips knew how to find each other, pliant and hot and hungry for this touch. This was no gentle promise. Louisa raised herself onto her toes, wrapping her arms around his waist so his hands, still within hers, were pinioned. Oh, he was tall and strong and solid, yet she could mold him with a touch. He let her press his hands behind him, his chest raising, brushing the tips of her breasts. Through layer upon layer of clothing, she felt the pressure of body on body; unmistakable and erotic.
Yes.

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