She exhaled quietly and waited. She couldn’t dash away, couldn’t run away—and to her surprise, she didn’t want to.
He’d been inspecting the damage; she felt his fingers soothe the skin—a caress that tightened her nerves again and sent sensation streaking through her. Then he released her hand and straightened.
He looked into her eyes, and she met his gaze.
The moment—filled with a nascent emotion she couldn’t name—hovered between them.
Impulses, urges, flashed through her mind, but the girls were just down the slope, in sight, and…
She dragged in a breath, smiled and inclined her head, and managed a creditable, “Thank you.”
Head tilting, he held her gaze, then his lips eased into a wholly masculine smile. “It was my pleasure.”
Keeping her own smile within bounds required effort; looking away, she waved toward the sled and started in that direction. “I believe we’ve done our share—our helpers can fetch the rest of the holly.”
Bending to retrieve the hatchet and two saws the girls had left behind, Daniel glanced at the piles of smaller branches. “As you say.” As it appeared that persuading Claire to accept him was going to be a case of one step at a time, he was already planning his next advance.
Straightening, he set off after her, lengthening his stride to catch up with her. They were halfway back to the sled when the girls passed them, of their own volition returning to pick up the rest of the holly.
Upon reaching the sled, Daniel busied himself with checking and stowing the tools. After a second of indecision, Claire went to the front of the sled. She leaned down and poked and prodded under the branches; Daniel hoped Louisa and Therese had hidden their secret foliage deeper in the sled. “What are you looking for?”
Claire glanced up at him, then she straightened, drawing a long loop of rope free. “This is a workman’s sled, so I thought there should be a rope for pulling as well—and there is.”
The girls returned, their arms full of holly. They dumped the branches on top. Daniel loosened the side ropes and looped them over the piled load; with a few quick knots, he secured it. “Girls,” he said, still busy with the last knot, “why don’t you take the lead position with the rope, and Mrs. Meadows and I will push?”
“Yes!” Juliet rushed to Claire and reached for the rope.
Knot tightened, Daniel straightened and saw that Claire was reluctant to give up the rope, but the girls swarmed, and she had no real choice.
Designed to allow the sled to be dragged, the rope at the front was a loop secured at the junctions of the front axle with the two runners. The girls busily lined up inside the loop, holding it at their waists and shuffling forward to tension it.
A frown in her eyes, Claire walked to join him as he moved to the bar that ran between the rear handles. “You don’t really need my help pushing this along—not with the four of them pulling, as well.”
“We might not need your help pushing,” he said, taking up position to one side of the bar and grasping one handle, then inviting her with a wave to take her place alongside him, “but we will almost certainly need your assistance to ensure this doesn’t run them down, and also stays on the path.” Facing forward, he nodded at the four girls, all eager to be off. “There’s enough of a gradient that if they pull too hard, the sled might start sliding on its own. And if two of them pull harder than the other two, the sled will slide sideways and might well end up off the path.”
“Oh.” Her frown deepened a fraction, but then she nodded and, taking a slightly deeper breath, stepped into position alongside him; mimicking his stance, she gripped the back bar with one gloved hand and the handle with her other.
Their shoulders just touched.
He was waiting to catch her gaze when she glanced up. He smiled as reassuringly as he could. “Ready?”
For an instant, she searched his eyes, then she looked forward and nodded. “Indeed.”
Quelling a smile, he looked at the girls and found them all staring expectantly at him. “All right, girls—off we go!”
To a chorus of cheers that quickly devolved into soft laughter, punctuated by the occasional feminine shriek, the sled started sliding over the woodland path in the direction of the house.
Daniel kept the pace at a gentle walk, reproving the girls if they tried to go too fast. Claire walked beside him and found herself mesmerized by her awareness of him—of the warmth of his large body pacing so fluidly beside her, of the muscular strength he deployed in correcting the sled’s trajectory, of the way her shoulder brushed his steely bicep with every second step.
She told herself she was being unforgivably silly, that such indulgence of her senses was something she would come to regret—the exercise had no purpose and, at best, would only leave her yearning for something she knew she could never have.
Pointless.
She should cease enjoying the moment immediately.
Instead, some reckless piece of her soul she’d thought long dead kept a firm grip on her reins, and she walked on by Daniel’s side and, regardless of what she knew should be, found herself smiling.
* * *
By their standards, the riding party hadn’t ridden hard, but they’d made good time into the hills, through the forests mantling the lower slopes, and had climbed to a bridle path that snaked along above the forests below the bald spine of the Rhinns of Kells.
Turning their horses’ heads north, they’d ridden a little way, then had halted at a spot where a collection of larger rocks provided a flattish space sufficiently large to accommodate them all. Leaving the horses grazing in the rough stubble between the rocks and the upper edge of the forest, the boys lugged the saddlebags to the rock, and their company spread out for what was a rather early lunch.
“More like late elevenses,” Prudence said, then bit into the chicken leg she held in one hand.
“Pointless to try to keep them from food,” Lucilla dryly observed.
“Hmm,” was all Prudence offered in reply.
Sebastian had settled on Lucilla’s other side, with Marcus, Michael, and Christopher beyond him. With a wave, Sebastian indicated the land spread before them. “If the manor lands end where the forests begin, who owns the land we’re riding through?”
“The Crown,” Marcus replied around a mouthful of ham. “We have logging rights in the forest, and hunting rights, too, but the land itself is the Crown’s—which hereabouts means it’s no-man’s-land.”
“So by our English standards, it’s common land.” Michael glanced at the crest towering above them. “How far does it extend?”
“To the west”—Marcus gestured to the rounded peaks—“it goes for four or five miles.”
“What about to the north?” Christopher asked, squinting in that direction. “Those forests to the north of the manor—are they common land, too?”
Glancing at Marcus and noting that his mouth was full, Lucilla answered, “Only a narrow strip—the highest and densest part of the forests. On that boundary, our lands go into the forests some way, almost to the ridge line, and our neighbor’s lands lie further to the north, beyond the strip of common land, which follows the ridge line.”
“So where in all these forests are we most likely to find red deer?” Michael asked.
“If I had to guess,” Marcus said, “I would say further to the north, closer to the Carrick property—they’re our northern neighbors. As with the manor’s lands, the Carricks’ western boundary lies at the lower edge of the forests, so we can ride and hunt along the ridge as far as we like.”
“Right, then.” Sebastian gathered his long legs under him and rose. He met Marcus’s eyes, then Lucilla’s as they, too, got to their feet. “I suggest we ride north along the edge of the forests”—he inclined his head to Lucilla—“as you suggested, and keep a sharp eye out for tracks.”
Marcus nodded. “We can ride into the afternoon and see what we find, but we’ll need to turn back in good time to return to the
manor before full dark.”
Sebastian glanced at the others, including the five younger boys. “We’re all good enough riders that we shouldn’t have a problem riding across open land in moonlight.”
Marcus glanced at Lucilla; when she said nothing, he shrugged. “We’ll see.”
As they gathered the saddlebags and the others started climbing off the rocks and heading for the horses, Lucilla looked up at the crests to the west. This close, they blocked her view of the western sky, yet…
She grimaced and, echoing her twin, muttered to herself, “We’ll see.”
After picking up her saddlebag, she followed the others off the rocks.
* * *
“A little to the left,” Helena directed.
Claire exchanged a glance with Daniel, then obediently shifted the long branch of holly a fraction further left on the mantel of the main fireplace in the Great Hall. The cavernous room had a total of four hearths of varying sizes built into the walls. They’d already decorated two mantelpieces to the girls’—and the three older observers’—satisfaction.
Louisa, standing back with the other three girls to observe the critical placement, nodded decisively. “That’s perfect.”
Glancing at the others and seeing approval in all their faces, Claire resisted the urge to raise her eyes to the skies and instead settled the holly on the bed of fir boughs the girls had laid over the stone mantel.
“We just need a few more sprigs to finish it off.” Annabelle went to the huge log-basket they’d filled with their holly sprigs. Juliet followed and the pair began to sort and select branchlets to augment the longer branch.
“We’ll get the candles and the pinecones,” Louisa said. She and Therese headed to where those items had been stacked on one of the tables.
With Claire, Daniel glanced around the hall at the four footmen co-opted to hang branches of fir over the four archways leading into the hall. Balancing on stepladders and stools, the men were lacing string between nails that had clearly been inserted long ago for just that purpose, creating a web to hold the branches in place. Louisa and the girls had been very clear in their instructions. The green branches were to be secured above and on both sides of the archways, and then later the girls planned to insert sprigs of holly in amongst the fir.
Daniel assumed that, at some point, they also intended to hang their mistletoe under the arches. He had no idea what they’d done with the leafy stuff, but he suspected it currently resided at the bottom of the log-basket, concealed beneath the holly. Upon finishing his survey of the hall, he glanced at Claire. “I think that leaves us to arrange the fir on the last mantelpiece.”
Eyes dancing, she arched her brows. “And I suspect we should get started before Louisa or Helena think of something else for us to do.”
Daniel grinned and moved with her to the last unadorned fireplace, pausing along the way to fill his arms with a load of the feathery fir they’d left stacked in one corner of the room.
Standing at one of the long tables, helping Louisa prepare and insert candles into a set of beaten silver candleholders, Therese glanced at Daniel and Claire, then, dropping her gaze to her busy hands, leaned closer to Louisa and whispered, “What about the mistletoe?”
Louisa glanced up as Annabelle and Juliet, satisfied with their creation in holly, joined them. Once the other girls had started sorting the pinecones by size, Louisa quietly said, “I think we should hang the mistletoe later.” She flicked a glance over her shoulder at her grandmother and the two others in the armchairs on the dais. “I’ve always thought it’s something that works best as a surprise. We could slip down while everyone is getting ready for dinner. That’ll be the perfect time. There’s really no point in putting it up earlier—I’ve always heard that the magic of mistletoe starts at sundown on Christmas Eve.”
Annabelle nodded. “And hereabouts at least, it’s said to remain effective only until sunrise on St. Stephen’s Day.” After a moment, she added, “There’ll be about half an hour when no one will be here—not any of the staff either.”
“Can we leave the mistletoe where it is, do you think?” Therese eyed the log-basket.
“As long as we leave a nice layer of holly on top, no one will notice,” Louisa said. “We can make it look like the basket’s a part of our decorations.”
“I’ll mention that to the footmen,” Annabelle said.
Juliet glanced at the pair of footmen working at the nearest archway. “We should take note of where they store those stepladders.”
“They’ll be left somewhere nearby,” Annabelle murmured. “They’re normally kept in the storerooms near the stable, but no one will want to go out there to fetch them if something falls down, so they’ll leave them in some nook. I’ll find some reason to ask exactly where.”
“Good—so we have the when and how decided, although we’ll need to be organized and quick when we come down.” Louisa met the other girls’ eyes and smiled. “So for now, we can simply enjoy ourselves finishing these decorations.”
The others smiled back.
They fell to with a will, and the next half hour sped by.
Daniel halted beside Claire and surveyed the results of the girls’—and theirs and the footmen’s—labors. “I will own to being astounded at just how much four schoolgirls can achieve.”
“If they set their minds to it,” Claire returned. “In this instance, they’ve seemed well-nigh driven, and I have to admit that the result is quite amazing.”
Previously rather bare, the Great Hall now stood ready for the festivities, garlanded with holly and festooned with fir, with pinecones and candles arranged on all the mantelpieces and down the center of the long tables. The fires had been built up in all four fireplaces; warmth pervaded the room, and the dancing flames bathed the scene with a cheery glow.
Watching the four girls pirouetting in the center of the huge room, their faces alight with unabashed delight at the transformation they had wrought, Daniel murmured, “They’ve been inspired.”
He was feeling inspired, too, but by sudden, unsettling uncertainty. He looked at Claire and found her consulting the small watch pinned to her collar.
“Heavens! It’s just after midday. Where has the morning gone?” She raised her gaze and looked at the girls, not at him. “Girls! Come along—it’s time to wash and get ready for luncheon.”
Daniel hovered as, in true governessly fashion, Claire gathered the girls, had them collect their coats, hats, gloves, and scarfs, and herded them out of the Great Hall…all without looking at him.
Not once.
He’d thought they were getting along well, that her resistance, whatever it sprang from, was waning, fading, yet as soon as they’d entered the Great Hall, something had changed.
She’d pulled back, retreated, and suddenly there was a certain distance between them, one he wasn’t sure he should attempt to reach across…perhaps her sudden buttoning-up was because of the three observers on the dais.
Regardless, concern over her unexpected retreat had collided with another realization—that although their respective families were supposed to remain at the manor until the second day of the new year, he couldn’t count on either her family or his not being called away earlier. Although the dowager had made the journey north, none of the others of her generation had felt strong enough to risk it. What if one of those others—Celia or Martin Cynster, for example—were taken ill? Or what if there was some investment crisis and Rupert Cynster took his family back to London? Or if Alasdair was called to assist with some antiquity and removed his family either back to Devon or somewhere else?
Such incidents had been known to occur. Which meant Daniel could only count on him and Claire being there, together at the manor, until the day after St. Stephen’s Day. It was unlikely they would move before then, but more to the point, it was unlikely that any news from the outside world would reach their employers to summon them elsewhere before then.
So in the matter of his campaign
to convince Claire to throw her lot in with his, he could count on having the rest of Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day and St. Stephen’s Day, but no longer.
Two days and an evening.
The driving need to ensure that she’d instituted the sudden distance between them purely for social appearances, that it was a smokescreen and nothing more, drove him to dog Claire’s heels and follow her into the manor’s front hall.
Chattering and laughing, the girls started up the curving stairs. In their wake, Claire was about to set foot on the first tread when Daniel caught her hand.
“Come out to the front porch for a moment.” Without further explanation, he drew her toward the front door. “I want to speak with you.”
Claire’s feet seemed to move of their own volition. Speak with her? Her heart started to thud. She should resist—make some glib excuse…before she had time to think of any words, Daniel had opened the door and checked outside, then he stepped back, ushered her through onto the porch—and there was no easy way to hang back as he followed and drew the door almost shut behind him.
Facing him, she clung to the mask she’d assumed as soon as they’d reached the house and she’d realized that her easiness with him—her relaxing in and enjoying his company, appreciating the dry wit of the comments with which he’d enlivened the return journey to the house—was not in keeping with the distance she was determined to maintain between them.
She could be an acquaintance and not much more, and she hadn’t been honest in adhering to that line.
For his sake, she was determined to do better from now on. Searching his eyes, she tried to read his expression; it seemed sober and rather serious. Her chest tightened; she raised her chin fractionally. “What did you wish to speak about?” Best they get this dealt with now—best she nip any aspirations he might harbor in the bud before they developed any further.
He held her gaze; he’d said he wanted to speak with her, yet he hesitated…then he cleared his throat and looked out at the landscape, brown blotches showing through the light dusting of snow. “I…”