A Winter Wish

by Christi Caldwell

  “Is that something you want, Merry?” he asked quietly. “To become a housekeeper?”

  That query proved sobering, shattering some of the spell cast by his touch.

  Was that something she wanted?

  No one had ever dared asked her that before. Why, that was a question she’d not even put to herself. To those born outside the ranks of the nobility, there were few options and only one certainty for all—men, women, and children would all work.

  The very best any woman could ever dare hope for was serving in the esteemed role as head of some nobleman’s household.

  But was it what she wanted?

  “Your silence hardly serves as a confirmation.”

  Merry swiftly drew her palm back, displacing his hand and leaving her fingers cold. “I want to serve as housekeeper.” That insistence emerged halfheartedly to her own ears. “It is what I’ve been trained to do.”

  He gave her an all-knowing look.

  Damn him for the perceptive, clever man he’d always been that he should see so much.

  Despite her earlier hungering to have him remain at her side, she now, coward that she was, found herself wishing he’d go. For then she’d not be besieged with questions she didn’t want to think about, ones that forced her to look at her life in a way that left a void inside.

  Nay, in a way that revealed a void. One she’d never before known existed within her. Merry cleared her throat. “I… there’s no more reliable future a young woman could hope for than to be head of a nobleman’s household.” Unnerved by the directness of his probing gaze, she grabbed for her pencil.

  He intercepted her efforts. “That isn’t an answer.”

  She bristled. “Of course it is.”

  “Fine,” he allowed. “But it’s the answer you likely received in your training that you’ve simply regurgitated back.”

  Merry’s jaw came together with enough force that her teeth rattled. Damn him for knowing that. How did he know that?

  He brushed a knuckle along her cheek, that touch so very effortlessly erasing the tension in her jaw, and briefly closing her eyes, she found herself leaning into that slight caress. “Do you want to be a housekeeper?” he repeated.

  The question served to shatter his hold upon her.

  When he still refused to relinquish her things, Merry tossed her arms up in exasperation. “Would it matter either way?” What did he want from her?

  “Yes,” he said quietly, with a sincerity that nearly brought tears to her eyes.

  Which was preposterous. She didn’t cry. And she certainly didn’t cry about her future—one that was very secure, at that. But she almost did, and all because a gentleman challenged her with questions about her existence.

  “I’ve not given thought to any life but this one,” she finally admitted… to them both. “This is the best I could hope for.” As soon as those ungrateful-sounding words left her lips, she wanted to call them back. “What I mean to say is—” Luke touched two fingers to her lips, silencing the lies she’d been about to hand him.

  “What would you want?” he asked as he drew his hand back, and she hungered for that gentlest, and yet most intimate of caresses.

  What would she want?

  “I don’t know,” she confessed wistfully. What was worse, she’d never given thought to… really anything beyond the day-to-day of her life.

  Over the years, she’d worked in various roles in various households throughout Europe with but one purpose to her travels—to prepare for the day she’d serve the Holman household. She’d taken notes for her future role the way a scholar might record lectures.

  “I don’t believe that,” he said, folding his arms at his chest.

  Yes, he was so blasted insightful that he should see those details.

  They locked gazes, engaging in a quiet battle.

  As the silence marched on, and he gave no hint of relenting, she pressed her lips together. She mumbled a word and grabbed her book.

  He leaned closer. “What was that?”

  “I said… travel,” she said tightly. “Are you happy? I’d like to visit the museums in Paris and Rome, not with the intention of learning and recording design aesthetics for other people’s households, but simply taking in those sights.” Embarrassed by all she’d shared, those intimate pieces she’d denied even to herself until this very moment, Merry shoved her stool back.

  It scraped noisily upon the stone floor as she hopped to her feet.

  Luke shot an arm out, catching her at the waist, tightly enough to stir delicious shivers from that decisive point of contact, but loose enough that she knew she was free to leave if she wished.

  Her throat moved.

  How very different he was from all the noblemen’s sons who’d attempted to steal kisses and take that which she’d no wish to offer.

  Luke lightly pushed her heavy plait back over her shoulder and cupped her cheek. “You deserve that,” he said quietly. “You deserve to go to those faraway places and see the world as you wish without any encumbrances.”

  As she and Luke settled back to work, she couldn’t help but imagine that very life he’d painted for her…

  But with him in it.

  Chapter 8

  It had been one week of seeing to the holiday preparations. From before the sun rose, until many hours after it set, Merry was rushing about seeing to her responsibilities. From coordinating arrangements with servants, to drafting the menu for the Christmastide meal, to creating decorations to hang about the household, hers was not an unfamiliar role she’d taken on in numerous households. There was, however, one difference between this assignment and all the others to come before it.

  Luke.

  All the times prior, her sole focus had been on work. There’d been little time for laughter and celebration. Oh, she’d always loved the holiday season, but the pleasure and enjoyment of it was not something the servant class had the luxury of. Nay, servants were too busy transforming households for the lords and ladies of the ton.

  Since she’d come upon him sprawled in the foyer, and he’d insisted on taking part in the day-to-day goings-on of holiday preparation, he’d risen with her and worked well into the night beside her. Long after the rest of the household had fallen asleep.

  He was the first—and only—gentleman to ever help her.

  And having him beside her as they saw to those tasks never felt like work.

  Side by side in the nursery, with garland and the adornments laid out before them, she threaded a string of gold beads through a long branch of evergreen.

  From the corner of her eye, she peeked at Luke.

  Muttering to himself, he jabbed a piece of red velvet into an untrimmed branch at the middle of his creation. “Close your eyes,” he said for the eleventh time since they’d begun.

  “I cannot close my eyes, Luke. I’m working,” she reminded him, neatly winding the remainder of her adornment and then tying it off at the end.

  “Very well. Then stop peeking at mine. I told you at the start, it is a surprise.”

  A surprise.

  There could be no greater one than the gentleman beside her. The teasing, thoughtful, and proud viscount who had put the same effort into their preparations for the holiday season that he had his studies.

  Only, there was so much different from then to now. She didn’t recall so much as a smile from the somber little boy. Now, whenever they were together, he wore a perpetual grin. An infectious one.

  Despite his warning from moments ago, her gaze drifted unbidden to him.

  Everything about him was real and warm and human, from the relaxed lines of his features to the looseness of golden curls he’d once kept slicked back in place.

  Her heart fluttered in an all-too-familiar quickened tempo.

  He paused in his task and glanced over at her.

  Merry hurriedly dropped her focus to—

  Her lips twitched.

  “I see you laughing,” he mumbled.

  “I’
m not laughing.” She winked. “I was smiling. It’s not exactly the same.”

  “It’s not entirely different either,” he said, all of his attention trained on that oddly shaped arrangement.

  No, it wasn’t. Nor did that adorably imperfect garland he’d worked tirelessly at since they’d arrived that morn account for the perpetual smile she’d worn that morning. With Luke distracted as he was, Merry freely studied him while he worked. It was simply him. He made her smile. And laugh, he did that, too. And how very wonderful it felt.

  Her garland forgotten, she dropped her chin atop her hand.

  How singularly odd that the man who would one day be her employer, the same man who’d been relentlessly devoted to his rank, should have opened her eyes to the truth that she was far more than a servant. She’d not been placed upon the earth with the sole purpose of serving.

  Oh, that was how she and her family and the majority of the world survived.

  But work was not all they were. She’d as much right to her happiness as any lady of the peerage. She’d as much right to her dreams. Dreams she’d not even realized she’d carried in her heart until Luke had forced her to look inside herself.

  Not for the first time, Luke broke into a quiet, cheer-filled song.

  “I saw three ships come sailing in

  On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;

  I saw three ships come sailing in

  On Christmas Day in the morning.

  And what was in those ships all three…”

  Her smile widened.

  He abruptly cut off that joy-filled tune. “Do you know, Merry? Laughing again, you are,” he said with a faint thread of teasing in his voice.

  “It’s simply that I’m happy,” she said softly. And she was. So deliriously, unapologetically happy. On the heels of that, her cheeks bloomed with a blush. Alas, he remained engrossed in his task. All the while, he continued working on… on… Merry squinted and, this time, couldn’t even attempt to hide her smile. “What are you creating?”

  He stole a sideways peek her way and hurriedly placed the greenery in his hands behind him.

  “Close your eyes,” he said. “I’m nearly done.”

  Yes, perhaps he was. But it also begged the question: “With what?” she asked as gently as she could.

  He held the jumbled, misshapen ball aloft. Beads and red velvet ribbons hung down, a garish display that all but covered every inch of green.

  Merry bit the inside of her cheek, but a snorting laugh escaped her anyway.

  “Hmph.” Luke gave it a slight shake, and the beading jingled merrily. “I’ll have you know this is perfectly splendid.”

  She laughed all the harder. “It is perfectly lovely,” she conceded, reaching for his masterpiece, but he held it out of her reach. “But what is it?”

  “Ah, I shan’t tell you. It’s a secret.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Until you’re able to properly appreciate my work.”

  He merely teased, and yet…

  “Does it matter so very much?”

  He paused.

  Catching the sides of her stool, she dragged it closer to him and then angled the seat so their legs met. “Why do you worry what I, or the world, or anyone else in between should think or feel? Isn’t it enough that you should simply be happy and damn everyone else’s opinion?” In that moment, it all became very blurred as to whether she spoke of him… or herself.

  His finger smoothed the velvet ribbon distractedly, and he sat in silent contemplation. “I was raised early on to believe Society’s perception of me mattered more than anything,” he began slowly, his tones introspective. “I’ve measured my responses to… everything. Every decision has been made first and foremost with my family’s name in mind.” His jaw flexed. “Even…” His words trailed off.

  “Even?” she pressed, needing to know everything there was about him. Because he was the most real man she’d ever known, and in this short time together, he had become a friend.

  “Even the woman I would wed.”

  Her heart missed several beats, and when it resumed a steady cadence, the rhythm was quickened. “You are betrothed?” Odd how three little words—four measly syllables—should sit like a pit in her belly.

  “No.”

  Some of the tension eased, leaving in its place a giddy relief.

  “I was betrothed, however.” His lips twisted in a bitter smile. “Past tense. At my parents’ urging, I broke it off.”

  There was a woman who’d very nearly been the Viscountess Grimslee… and who would have been Merry’s employer.

  Perhaps it was fatigue from the long hours she and Luke had kept, or perhaps it was an illogic thought that simply could not be rationalized away, but the idea of him with his Society-born lady left her bereft.

  This is where you are to say something…

  “I’m… sorry,” she said softly, resting her hand on his. “She is the reason you…”

  Luke stared at their almost-joined hands and then lifted his face. And in those perfectly carved features, there wasn’t a hint of pain or regret. Only wry amusement. “She is the reason I was sleeping in the foyer when you arrived?” He wore a faintly sheepish expression. “Yes, she is the reason, and yet…”

  And yet?

  That question screamed around her mind, and the lessons on patience ingrained into her early on were all that kept her from demanding he say more.

  “I regret that I let my family’s concerns drive my decision. I regret the dishonorable way in which I conducted myself. I’ll always regret that I let my worry about Society and what they might say matter more than what I wanted.”

  What I wanted. The sharp blade dug all the deeper. She stared down at the obscenely shiny objects littered about them.

  “But I won’t regret not marrying her,” he said quietly, bringing her head jerking up. “Not because she wasn’t an honorable or good woman, nor because my life with her would have been content, but because had we married, I would have never realized I wanted more than being content. You, however, Merry Read,” he said, lightly caressing her left hand. “It was you who showed me I wanted more. That I want passion and joy, and I thank you for that.”

  “You needn’t thank me, Luke. We are… friends.”

  Friends.

  Aside from her relationship with her brother and sister, there’d been a dearth of friendship in her life.

  And you cannot very well go on being friends with him when he is your employer. Not when he would eventually wed and Merry would answer to that lady of the household.

  Luke looked up, and he searched his eyes over her face in a slow, delicate caress, and she held her breath, more than half afraid of what emotion he’d see there. But he gave no indication that he had detected the undercurrents of feelings she had no place feeling for him. Luke set his garland down and spoke with an earnestness she’d never remembered from him. “You’ve challenged me to see the world and live in it in ways that I never have. In ways I suspect will always be foreign, and yet”—he caught one of her hands, tangling their fingers as one—“I’ve never felt more alive or freer than I have this week with you, Merry.”

  Merry’s heart lifted and then soared as Luke’s words gave that organ flight. Only to come crashing down in a blaze of reality.

  As much as she loved the Luke Holman he was before her, he would, by his very admission, forever remain a man worried about Society’s opinion. Such men didn’t have friendships with maids or other servants. They didn’t tease their housekeepers, and they certainly didn’t marry them.

  They wed women such as the honorable and good one he’d been betrothed to. And even with a like social connection, his parents still had not approved of the match.

  Her stomach flipped, as it had when she was a girl aboard a packet to France in a violent storm that churned up the waters, leaving her sick.

  A light palm came to rest upon her forearm, and she jumped. “Merry?” he asked.

  Suddenly, she was besieged by an over
whelming urge to cry at the tenderness of his touch, at something that would never—and could never—be.

  “I was… thinking of what you said.” Which wasn’t altogether untrue. For even as she reveled in this new freedom he’d allowed himself and all the ways in which he’d changed, Merry proved selfish. “And how I’ll miss this.” Her voice faded to a whisper that she could not call back. With that, she made to return her seat to its previous spot so she could resume working.

  Luke stopped her. “Why does it have to end?”

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t know.

  Her teeth snapped together with a ferocity that sent pain shooting from her jaw to her temple. “Come, Luke, by your very words here, you’re aware of how Society is driven by its social order. Servants work.”

  He frowned. “That’s not what I was saying.”

  “But it’s true.” She tied off the end of her beads and grabbed for another piece of evergreen to start on. “It is the way of the servant.” Always working. “Always be working,” she muttered. It was the mantra her own mother, as housekeeper, had ingrained into not just the entire female staff she was responsible for, but also her own children. Merry angrily dragged the gold beads around the vibrant strand garland. “And that is precisely what we’ve done this week, Luke. Work.” Because no matter what illusion she’d allowed herself, or pretty dream Luke had put forward of her having a future beyond this, the truth remained—she was and always would be a servant. And this time here? Decorating the countess’ London townhouse and organizing the family’s festivities was still work. No matter how much joy she’d found with Luke as she’d overseen those tasks. Tasks were still tasks, and—

  Tears blurred her vision.

  Luke cupped her cheek and stroked it lightly. “Here,” he murmured, his honeyed baritone as warming as the glide of his knuckles along her cheek.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and gave her head a slight shake. She didn’t want his touch. She couldn’t afford the havoc it wrought on her senses any more than she’d already allowed this man. So why, as he complied, did she want to let her tears fall?

  “The past days… this time with you,” he quietly corrected. “They’ve not just been about my family’s guests or what my mother or father expect for the holidays. It was about the time I spent with you, and the joy I found in it.”