Christmas at the Castle

by Marion Lennox

  The choir master had beamed them a beatific smile as they’d entered—what had Angus written on that cheque?—but now, apart from the choristers, they were alone.

  Holly had been running on adrenalin ever since she’d discovered Geoff’s betrayal. She’d been trying to figure how to settle debts, to pay overdue wages—to survive in the mess her creep of a fiancé had left her. She’d been gutted by Geoff’s dishonesty. Her parents’ death had taught her not to trust the world, but she’d trusted again and Geoff had thrown that trust in her face.

  Then, when she’d arrived in Craigenstone, she’d discovered her grandmother facing eviction and the sense of desolation and loss had just got worse.

  She’d spent the last days working like a Trojan. Today had been just as crazy, but now the world seemed to have stopped to take a breath.

  She was seated in a pew whose background made her tremble. Who else had sat here? Angus was right beside her—right beside her—in his gorgeous cashmere coat with the slightly suspicious bulge under his arm. That was why he was sitting so close, she told herself. He needed to disguise the bulge that was Scruffy. But the man who’d bustled forth when they’d first entered had been silenced by whatever Angus had put in his hand, the choir master was happy with the cheque Angus has produced, and no one was asking questions.

  And the music was all around her, piercing places she’d thought were thoroughly armoured. The choir was singing a layered, magnificent version of Silent Night. Her mother had sung this carol to her, and she wouldn’t mind betting Maggie had sung it to her father. Silent Night was a song for the whole world, and yet here, in this place, it was her song, intensely personal—it was as if they were singing it just for her.

  Or maybe they were singing for Angus as well, for his hand was still holding hers. Apart from a little cheque writing, even as they’d smuggled the little dog in, even as he’d held him close under his coat, he hadn’t relinquished his grip and she hadn’t tugged away.

  Why not?

  She didn’t want to pull away. It was as simple as that. She shivered, but it wasn’t from cold or from fear.

  It was a shiver of pure sensation. Here in this night the ghosts were out: Christmas Past and Christmas Present.

  It was a shiver caused by their linked hands, and by something deeper, something she didn’t understand.

  Trust? Could she learn to trust yet again?

  What sort of question was that? A crazy question, that was what.

  But, lack of trust aside, when Angus dropped their linked hands and put his arm around her waist she didn’t object. She couldn’t object to anything on this night. Magic was all around them, and for this one amazing time she could forget debts, landlords, thieving fiancés, distrust, a world where fate was precarious, and she could just be. She was a woman side by side with a man who took her breath away, in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

  They listened and listened and the feeling between them seemed to grow and grow. Within the silence and the music something was forming that she’d never felt before, that she had no hope of understanding. She didn’t trust it but she didn’t care because, right now, trust wasn’t important.

  She felt as if she were floating, weirdly, out of her body but wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully.

  And then the choir started on the Hallelujah Chorus. This was hardly a rehearsal. This was the triumph of the night. The voices soared and the Abbey seemed almost to melt with beauty and power and, before she could soar through the great vaulted ceiling, which was what she felt she was about to do, she made one last desperate attempt to pull herself together.

  ‘We need to leave,’ she whispered, not caring if he could hear her desperation. ‘One minute more and I’ll be on my feet singing with them.’ Or something more drastic. Something she had no idea about.

  ‘This I have to see.’

  ‘This you don’t have to see,’ she whispered fiercely, forcing herself to sound matter-of-fact. As if this was no special night. No special place. No special man. ‘I have the singing voice of a tomcat. It’s scary. Angus, let’s go.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The way I’m feeling, I’m about to melt in sheer awe,’ she whispered back. ‘I’ll ooze down into these flagstones and merge into all these graves, which wouldn’t be fitting. This is the place for Kings and Queens and the likes of Charles Darwin. I’m just an Aussie cook.’

  ‘Chef,’ he said and she gave a wavering smile but she did manage to pull away, to head out through the vestry—trying not to run, she felt so panicked—leaving Angus to follow if he would.

  He did. The security guard nodded to both of them, beaming a goodnight. How much had Angus given to him? Angus fell into place by her side, popped Scruffy back down on the pavement and made to take her hand again.

  But this time she kept her hand firmly to herself. What had she been thinking? Something had happened in there. Her world had shifted, and she was trying desperately to find even ground again. To make her head work and make sense.

  She’d been thinking she could wipe the slate and start again.

  Back there, seduced by the place, the music—and the sensation of this man so close to her—she’d been thinking it felt right to be held by the Lord of Castle Craigie. Was she mad?

  She’d been thinking the world could right itself—that somehow she could learn to trust. She knew she couldn’t, but one more moment of listening to those voices in that place with this man holding her and she wouldn’t have been responsible for what happened. A girl had to be sensible.

  ‘Head, not heart,’ Angus said and she flashed him a suspicious glance from all of three feet away.

  ‘What?’ The comment had come from left field and she veered from determined to confused.

  ‘It’s what I’ve been telling myself for years,’ he told her. ‘Don’t let sentiment hold sway.’

  She stopped and stared. It was so much what she had been feeling...so much what she had been telling herself...

  ‘So you were feeling it back there, too.’

  ‘I’m still feeling it,’ he said. ‘Sensible or not.’ He offered his hand again but she looked at it as if it might be a scorpion.

  ‘You’re saying head, not heart, but you’re also giving in. Ignoring your own advice?’

  ‘I’m suggesting we could take a risk,’ he said, and the way he said it...it was as if he was making an effort to keep his voice light. ‘The way I’m feeling...maybe the risk is worth it.’

  The way I’m feeling... There was enough in that to take a girl’s breath away, but a girl had to keep breathing—and had to keep thinking sense.

  ‘I’m over risks,’ she managed. ‘You gamble when you have enough to lose without catastrophe. I don’t have that luxury. I’ve gambled before, and I’ve lost my life savings and more besides. If you think I’m going down that road again...’

  ‘Ah, but we’re not talking about gambling,’ he said, humour resurfacing. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, you don’t have any life savings to lose. You just gave away your ring, so how can you gamble without a stake? There’s nothing being put on the table here except the way we’re both feeling.’ He hesitated. ‘You are feeling it, aren’t you?’

  ‘It was the music.’

  ‘Just the music?’

  ‘Okay, I don’t know,’ she said honestly, still three feet from him. ‘But it’s scary to think that it can be anything else.’

  ‘Scary for me, too,’ he said. ‘I’ve never fallen for a girl in blue boots before.’

  ‘You can’t fall,’ she said a little bit desperately. ‘I’m your employee and things have changed since peasants followed their lords. Yours is a position of power, and current politics says propositioning me is against the rules.’

  ‘So if I wasn’t Lord of Castle Craigie...’

 
‘You are.’

  ‘But if I wasn’t,’ he said stubbornly, ‘you might consider...I don’t know...hand-holding a bit longer?’

  ‘See, there’s the problem,’ she said, deciding to be honest. They were back on Westminster Bridge. The night was still now, and icy-cold. There were still sightseers veering around them but suddenly they faded—the noise, the Christmas glitz, night-time tourist London. There was simply a man and a woman cocooned by some sort of connection she didn’t understand—a connection that isolated them, linked them, held.

  She shivered, a racking shiver that had nothing to do with the cold, and he reached out instinctively and touched her face.

  She didn’t flinch.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said gently. ‘I’m not Geoff.’

  ‘No,’ she said, linked to his gaze. Things were shifting, changing and she felt herself shudder again. She’d been too badly hurt. Too badly betrayed. Her head was screaming at her to step away, that her heart couldn’t be trusted, but every instinct was to move forward. To let this man hold her.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she managed feebly and he nodded but, instead of withdrawing, he took her hand in his again.

  ‘Of course it is,’ he said, gravity fading. ‘Much too soon for commitment. If we want to take this further we need a couple of years of careful consideration, lawyers going through the ramifications in triplicate, lots and lots of careful, nit-picking investigation. So let’s not.’

  ‘You’re holding my hand.’

  ‘Friends can hold hands,’ he said. ‘They can hold hands while interim ramifications are sorted. Call this preliminary negotiations.’

  ‘O...Okay,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘This is friendship by the book,’ he said. ‘Head, not heart. I have fallen before,’ he said gently. ‘It ended in disaster. You’re not the only one with a broken engagement to your name, but mine ended in death as well as betrayal. So it’s hand-holding only.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ she said. But was it? She was feeling the warmth of the link between them, the strength—the wonder? But behind the warmth of the link was the shock of his words. She heard the pain behind them, the lesson learned. She didn’t need to ask more.

  ‘In a day or two I might stroke your hair,’ he was saying lightly, as if to get this back on a normal footing. Slight flirtation, nothing more. ‘Just lightly and the agreement is that I provide a comb to fix it afterwards. And I’ll let you adjust my tie on Christmas Day.’

  ‘Gee...’

  ‘I know,’ he said nobly. ‘It sounds too familiar for words but I think we can handle it. It’s one small step at a time for the likes of us. Now, let’s go home.’

  ‘Back to the hotel,’ she said, flustered, because suddenly it seemed important to differentiate between ‘home’—personal—and ‘hotel’—part of impersonal negotiations within a relationship she didn’t understand in the least.

  ‘Hotel,’ he agreed cheerfully and swung her arm with their linked hands. ‘You’re right. Home is something other people do together. Not us.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ONLY OF COURSE, even though it sounded impersonal, it wasn’t. They should have booked two rooms on different sides of the hotel. They were far too close, and Angus was far too large and male and gorgeous, and Holly was warm and full of the sounds of the choir and the wonders of the night and the way Angus had organised things and just...Angus.

  The hotel provided hot Christmas punch—the waiter arrived with it steaming, moments after they returned. Without being asked, he flicked on the gas-flamed fire and departed. Fake logs crackled in the fake hearth, and there was some sort of expensive fragrance of pine wafting through the warmth.

  It was all too much. Holly was fighting desperately to keep up defences she was starting to doubt she even wanted.

  This night... This man.... This moment...

  Angus poured the punch and it would have been surly to refuse, but the moment the warmth hit her stomach she knew she was in trouble.

  The glow started from the inside out. Her clothes were too hot for this room. She should strip off her sweater but she wasn’t brave enough. She was hardly brave enough to move.

  Scruffy had collapsed in a tired heap in the luxurious dog basket the hotel had provided. She needed him, she thought, as the punch warmed places she hadn’t known had been cold. She needed to hug him for defence. She needed...any defence she could find.

  She was looking out of the great plate glass windows at night-time London sprawling below, and Angus was behind her, watching the sights as well, or maybe watching her; she didn’t know and she wasn’t about to turn and find out.

  ‘Holly,’ he said and the sound of his voice did something to her. Something deep and magical and irresistible.

  Head before heart? Whatever their backgrounds, it wasn’t working. He was too gorgeous. He was too male. He was too...here.

  ‘Mmm...mmm?’

  ‘Legal considerations seem to be speeding up faster than expected,’ he said softly, and she did turn then and look at him and what she saw...

  He was as unsure as she was, she thought. Earl of Craigenstone? No. He was just...Angus. Looking at her gravely. Asking a question with his eyes.

  Could she trust?

  And more. Something in his expression told her that this was as big a leap for him as it was for her.

  Could he trust? Could he step forward?

  Nonsense, she told herself, head trying desperately to get a word in over heart. He’s just a guy with a woman in his apartment trying to do what guys the world over would do in this situation.

  But... His words came back. Mine ended in death... This man was more wounded than she was. This man.

  Angus.

  ‘Angus, I’m scared,’ she whispered before she could help herself. ‘The way I’m feeling...I’ve just been skyrocketed from a relationship that almost ruined me—a relationship where I trusted far more than I should. I don’t think... I can’t...’

  ‘You can’t kiss me?’

  ‘I want to kiss you,’ she said, and her voice held all the longing in the world. ‘But you’re way out of my league. You’re a billionaire American and Lord of Castle Craigie to boot. It scares me.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ He took her glass from her hand and laid it on a side table. ‘Holly, I’m as unsure as you are. I don’t fall for bright chefs in blue boots either, and yes, the way I’m feeling...scared might be a good word for it. But I’m feeling that I need to kiss you. Would that be mutual?’

  ‘No!’

  But she was lying. They both knew she was lying. There was that between them... It was intangible but real, as if there was a bubble wrapped around them, not constricting, just gently, wondrously closing in, propelling them closer and closer together.

  The fear was receding. The uncertainties. The barriers. One by one they were slipping away into the night.

  ‘Holly...’ he said and it was too much—the night, the warmth, the fragrance of Christmas. Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was the months of betrayal, where nothing had been what it seemed, where the ground had slipped from under her feet, where foundations had become shifting sand.

  And for this man it had been the same.

  Angus’s hands were held out and the shifting sand was still there, but here, before her, was a link she could take and hold. But she shouldn’t. She mustn’t. But here he was and the warmth was all around them, and all she did was want.

  She wanted so much.

  And stupidly, idiotically, irresistibly, she lifted her hands and let him take hers in his. She felt him tug her forward and she felt herself be tugged until her breasts were touching his chest, until she could feel the strength of him enfolding her, the soft brush of his sweater, the heat and strength of his chest underneath.

>   His breath was on her hair. His hands were tugging her waist, pulling her closer, closer.

  She was melting. Fears, reservations, caution, were all disappearing in the magic of this night, this place, this man.

  She wrapped her arms around him and she held as well, allowing her body to simply rest on his, his head on her hair, his arms holding her close—her heart transferring to his?

  No! That was fantastical nonsense, the stuff of romance novels. This was merely a moment in time, a pre-Christmas weirdness, like kissing your boss in front of the water cooler.

  Or not. He didn’t feel like her boss. He felt like...Angus.

  He was her boss.

  So what? her body was screaming at her. Are you going to reject this moment because of your crazy scruples? Are you going to push away this magic?

  It would have taken a stronger woman than she’d ever be, because Angus was putting her a little away from him, gazing down at her with those deep, gorgeous, questioning eyes, smiling, just faintly, a smile that said he was as unsure as she was but oh, he wanted...

  She knew nothing about this man. Earl of Craigenstone...

  She looked at him now and something inside her saw not the Earl of Craigenstone but the remnants of a scarred childhood—rejection from his father, bitterness from his mother, an engagement she knew nothing of except it had ended in disaster, fear of emotional attachment that meant that even now he was looking at her with desire but still she could see the reflection of her own uncertainty.

  More. There’d been happy relationships in Holly’s past—her parents had loved her to bits, and so had her grandparents. This man, though...

  He was flying blind, she thought. He cupped her face in his hands, he gazed down at her and she thought this should be the scenario where the wicked Lord had his way. But this was no wicked Lord. There was only Angus and he wanted to kiss her and all she had to do was allow those gorgeous, wondrous hands to tilt her chin...

  And of course she did. How could she not? He was here, he was now, he was her gorgeous Liege Lord, but he was her man besides. Her knees seemed to be giving way beneath her, as did her principles, as did her fears.