He knew it was madness. He barely knew the woman. She was his best friend’s widow. He had no right to think of an impoverished widow with two children in the way he was thinking of her. If he just thought of her in his bed, he might dismiss the matter entirely as lust, but he longed for the warmth and joy of her kitchen, the smile on her face, the loving touches he’d seen bestowed on the girls. He wanted something from her for which he had no right to ask, and now he came to her door, hat in hand, announcing his failure. She had every right to never speak to him again.
When Rebecca opened the door, Simon could see the roses hadn’t returned to her cheeks yet. She looked pale and drawn, and she coughed when she tried to smile. She might as well have ripped the heart out of him. He wanted to grab her in his arms and carry her up to bed and scream for a physician. He wanted to rail against the fates that required her to work when she should rest, when she should rightfully have servants at her beck and call. He could do nothing but take off his hat and find words to lighten the blow.
“Mr. Lemaster! Come in. We haven’t seen you in ever so long. I just finished the gingerbread for the church auction. Won’t you come in and test it for us?”
She ushered him into the drafty hall, taking his scarf and hat and hanging them on hooks, coughing as she chattered. Without embarrassment, she led him back toward the kitchen and the only warmth the house offered.
He ought to tell her she didn’t look well enough to be out of bed, but he couldn’t insult her like that. He thought her lovely even in her illness. Her eyes sparkled with delight at his arrival. Her fingers brushed his coat with the same loving attention as she gave the girls, and Simon could see a spot of color return to her cheeks when she looked at him. That look stirred his longings even more strongly than before.
Gratefully, he accepted the chair she offered, but then realizing she meant to wait on him, Simon leaped to his feet again. His injured foot no longer pained him as it once had, but the sight of her coughing from her efforts felt like a stab wound to his heart.
“Sit, and let me wait on you for a change. I suppose you have spent the morning on your feet, baking gingerbread for others instead of caring for yourself,” he scolded, catching her shoulders and pushing her down on the cushioned bench beside the fire. “Where are the girls today?”
“Lucille is delivering the first batch of gingerbread and”—she blushed slightly and turned her face away—”I shouldn’t tell you this. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. But…” She shrugged and met his gaze anyway. “I offered the goose to the church for the auction, also. We couldn’t feed it, and the girls would never allow me to kill it. We talked about it, and they agreed it was best to give it to charity. Mary’s taking it down to the vicarage now.”
Simon ran his hand through his air in perplexity. He really should have known the girls would make a pet out of the creature, but he’d meant to give the Tarkingtons a merry Christmas dinner for a change. He’d meant do many things, but he didn’t seem to have the knack for doing anything right in this civilian life. He stared down into her flushed face and could only think of one thing to say.
“Do you have any idea how lovely you are when you blush like that?”
She reddened even more, and turned her eyes away, brushing at a wayward strand of hair as she did so. “You needn’t tease to get even. I know I shouldn’t give away presents from others. I debated it long and hard. But…”
Giving a sigh of exasperation, Simon caught her chin with his fingers and turned her face up to his. She looked so startled, he couldn’t find any words to ease her plight. Giving up the fight, he bent and kissed her.
The sweetness of her lips warmed his blood like ripe strawberries on a summer’s day. He couldn’t indulge in just one. He couldn’t keep bending over her like this either. Without any more thought than that, Simon pulled her to her feet and into his embrace.
She struggled briefly, protesting with a push of her hands against his chest, but she never attempted to remove her lips from his. Their mouths had somehow sealed together, nourishing, encouraging, taking and giving with equal parts hunger and need. The black void in Simon’s soul disappeared, filling with the bliss of this brief moment.
And brief it had to be. The sound of the girls’ chatter as they flung open the front door shattered the intimacy.
They both backed away in embarrassment, afraid to look at each other as the girls ran into the kitchen, laughing and shedding coats and scarves across the furniture.
“Betsy squawked and chased the butcher’s dog all the way through the village!” Mary laughed as she reached for the teakettle simmering on the stove. “I don’t think she’ll end up anyone’s Christmas dinner. I think she ought to be a guard dog.”
Rebecca tried not to look at the tall man beside her as she carefully spooned tea leaves into the pot. He seemed as rooted to the spot as she felt. She didn’t know what had come over them. An excess of Christmas cheer, perhaps. She certainly felt as overheated and excited as if she’d drunk too much Yuletide punch. She had to force herself not to glance over her shoulder to see his expression.
Mary might be oblivious to the tension between the two adults, but Lucille sent them quizzical looks as she set out the plate of gingerbread. More boldly than she ought, she confronted Mr. Lemaster with the questions Rebecca had refused to put into words.
“Did you see Rebecca’s father? Did he read our letter?”
Rebecca could feel the way he stiffened, felt the tension as surely as if it were her own. Perhaps it was. She was having difficulty separating herself from that kiss. She felt as if she’d entered Simon’s soul when he’d taken her into his arms. It had felt so right. She’d never thought anything could ever feel so right again. But she knew enough now to know Simon Lemaster would never dally with the widow of a friend. He’d meant no insult by that kiss. She didn’t know precisely what he had meant, and maybe he didn’t either. But she knew the despair she’d seen in his eyes had found its outlet now.
“I saw the baron.”
Rebecca wanted to keep her face turned from him, didn’t want to see the torment behind his words, but she couldn’t resist looking. Perhaps she heard wrong. Perhaps she could see something in his expression that would tell her more than his words. She trusted the unhappy lines of Simon’s face. At least they were honest. Unlike other handsome men, he didn’t use his charms to hide the truth, not about something that mattered as much as this did. She wanted to make it easier for him somehow, but she couldn’t.
Simon looked directly at her as he spoke. She could feel the distance between them widening as the words emerged.
“I delivered the letter into his hands. He knows you’re alive and well and doing fine. He appears quite hearty and healthy. He sends you his warm wishes.”
She couldn’t quite believe she was hearing this. He’d seen her father? He couldn’t have. But why should he lie about such a thing? Did that mean her father had refused to see him or was too ill to see him? Panic rose, unbidden, into her eyes, before she could even say the words.
He must have seen the panic, must have recognized her disbelief. His expression shuttered, Simon set down the cup Lucille had handed him. “He’s doing fine, Rebecca. You needn’t concern yourself about him at all. I think it’s time I left. Thank you for the tea.”
She let him go. The girls escorted him through the hall, asking excited questions about London and the man they thought of more in terms of step-grandfather than as no relation at all. In their innocence, they saw the baron as an old man, rocking by the fire, reading their letters with loving repetition. Rebecca had never had the courage to correct them. They wouldn’t understand how a man could be so cold as to live without love. She couldn’t understand it herself.
Unable to fight the tears running down her cheeks, Rebecca turned the bread dough into the flour and blamed her sniffing on her cold when the girls returned.
* * * *
Simon bought the stupid goose at the auction for a sum
so large that everyone attending rose to their feet and applauded his largesse. He had the bird caged and sent back to the manor to guard the stables. What else could one do with a gander wearing a red ribbon around its neck?
After sampling the refreshments, the viscountess offered an equally immense sum for the gingerbread auctioned, but Rebecca wasn’t there to appreciate the compliment. Only Simon understood the real reason the Tarkingtons didn’t join the festivities, and Rebecca’s excuse of illness had very little to do with it. She would never let a minor obstacle like a chest cold stop her from going where she wanted. But lack of coin to purchase anything for charity would embarrass her into hiding instantly.
Simon had caught Mr. White having Rebecca’s wedding ring weighed at the jeweler’s. He still cringed inside when he thought of it. He’d come in to figure out what little trinkets might please his family, but the sight of that wedding ring had destroyed any Christmas spirit he may have possessed. The gold had worn to a thin fragment of itself on the fingers of untold Tarkington wives. It was all but worthless in any light. Simon had paid the balance of the widow’s bill in exchange for it.
On Christmas morning, he carried the ring in his pocket as he climbed the rocks of the cliff in a fit of despair over not being able to aid the Tarkingtons or anyone else, for all that mattered. He had the urge to heave the wretched piece of gold into the waves crashing below. In return for that miserable piece of jewelry, a lovely strong woman like Rebecca had turned herself into a drab, worn farmwife when she could have danced in luxurious ballrooms wearing silks and satins. He didn’t understand it.
He didn’t understand life. How could he be given everything when others had nothing? And having everything, why did he feel so miserable, when the Tarkingtons, with nothing to their names but a drafty old farmhouse, managed to laugh and fill their lives with warmth and joy? Why did he, a hero with dozens of military medals to his name, feel a failure while Rebecca, with nothing more than this plain gold band, see herself as successful because she’d managed a few short weeks of marriage?
A sharp wind blew through him as he stood on the cliff, contemplating these questions and finding no easy answers. Even the weather failed to cooperate. Instead of the gloom and clouds his mood required, a bright winter sun sparkled across the waters, laughing back at him in twinkles on the waves. Simon couldn’t even find his melancholy of earlier. Something else had taken its place.
And he knew exactly when it had happened. It had happened the moment his lips had touched Rebecca’s. Something had opened in him then, something strange and unexplored, perhaps, but something so powerful that he couldn’t ignore it as he wished. He wanted to go back and try again, to explore the feeling a little further, to talk to Rebecca about it, to see if she felt any glimmer of the same thing. He wanted to know if she’d felt that way with Matthew, if she could ever feel that way again. He wanted to know so many things, but instead, he stood on the cliff’s edge, facing failure, again.
How could he ever tell her the truth about his visit with her father? That he had angered the old man so much that the baron had no doubt flung the letter on the fire, unread, after he’d left? How could he explain her father’s bitterness, a bitterness that would continue should Simon attempt to court her?
He didn’t possess great title or riches to please the old man. He had the inheritance from his grandmother. His father had offered a small farm with a manor house, but the income from it barely paid the upkeep of the house. He supposed everyone assumed he would marry well, so no one had given the matter of his support much thought. He’d never considered it himself. But if he meant to take a poor wife, he’d have to do more than idly think about it.
Simon blinked and stared out over the ocean as the direction of his thoughts became clear. A poor wife? Had he considered taking any wife at all? Not more than a month ago he’d stood on these rocks and thought about throwing himself off. How had he made such a turn around to stand here now contemplating the responsibility of a wife and children? Children? Where had that thought come from?
In something akin to shock, Simon turned and faced the rolling land behind him. he wind pummeled his back, driving him farther from the cliff’s edge, closer to the village and the road leading to a certain quiet farmhouse nestled in a valley. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t go to her a failure. He had no right to think she would accept him. No right to think she would even look twice at him.
But even as he told himself these things, he saw a tall figure appear on the crest of the hill, her bonnet whipped back from her loosened hair, her skirts and pelisse billowing around her as she scanned the horizon. Catching sight of him, she waved with all the joy and excitement and life that was the Rebecca he had come to know and love. The ill woman of the past weeks was just a momentary aberration. His Rebecca possessed a spirit akin to the wind blowing off the water, too strong to ever give in.
Simon loped in her direction, ignoring the ache in his healing foot, ignoring the idiot he made of himself as he raced to capture what was never his in the first place. If he stopped to think, he would leap off the cliff. Instead, he let himself hope. He held out his arms, and much to his happiness and relief, she raced into them.
Their lips met and clung, and the icy cold of their flesh warmed quickly to a blazing fire. Simon gasped and came up for air, catching her against his chest so she couldn’t escape in this fleeting moment when he couldn’t hold her with his kiss. Joy danced in her eyes, but whether it had anything to do with himself, he couldn’t discern. He merely basked in the wonder of sensations he’d never thought to know again.
“He’s come! You did it! You brought my father here! Oh, Simon, I can’t believe it. I didn’t believe it. I thought you lied. I’m so ashamed. But he’s here. It’s Christmas and he’s here. It’s the best gift I’ve ever had. Oh, Simon, thank you. I can’t tell you how much I thank you.”
Disbelief widened his eyes as he stared down at her. Simon wanted to protest, wanted to disclaim any responsibility in the matter, but Rebecca tugged on his arm, pulling him toward town.
“He’s being grumpy and obnoxious, but the girls are stuffing him with gingerbread and apple tarts, and I’m basting him with honey, and he’s coming ‘round, Simon. He’s asked about you.” She gave him an embarrassed grin. “I think he’s checking on your prospects. You made a strong impression, it seems.”
A strong impression. He’d yelled at the old goat and slammed a door in his face. That ought to be strong enough. Still incredulous, Simon followed Rebecca reluctantly. “Stuffed with apples and basted with honey? Are you turning him into the Christmas goose in replacement for the one you gave away?”
Her laugh chimed on the December wind. “Yes, I am. He’s a goose and deserves basting, but I’ve invited him for dinner and not as dinner. He brought us a goose already dressed. I’ve made apple dressing. Will you have some with us?”
Would he have some with her? He had a family at home no doubt sitting down to a groaning board of a dozen removes from soup to pudding, but Simon wanted more than anything else in this world to share a goose in the warmth and laughter of Rebecca’s kitchen. He followed her gladly, wiling even to face the baron’s outrage in exchange for a few more minutes of her company.
* * * *
He was insane. He knew himself as a raving lunatic. Simon had never done anything so impulsive in his entire life. Even as he walked into the utter anarchy of a farmhouse filled with the screams and laughter of two young girls as they chased Leopold up and down stairs while a crotchety old gentleman yelled at them to sit like proper young ladies, Simon still wrapped a proprietary arm around Rebecca’s shoulders as he walked through the door. He knew it was a possessive gesture, and a defiant one.
Rebecca knew it, too. She glanced up at him with a trace of uncertainty that disappeared the moment he gave her his best commanding stare. He had learned a lesson or two as an officer.
Laughter immediately danced in her eyes. She meant to lead him a merry cha
se, he could see that now. She would never make a docile wife, but Simon had discovered he didn’t want docility. He wanted someone to challenge him, to keep him on his toes, if only to chase her blamed pigs across creation. He gave her a wicked grin before turning to greet the old man who’d suddenly stopped waving his walking stick at the girls to glare in their direction.
“I knew it!” the baron huffed. “I knew you had designs on her. Well, let me tell you this right now, you young puppy—”
Simon helped remove Rebecca’s pelisse, hanging it on a hook as if the old man didn’t bluster worse than the wind outside. Interrupting the tirade, he held out his hand to the old gentleman. “Glad to see you again, sir. You couldn’t have given your daughter a better gift. I wager you didn’t realize she’s the best cook this side of Paris, France. A man could easily breathe his last breath in exchange for one of her tarts.”
The baron stared at the proffered hand, glared at his daughter who stood breathlessly at Simon’s side, glanced up the stairs at the two girls leaning over the banister in sudden silence, and grudgingly shook Simon’s hand.
“I’m taking her back to London with me.” The baron threw out the challenge.
Simon smiled in return. “It’s Rebecca’s decision if she wants to go. I’ve business up there myself.” Escalating the attack, he caught Rebecca’s cold fingers between his own warm ones, and asked, “Have you any of that hot cider you made for me last time? I’ll have to follow you to London in hopes you’ll occasionally feed me.”
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