by Lauren Smith
He was enraptured by her as he watched her whisper something to one of her sisters. Her auburn hair caught the light of the candles nearest her, a beacon shining for him. Her greenish-gray eyes, jade pools frosted with silver, glanced about the room; she was unaware of the steady heat of his own gaze.
Nathan sucked in a harsh breath as his body stirred to life with a level of arousal he’d thought he’d never feel again. Eight years had wrought great changes in her. In them both. The lithe-bodied girl of seventeen he’d swept across ballrooms in her first Season was gone. In her place was a woman infinitely more alluring, with luscious curves his hands itched to touch and pale-pink lips he longed to explore with his own. Were they as soft as he remembered?
She smoothed her hands over her dark-green gown and tugged at the puffed sleeves trimmed with lace. Her full breasts were accented by a square-cut neckline and a bodice embroidered with holly leaves. Like a ghost of a Christmas long forgotten, she was haunting and exquisite.
When she shifted, he caught a glimpse of the shape of her legs as the silk, drawn up in festoons with more holly leaves, rustled and clung to her. Most men preferred younger women, girls barely out of their first Season, but Nathan couldn’t think of anything more lovely, more sensual, than a full-grown woman who had a body worth holding, worth making love to endlessly into the night.
Her gaze swept the room, and his gut clenched a second before her eyes hit him with the force of a physical blow. He swallowed hard as he watched as her cheeks turned from blooming roses to ash. The look on her face robbed him of breath. Sadness etched into her features, and he hated seeing it, seeing her so wounded. She looked as destroyed on the outside at seeing him as he had been on the inside on the day he’d broken both their hearts.
His heart cried out for her. Things are different now. I’m not the fool I once was, and I’m not under my father’s control. But I am too late, aren’t I?
Thea gave up herding her six younger sisters deeper into the ballroom. It was a bit like herding six wild geese. They seemed content to gossip and twitter like peahens about the latest fashions, who was in love with whom, and which couples had secret understandings. At this last part, Thea rolled her eyes. Wasn’t the point of a secret understanding to actually be a secret? When she had been younger, she’d had an understanding once, very secret, up until the day she’d expected a proposal . . . a proposal that never came.
“Thea? By God’s teeth! It has been positively ages!” A familiar voice made her halt in the path of chasing after her sisters, who were bustling toward the refreshment table. She turned to see a tall, handsome man moving toward her. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, but as her eyes took in the figure approaching, she exhaled in relief.
It wasn’t Nathan. It was his younger brother, Lewis.
“Oh, heavens, Lewis, it’s you.” She laughed a little, and he didn’t seem to notice the edge to the sound.
“Hello, Thea,” Lewis said more softly as he reached her and held out his hands. She clasped them, smiling. Lewis had grown up in the last three years since she’d crossed paths with him at Gunter’s, where she’d been out with a few companions eating flavored ices. He looked very much like Nathan, only without the world-weary weight upon his brow of the dukedom.
“Lewis, how is your mother?”
“Well enough. Lonely, perhaps. She would love it very much if you came to call.”
For a moment she couldn’t respond as her throat tightened. She could see herself riding her horse down the lane toward the ancestral home of the Powells. She could see in her mind’s eye the towering oak trees that lined the road, their branches arching over to create a wooded passage as though to a magical realm.
How many nights had she closed her eyes and traveled that path, over and over, again and again, reaching the door to the home she’d wanted to share with the only man who’d ever held her heart? But the dream always ended just as her hands touched the door, and the golden dream faded into a crushing darkness that left her shaking, sobs tearing from her throat.
“Say you will come and visit her, Thea, please.” Lewis’s plea seemed to hold a note of such seriousness that she didn’t feel comfortable denying him.
“I suppose I could come . . . only if . . .” She bit her lip before continuing. “Only if I knew that I would not intrude upon your brother.”
At this, Lewis’s gaze sharpened. “You wouldn’t be intruding—you know that, Thea. He would be glad to see you.”
Determined to avoid the subject that would inevitably wound her, she asked instead, “How are you? I know that the loss of your father must not have been easy.”
The young man smiled grimly. “I wish I could be a good son and say I am grieving his loss. But I am not a good son. His death was freeing for all of us, especially Nathan.”
“Oh . . .” She didn’t know what to say.
“Thea . . . he is here tonight. I know you likely don’t wish to see him, but . . . would you see him at least once tonight? One dance? It is Christmas, after all.”
She didn’t speak. Her heart was pounding a wild rhythm. Nathan was here? He never came to social functions, not since that awful day in the orchards of her family home.
“One dance is all I ask of you,” Lewis begged. “One dance for him to remember.”
She found herself nodding, her tongue too tied to form words.
“Thank you. I shall endeavor to go find him. He’s so damned clever at hiding away at these sorts of things.” Lewis bowed over her hand and went in search of his brother.
But there was no need. As always, fate seemed to draw them together. Several couples moved past her, then split apart, revealing him standing just across the room.
“Nathan!” she gasped. She blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the dream that had descended over her vision.
Nathan, now the Duke of Hastings. She’d forgotten how tall he was, standing several inches above the men nearest him. His dark hair was tousled and longer than she remembered, curling at the edges of his collar. His eyes, such a warm hazel, had always heated her body like a wildfire whenever he looked her way. They were fixed on her now, and in a blinding rush, the past came crashing back, inescapable, inevitable.
4
Twelve years ago
Fourteen-year-old Thea tied up her skirts using a bit of twine to fashion a set of loose trousers about her legs. She stripped out of her stockings and boots, setting them upon the bank of the stream. Then she retrieved her fishing pole and the small tin of worms before she waded barefoot into the shallows. The cold water was crisp against her skin and soft as silk as it rushed past her and over the smooth riverbed stones beneath her feet. Tiny minnows darted around her, tickling her as their slick fins brushed against her ankles.
The noonday sun beat down in warm rays against her bare arms, face, and neck, the feeling quite wonderful. There was nothing better than fishing on a clear summer day. She captured a worm from her small tin, and it wriggled while she set it upon the hook before she tossed her fishing line out in the rushing water, farther away where the larger fish would be.
Thea wasn’t sure how long she’d stood there, immersing herself in the sound of the water and the feel of the breeze against her skin, before noticing she wasn’t alone.
A young man astride a pretty roan mare was on the opposite side of the stream. He slowly slid out of the saddle and walked his horse to the water’s edge, where the horse bent its head to drink. For a moment they simply stared at each other. He looked to be only a year or perhaps two older than her, enough that he was already looking the part of a young gentleman. His dark hair and bewitching eyes fit the attractive, handsome features of his face.
“Hello there. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said with a warm smile.
“Hello,” Thea replied, uncertain of what to do. She was the eldest of her sisters, but she was still too young to be out in society, conversing with a gentleman.
“Have you had any luck?” he asked.
&
nbsp; “Luck?” she asked, a bit dumbstruck as he began to walk his horse across the shallow stream toward her.
“Yes,” he chuckled. “With the fish,” he clarified. “I’ve been to a spot farther upstream, but I have the damnedest bad luck there.” He walked his horse over to the nearest group of trees behind them and tied the reins, then returned to stand at the shore.
“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked as he stripped off his boots and stockings.
“No,” Thea finally managed to say. “I don’t mind.” She watched him wade into the water, fascinated by him. He was taller than her, by perhaps a head, and his shoulders were broad. It made something inside her go very still, yet there was a fluttering, too, an excited feeling as if a hummingbird had managed to find a way inside her chest.
“My name is Nathan Powell.” He held out a hand to her to shake it, which all together something only a young man would do with other boys. Strangely the casual greeting put her more at ease than if he’d tried to kiss her hand. She certainly wouldn’t have known how to react to that.
“I’m Thea Swann.” She shook his hand and tried to still the increased flutterings of that invisible bird inside her.
“Do you like to fish?” he asked when she offered him her pole. He gave a few experimental tugs on it to see if moving the lure in the water might attract a fish.
“I do. Do you?” she asked.
He chuckled. “I do. My father says it’s not an elegant sport for a gentleman, but I don’t care. It’s . . . peaceful.” He said this with such an adult seriousness that it almost made her laugh.
“Yes, it certainly is,” she agreed. “I have six little sisters, and there is very little peace in our house.”
“Six sisters! Christ, that sounds very trying indeed.”
“It is. Do not misunderstand me, I love them all, but as the eldest, I find that I share quite simply everything with them and have so little time to myself.”
“I have a younger brother, Lewis, but he’s not so bad. He’s a boy, so I suppose it makes it easier. I don’t think I would know what to do with a little sister.” His puzzled face made her giggle.
“Sisters aren’t that much different from brothers, I shouldn’t think. I rather imagine the challenge is the number, not the gender.”
“You could be right there,” Nathan said, and then he crowed as he started to pull the line on the fishing pole. “We’ve got one! Here!” He pressed the pole into her hands, and when the fish gave a surprisingly sharp tug, she stumbled forward. Nathan’s hands caught her waist, holding her firm.
“That’s it, Thea, now use the reel to bring it in. No need to worry—I’ve got you.”
His hands upon her waist and the feel of him holding her set something in motion that she knew she was perhaps a little too young to understand fully, but she knew enough—enough to know she was going to fall in love with this handsome boy.
The fish came flopping out of the water into the shallows, and they rushed to catch it in a net.
“Oh, must we take it back? Couldn’t we let it go?” she suddenly asked Nathan as he removed the hook from its mouth. For some reason, she needed this moment to be forever remembered by life, not death.
He raised his gaze to hers, studying her. “Let it live another day? Yes, I agree.” He lifted the fish up and carried it deeper into the water and set it with infinite gentleness back into the river. It splashed and shot away beneath the rushing waves.
The days passed in a blinding blur, the way time speeds up quicker and quicker during the best moments of one’s life. It was a thought that Thea would have every so often over the next few years as she and Nathan grew closer and closer, their secret meetings in the woods, at the stream, and eventually her family’s orchards becoming so common that she spent more time with him than with her own family.
On one such afternoon when she was seventeen, she’d snuck away from her house and lay beneath the spreading branches of the cherry blossom trees. Nathan lay beside her, his body propped up against the trunk. Her head lay in his lap, and she gazed up at the blossoming branches, admiring the bright pinks and pale whites of the petals against the deep-blue summer sky.
“Thea . . . ,” Nathan began uncertainly.
“Yes?”
“May I kiss you?” he asked with such sweet uncertainty that she knew she would never deny him anything. She just never imagined that someday the cost of one of his requests would be to break her own heart.
“Kiss me?” She slowly sat up, her face close to his.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “It is what people do when they are in love.”
“Are we . . . in love?” Her breath quivered in her lungs as she held herself very still.
“I am in love with you. Do you love me?” He cupped her cheek, his gaze searching hers, and she was lost in his eyes, thinking of that first day she’d seen him by the river. She had loved him every moment, waking and asleep, since that day.
“I do.”
He waited for no other words, but leaned in and claimed her lips sweetly, passionately. She had never been kissed before, but she seemed to know what to do, moving her mouth with his, and soon the kiss built to something bright and wonderful that became in that moment a memory that extended into the infinite space around them.
She desperately tried to burn everything about this kiss into her memory—the feel of his warm, insistent mouth, the feel of his hand as he held her face, the way the wind blew his hair across her fingers as she dug her hands into the strands, and the dizzy bliss of knowing that he loved her.
When their mouths finally parted, they continued to stay in each other’s arms, his forehead touching hers as they both sought to regain their breath.
“Thea, would you . . . wait for me?” he asked.
“Wait for you?”
“Yes. I cannot yet offer marriage, but I believe when I am twenty that I shall be able to. I don’t wish for you to miss your coming out, but I fear any other decent man out there will wish to court you, and you belong to me.”
“Just as you belong to me,” she reminded him with an impish grin.
“Yes,” he laughed. “I do, my heart, I do. More than I shall ever belong to anyone.” He studied her face. “So will you . . . wait for me? Give me one year of a secret engagement so that I might propose to you properly next year?”
“Yes.” There was simply no other answer she could have wished to give. She didn’t want to wait even a year, but if they tried to marry now, her father probably wouldn’t allow it. Eighteen was much better. As always, Nathan had carefully thought this out.
“Good,” he murmured before capturing her mouth again. This time his kisses were more urgent, as though some part of him seemed to sense the doom that was coming for them both, not that she or Nathan could have known the heartache that yet lay in store for them.
Thea suddenly shivered.
“Do you wish to return to the house?” he asked in concern.
“No, no, stay and hold me a minute longer.” She wanted to tuck herself away in this single instant, to bury herself in this moment and never move forward.
Her heart warned her that if she let time continue its inevitable march that something, someday, would make her wish with all her heart that she’d never moved beyond this moment. But that was life, wasn’t it? Life’s best moments were never permanent, and the only way not to long for the past was to pray and search for those future moments that might rival the past in all its golden glory.
5
Christmas Eve 1821
A dream. Thea was stuck in a dream, one she’d had so often over the last eight years. The room was always full of people, moving and dancing. She and Nathan were at opposite ends, standing still, waiting, always too far to reach for each other or to speak. Had she fallen asleep on the coach ride to Pemberton Hall? Surely this wasn’t real.
It felt too vivid to be anything but a dream. Her heart pitched straight down into her stomach. Eight years. Had it been t
hat long? She hadn’t forgotten one moment of their past. She hadn’t forgotten his kisses, the tender way he’d looked at her, the softness of his smile, his hands rough and insistent on her skin as they’d melted into each other. She hadn’t forgotten their conversations, the wit and intelligence of their shared thoughts or the way they could speak without words. Yet covering it all was the gray, all-consuming despair of her life when he’d left it.
Seeing him now, after all these years, the pain came rushing back to the surface, threatening to drown her. She bit her bottom lip, eyes burning with unshed tears. Instantly, she was back in the orchard, Nathan reaching for her but then drawing back before his hands could touch her. Nothing could undo the pain of his severing their connection. His father hadn’t approved of her. She wasn’t suitable. It didn’t matter that her father was a well-liked country gentleman, or that she had a sizeable dowry. Nothing had pleased the old duke. Especially not her.
In the end, Nathan had listened to his father’s threats against her family. She could not fault him for that—her family never knew that Nathan’s noble heart had saved them that day. It would have been possible to run away with him and marry in secret, but it would have destroyed her father’s life and ruined her mother’s and sisters’ lives as well.
Since that day she hadn’t looked at another man, hadn’t been able to bear the idea of another suitor’s touch. It didn’t matter that she’d vowed to marry someone else, to go on to live a happy life. Nathan was her only love, and she’d lost him. Her hands ached to touch his face, to feel the muscles of his shoulders beneath her palms, to taste his lips and let his body warm hers. Heat infused her cheeks as, across the room, Nathan’s lips formed a bittersweet smile. And just like that she was fourteen again, entrusting her heart and soul to the dashing young heir to a dukedom.
The room seemed to be suddenly devoid of air. She couldn’t breathe.
He crossed the dance floor, and just as he reached her, fate intervened in the form of their host, Sir Giles.
