Regency Christmas Wishes(50)
“Oh, no. That’s for you—”
“I wished for you.”
She looked up then, eyes wide and shadowed in her elfin face. “For me?”
“Well, for a second chance, anyway. I . . .” Years of loneliness and regret squeezed at his heart and he felt the prick of tears at the back of his eyes. “I know I don’t deserve it, but I’ll beg nonetheless. Please, Alice, let me love you. As I did . . . better than I did. Perhaps if I’m very good at it, in a few years you’ll come to love me again.”
Hope and joy swelled so fiercely within her that Alice thought she might burst on the spot. Suddenly she was laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, Gareth, I never stopped!”
She was ready to tell him about her own wish: that he might, just once, kiss her as he once had. She didn’t have the chance. His hand snaked out to wrap around the back of her neck. In an instant, she was flat against him and he was kissing her in a way he never had. As if his very breath depended on it. When he finally released her, her lips were tingling, her heart was going like thunder, and she was seeing stars.
“Well,” she managed after a moment, “you’re very good at that.”
His smile was quick and wicked. “I can be better.” Then he sobered. “You’ll marry me, Alice. As soon as possible.”
Heart bursting, she could only nod. Then, after a moment, “I’ve one request to make of you.”
“Anything.”
“I will go anywhere with you, Gareth, gladly. But I would very much like to come home for Christmas every year. Could you stand that?”
“That is your request?” He smiled again, but this time with a hint of sadness. “You could ask me for the moon and stars, sweetheart.”
“I know. But I’ll settle for a piece of Ireland. I understand your need to travel. Even if Clarissa’s baby is a girl, you needn’t be here all the time—”
“We will be here. At Christmas, at the harvest, whenever possible. If the baby is a girl, I’ll have to be in London for the parliamentary sessions, but other than that, we will be here in Kilcullen.”
“But, Gareth, you don’t want the title, the responsibility. And you shouldn’t have to shoulder it.”
He shrugged his uninjured shoulder. “I’ve found that my feelings have changed on a few matters. If the title comes to me, so be it. Kilcullen is well worth whatever work comes with it.”
“And if the baby is a boy?” she asked, a new hope rising.
“Then we’ll build our own home nearby. Raise children and sheep and throw massive joins at Christmas. I know a duke who would greatly enjoy an evening in the company of the Sullivans.”
This time it was Alice who kissed him, with enough joy and enthusiasm to leave them both breathless. And she might have gone on kissing him until Christmas morning had not a voice interrupted from the doorway.
“Alice!”
They both jumped and Alice nearly tipped herself off the mattress. “Clarissa? I . . . oh, dear. Well, you see . . .”
“Your sister has graciously consented to marry me,” Gareth announced smoothly and, Alice thought, a bit smugly.
“Yes, yes, splendid,” Clarissa replied. “And I do say it’s about time. But we’ve more pressing matters at the moment.”
“Clarie?” Alice was off the bed in an instant. “What is it?”
“This baby isn’t going to wait until Twelfth Night, apparently.” Clarissa clutched the door frame, face pale. “Oh, heavens. It’s time!”
The Merry Magpie
by Sandra Heath
1
“Beggin’ your pardon, my lord, but it is Marchwell Park you want, isn’t it?” The postilion leaned into the hired chaise to awaken his young gentleman passenger. Christmas Eve was bitterly cold, and a flurry of fine snow whisked past the lantern that swung on an adjacent cottage.
“What in God’s own name—?” Startled into shivering wakefulness, Sir Charles Neville struggled to get his bearings as he heard the storm soughing through bare-branched trees. For a moment he thought he was back in Madras, where Bay of Bengal breakers thundered constantly upon the exposed shore; but then the raw cold and stray snowflakes reminded him he was in England again, his long journey from India almost at an end.
It wasn’t easy to collect his thoughts because he was exhausted and the blustering December air seemed to hail from the Arctic itself. The heavy greatcoat he’d managed to purchase on disembarking in Portsmouth wasn’t as warm and protective as he’d hoped, with the result that the penetrating cold seemed to lie upon his skin like a layer of frost. By all the saints, he’d never thought he’d miss the Madras heat as much as this.