moon and the stars. She had the Christmas star, the brightest and best of them all. She would be satisfied with that. Things could never be quite as bad between them now that they had had this night-or this part of a night.
He had opened his eyes and was looking at her. She smiled. Don’t remove your arm, she begged him with her eyes. Let’s lie like this, just for tonight.
“You said it,” he said. “It seemed to come so easily, though I know it did not. You have not been able to say it in three years, have you? Why have we found it so hard? Why is it so difficult to talk from the heart with those closest to us?”
“Because with them there is most fear of rejection?” she said. “Because we have to protect our hearts from those who have the power to break them every day for the rest of our lives?”
“I do not have your courage,” he said, one hand stroking lightly over her cheek. “I still don’t. Sally, my love… Ah, just that.My love.
Did I hurt you? Did I disgust you?”
“Say it again,” she said, smiling at him. “Again and again. And do it again and again. I want to be as close to you as I can be, Henry. Close to your body, close to your heart, close to your mind. Not just for tonight. I am greedy.”
“My love.” He drew her closer to him, set his lips against hers. “It is what I have always wanted, what I have always yearned for. But I have wanted to treat you with respect. Foolish, wasn’t I?”
“To think that being respectful meant holding me at arm’s length?” she said. “And giving much of what I have longed for to mistresses? Have I made you flush? Did you think I did not know? Yes, you have been foolish, Henry. And I have been foolish not to fight for your love and not to put you straight on this ridiculous notion that gentlemen seem to have about women.”
“Would this be happening if we had reached the Middletons’ before the rain came?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “No, it would not. Perhaps it never would have happened.
We would have kept drifting until perhaps we would have lived apart.
Henry…” There was pain in her voice.
He rubbed his lips against hers and drew back his head to smile at her.
“But it did happen,” he said. “Christmas happened almost two thousand years ago, and it has happened this year for us. Love always seems to blossom at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected places.
This was meant to happen, Sally. We must not shudder at the thought of how nearly it did not happen. It was meant to be.”
“Do you think we will ever have a child?” she asked him wistfully, snuggling closer to the warmth and safety of him. “I wanted so much today for that baby to be mine, Henry. Ours. Do you think we ever will?”
“If we don’t,” he said, and he chuckled as he drew her closer still, “it won’t be for lack of trying.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Shall we try now?” he said to her. “And perhaps again later?”
“And again later still?” she asked.
He laughed. “After all,” he said, “dawn comes late in December. And there does not seem to be a great deal to get up early for at this apology for an inn, does there? Especially not on Christmas morning.”
“Christmas morning is for babies,” she said.
“The making of them as well as the birthing of them,” he said, turning her onto her back and moving over her.
She smiled up at him.
“Sally,” he said, serious again as he lowered his mouth and his body to hers, “my most wonderful Christmas gift. I love you.”
It did not seem quite the same once everyone had gone to bed and he was left alone in the taproom. Even though he built up the fire and sat on a settle close to the heat, the place felt cheerless again. Christmas had fled again.
He thought of the Whittakers’ large and fashionable mansion and of Lady Frazer’s enticing beauty. He felt a moment’s pang of regret but no more.
He did not want to be there, he realized with a wry smile directed at the fire. He wanted to be exactly where he was. Well, not exactly, perhaps. There was a room upstairs and a bed where he would rather be.
But perhaps not. He could no longer think of her in terms of simple lust. There was a warmer feeling and a nameless yearning when he thought of her. Also a regret for wasted years, for years of senseless debauchery that had brought no real happiness with them.
They would not be able to travel during the coming day, Christmas Day.
Probably they would the day after. The rain had finally stopped, and the sky had cleared before darkness fell. He would have one more day in which to enjoy looking at her and in which to maneuver to engage her in conversation. One day-a Christmas to remember.
And then he looked up from his contemplation of the flames in the hearth to find her standing before him, looking at him gravely. She held a blanket and a pillow in her arms.
“I thought you might be cold and uncomfortable,” she said, holding them out to him. “It was very kind of you to give up your room for Lisa. You are a kind man.”
“I gave up my room,” he said, taking the pillow and blanket from her and setting them down beside him, “because you had tried to give up yours and I wanted to impress you with a show of chivalry. Kindness had nothing to do with it. I am not renowned for my kindness.”
“Perhaps because you sometimes try not to show it,” she said. “But I have seen it in other ways. You came to help Lisa give birth though it terrified you to do so.”
He shrugged. “I came for your sake,” he said. “And I did not help all day long, while you were exhausting yourself. In the event I did not help at all.”
“But you would have,” she said. “The intention was there. Tom showed me the ring you gave as a gift for the baby.”
He shrugged again. “I am very wealthy,” he said. “It was nothing.”
“No,” she said, still looking at him with her grave eyes, “it was something.”
“Ah,” he said, “then I have impressed you. I have achieved my goal.”
She stared at him silently. He expected her to turn to leave, but she did not do so.
“Do you know how you have affected me?” he asked. “I do not believe I have ever before refused an invitation to bed. That was an invitation you were issuing last night?”
She lowered her eyes for a moment, but she lifted them again and looked at him calmly. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose so.”
“Why?” he asked. “You are not in the habit of issuing such invitations, are you?”
She shook her head. “Sometimes,” she said, “I grow tired of the grayness of life. It was so full of color until a little more than a year ago, but there has been nothing but grayness since and nothing but grayness to look forward to. It is wrong of me to be dissatisfied with my lot, and normally I am not. But I thought this was going to be a disappointing Christmas.”
“And it has not been?” he asked.
“No.” She smiled slowly. “It has been the most wonderful Christmas of all.”
“Because of the baby,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, “because of him. And for other reasons, too.”
He reached out a hand. “Come and sit beside me,” he said.
She looked at his hand and set her own in it. She sat down beside him and set her head on his shoulder when he put an arm about her.
“I wanted you last night,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? And why I left you, the deed undone?”
“Because you knew I was inexperienced,” she said. “Because you knew me to be incapable of giving you the pleasure you are accustomed to. I understood. It is all right.”
“Because I realized the immensity of the gift you were offering,” he said. “Because I knew I could not take momentary pleasure from you.
Because any greater commitment than that terrified me.”
“I expected no more,” she said.
