Nicola Cornick, Margaret McPhee, et al by Christmas Wedding Belles Read Free Book Online Page A

He felt a cold desolation that had nothing to do
with the winter night.

Chapter 4
    T HE middle of December brought the final
Woodbridge Assembly before Christmas. The Assembly Rooms were icy cold that
night. A wind was whistling in from the sea, finding all the gaps between the
windows and setting the candle flames dancing in the draught. Lucinda drew her
shawl more closely about her and shivered on her rout chair. Company was light
that evening—a few local families, and some of the officers from the Woodbridge
barracks—but amidst the small crowd Miss Stacey Saltire shone like a jewel.
    Lucinda had observed that it was often the way when a young lady
was engaged: all the gentlemen who had been wary of approaching her when she
had been husband-hunting now felt free to pay attention to her, knowing she was
promised to another. And none was more assiduous in his attentions than the
Riding Officer, Mr Owen Chance, who was even now dancing with Stacey, the two
dark heads bent close to one another as they indulged in intimate conversation.
    Lucinda sighed. Not only was she concerned by what she saw—as was
Mr Leytonstone, glowering from across the other side of the floor but too
cowardly to intervene—but she felt for a moment a wave of envy so sharp that it
that shocked her. Envy for Stacey, and for the way that Owen Chance was looking
at her, and for her own lost youth and her lost love.
    She had not seen Daniel since the night he had kissed her in the
woods. She had run from him then—run from his harshness and the feelings he
could still stir in her. More than anything she had run from the fact that he
was not the man she wanted him to be, and her heart ached that she had loved
him once and now he was a stranger to her.
    She had kept away from the creek, just as Daniel had demanded,
and had taken her walks in less dangerous places. Sometimes as dusk was falling
she would stand by her bedroom window and scour the wide expanse of the bay for
a scarlet and black ship with a snarling dragon on the prow, but the horizon
was always empty, and she would draw the curtains together with a sigh and feel
her heart plummet to her slippers. If only she had never met him again. But she
had, and memory, reawakened, was difficult to dismiss. It taunted her at every
turn with the restless passion and excitement of that distant summer when she
and Daniel had been young. And the knowledge that he was a different man now,
supposedly a criminal and a traitor, tortured her.
    She had asked questions about him of Sally Kestrel, and had
listened to Midwinter gossip with avidity. Although she knew she should forget
Daniel, she found she could not help herself. His name was mentioned
frequently, but the stories were as insubstantial as smoke, and at the end it
was impossible to tell the truth from the myth. Intriguingly, many of the
legends painted Daniel de Lancey as a hero—a man secretly in the pay of the
government rather than the renegade he pretended to be. Lucinda found she ached
for it to be true, but thought it probable that she would never know.
    ‘My dear Mrs Melville, you look blue-devilled!’ a warm female
voice beside her commented, and Lucinda turned to see the Duchess of Kestrel
smiling sympathetically at her. She followed Lucinda’s gaze to the couple on
the dance floor.
    ‘Matter for concern, do you think?’
    ‘As a chaperon, I would say most definitely,’ Lucinda said. She
hesitated. ‘As someone who would wish to see Miss Saltire happy, perhaps not.’
    Sally Kestrel’s green eyes focused shrewdly on her face. ‘You
think that Miss Saltire will be making a mistake in marrying Mr Leytonstone?’
    Lucinda shrugged a little awkwardly. She was acutely aware that
in her youth Sally Kestrel had chosen the rather more solid merits of Stephen
Saltire above the dashing brilliance of Justin Kestrel, and that it had been
twenty years before they were reunited. Their glowing love for one another now
was plain for all to see, and