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Christmas Day 1816
Lorene leaned back against the soft leather seat of the carriage. Outside snowflakes fluttered down from a sky almost milky white from the light of the moon. The snow on the fields glowed and the sounds of the horses’ hooves and the carriage wheels were as muffled as if passing over down pillows. It was the perfect end to a perfect day, a day-long visit with her two sisters, their husbands and the man she adored.
Thank goodness her husband had refused to come with her.
Her husband, the Earl of Tinmore, a man in his seventies and at least fifty years her senior, had forbidden her to spend Christmas Day with her sisters at their childhood home, Summerfield House. Lorene had defied her husband’s dictate. She’d walked the five miles to Summerfield House that morning. Snow had been falling then, too, but the cold merely filled her with vigour and made her feel more alive.
How different it was at Tinmore Hall where she had to kill every emotion merely to make it through the day.
‘Will you be all right?’ the man seated next to her asked.
She turned to him and her heart quickened as it always did when looking at him, Dell Summerfield, the Earl of Penford, the man who had inherited her childhood home. His blue eyes shone even in the dim light of the carriage. His well-formed lips pursed in worry.
She could not help but stare at those lips. ‘I suspect he will be asleep. He retires early, you know.’ She did not have to explain that she spoke of her husband.
‘What of tomorrow?’
She loved his voice, so deep, like the lowest notes on the pianoforte, felt as well as heard.
How silly to have a schoolgirl’s infatuation at the advanced age of twenty-four, especially since she was a married lady and he’d merely been civil.
No, he’d always been more than civil.
He’d been kind.
The last thing she wanted was for him to worry about her. Or to think of her. He must never know how much she thought of him. Or how much his kindness towards her meant to her.
She smiled. ‘The worst I will endure is a tongue lashing, but I might earn one of those for choosing the wrong dish for breakfast, so I am very used to it.’
Dell
