Christmas Kiss (A Holiday Romance) (Kisses and Carriages) (16 page)

“So, give us a fairy tale.”

“Why don’t you tell me a story instead, since I just proved I’m not a very good storyteller.”

But it wasn’t his own voice he was wanting to hear.

“What I should prefer,” he said, “is to hear a romantic tale—something more romantic than two people able to come together in all happiness only after they are ghosts upon the moors.” He cleared his throat, then took a deep breath and pressed on, damn the consequences. “Have you a tale about a woman who falls immediately in love with a Highland laird and forgives him for his bumbling ways?”

The woman lay deathly still against him. He forced himself to breathe as he usually breathed, but it was hardly easy.  After a moment, he could stand the silence no more, but was unwilling to change the subject. He’d be damned if he’d pretend the words had never come out of his mouth. He was finished pretending.

“Or,” he said, “would you care to hear the story of a simple Scotsman who falls in love with an American woman in the space of a mere week?”

“I wouldn’t buy that kind of story,” she murmured. “No one really falls in love that fast, right?”

“Truly? I have little experience in such matters. But I fear it is possible for a man to love a woman in a day, even if it takes him the better part of a week to acknowledge it.”

Of course he was a fool to speak to her of his feelings again so soon after he’d promised to move slower. But in the space of a day, she might be gone from his life forever, and he would not let his pride stand in the way of speaking his heart now. If he was to return to his lonely existence, he did not wish to add the burden of regret. And if he did not take advantage of every moment left to them, the regret of it would haunt him to the grave.

Like the ghost of Catherine.

“I did not wish to frighten ye, Brianna.” He tried to pull back from her, so he could look at her face, but she held tight to him, no doubt to prevent him from doing just that. “Speak to me, lass. Please. Even if you laugh at me, I would prefer it to silence.”

She cleared her throat.  “I thought I was in love a dozen times, before David Wordsworth. But I think those were all just obsessions. Falling in love was an exciting hobby when I was a teenager, you know?”

“But this David was not an obsession?” His stomach turned at the thought of Brianna in love with someone else. But he would hold his tongue. If she were in love with the man, he had but a day to win her heart away. He would need to try harder, dig deeper for what few charms he might find in the dusty recesses of his own soul.

And what if he failed?

He let the thought wash over him, waited for alarm to squeeze his chest. It was not unlike tossing a blanket on an un-broken horse, to see if it would panic. But instead of balking, his heart assured him Brianna Catherine Colby belonged at his side for the rest of his days. Marrying an American was less a sin than being a witch. And if she chose to remain, there would be no need for unnatural storms.

But could he win her from this David?

Her voice pulled him from his musings.

“David wasn’t quite an obsession. He was different. In the beginning, I thought he was just a quiet guy who needed a little cheering up. Then I got to know him, got to know how smart he was, and whenever I saw him, my heart would race.”

“I can sympathize.”

Her hand moved over his heart and held there, as if she were verifying that his heart was indeed racing. Then she pulled her hand back. But at least she would know he spoke the truth.

“You wanna hear something funny?” she asked. “I came to Scotland to get David out of my system. As it turns out, my heart wasn’t racing because I was in love with him, but because I was intimidated by him. I was always afraid I wouldn’t measure up, that I would do something dumb, that if I wasn’t careful about every word I said, he’d realize I wasn’t as smart as I was pretending to be.”

Heathcliff’s chest inflated with joy and he held his breath, to prolong the feeling.

She didn’t love David!

“The worst part was that I changed my opinions to match his. He thought my career choice was a waste of my brain. Of course I took that as a compliment—he thought I was smart. So I started looking at changing my major, started looking at my time at the deaf school as just a day job to help pay for my degree. I started thinking I didn’t want to be there, like it was...beneath me. I know that sounds terrible.”

“It sounds like that other Catherine—the one we doona care for.”

She pushed up onto her elbow and looked down at him. “Exactly! I was turning into someone I didn’t like. But I didn’t realize it until my family held a David Intervention for me.”

“A David Intervention? What is this?” It sounded a bit like winning her heart away from the other man, something he would be happy to repeat if necessary, before midnight on the morrow.

“They reminded me what I used to be like. They showed me pictures of kids I’ve helped over the years, the kids that made me love my job. They told me what they didn’t like about the person I’d become.

“So I dumped David—which was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I don’t think he cared much, one way or the other, which just proves how little I’d really meant to him in the first place. But the hardest thing is trying to wash all of David’s opinions out of my brain, to wash his personality out of my own, you know? So I thought a vacation out of the country would help with that. I was getting tired of my family trying to help me. It was something I needed to do by myself. So here I am.”

“I cannot help but be grateful for whatever it was that led ye to my door, Brianna. Even a mad coachman.”

She tortured him with silence, hovering over him, looking him in the eye but saying nothing.

“Yeah, well, I guess I can’t be too mad either,” she finally said.

He prepared himself for the declaration he knew was on the tip of her tongue.

“It won’t make much difference, though, will it?” He barely heard her whisper, but he’d followed her lips well enough.

“I doona understand, lass. Love makes all the difference in the world, surely.”

She sat up, away from him. She was preparing to run from him again, but he couldn’t let her. They would finish with all this foolishness and set things right between them. He refused to suffer through another silent day.

He sat up and placed his feet on the floor. She breathed slow and steady, like a cornered rabbit. Then she gave a little laugh.

“All the difference in whose world? Yours? Mine? How we feel about each other won’t matter if we’re 200 years apart, will it? What happens when I go back?”

“Go back?” His body rose with his frustration, but once on his feet, his frustration went on without him, exploding out his mouth. “Go back to the year 2012? You’re out of your beautiful mind, lass. Ye’ve had some accident, had some unhappy experience that made ye believe such nonsense. Of course yer not from the future. I’m sorry, lass, but yer no’. ‘Tis impossible!”

She was strangely calm in the face of his ranting.

“So you were just playing along this morning, when you wanted to talk about the year I came from? Nice. You were sucking up so you could what? Earn another kiss?”

The memory of his grandmother tapped him on the shoulder to remind him that nothing was impossible, but he ignored it. There was too much at stake.

He dove to his knees before her and brought his hands together in supplication.

“Please, Brianna. Please believe that ye’d be happy here, with me. Stay with me. Let me love ye. Doona think to leave me, lass.” He opened his hands. “Me hearts just here, in these to hands. Take it. Take it.”

She shook her head. “You really don’t believe me.”

“My love—”

“Don’t!”  She jumped to her feet. Her eyes were filling with tears. “Don’t you dare say that. You don’t know me. You don’t trust me, so you sure as hell can’t love me.”

With his empty hands still raised, he stepped toward her. She recoiled, so he stopped. If he took another step, she would run. He had to hold her attention.

“Am I obsessed by the thought of ye? Aye, I am. Intimidated? That too. But my heart was not racing in my chest because I fear ye, Brianna. I only fear ye mightn’t feel the same for me.” He lowered his hands. “I shouldn’t have teased ye, this morn. It was a poor jest to goad ye into breakin’ yer silence. Forgive me. Forgive me and offer me but a wisp of hope to take with me to my bed. Tell me you feel something for me, that if... If we must part on the morrow, that you will miss me, at the very least. Mm?”

She blinked and tears poured from her eyes. She shook her head, but he knew it was a lie. Her feelings for him ran as deep as did his. She would miss him if they parted. And she’d share the same regrets if he allowed her to run away now.

He gave her a sad smile. She slipped sideways and bolted. He’d reached for her hand, but she’d been to quick. He ran after her. When she realized he was on her heels, she squealed, but did not falter. She took the steps two at a time. He took them three. He dared not reach for her, lest she stumble. He allowed her the lead only until they were out of danger, then he headed her off when she turned toward the child’s bedchamber.

He grasped her by the shoulders and in one fluid movement, as when they’d danced, he spun her further down the hall and up against the wall. The light from a sconce lit the top of her head. Her blond tresses tumbled from their nest at the back of her head while they both caught their breath. It took all his effort to keep from stealing that breath away again with a kiss, especially when she continued to look at his lips, then his eyes, then back again.

Eventually, he released one shoulder and held his palm to her cheek, demanding her complete attention.

“Does it matter?” he whispered. “Does any of it truly matter? Whatever I was but a week ago, I am no longer, lass. I will not be content to watch life from my tower window and remain apart from it, not when you could be that life.”

She dropped her chin and sobbed as he wrapped his arms carefully around her.  He was happy to hold her straight through the New Year if need be and ignore anyone who came to his door. But something was wrong; she was shaking her head.

“Your life? Your Nineteenth Century life?” she whispered, though she would not look at him. “You’re out of your mind. You can’t want a wife you can’t believe. A wife you think is crazy.” She wiped her tears on her shoulder, but she didn’t push him away. “So, yes, it matters.” Finally, she looked up at his face. “But if you want to pretend, for one more day, for the sake of Angeline, I’ll pretend too. You can keep pretending you love me. I’ll pretend I believe you.”

She had no need to push him away then, the distance between them stretched without him taking a step. His chest burned as if she’d branded the words across it,
I’ll pretend I believe you.

When he’d given her that same promise, had she suffered the same pain?

Impossible. I gave the promise days ago—a lifetime ago. She had no tender feelings for me then.
Then the pain delved deeper.
 Likely, she has no such feelings for me now.

What a fool. He’d wanted so badly for her to feel as he did that he’d convinced himself of the truth of it. The pain in her eyes had only been from his lack of trust, not because her heart was breaking...as his was.

He reached for her face again and when she did not resist, he held it a moment, then another still, but the futility of reaching for her soul became bittersweet. Finally, he could stand no more of it. After brushing the wetness from the still wet cheek, he dropped his hand to his side and smiled.

“Go, now. Sleep. We shall pretend tomorrow will be a fine day, aye?”

The candle he left with her. He needed no light to guide him down the dark hall. The door to his sanctuary opened without thought. As he closed it behind him, the chill air moved against his skin. Silently, he willed it to sink through his heart.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Bree watched the shine on the backs of Heathcliff’s boots as he moved away from her into the shadows. When he turned at the end of the hall, he didn’t glance back.

If he hurt half as bad as she did, she was no better than that other Catherine and she deserved her pain. What she didn’t deserve was her Heathcliff. And what had he said? If Catherine had just married Heathcliff, as she was supposed to, she might not have died in childbed. If she’d have just taken what was offered...

But she couldn’t take what was offered because someone was going to pull the rug out from under her little fantasy here.

Yes, she loved him. Yes, she could jump into his arms and tell him it was all going to be all right. And maybe no one would come at midnight. Maybe she could just bide her time until the day he finally believed she couldn’t possibly be from his century. They could work it out later.

But they weren’t the only people in the world. Out there, somewhere, were her parents and her friends who were probably already freaking out because they hadn’t heard from her. If she chose to live the fairytale, they’d be the ones to pay for it. Besides the fact she’d never see them again.

She laughed. What a joke. There was no telling if she even had a choice. Going back might not be an option anyhow.

The coachman would come. He had to come. He had to be the key to all this insanity.

* * *

The smell of morning made her sick to her stomach. Whatever was going to happen at midnight, she almost wished would happen right away, so it would at least be over with. Instead of enjoying his company for one last day, or even pretending to, she dreaded facing him. It was all going to be just too painful, and she wouldn’t be able to keep from falling apart.

She led Angeline down the stairs as usual, but she planned to go right back to the room as soon as the girl had her breakfast and her would-be father could worry about entertaining her. Bree needed to put a little distance between Angeline and her anyway, so when Bree wasn’t there for her the next morning, it wouldn’t be a complete shock. As for herself, she dreaded that cold turkey affect and wondered if she would have a hard time from now on teaching little blond girls with braids.