Nor, in fact, was she any longer the innocent young miss he recalled. Clearly. She was a woman grown, and could hold her own. Even against him, it would seem.
With a gentleness he envied, she tousled the boy’s shining blonde mane, and for a moment he was certain he could feel her hands in his own hair; warm fingers at his nape, the sensation so real that he inhaled sharply and closed his eyes to savor it privately. But it was a mistake, for it opened a window he’d long ago slammed shut, revived a memory he’d long tucked away.
Another Christmas, long ago, far away…
He was in his mother’s arms. She kissed him sweetly upon the nose as she ruffled his hair. “You are my light,” she had said to him then. But she’d been blind in her love for him, because he’d been born with his father’s darkness. Even then his armor had been tarnished an ugly black. Even then. And then instead of remaining to help her through her melancholy, he had fled… like a coward… until his brother’s death had called him home.
“Do you remember the time you and Lettie rescued the robin from Penelope’s perilous jaws,” Emma was saying, bringing Lucien back to the present.
“Crotchety old feline!” Peters proclaimed.
Lucien had entirely forgotten Andrew and his wife were in the room. His attention had been so focused upon Emma.
Emma glanced up at her brother and added with an impish smile, “And do you remember that your Papa fostered it within the nursery....”
“Lord-a-mercy!” Cecile said aghast, once again casting aside her sewing. “Not in the nursery! Really, Andrew!” She gave him a chastening look and peered up at Lucien. “Sometimes I wonder who are the real children in this house.”
Despite himself, Lucien chuckled at their banter. He envied their easy alliance. And Emma... she reminded him too much of his mother... and Jonathon of himself.
Poor child.
More acutely than before, he felt like a trespasser here in their home.
“Well, that would be a perfect example of a very good deed,” she informed them all. “But I’ve no doubt you will all come up with dozens more this year.”
“Aunt Em… does keeping your socks clean count?” Jonathon asked soberly. The child peered up at his aunt with all the hope and adoration Lucien had once felt for his own mother, and he couldn’t help but think that Emma would have been a very good mother, indeed. She might have been the perfect mother... for his own children… but he refused to reconsider now. She looked so dashed innocent sitting there amongst the kids.
He saw her shudder. Against the chill of the room, he thought—a chill he didn’t feel because it was too much a part of him. He’d be damned if he was capable of feeling anything as redeeming as love, and he didn’t intend to do to Emma Peters what his father had done to his gentle mother. No, crying off was the right thing to do.
“Yes, of course. Everything counts,” Emma advised the children charitably, raising a finger in counsel, “so long as ’tis done for good.”
“Yes, but Aunt Em, is it really, really true?” the youngest daughter asked again.
Emma hugged the book against her breast, and Lucien suddenly wished it were his cheek lying there so close to her heartbeat. He blinked away the image. “I would very much like to think so,” she replied.
The oldest daughter turned pleading eyes toward her father. “Can we build a crèche again this year, Papa? Can we please?”
“I promise not to put anymore mice in it,” the boy swore. “They were cold,” he explained. “I only brought them in to keep them warm.”
“Dear me, we thought we would never be rid of those horrid beasts,” Cecile said as an aside to Lucien.
Compelled by his eldest child’s plea and his son’s fervent promise, Peters withdrew the billowing pipe from his mouth and said, “Well, now... I cannot conceive why not.”
“Yeahhhh!” the children screeched in unison.
“Thank you, Papa!” the youngest daughter proclaimed, leaping up and flinging herself into her father’s lap. “Thank you very much!”
The boy, too, bounded upward, wrapping his little arms about Emma’s neck. “We love you, Aunt Em!”
Emma laughed, and the earthy sound gave Lucien an immediate physical response.
Twice now in one day.
“I—” She glanced up suddenly, meeting Lucien’s gaze, and her face turned a lovely shade of pink. She quickly averted her gaze. “I-I love you, too,” she assured the child, but her voice was quivery, and Lucien couldn’t help but wonder whether she was recalling saying just the same words to him.
He couldn’t seem to forget.
Dressed brightly in a pale yellow morning dress, she’d tilted her lovely face to his and said with all the sincerity of an adoring child, “I think I love you!”
No words had ever touched him more. None had ever sobered him more. None had ever terrified him more.
“Aunt Em?” the youngest daughter asked, turning slightly in her father’s lap where she had settled herself. She looked at her aunt and then turned to glance shyly at Lucien, but with something slightly calculating in her somber blue eyes. “What if you try to help people instead of baby robins?” she asked, hugging her father’s neck. Once again, she turned to peer at Lucien and this time did not turn away. Lucien fidgeted uncomfortably under her guileless scrutiny. “Does that count as a good deed?” she wanted to know.
Lucien noted that Emma, too, had noticed the direction of Lettie’s gaze, as did her father.
Pinned by their combined scrutiny, and targeted by the child’s question, Lucien had never felt more discomfited in all his life. He straightened abruptly as Emma replied soberly, her voice a little trembly, “Yes, of course, Lettie, though we can merely try.” She cast Lucien an awkward glance. “Some people will not be helped,” she disclosed. And then she lifted her chin. “Those you must simply set free.”
Lucien had the immediate impression that she was speaking of him. Could that be what she was attempting to do with her frosty demeanor? Set him free? The thought touched him in a way he could not quite perceive.
Lettie whispered something into her father’s ear, and then Peters stared down at his daughter in what appeared to be surprise, and then sudden enlightenment. He turned to regard Lucien as though he’d had some sort of coup de foudre and then he stood abruptly, chuckling as he lifted his daughter up with him and then set her down before him.
“You are brilliant!” he said, removing the pipe from his mouth and bending to plant a quick peck upon her forehead. “Very well!” he declared to one and all with a sudden burst of excitement. He straightened to his full height, grinning waggishly. “I believe I shall have the crèche constructed at once!” And he stared at Lucien an uncomfortable instant, shaking his head, chortling, and then cast a wide grin at Emma. And then, still chuckling, he abruptly seized his wife by the hand and dragged her out from her chair, declaring, “Come now, my dear, we have work to do.”
“Oh, but, Andrew!” his wife exclaimed, abandoning her sewing to the floor as he tugged her unexpectedly to her feet. “What are you doing?” she laughed. “Where are we going? We have a guest!”