Marielle fell silent. Her body was both hot and shivery, as memory and reality collided in the man she beheld.
“Miss Redford.” He bowed correctly, which was ridiculous given the setting, then produced a wrinkled handkerchief.
Marielle took it and dabbed at her cheeks. “What are you doing here, Leo, and is this a flag of truce?” How calm she sounded, though the hand clutching his handkerchief shook.
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Happy Christmas to you, too, ma’am. You are looking well.”
“I look a fright. You look to be thriving.” Her splotchy cheeks and puffy eyes were his fault, for which she was grateful. The sight of him—the simple sight of him—well, whole, and healthy, threatened to turn her weepy again.
“I am well, if a bit chilled. How is your husband?”
Must he sound so damnably calm? Must he look so damnably attractive?
Though Leo did not look friendly. His question was clearly meant to establish some sort of picket lines, and that would not do. Leo’s abandonment had hurt, but Marielle refused to make an enemy of him—tempted though she might be.
“He’s dead, Leo. Gone three years, from a wasting disease. I’m a comfortably well off widow.” Without children, and Drew’s dying regret had been that they’d never had offspring. Marielle hadn’t understood the intensity of Drew’s sadness over that lack until she’d been wearing her weeds, listening to the bishop drone on about God’s will and faith and other platitudes.
Children were somebody to love, and without somebody to love, meaning in life was hard to come by. Remarriage loomed as a solution to the problem of the childless widow in society’s eyes, and lately, in Marielle’s too.
“My condolences on the loss of your spouse,” Leo said. “What of your father?”
Leo’s voice had deepened, and acquired an implied hint of command. He expected his questions to be answered.
“Papa died shortly after I married. He’d apparently been unwell for some time.” Drew had thought Marielle was mourning her papa, and she had been, but she’d also been mourning her first love.
Leo took a scowling visual inventory of the saddle room, as if rearranging his own view of the past.
“It’s cold enough to freeze Lucifer’s ears off in here,” he said. “May I escort you to the inn?”
That was Marielle’s turn of phrase, borrowed from a long-ago nanny. Leo had kept that much of her with him. Had he carried other memories of her into battle, and exactly what had prompted him to choose the constant threat of death over her hand in marriage?
“We’re shall talk, Leo Drake,” Marielle said, rising and dusting off her backside. “For Christmas, you will give me the answers I deserved ten years ago.”
He peered down at her—he’d not been this tall as a lad of seventeen—his expression unreadable. Ten years ago, Marielle had been able to accurately translate his sighs, the angle of his shoulders, his stride, his word choices, even his silences.
Now, he was a stranger inhabiting the person of her dearest, lost love—a handsome stranger—and one who had not kept close track of her. But then again, how exactly did a soldier at war keep track of anybody back home?
“Perhaps you’ll favor me with a few answers too, madam.”
Marielle was tempted to ask if Leo had married, but she’d moved on with her life, made other plans. His present marital status was no concern of hers. Perhaps it was for the best that she and Leo had encountered each other like this. She could close the door to her past before stepping through the door to her future, all tidy and calm.
She preceded Leo into the barn aisle, waited while he stowed his gear—a half-pay officer wouldn’t expect the stable lads to wait on him hand and foot—and then permitted him to escort her across the frigid, snowy inn yard.
She was Lady Drew Semple now, widowed, and of means and consequence.
So why was her heart pounding if she were a seventeen-year-old girl on the eve of an elopement?
CHAPTER 2
Of all the ambushes in all the villages in all the hinterlands, coming upon Marielle Redford at the same hostelry where Leo had last heard her declarations of undying devotion was the most diabolical.
Surely, only a very, very naughty fellow deserved that blow on Christmas Day, though this year past year especially, Leo had been nearly a monk where the ladies were concerned.
Marielle was prettier than ever—another blow—but she’d lost an ebullience that had come through even when she’d sat quietly and read. Marielle as a very young woman had been like the sun, bringing light no matter how cold the day, and a determined optimism Leo had missed brutally as he’d marched through years of war.
Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a tidy chignon, and her brown eyes bore a woman’s sense of self-confidence. She’d become altogether more impressive for acquiring a faint air of restraint, but he missed his impetuous Marielle.
As much as Leo wanted to resent the lady before him, he could not. A woman made her way in the world as best she could, and clearly, Marielle’s way now was adequately smoothed with coin. She was in good health, in good looks, and expensively attired. Her cloak was velvet, doubtless lined with satin, and cut in the latest style.
“I’ve ordered toddies and toast,” Leo said as he escorted her across the inn yard. “Will you join me?”
Marielle paused outside the main door. They were sheltered from the wind, and all around them, holiday decorations conveyed yuletide good cheer. And yet, the bleakness that assailed Leo was bone deep and colder than a winter night.
He had lost her. He’d accepted a commission, convinced she’d spurned him. The girl he’d known had been impetuous, passionate, and not always sensible—who was at seventeen?—but she’d been unfailingly kind. Perhaps Marielle had thought sending him off to the glamor of an officer’s life was a kindness, though the romance of soldiering and the reality had been only distantly related.
She gazed across the innyard, at the stately oak that had sheltered so many of their encounters. Her expression suggested some sorrow deeper than regret, some grief that echoed the bleakness in Leo’s heart.
“Marielle, I’m sorry.” The young man in Leo was also furious with her—joining a war when he’d planned to attend his own wedding had been a horrible coming of age—but his regrets were genuine too. “I’d like to know why you did what you did, but mostly, I’m sorry we couldn’t be together.”
She had grown formidable with the passing years. Widowhood could do that. Marielle had tossed Leo aside to marry some aristocrat, and she had to have loved her husband fiercely.
Maybe more fiercely than she’d loved Leo, though in all humility, he hadn’t thought such a thing possible.
“You want answers from me?” she replied, looking him up and down as if he’d arrived to a fancy dress ball in muddy boots. “That’s rich, Leopold, when you were the one who preferred war to wedded bliss. A gentleman holds a door for a lady.”
Marielle had always had a temper, but the passing years had taught how to wield that temper with cool precision.
Leo bowed her through the door. “A gentleman also doesn’t argue with a lady, but clearly, I’m about to have a rousing disagreement with you. A private parlor is in order, don’t you agree? I’ve known you since you gave up sucking your thumb. We can share a plate of toast without offending the dictates of propriety.”