‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure it is lovely,’ he said. ‘Heaven knows we’ve got enough food, and I’ve got all the decorations and there’s a tree outside waiting to come in, if I can find it under the snow. And we can’t do anything else. My family aren’t going to be able to get here, and you can’t get away, so why don’t we just go for it? Give Josh a Christmas to remember.’
She stared at him, taking in his words, registering just what it must be costing him to make the offer—although she might have known he would. The old Sebastian, the one she loved, wouldn’t have hesitated. The new one—well, she was beginning to realise she didn’t know him at all, but he might not be as bad as she’d feared.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said softly, her eyes welling. ‘Thank you. I know you don’t—’
He lifted his hand, silencing her. ‘Let it go, George. Let’s just take it at face value, have a bit of fun and give Josh his Christmas—no strings, no harking on the past, no recriminations. And no repeats of last night. Can we do that?’
Could they? She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to try.
She felt the tears welling faster now, and pressed her lips together as she smiled at him. ‘Yes. Yes, we can do that. Thank you.’
He returned her smile a little wryly, and got to his feet.
‘So—want to help me decorate the house?’
* * *
He gave them a guided tour of the ground floor.
Josh loved it. There were so many places to hide, so much to explore. And Georgie—well, she loved it in a different way, a bitter-sweet, this-could-have-been-ours way that made her heart ache.
No what ifs.
His words echoed in her head, and she put the thoughts out of her mind and concentrated on what he’d done to the house.
A lot.
‘Oh, wow!’ she said, laughing in surprise when they went into the dining room. ‘That’s a pretty big table.’
‘It extends, too,’ he said, his mouth twitching, and she felt her eyes widen.
‘Really?’ She went to the far end and sat down. ‘Can you hear me?’
His smile was wry with old memories. ‘Just about. Probably not with the extra leaves in.’
Their eyes held for just a beat too long, and she felt a whole whirlpool of emotions swirling in her chest. She got up and came towards him, running her fingers slowly over the gleaming wood, avoiding his eyes while she got herself back under control. ‘Did you get the grand piano for the music room?’ she asked lightly, and looked up in time to catch a flicker of something strange in his eyes.
He shook his head. ‘No. It seemed pointless. I don’t play the piano, but I do listen to music in there sometimes. It’s my study now. I prefer it to the library, the view’s better. Come and see the sitting room—the old one, in the Tudor part. I think it’s probably where I’ll put the tree.’
‘Not in the hall?’
He shrugged. ‘What’s the point? I’m never in the hall, I just walk through it. And I thought, over Christmas, we might want to sit somewhere warm and cosy and less like a barn than the drawing room. It’s huge, if you remember, and a bit unfriendly. It’ll be better in the summer.’
She nodded. It was huge, but it was stunningly elegant and ornate in a restrained way, and it had a long sash window that slid up inside the wall so you could walk out through it onto the terrace. She’d loved it, but she could see his point.
In winter, the little sitting room—which was still twice the size of her main reception room—would be much more appropriate. Next to the kitchen in the same area of the house, it was beamed and somehow much less formal than its Georgian counterpart, and it had a ginormous inglenook fireplace big enough to stand inside.
He pushed open the door, and she went in and sighed longingly.
‘Oh, this looks really cosy.’ Huge, squashy sofas bracketed the inglenook, and there were logs in the old iron dog grate waiting to be lit. She could just imagine curling up there in the corner of a sofa with a book, with a dog leaning on her knees and Josh driving his toy cars around on the floor.
Dreaming again.
‘Where are you going to put the tree?’
‘In this corner. There’s a power socket for the lights, and it’s out of the way.’
‘How big is it?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Eight foot?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Will it fit under the beams?’
He grinned and shrugged again. ‘Probably. I can always trim it. Only one way to find out.’
‘Finding out’ turned out to be a bit of a mission. It was in the courtyard, close to the coach house, but the snow was deep except by the back door where it had all fallen in earlier.
‘A shovel would make this a lot easier,’ he said, standing at the door in his boots and eyeing the snow with disgust.
‘I thought you had a shovel in the car?’
‘I do. Look at the coach-house.’
‘Ah.’ Snow was banked up in front of the doors, and digging it out without a shovel wasn’t really practical.
‘I should have thought of that last night,’ he said, but of course he hadn’t, and nor had she, because they’d had quite enough to think about already.
She didn’t want to think about last night.
She picked Josh up and stood in the kitchen watching through the window as Sebastian ploughed his way through the snow to a huge, shapeless lump in the corner by the coach-house door. He plunged his arm into the snow, grabbed something and shook, and a conical shape gradually appeared.
‘Mummy, what ’Bastian doing?’
‘He’s finding the Christmas tree. It’s buried under the snow—look, there it is!’
‘Oh..!’ He watched, spellbound, as the tree emerged from its snowy shroud and Sebastian hauled it out of the corner and hoisted it into the air.
She went to the boot room door.
‘Can I help you get it in?’
‘I doubt it. I should stand back, this is going to be wet and messy.’
She moved out of the way, and he dragged it through the doorway, shedding snow and needles and other debris all over the place. Then he emerged from underneath it, propped it in the corner and grinned at them both.
‘Well, that’s the easy bit done,’ he said. There was a leaf in his hair, in amongst the sprinkles of snow, and she had to stuff her hand in her pocket to stop from reaching out and picking it off.
‘What’s the hard bit?’ she said, trying to concentrate.
‘Getting it to stay upright in the stand, and finding the right side.’
She chuckled, still eyeing the leaf. ‘I can remember one year my mother cut so much off the tree trying to even it up she threw it out onto the compost heap and bought an artificial one.’
He laughed and turned his back on the tree and met her eyes with a smile. ‘Well, that won’t happen here. There’s no way I can find the secateurs, and the compost heap’s far too far away.’
‘Well, let’s hope it’s a good tree, then,’ she said drily. ‘How about coffee while it drip-dries? And then, talking of my mother, I really should phone her and tell her what’s happening.’
‘Do that now, although I expect she’s