‘The master asked me to show you the bolts of fabric in the attic, Miss Moorland. He said you might choose some material for a Christmas gown and if we are to have any hope of finishing it we would be best to get on to it as soon as we can.’
The thought crossed Seraphina’s mind that Lord Blackhaven might be regretting his earlier kiss and allowing her some recompense in return for it. She swallowed down such a conclusion and tried to take stock of her situation.
‘I haven’t the means to pay you for the work, Mrs Thomas, and I am not certain yet of the amount of my wages.’
‘Oh, never mind that,’ the housekeeper returned softly. ‘The boys are happier than I have seen them in a long while and that is the best payment I could ever receive. Now, come along and we will see what we can find.’
Ten minutes later Seraphina felt as though she were in some Aladdin’s cave, myriad rolls of fabric leaning against the walls, some still bound in tissue paper but many partly unravelled as if the person who owned them had just been there deciding on her choice of colour.
‘Lady Stanford was a woman who liked a great deal of selection. She was always buying from the travelling salesmen or the gypsies, as well as getting fabric sent up from London. Velvet, as you can see, was a special favourite of hers, and lace. The Brussels lace here cost a right fortune, I can tell you.’
‘Then perhaps I should look at something less costly?’
‘And have the moths burrow their way through this? Nay, the hue will show up the depth in the gold velvet of the gown and would suit the shade of your hair. If we do not cut into it now, it could stay unused for another decade and by that time there would be nothing of it left at all. Save dust. Such a waste.’
Unravelling the bolt, Seraphina felt her breath hitch. Catherine Blackhaven’s taste in fabric was unparalleled and she had rarely seen lace so fine. Still, tempting as the gift was, she wondered at her own ability to pay back the cost of it.
‘The duke said you could have your choice, Miss Moorland. Were it to be mine, I should most certainly select these ones.’ The Brussels lace was in her left hand and the golden velvet in the right.
Without waiting for a reply, she bound the length around Seraphina’s waist. ‘If the skirt was full and the bodice tighter, you could use the lace here and here. Lady Catherine always favoured a scandalously low décolletage, but on you we could fashion a gown in a manner that was more classical.’
Mrs Thomas’s words gave her an opening. ‘The duke’s late wife was a beautiful woman. I saw her in London a few times with my mother.’
‘And the beauty went to her head until it was all that she could think of. It was why the master was in Europe for so long, with a bride who cared for nothing save herself.’
‘But the children?’
As if catching sense, Mrs Thomas shook her head. ‘I am the housekeeper, Miss Moorland, and I should remember my place.’ Winding back the gold so that even more of the colour was on show, she nodded sagely. ‘Blackhaven Castle needs laughter and joy again and if the cost of that is a few yards of fabric, then it comes cheap.’
When Mrs Thomas undid the handles on a sewing bag she had placed on the floor, Seraphina saw scissors, pins and thread, and the promise of a gown that was neither too big nor too tight overcame reticence. With real anticipation she slipped off her old dress and stood in her many-times-patched chemise and petticoats as the measuring and fitting began in earnest.
The wind had died down and the rain had held off, though the clouds were thick and dark above as Seraphina sat on a wooden bench in the ornate inner gardens of Blackhaven as the evening was about to fall.
Reaching out to the bare wood of a bush beside her, she smiled as she touched the vibrant orange of a rosehip, the only colour besides green and black and grey in the snow-tossed square. It was good to be outside at the end of a long and noisy day, the silence of the place welcomed as she tucked her chin into the worsted wool of her borrowed cape.
The kiss from the morning turned in her mind, again and again, compelling and intense. She had kissed Trey Stanford back, too, pressing herself against his body like a wanton woman. The thought had her eyes opening and she stared into the amber glance of the very man she dreamt of.
‘I saw you come out here through the window of my library,’ the duke explained, gesturing to a room behind a row of barren espaliered fruit trees, light showing through diamond-panelled windows.
His hair this evening was tucked carelessly into the generous collar of a military coat: a soldier, a hero, a man whose very accent summoned the amount of years that he had served in Europe for England. She imagined just what he must have experienced.
‘It was quiet out here, my lord, and a sheltered place to rest.’ She wondered if she should invite him to sit, but he seemed restless, his fingers playing against intricate gold buttons in a line down his front, the same fingers that had caressed her neck and threaded through her hair as he had kissed her.
No. She must not think of this now, for she sensed a barely held anger broiling beneath the careful surface.
‘My sons like you, Lady Seraphina. Gareth informed me last night that he wished we might keep you.’
Astonishment leapt quick, though he was not finished.
‘I have no wish for them to be disappointed again, for they would not weather it. The boys’ mother was …’ He hesitated. ‘She was not the sort of woman who held the maternal instincts in high regard, you understand, and they have suffered. Therefore, if you feel in the light of what happened today that you no longer wish to remain at Blackhaven Castle until the end of January, I would provide you with transport back to London and a generous stipend for the trouble taken for coming here in the first place.’
For the only time since she had met him he looked slightly abashed, a peer of the land who was also a father and a man.
‘I should also like to say that I have come into the gardens to find you in order to personally apologise for my lack of regard.’
‘You speak of our kiss?’ Anticipation sizzled amidst an unsettled anger. If he should say their kiss was a mistake or an error or a lapse in judgement, she would scream because to her it was none of those things. To her the very soft rightness of it still made the blood race in her veins, and the hope of more was in her answer. ‘I could have refused your advances, Lord Stanford, easily, but I found myself not wishing to.’
At the words Seraphina stood, the evening wrapping around them both and her breath white in the half-light when she spoke. ‘I do not consign what happened under the mistletoe as an error, but see it as a gift that was precious to me beyond words.’ The vulnerability creasing his face made her reach up to his cheek and place her finger across the hard angles.
He felt warm even despite the chill, a twelve-hour stubble roughening his skin: a man who was solid and reliable and honourable. ‘If, indeed, there is anything I might say, it would be to ask you to kiss me again,’ she simply stated, standing on her tiptoes so that he might have better access to all that she offered him. She could no longer be careful or circumspect or judicious. She wanted him, his taste, his feel and his warmth. She wanted to know again that which she had in the room full of Christmas, the ache of delight filling every part of her body with heat.
The shards in his eyes lightened from brown to gold, melting into response, and his lips came down to hers, the slam of need attesting to a control he had suddenly lost hold of.
His tongue met her own, duelling against entry as he deepened the kiss, changing that which she offered into something else. Wonderment and lust. She felt his hips move even through the thick layers of wool between them, asking for what men and women through all the centuries had sought to understand in an elemental promise. When she answered back, his voice broke hoarse into the silence, her name whispered fiercely before his lips returned to take—only them in the