“She’s ready, milord!” Harry appeared at Noah’s elbow and handed him the reins of a dappled mare.
“Thank you, Harry. You’ll drive Lady Caroline?”
The groom bowed and headed off as Noah began to mount up.
“Mind yourself,” Claire advised him, patting the horse’s neck. “Lord Milstead is in a temper.”
“It’s he who should mind my temper,” Noah said darkly. “I’ll see you back at the castle, with Miss Harris in tow. Milstead, I fear, may be called away on urgent business. A pity he shall miss the Christmas festivities.”
As he rode off, Claire turned back to survey her guests. On finding them all settled in their sleighs, ready to depart, she had naught to do but to climb into her own seat. Having both been slighted by their original driving companions, she and Jonathan were obliged to claim the last vacant sleigh for themselves (not that she minded).
When he handed her up, she felt exceedingly aware of his fingers clasping hers, even through the thick protection of their gloves. Now she recalled that, just before Noah’s interruption in the hovel, she’d had something she’d wanted to say to Jonathan. But she couldn’t remember the details.
Her thoughts seemed washed away by a swell of fatigue. Willing her eyes to stay open, she sank onto her seat with a languid sigh and pulled a blanket over her lap.
The blanket pulled back—Jonathan had seized the same one. They shared an awkward laugh, both recalling Claire’s troubles with the earlier blanket. Relinquishing his hold, Jonathan began to rummage for another.
But he searched in vain, and a peculiar tension grew the longer he hunted, till Claire felt she should offer hers. Of course he graciously declined, and Claire’s well-bred politeness made her insist, and they went round in this manner for some time before she was on the point of acknowledging the inevitable: They would have to share the blanket.
Once she’d mentally accepted that solution, she began to fancy it. And that’s when he discovered, at long last, the second blanket.
Thus settled in their respective places, under their separate blankets, they both stared straight ahead as the sleighs moved off. And before her weary mind could grasp the threads of what she’d wanted to tell him, Claire was asleep.
Thirteen
As Jonathan drove back to Greystone, the sun began to dip, casting long shadows over the countryside. A sharp drop in temperature made Claire shiver in her sleep. Jonathan removed his blanket and threw it over hers, and the shivering ceased. Her head lolling onto his shoulder, she slept on.
Jonathan watched her face, glad she looked peaceful, and also glad that (at least for now) she was in his safe hands.
While she’d done an admirable job of banishing Milstead, there were plenty more men like him—and if in the end she banished Jonathan too, he feared he might end up in a state of constant anxiety. For though she’d grown strong enough to take care of herself again, he couldn’t bear to think of her being mistreated.
Somewhere in the course of these bleak musings, he fell asleep himself, and woke to the clatter of the sleigh upon the drawbridge. As the stablemaster had predicted, Serenity had done well for them, carrying them home in spite of the unconscious state of her driver—for which Jonathan could only feel immensely grateful and vastly foolish.
There were two other circumstances for which he was grateful: the first being their sleigh’s position at the rear of the convoy, and the second, the absence of Miss Harris’s watchful eye. For when Jonathan came to, he found his arm around Claire’s shoulders and her head tucked under his chin—an arrangement which, had she observed it, Miss Harris would have found tremendously interesting.
But it appeared that in her absence, no one had bothered to look. And when Claire awakened within seconds of Jonathan and blinked up at him sleepily, their faces scarcely inches apart, she graced him with a smile of the deepest contentment before their arrival in the carriage sweep forced them to spring apart.
Though a footman materialized to assist the lady, Jonathan insisted on handing her down himself. If, after Claire descended, their fingers remained linked rather longer than was necessary—and if, as another footman approached with a tray, the two of them remained rather closer than was seemly—nobody seemed to notice or mind.
They each accepted a mug full of something that steamed and smelled of Christmas. Jonathan raised his cup to her, and they clinked in a silent toast full of unspoken significance. He held her gaze as he drank deeply. With a good deal of spice and a delicious heat, the drink thawed him from the inside out. Quickly he drained the whole mug.
Claire grinned to see him reaching for another. “You like the wassail?”
“I demand the recipe.” He clinked his second cup with hers.
She laughed and sipped. “I’m afraid it’s a family recipe, from my mother’s side.” Her smile went lopsided. “Only to be shared among ourselves, you know.”
“Ah. That does present a difficulty.” Feigning contemplation, he rubbed his cheek, then his chin. “If only one could join this very exclusive, secretive family…”
“An interesting thought. I suppose there might be one way. But you may have to—horsefeathers!”
“Pardon?” Laughing, Jonathan paused in scratching his chin. “‘I may have to horsefeathers?’ What on earth?—”
“Jonathan!”
“What? Is something amiss?”
“Your face! It’s all red and—” She broke off, her own face turning white.
