He bowed his head slightly. “I know. And I will wait. But I do not wish—” His voice faltered. “I do not wish you to feel bound on my account. If it is to be sold, then let it be sold.”
She flinched as though struck. “That is not what I want.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Miss Hale… I would spare you the consequences of my failures if I could.”
Her lips parted—but whatever words gathered on her tongue were swallowed by sudden movement in the room. Mrs. Forsythe’s husband passed between them, trailing conversation, and both had to step aside.
Thornton found himself—again—near the archway.
And again, beneath the mistletoe.
Margaret stopped two paces from him, cheeks flushed. A startled, charged recognition passed between them as their eyes flicked upward, then met again.
He stepped back immediately, almost sharply. “Forgive me.”
“No harm done,” she blurted.
He bowed. “I will attend the solicitors on the twenty-sixth,” he managed. “Or whenever it suits. Send word when you are ready.”
She nodded once, quickly. And he left—coat gathered, hat in hand, the night air striking him cold as he stepped out of the Lennox house.
He did not look back.
He did not dare.
Inside him, something already felt perilously close to breaking.
Sleep would not come.
Margaret lay still in the dark, eyes open, listening to the faint tick of the mantel clock downstairs, to the last murmurs of the household settling into rest. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him standing beneath the mistletoe—uncertain, restraining himself—and the look he had given her when he said he would not bind her to his failures.
Failures.
As though she believed him capable of any such thing.
At last, she sat up. Therehadto be something she had missed.
Some figure, some clause, some pattern in the accounts that would cut through his despair. The solicitor’s folio had been thorough—Harcourt was nothing if not methodical—but she had skimmed parts too quickly earlier, distracted by Thornton’s voice near her shoulder, the warmth of him, the ache of what hovered between them.
She rose quietly, careful not to disturb Dixon sleeping in the chamber adjoining hers. Margaret held her breath as she passed it, fearful that some small sound would bring Dixon out with her nightcap askew and her moral disapproval fully awake. She wrapped herself in a shawl, then stole barefoot into the corridor.
But the door stayed shut.
The stair creaked once under Margaret’s weight. She froze.
A carriage clattered past outside, covering the sound. When the street quieted again, she moved on, easing herself down step by step until she reached the dark drawing room.
The tree stood near the window, its candles long extinguished—little blackened curls still marked the fresh wick-ends. The greenery draped along the mantel had sagged slightly in the warmth of the day. Stray ribbons lay scattered where Sholto must have tugged at them earlier. It looked both festive and faintly forlorn in the late hour.
Beyond the window, the street glimmered faintly. A trio of carolers trudged past in the cold, their voices soft and wavering with weariness as they sangGod rest ye merry, gentlemen…
Their harmony drifted upward, thin but earnest. A lantern swung in one of their hands, throwing a weak circle of gold upon the snow-dusted pavement.
Margaret’s throat tightened. It felt like the whole of London breathed wistfully against the glass.
She went to the study. The folio rested on the desk where she had left it earlier. The lamplight from the hall barely reached the threshold, but she could find the shape of the leather spineeven in darkness. She gathered it into her arms and stole back upstairs.
Once in her room, she closed the door gently and drew the curtains shut. She lit a single lantern and carried it to the window seat. Its glow pooled softly over the cushions, catching the frost on the panes in tiny sparks.
