Bell.
Bell, who had known her father better than anyone.
Bell, who had known Thornton almost as well.
Bell, who in his own meddlesome, affectionate, maddening way, had set the board long before either of them knew there was a game at all.
Margaret lifted a hand to her mouth to silence the gasping cry that quavered there.
Slowly, deliberately, she gathered the papers into a tidy stack. Her hands trembled, but her resolve did not. She extinguished the lantern, folded the folio to her chest, and rose.
When dawn came, when the bells rang for Christmas morning, she would know what to do.
And John Thornton would have his answer.
10
The church bells wokehim.
Not loudly—they floated through the thin window glass of his lodging as though carried by cold air rather than struck by metal. A slow, solemn peal for Christmas morning. In Milton, he would already be dressed, already hearing his mother’s brisk footsteps downstairs, already thinking of the work that would resume tomorrow.
But here, in London, with no mill to oversee and no orders to sign and no purpose except to wait…
He lay still.
For the first time in years, he had nothing he must rise to do.
His gaze drifted to the small table beside the narrow bed. A folded letter lay there, its seal already broken. His mother’s hand. Delivered late yesterday afternoon while he had been out.
She would be sitting now in the front room at Marlborough Mills, stiff-backed, hands folded, presenting an image of calm she certainly did not feel. He could see her in his mind—her sharp eyes fixed on the cold grate, refusing to admit even toherself that she missed him. That she feared what had driven him to remain here, so far from home, on Christmas Day.
She would not be wrong.
He pressed a hand briefly over his eyes, then forced himself upright.
The boarding-house mistress knocked a few minutes later with a tray—bread, a small pot of tea, and a boiled egg. “Merry Christmas, sir,” she murmured kindly. “The lad says there’ll be carolers in the square before long.”
“Thank you,” he said, and she withdrew.
He took the tray, set it on the small stool beside the bed, but ate nothing. Instead, he reached for his coat—still draped over the back of the single chair—and drew from its pocket the book he had brought from Milton.
Hale’s book.
The one Margaret had returned to him last spring.
He sat on the edge of the bed, opened to the familiar passage, and let the quiet morning seep around him. The muted hum of a carol rose from the street below—thin young voices, earnest and slightly off-key.O come, all ye faithful…
He let the sound finish echoing. Then he touched the ribbon. Margaret’s ribbon.
Pure ivory. Soft as breath. And with those words in her stitching.
After last night—after seeing the warmth in her eyes, the way she shielded him from questions he would not shield himself from—after watching her cross the room toward him with something like purpose, he wondered again.
Had she meant him to find it?
Had it been left there for him, deliberately? A small, private token? A sign of something she could not say?
He shut the thought down at once. It did not matter.
