With a baleful glare, Susan bounded away and disappeared up the steep, rickety staircase that led to Abigail’s bedchamber, a large, airy room with whitewashed pine walls that overlooked the river. It was Susan’s favorite place to hide when she was annoyed, which lately seemed to be most of the time as her least favorite season was winter, although she did seem to take particular delight in tearing down the miniature paper stars Abigail had made to decorate the sills.
After donning a heavy green cloak and a matching silk plush bonnet (generally she had no time or sense for fashion, but had purchased the cloak and hat as a set), she set out for a narrow walking path, covered in crushed oyster shells and a fresh layer of fallen snow, that wound its way up the side of a steep hill and onto a rocky outcropping that afforded anyone who cared to make the arduous journey a stunning view of the river.
Short of breath by the time she reached the top, she paused to untie her bonnet and tuck it under her arm before proceeding to the lone wooden bench at the apex of the bluff. The surrounding snow was unmarked, revealing she was the first to come here since the weather had turned two days prior. Itwasa solitary spot, far removed from the festive commotion down below. During her weekly visits, she’d yet to encounter a single person. Which was likely why, when she heard the crack of abranch and the heavy thud of a footfall, she leapt up off the bench with a startled gasp... and might have toppled right off the edge of the cliff when she saw who was behind her had he not reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders, just as he’d done when they first met.
“Easy,” Stephen murmured, his gloved hands tightening as he pulled her against his chest. “It’s a bit too cold for a dip in the river.”
“What...” Abigail’s mind raced as she pressed her warm cheek against a cool silver button on his coat. Dimly, she heard the thump of his heart, its steady beat at odds with the erratic beating of her own. “What are youdoinghere?”
“Saving you from a winter swim,” he said dryly.
“I meant, what are you doinghere? In Mystic? I...” She lifted her head to stare incredulously at the husband she had not planned to see for another two years. He looked exactly as she remembered, and yet somehow better. Handsomer. More...real. Like a flat oil painting brought to life.
His hair was the same color as it had been, but the dark waves of ebony had a glint of rich burgundy she did not recall from before. His eyes were bright and his face was clean shaven, a slight difference that only served to illuminate the rugged perfection of his strong jaw. He wore a navy-blue coat that fell to his knees and a scarf that was the same shade as the pine trees standing behind him in a solemn row of hunter green. While she stood frozen in place, he unwound the scarf and draped it around her neck, his hands lingering in the hollow of her collarbones.
“You’re even more beautiful than I remember.” Stephen’s gaze darkened as he traced the arch of her cheek, his fingertips grazing her tortoiseshell spectacles. “I like these. They suit you.”
“Oh, they’re... they’re new.” Blushing, she tried to remove them, but he stopped her.
“Don’t,” he commanded, and she went very, very still when he gently grasped the frames, his countenance a mask of concentration as he nudged them up slightly on the right. “There. That’s better.” He smiled and her belly did a slow, slippery turn. “They weren’t quite even.”
Wrapped in Stephen’s achingly familiar scent with his lips a hair’s breadth from her own, Abigail found her heart at odds with her head. Part of her knew better than to be lured in by the charm of a rakish grin. But the other part, the lonely part, the lost part,wantedto be lured. To be lavished. To be loved.
Stephen wasn’t supposed to be here.
Not for another two years.
But hewashere.
Suddenly, and without any warning, he was taking up her entire world... or so it felt on the cold, blustery edge of the cliff where there was nothing and no one else but the two of them.
“I...” She licked her lips, the pink tip of her tongue skimming nervously across soft skin that still tasted faintly of the mint tea she’d had with her breakfast. “I... I’m not sure what you are doing here, Lord Brunswick, but—”
“Lord Lancaster. My father died and I’ve inherited his title.” For an instant, Stephen’s expression shuttered, concealing his emotions behind a walled fortress. Then the corners of his eyes creased as he tucked a loose curl behind her ear, his thumb gliding along the sensitive shell. “Subsequently, you are now the Countess of Lancaster. But as I’ve said before, I would like it if you called me Stephen.”
Too late, Abigail noted that under his blue coat, her husband wore mourning black. “I am sorry for your loss,” she said, the words spilling out automatically, as words of sympathy had a way of doing. Truthfully, she didn’t know if she was sorry at all. Having never met her father-in-law, she had no idea if he was aperson worth expressing sympathy over. But then, condolences were intended to comfort the living, not the dead.
“Don’t be,” Stephen said flatly. “It is no great loss. But it is why I came here. To tell you in person.”
“Could you... could you not have written a letter?” In a drawer in her bedchamber, its bronze handle tied with a yellow ribbon, she had five years’ worth of letters, some of them read so many times that the lines had flattened and the ink had smudged in spots.
During the course of their marriage, Stephen had written of the changing seasons. He’d described Summerwind House, his country estate—their country estate?—in such detail she already felt as if she’d walked down its halls. He’d told her of a particularly lively outing while foxhunting that had found him unseated from his horse, and of a baby bird he found after a storm that he went to great lengths to return to its nest.
For her part, Abigail’s dutiful replies had read, at first, like a page from one of her medical journals. Stiff and stilted, with nary a personal anecdote to be found. But somewhere along the way, perhaps after she’d nearly giggled herself off a chair after Stephen had described, in vivid self-deprecating detail, the size of the puddle he’d landed in during the hunt, that she began to share more.
She revealed her doubts leading up to her final medical exams. Her exultation at achieving one of the highest grades in the class. Her disappointment at not receiving the same public accolades as her peers. Her frustration with the general public’s inability to take her seriously as a female doctor. In her last letter, she’d told him about opening a practice in Mystic, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would come.
Letters . . . letters were safe.
Letters were distant.
Letters didn’t make her pulse race or her belly tie itself in increasingly intricate knots.
She preferred letters.
She wantedletters.
Because the alternative—Stephen standing in front of her, an ebony curl dangling rakishly over his left eye and a teasing dimple in his right cheek—was more than she was prepared to handle and far more than she knew what to do with.
