Cold lips brushed her cheek, soft but fleet.
“Thank you, Charlotte.” He smiled but she sensed it held a sadness. “I will likely still visit Carlisle on Christmas Eve.”
She glanced up as something soft and crystalline drifted, another feathered her cheek in a cold caress.
Snow.
“I understand.”
He drew back, countenance shadowed. “We must not tarry. The weather is worsening.”
Charlotte nodded, clutched his arm and ascended the steps.
Marcus considered her perennially cheerful and full of laughter yet…
She’d not told him of the nights she’d cried over him when he’d returned from London, her girlish yearning for the boy he’d been and her own shattered heart.
And she’d not tell him of her love for him now.
For the man he was today with his strength in adversity and his wry humour, for his protectiveness of Dinah and his unwavering honour.
Marcus was a peer of the realm with all the responsibilities it brought. He could choose any debutante he wished as his duchess. One with a dowry that would ensure the future prosperity of the estate and all those who depended upon it. Depended upon him.
She was just a governess.
Their time had passed.
He considered her a friend.
The butler opened the door but once inside, she did not linger and with a nod of goodnight hastened up the staircase.
While outside in the bleak night, the owl screeched poignant and alone.
CHAPTER NINE
“Young ladies can, now and then, give you their opinions.”
PRIVATEEDUCATION:APRACTICALPLAN FOR THESTUDIES OFYOUNGLADIES.
ELIZABETHAPPLETON. 1815.
’Twas the day before Christmas Eve and Marcus had packed the majority of his bags.
He was leaving on the morrow.
No doubt at all.
Best for all concerned.
The snow last night had been considerable but nothing a ducal carriage couldn’t overcome, and the townsmen were even now clearing the roads for the mail stagecoach as they did every year. Life and business would not cease for either snow or Christmas.
Stood before his study desk, he gathered documents together but today couldn’t seem to garner any enthusiasm for this canal construction project that would see half the countryside dug up.
So, with folders in hand, he stalked to the window, stared to the peaks painted in white.
“Cousin Marcus?”
He swivelled to his ward hovering in the open doorway. “Yes, Dinah?”
