Page 53 of The Winter Companion

“What will you do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I pray my mother will advise me when she replies to my wire.”

If she replied.

And there was the rub of it. Mama had always put her own work ahead of the demands of her family. Clara admired her for it. Had even sought to emulate her. But in times of crisis, it was rather hard.

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. There usually is where one’s brother is concerned. It’s ridiculous to fret. But I haven’t seen Simon since he left for university. He spends all of his holidays with his friends. Goodness knows what he might be up to.” She could imagine all sorts of terrible things having gone wrong, from masculine pranks and mischief to broken limbs—or worse. “And here I am, fretting nonetheless. I’ve been anxious over it since yesterday.”

Mr. Cross looked out across the sea, his expression inscrutable. “I thought…” He struggled for his words. “I thought it was…because of…of Mary.”

Mary?

“Is that her name?” Clara couldn’t keep the note of dryness from her voice. “She’s very pretty.”

“The mistletoe…” He scrubbed his jaw with one hand. “She k-kissed me.”

“So I saw.” Sea foam rolled up onto the sand, frothing near her half boots. She stepped away from it without thought, focusing on the dogs playing up ahead. Bertie was right in the thick of things, snapping at the stick Paul still carried in his mouth. “Did you truly think that was why I was upset? Because I encountered you kissing a pretty maidservant?”

“It wasn’t…” His brows lowered. “Mary is… She…”

“She likes you. It’s plain enough. Who wouldn’t?”

He thrust his hands into his pockets. “Do you?”

It was a simple enough question. Yet there was an undercurrent to it. Something imbued in those two short words that made his enquiry feel weighty. Important.

She answered carefully. With honesty, though not, perhaps, with soul-baring candor. “I like you very much. I hope we’ve become friends.”

His footsteps slowed. Again, he looked out at the sea, his gaze fixed at a point over her head, and past it. A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Friends.”

“Friendship is a precious thing.”

“I have friends.”

“One can have several. An infinite amount. There’s not a limit that I’m aware of.”

“Is that all?”

She wanted to pretend she didn’t understand him. That she’d lost the thread of their conversation. But that would have been a lie. “Was it only the mistletoe?” she asked instead.

His gaze slid back to her face.

“That is…” She stopped on the wet sand, arms still folded at her waist. “I understand there was mistletoe. And kissing someone you encounter under it is practically obligatory. What I wonder is…was it only that?”

He came to a halt in front of her. “I don’t…”

“Would you have kissed Mary in the stables? Or here, on the beach?”

“Of course not.”

“I see.” Her stomach trembled. She told herself to be quiet. To change the subject or make her excuses and return to the house. Such warnings proved useless. The words tumbled from her lips nonetheless. “Is there anyone you would wish to kiss outside the presence of mistletoe?”

He gave her a wry look.

Her heart thumped hard. She was standing on the precipice. It wasn’t too late to step back. To choose a different course. But for all her feminine resolve—all her determination never to repeat past transgressions—she seemed powerless to stop herself.

“You’re very tall. I shall have to stand on something.” She glanced about the beach, trying to ignore the fact that a scalding blush was burning its way from her throat all the way to the roots of her hair. “Is there a boulder hereabouts?”