Third Day of Christmas #4
The man sighed playfully, and there was enough voice in it to confirm it was Tom.
Her heart warmed. So she spent a few bonus seconds exploring his face, taking even more delight.
How was it that she already felt so comfortable with this man?
Her thumbprint fit perfectly in the space between his chin and bottom lip. She felt him smile.
“Hello, Tom,” she whispered.
“Capital,” he said, laughing. The group applauded.
“Marvelous, simply marvelous!” came the voice of Mrs. Martinez.
Kestrel started to lift her blindfold off, but Lady Heartwright stopped her hands. “Not yet! As long as you’re blindfolded, you may as well have one more go.”
There was muted conversation, mumblings that sounded like protests, and then she sensed another presence before her.
She lifted her hands, finding the hard torso of a person in cravat and jacket.
Another gentleman, this one taller than Tom.
She suspected Mr. Culpepper, and as she pressed her fingertips against the chest, she detected his heart thumping.
Nervous under her touch? Excited? Could this nerdy-handsome actor be falling head over heels for real?
She traced his chest upward to his neck and to his face, and felt the wide jawline.
A long nose. His brows pressed together in a worried frown.
No glasses. He was tall like Mr. Culpepper, but her hands dropped to his shoulders, and they felt much wider than she was expecting.
She was sure it wasn’t Jerome or Andrews.
Lady Heartwright must be tricking her with one of the new gentlemen.
Kestrel played along, even knowing she could never identify him.
Her fingers began to tingle as they explored the shape of his chin and jaw, felt his cheekbones and ran along his forehead. She knew this face. She knew it well. Her heart shocked her how quickly it sped up with joy.
No, it’s not him, silly, she scolded herself.
But when she boldly brushed her fingertips along his upper lip, she felt a small divot like a scar, and her heart spasmed. It was Hank. No, impossible. It couldn’t be Hank. But still, this someone felt so much like Hank.
She stepped a little closer, till she could feel the heat between their bodies, and she breathed in through her nose.
She was conscious of no scent, and yet a memory zapped through her—she and Hank at a party, noisy and loud and full of people she liked, but the two of them stayed in a far corner, sharing the same armchair, the sides of their faces touching as they spoke, close enough to hear under the music.
It had only been their second date, and yet already the intimacy had felt as natural as breathing.
Almost from the first moment, their souls seemed of a texture, and when they collided there was a softness, a familiarity. A welcoming.
Kestrel had always feared that she was too much, and despite her best efforts to stamp down that muchness, it popped back out.
She was used to people finding her exhausting.
Her relationships were fun, passionate, and brief.
Anything long-term was unimaginable, because the most she could hope for was someone who might tolerate her, and she couldn’t tolerate being tolerated.
But then Hank had come along, and he hadn’t tolerated her. He’d delighted in her.
And, blindfolded in front of this stranger, she couldn’t help but delight in the harmless daydream that Hank had returned to her.
She lifted her hand to his shoulder and let her fingers run down the length of his arm, past the cuff of his jacket to his large hand.
She lifted it with both hands, exploring the calluses on his palm, imagining they had been formed working on Hank’s family’s dairy farm.
She slipped her fingers between his, their hands joined, and she was jolted back to the first time Hank had held her hand, as they’d walked away from a New Year’s party, and how she’d marveled that she couldn’t tell where he stopped and she began.
All the edges softened, no space between themselves and the air, the sky, the whole unbearably beautiful world.
Behind her blindfold, she felt cold pricks as her eyes threatened tears, warning her that this daydream wasn’t completely harmless. Even after two years, her heart was too sore to pretend that Hank was hers again. She let go of the stranger’s hand.
“I don’t know, I give up,” she said, and ripped off her blindfold, ready to laugh at herself.
Hank. Hank stood before her. So close, his face inches from her own.
Those were his large blue eyes under dark, expressive brows.
There was his long nose and wide jaw, his shoulders too wide for off-the-rack jackets, his brown hair that never quite lay flat.
And that small divot on his upper lip, a scar from when he had yanked chicken wire off a post and a sharp edge sliced his lip deep enough to require seven stitches.
He was looking down at her with his worried frown. She shook her head, trying to clear it. She had to be hallucinating. She’d wanted to see him so badly, her mind must be confusing the stranger in front of her with the face of the man she knew best in the world.
“Hi,” he said, and her entire body took in the sound of his voice, sending a warm shiver from her ears all the way down to her knees.
She was no longer submerging—instead she felt like she was coming up into the warm air.
And then she just kept falling upward. There were no walls, no roof—she was rising and nothing could stop her.
Galaxies were colliding and stars imploding and planets turning themselves inside out and opening their mouths to scream.
Nothing made sense; everything was chaos and tumbling.
Kestrel landed back in the moment, felt the wood floor beneath her slippered feet, the breathable, oxygenated air around her body. The noises of the drawing room that had sounded garbled as if she’d been underwater now clarified into voices and laughter.
“Not fair at all,” Andrews was saying, “as Miss Spinster had not yet met Mr. Kern.”
“I know, Colonel,” said Lady Heartwright, “but that’s what made it such a delightful jest!”
Kestrel and Hank were still staring at each other. It was Hank. It really was Hank. And he was wearing breeches and a cravat and everything. What in the gods’ slippery, tumbling, inside-out universe was happening?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to scare you.”
She took several steps back. She tried to ask a question, but there was no air in her lungs.
“If no one else has manners here, allow me to introduce you,” said Jerome. “Miss Kestrel Spinster, may I introduce Mr. Hendrik Kern.”
“Miss Spinster?” said Hank. It was a question.
“Mr. Hendrik Kern,” Kestrel repeated. It was Hank’s full name. He’d kept his real name.
“You’ve known him by feel, now know him by sight,” Andrews said. “And over there we have Mr. Patrick Houlihan.”
Kestrel forced herself to look away from Hank to curtsy to Mr. Houlihan, an elegant man in his thirties with blond hair and a trim red beard. He raised a monocle to his eye to look at her and then bowed.
“And the Hardy brothers, Jonathan and Samuel,” continued Andrews.
The two gentlemen were in their mid-twenties, with olive skin and dark hair, and even in Regency clothes they had the look of rugby players. They offered her rough-and-ready smiles.
When Kestrel’s attention returned to Hank, he had taken several steps back, and she found she could breathe again.
“Now that Miss Spinster has had two turns,” said Gussie, “do I get to have a go?”
If the game continued, Kestrel wasn’t aware.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Her mouth was dry.
All the color seemed to have gone out of the world, except for Hank.
He was vibrant, burning bright as neon at night.
Everyone else was stuck in Kansas while he was blazing away in Oz.
Each cell in her body was throbbing and thrumming, and her thoughts were echoing the unanswered question: Why? Why? WHY?
Had he come here for her? To win her back? But his rejection of her had been absolute and devastating, and in the two years since he’d never so much as texted her a single word let alone made any indication that he’d regretted it.
He wasn’t even trying to talk to her now. If anything, her presence seemed to torment him. Twice she moved herself closer with the intention of speaking to him only for him to notice her agitating nearness and retreat farther away again.
He didn’t look well, she thought. In fact, he looked so pale and worried, she vaguely wondered if he had a vitamin D deficiency—not that she would say anything about that. Her days of having concern for his health were long over.
When the dinner bell rang, Kestrel was relieved to accept Mr. Culpepper’s offered arm. In the procession from the drawing room into the dining room, Hank’s arm was taken by Mrs. Martinez, and at the table, Kestrel was seated so far away she couldn’t make out a word of their conversation.
But why? Why was he here? WHY?
He looked down the table, meeting eyes with her. She felt again that zing of electricity crackle through her body. His brow was frowning, his eyes sorry. Why?
“Miss Spinster?” Juliette was standing by her chair, holding a dish.
“Oh, sorry.” Kestrel scooped up some fish in white sauce.
“Miss Spinster, what do you opine on the matter?” asked Andrews. He was looking at her from across the table.
“About what?”
Andrews and Jerome gently laughed.
“I believe our enchanting friend has not absorbed a word we’ve said,” said Jerome.