Sixth Day of Christmas #3
“‘How like a winter hath my absence been / From thee,’” quoted Mr. Culpepper in greeting.
“But Christmas is in winter, Mr. Culpepper,” she said. “Don’t finish Christmas without me.”
“You are festivity incarnate, my lady,” he said.
“Do put this rug over your legs, Miss Spinster,” said Tom.
“Or when you freeze like an icicle, I shall have to take it upon myself to thaw you out.”
“Promise?” she said.
And she kept flirting with them both over the river and through the woods, as their horse pulled them into a fairyland of Christmas landscape.
Fresh powdery snow rose up from the horse’s steps and flowed in the breeze like tossed glitter.
Frosty air tickled her face and reminded her she was alive, her heart pumping hard even though she sat still.
Kestrel snuggled deeper into the blankets, feeling well-justified about her anticipation of English sleigh rides.
There were some fanciful promises that did not disappoint.
“Here we are!” said Tom, pulling up in front of a small brick cottage, a carved wooden sign naming it the White Stag. “Mrs. Wattlesbrook prepared the place for our express amusement, so we can play rustics—eating meat pies and drinking mead and dancing the night away.”
“Then I am in love with Mrs. Wattlesbrook,” said Kestrel. As they helped her down from the sleigh, she added, “And I am in love with you, Mr. Culpepper. And you too, Tom.”
“What, both of us at once?” Tom asked with an eyebrow perfectly arched.
“Why not?” She felt drunk on Christmas hope and all that dashing through the snow. She laughed and spun around. “I’m in love with an English winter!”
As the next sleigh pulled into view, she shouted, “I’m in love with you too, Charming!
” The sleigh bells were jingling—not to mention ring-ting-tingling—and Charming didn’t appear to have heard.
Kestrel was about to shout it louder, but taking in the sight of Bobby beside Charming, she muttered, “Nope, not you,” and turned her back.
Still seeking an outlet for all this magnificent, joyous, Christmassy passion inside her aching to explode, she swung open the inn door and proclaimed, “And I am in love with you!”
But the inn was not empty, as she had been expecting, because Windy Nook had already arrived. Lady Heartwright and Mrs. Martinez. Mr. Houlihan and the Hardy Boys. And Hank.
Now Kestrel felt the cold deeply, laying slick as ice over her bones. As the magic of a snowy day entered and chilled her, she felt all the more acutely that tiny, warm fire of hope. Hope, she remembered, was dangerous. And yet it crackled and burned in her chest all the same.
There were three long tables with wood benches, and Hank was sitting alone at the farthest one.
He stared at Kestrel, as if she were the only person in the entire world.
Annoyingly, he even seemed to fit in this context.
His sideburns had grown in properly, and he was wearing tall black boots, brown breeches, and a deep green jacket.
Here she was, stepping into a space that used to exist only as fantasy, but she found Hank there too.
The reality of him collided with the fantasy so violently, her legs wobbled and her head spun.
“Huzzah!” said Lady Heartwright, raising a pewter mug.
“Miss Spinster is in love with me!”
“I meant . . .” Kestrel said cleverly. And then shut up.
Music began—a man at a piano and a woman on a violin playing folk tunes.
In their Regency sporting clothes, the party of fifteen took to benches and tables, unceremoniously forking into hot meat pies.
There was chatter and laughter rising like harmony to the music, and it was so damn quaint it made Kestrel furious, because she should be enjoying it tremendously.
But Hank was still sitting alone, not eating, not talking, like a boring lump on a boring log.
Kestrel wondered if maybe he hadn’t been so great after all.
Maybe what she’d thought was truth had just been a story she’d told herself, a fiction about how perfectly they’d fit together.
Well, she refused to let his existence dampen the fun.
Time to harpoon hope to death once and for all.
She grabbed her mug, stood up from the Pembrook Park table, and plonked herself down beside Hank. His posture stiffened.
“I can’t believe you’re still here,” she said quietly, speaking under the cover of the music.
“I almost can’t believe it either,” Hank said with complete sincerity.
“You have to know what this trip means to me, but it’s hard to lose myself in the story when you’re around reminding me of the worst time in my entire life.”
He winced, a quick reaction of sincere pain. Her heart warmed toward him, and she cursed it back into submission. She would not feel sorry for him.
“Frankly, I’d like to deck you,” she said.
“That’s fair. And it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Hey, that wasn’t on purpose. I thought you were a spider.”
“You slugged me square in my nose,” he said, the corners of his mouth lifting.
“Well, you came up behind me and touched my shoulder. You could have been a spider! It was instinct.”
Hank was quietly laughing. “So you felt something and thought it was a spider, perhaps dangling from the ceiling on a thread of a web, and your response was to spin around and deliver a head-height killing blow.”
Kestrel didn’t want Hank to know how close she was to laughing, so she tried to take a casual sip of her drink. But as soon as the liquid was in her mouth, the constrictions of laughter tightened her throat till she couldn’t swallow.
Don’t say anything else, she silently pleaded to Hank, but he wasn’t looking and was unaware of her predicament when he added, “You would believe you could sucker punch an airborne spider.”
And all the liquid in Kestrel’s mouth went shooting back out again.
“What was that?” Gussie said with no trace of a British accent. Sitting at the table across the room, she wiped splatters of liquid from the back of her neck.
Kestrel put her head down on her arms until she could stop laughing enough to speak. Beside her, Hank had turned around on the bench, his back to the rest of the room, while he valiantly tried to breathe through a deep belly laugh.
“Someday,” Kestrel whisper-squeaked, “you’ll be beset by spiders, and you’ll long for me to show up and punch your way free.”
“I will. I guarantee it. I’ll be covered in spiders, and I’ll . . .” His voice softened to a whisper. “I’ll be longing for you.”
And the laughter went out of Kestrel like a stomped balloon.
Until that moment, she hadn’t been honest with herself about how much she’d been hoping that Hank longed for her.
And still loved her. That he’d come all this way just to throw himself at her feet and beg for a second chance.
And she was furious about that. Because he’d destroyed her.
The fact that she still hoped meant that she wasn’t over him after all.
And if not by now, then maybe she never would be.
Kestrel sat up to glare. “What did you imagine was going to happen here with us?”
He looked down at his hands and slowly shook his head. “When I signed up, I knew I’d be in a different house than you. I wasn’t sure if I would see you at all. But I did hope I would so I could make sure you’re okay. I’ve always regretted the way it ended and wanted to apologize—”
“And you figured the best way to apologize was to show up on my vacation as a Regency man in breeches?”
He exhaled a rueful laugh. When he spoke, his voice was so soft she had to lean closer to hear him. His hip was warm next to hers. Their shoulders were touching. It felt so natural and familiar, that all on its own, her body leaned into him a little more.
“When we were playing Hoodman Blind, I thought you might have known it was me. The way you touched me . . .” His hand went to his face, his thumb brushing his jaw.
Her breath froze in her chest and all words left her brain.
When he looked at her, she realized just how close she was.
She could see the fingertip-sized dent in his right cheek, an old acne scar.
The quintet of freckles above his right eyebrow that she used to call his forehead constellation.
And that white scar slicing through his upper lip, like an arrow pointing to his mouth.
His eyes met hers, unflinching, and then his gaze lowered to her own mouth.
Her heart pounded so strong, she heard the boom of it in her ears.
She felt herself lick her lips. She had kissed his thousands of times.
Sometimes in greeting, short and welcoming.
Sometimes in farewell, a lingering to say she would miss him during her double shift.
Sometimes in passion, kissing as a dialogue they shared while adoring each other’s bodies.
And once, she had kissed him goodbye forever.
Since the New Year’s Eve when they’d first started dating, she had never been around Hank and not been free to just kiss him. The urge was beautiful and painful at once, and she made herself straighten out of her lean, creating a little more distance between them.
What had he been saying? Waves of emotion were surging through her, and she had to search back for the thread of conversation. Ah yes, Hoodman Blind.
“I thought you were a stranger,” she said truthfully, without volunteering how she had imagined it was actually him as her fingers had trailed over his face and down to his hands. How her heart had lifted at the unlikely hope. “Please just be totally clear with me—did you come here to ask me back?”
“No, no, I don’t want to ask anything from you,” said Hank, hands up to show surrender. “I know we’re over. I know that. I’m so sorry, and I have no intentions of trying anything with you.”
Kestrel worked very hard to keep her face still, because she felt as if it’d been slapped.
“No intentions . . .” she repeated slowly.
“I swear. And I don’t want to ruin your vacation. All I want now is closure.”