The From Paris With Love And Regency Season Of Secrets Ultimate Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

he was talking about her wise words regarding his future. She didn’t have to know that he meant her.

      Her quiet words followed him like an echo that seemed to be picked up by the train wheels as he made his way to the dining car.

      ‘I won’t either.’

      The rest of the journey seemed interminable.

      Lady Geraldine was keeping up a brave face but she ate virtually nothing of her brunch and didn’t touch the champagne or afternoon tea on the English leg of the trip. The weather was cold enough to make her look pinched and it was clearly a struggle to join the excited conversations around them that were predicting a genuine white Christmas as fat snowflakes began to fall more and more heavily.

      ‘I’m just tired, love,’ she told Charlotte. ‘But I wouldn’t have changed anything about the last couple of days. Not a thing.’

      And Charlotte had been able to smile back and tell her grandmother that she felt exactly the same.

      Victoria was heaving with people desperate to get to where they wanted to be for Christmas Day. It was Nico who helped collect their luggage and carve a pathway through the crowd to where Lady Geraldine’s chauffeur had arranged to meet them.

      They offered Nico a lift but he declined with palpable regret.

      ‘I’ve made an appointment with a colleague at the Hammersmith,’ he told them. ‘You need to go in the opposite direction and it’ll be bad enough already. I hope you don’t get caught in a traffic jam or the snow. If I can’t find a cab, I’ll take the tube.’

      He took Charlotte in his arms to say goodbye. For her grandmother’s sake? Was that why he said that he was going to miss her and that seeing her again couldn’t be too soon for him?

      It wasn’t why Charlotte returned his kiss and agreed that it couldn’t be too soon for her either.

      She meant every word.

      The bleak feeling of watching the crowd swallow Nico only got stronger as they inched their way out of London.

      Lady Geraldine took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

      ‘I know it’s hard, darling. It’s such a shame that Nico’s going to be so busy for a while.’

      ‘Mmm…’

      ‘You’re lucky, though.’

      ‘Oh?’ Thank goodness her grandmother couldn’t possibly have any idea of just how lucky her granddaughter had been.

      ‘Yes. Much luckier than back in my day. You’ve got your mobile phones and…and Scope.’

      Charlotte smiled despite herself as she sighed. ‘Skype, Gran.’

      ‘Whatever.’ Her hand got another squeeze. ‘It’s not quite the same as the real thing, though, is it?’

      ‘No. It’s not.’ There was an odd pain in Charlotte’s chest as she tried to draw in a new breath.

      Her heart starting to break perhaps?

       CHAPTER TEN

      CHARLOTTE’S FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS ever had been the one she’d told Nico about when they’d been snowed in and Gran had cooked sausages on sticks over the open fire in the drawing room.

      Maybe, some time in the future, somebody would ask her about her least favourite Christmas and she knew that, coincidentally, it would also be one of the rare, truly white ones.

      This one.

      She stared out of the V-shaped gap in the snow piled on the sill of her latticed window and there was the eerie, early morning light that only a thick blanket of snow could create. There was nothing to disturb the perfection of the Christmas-card scene in the gardens of Highton Hall. The footprints on the lawn below had probably been made by a fox but if her grandmother had seen them in years gone by, she would have told a small Charlotte that they were the tracks left by Santa’s reindeer.

      The thought should have brought a poignant smile to her face but instead Charlotte felt the lump in her throat get bigger.

      She had never felt this…bleak.

      This lonely.

      This…empty.

      As if she’d lost something huge that she would never have back again. Like her heart? Or maybe it was part of her soul. The part that she’d shared with Nico. Yes. That’s what it felt like. He had brought light into the darkest part of her being and, by touching it, it had somehow become his, even if he didn’t want it.

      Was that what love was? Giving away the most important part of yourself?

      No…Charlotte found her picture-perfect view becoming blurry. It was finding someone who recognised that part. Accepted it. Made it better than it had been before simply by being there.

      And it wasn’t one-sided, that had been the clincher. Nico had shared that part of himself with her. The lonely little boy who was still there deep inside. The one who’d been hurt and had seen people he loved get hurt, and was determined to never be the cause of such hurt himself.

      Nico thought he didn’t know what he needed. That he couldn’t possibly make the right choice of a person to be with for the rest of his life. He thought he was incapable of falling in love.

      And maybe he had the kind of strength to hold himself back from that kind of surrender but it was blindingly obvious what he needed.

      A tiny robin, its bright red breast a decoration in itself, fluttered into view and landed on the windowsill, tilting its head and to give Charlotte a cheeky glance.

      ‘He just needs what we all need,’ she informed the robin. ‘To be loved.’

      The robin fluttered off like an echo of laughter.

      As if it was that simple…

      It was. Charlotte had found that person, hadn’t she? She had given him that part of herself she could never give to anyone else.

      But it was that impossibly difficult at the same time.

      Because finding someone that you connected with at a soul-deep level wasn’t enough. They had to feel the same way or it could never begin to work.

      And Nico didn’t feel the same way. How could he when they’d only known each other for a couple of days?

      But he didn’t even want to see her again. Good grief, he’d told her that she could leave the ring with his secretary, if he wasn’t around.

      It had meant nothing. A bit of harmless pretence to make an old lady happy before she died. Repayment for the imagined debt of losing her laptop. A bonus of a one-night stand as well?

      Charlotte forced herself to move. She couldn’t stand here dwelling on how miserable she felt. It was Christmas Day after all. And her toes were freezing. Dressing quickly, she chose clothes for warmth, donning black woollen leggings and an oversized crimson pullover on top of a black bodysuit. No doubt her grandmother would expect her to change for dinner but that was a few hours away yet and it would be warmer downstairs when the open fires were stoked up.

      Maybe Christmas dinner wasn’t so far away after all. The rich aroma of roasting meat caught Charlotte’s nostrils as she went downstairs. Betty, the cook, must be busy in the kitchen, probably under Gran’s strict supervision. Charlotte would probably be given a laden plate of bacon and eggs and an admonishment about the perils of laziness and sleeping in.

      The Christmas tree in the huge foyer of this grand old house had coloured lights twinkling merrily and there were gifts beneath, enticingly wrapped in pretty paper and tied with bows of satin ribbon.

      It looked like one of the festive pictures that had played against the wall of that Venetian