Gifts of the Season. Anne Gracie

Miss Fordyce and her governess, my lord,” said the maidservant, following his gaze as she set the tray on the table beside him. The woman was past middle age, a servant who’d likely been with the Fordyces for so long that she felt entitled to certain conversational freedoms like this. “No matter what the weather, them two always go walking at this time of the day, regular as clockwork after first lessons.”

      Revell, of course, had discovered this for himself, having already visited the schoolroom as promised to help with the tigers and elephants. The schoolroom had been empty except for a mystified parlor maid who’d informed him of Miss Clarissa’s customary walk. He’d have to control his impatience for another half hour or so until they returned, and without much interest he glanced at the plates of sliced cold meat, breads, and cheese on the tray that the cook had sent up to him out of a certain pity.

      He knew he was already being regarded as something of an oddity. The other houseguests had scattered for the day, the gentlemen out riding and visiting the local tavern with Albert and Sir David as their leaders, and the ladies, under Lady Fordyce’s guidance, putting the final touches on their masquerade costumes at the local milliners and mantua-makers. His polite refusal to join either party had raised eyebrows, and he could only imagine what manner of wicked pastimes the others had imagined for him instead. How wonderfully shocked they’d be when they, inevitably, learned the truth!

      “Aye, my lord, that Miss Blake has worked magic with the little miss,” continued the maidservant with approval, taking Revell’s silence as encouragement. “Like a little wild creature, she was, before Miss Blake came. ’Course ’tis to be expected, being so petted and all, but Miss Blake was the only one to give her manners to match her breeding.”

      “How long has Miss Blake been with the family?” asked Revell, striving to sound only idly interested. He knew it wasn’t wise to encourage such confidential discussions with servants, but he’d learned next to nothing from Albert, and God help him, he’d so blasted much at stake.

      “Five years this spring, my lord,” answered the maid-servant promptly, her hands folded over the front of her apron. “Before that she was with Lady Gordon, whose husband made such a fortune in India. A regular nabob, he was. Oh, begging your pardon, my lord, meaning no disrespect to yourself.”

      “None taken,” said Revell, his thoughts racing. He remembered Lady Gordon—Lady Gorgon, they’d called her, on account of her imperious manner—from Calcutta’s small English social world before her husband had retired from the Company and returned home. But how would Sara have become a servant in Lady Gordon’s household, and why in blazes would she have left India—and him—so suddenly to do so? “Though I suppose they must have become acquainted in India together.”

      “Miss Blake in India, my lord?” asked the servant, scandalized. “She’s a proper English lass, is our Miss Blake, not one of those wild, brown-skinned hussies from the colonies! Begging pardon again, my lord, but ’tis different for gentlemen. You know how it be, my lord. Lady Fordyce would never have taken Miss Blake if she’d lived wild among the pagan savages like that.”

      “I understand,” said Revell, and he did, far more than the servant could realize. He’d forgotten the prejudice against women who’d gone out to India, let alone the ones like Sara who’d been born there. She hadn’t even had the advantage of being sent home to England for education as a girl, the way most British children were, simply because her widowed father hadn’t been able to bear parting with her. When he’d teased Sara about tigers and elephants before Clarissa, he’d only meant to remind her of the past they’d shared. Instead, great bumbling ass that he was, he’d put her entire livelihood and reputation at risk.

      “If that will be all, my lord,” the maidservant was saying as she dropped a quick curtsy, the edges of her apron clutched in her hands.

      “Yes, yes, and thank you,” said Revell, then shook his head as he thought of the final question. “About Miss Blake. She’s never been wed, has she?”

      The servant grinned widely. “Nay, my lord, nor could she have taken a husband and still be Miss Blake, could she? Neither husband, nor followers, not since she’s been with the Fordyces. I tell you, my lord, she’s a good, quiet lass, and a credit to this house.”

      “That is all, then,” he said softly, and turned back to the window. Sara and Clarissa must be inside now, for the haphazard trail of their footprints through the snow led to the kitchen door in the yard below. Soon he could venture back to the schoolroom, and be sure to find them there.

      And then what? He’d learned more of Sara’s past from the maidservant, true, but he’d also realized he didn’t want to ask any more such questions. It had been one thing to make inquiries when he’d no notion of where she was, but quite another when fate had so conveniently placed her once again beneath the same roof. Now he should be asking her himself, directly and without guile; anything else seemed distastefully like spying, and Sara—Sara deserved better than that from him, no matter what happened next.

      Still gazing out at the flurried footprints in the snow, he lightly touched the waistcoat pocket that held the sapphire ring. She could talk all she wished about Christmas miracles, but surely finding her again like this, across six years and three continents, was as truly miraculous as anything he could ever have dreamed.

      Perhaps this is why he’d been drawn so inexplicably to Ladysmith. Perhaps some subtle tug of fate had made him trade London and a liquor-sodden bachelor Christmas with Brant for another chance with Sara. Living in India had loosened his distinctly English faith in a world based on logic and reason, and made him trust more to the mysteries of fate.

      But not even that could explain why Sara had abandoned him the first time, or why he seemed so damned eager to let her do it again. He thought he’d sensed the old magic between them again, but for her part, she hadn’t exactly been overjoyed to see him. Pleased, yes, but not overjoyed, and not at all eager to trade her life as a governess for one with him—a sobering, if not downright depressing, thought. Yet he couldn’t deny that when he was with her, he felt happier, younger, more content and yet more excited, too, more at peace with himself and the world.

      He might even still feel in love.

      He gave the box with the ring one last rueful pat. All he could do was ask Sara for the truth, and let the rest fall where it would.

      And believe with all his heart in miracles.

      Never had Sara doubted that Revell Claremont was an extraordinarily accomplished gentleman. He rode well—both horses and elephants—shot well, and was as skilled with the short, curved blade of a Gurkha’s kookree as he was with an English cutlass. Unlike most sons of dukes, he had survived on his own since he was fourteen, and made his first fortune before he’d turned twenty-one. He was as well read as any university man, spoke five languages with ease and grace and swore in several more, and while he could demonstrate all the politesse of a career diplomat, he could also be a ruthless negotiator and trader, as able to conduct business in a rough tent with Bengali brigands as he was with the equally cut-throat factors of the East India Company.

      But as Sara soon saw, he was hopeless—absolutely, abjectly hopeless—with a pair of scissors, a pot of paste, and a pile of colored paper squares.

      “Not like that, my lord,” said Clarissa, scowling down at the tiger’s head, newly attached at a peculiar angle to his body and oozing a fatal blob of paste from his throat, or what should have been his throat if his head had been placed more accurately. “You’ve put it on all wrong.”

      “I have?” Revell stared balefully at the tiger, heedless of another paste blob smeared across the sleeve of his superfine coat. He had insisted on sitting beside Clarissa at the child’s table, his oversize frame hunched forward and his legs bent awkwardly to fit the short chair. “I thought he had rather a rakish air about him.”

      “No, he doesn’t,” said Clarissa crossly. “It’s just wrong.”

      Considering the discussion complete, she reached across Revell and pushed the offending head into a more anatomically pleasing position, using her small thumb to