“All?” He raised a brow. “Just how many other men have you contemplated undressing for?”
“None, of course,” she squeaked, and disappeared back under his chin.
“Claire.” His voice was suddenly an octave lower. “Are you telling me the truth?”
She shivered despite herself. “That tone is only to be used for—” Her face heating, she gestured at their current position.
“Claire,” he growled, “fetch me my cloak. And be sure you order the lamb for Christmas dinner. I’ll have no prawns on my table, Claire.”
She elbowed him, laughing. “Speaking of Christmas, I suppose we ought to join the others.”
“Not yet.” He gathered her closer. “Just a few more minutes.”
“Very well,” she agreed, snuggling into him. She tightened her arms around him, matching his breathing. And for the first time in a year she felt wholly content. Wholly warm. Wholly, well?—
Whole.
Seventeen
Some time later, as they were helping each other tidy their appearances (Claire’s hair was an especially tricky puzzle, as was Jonathan’s cravat), a noise of distant revelry burst their private bubble.
When they quit the library, the sounds grew more distinct. Raucous laughter, clinking glassware, and off-key strains of Hark the Herald wafted down the corridor from the drawing room.
Someone had left the door ajar, as though to set a trap. When the two lovers were so foolish as to peep inside, they found themselves immediately seized and beset by hearty handshakes, hugs, kisses, and congratulations. Then, before they could escape, they were furnished with brandied eggnog and made to stay and have a wonderful time.
Caroling was followed by charades and then snap-dragon, an unaccountably popular game of snatching raisins from a bowl of flaming brandy. While the others singed their fingers, Jonathan and Claire (protesting she suffered more than enough burns in her workshop) sat down to a nice, safe round of whist with the Cainewoods. The two couples got on famously, and by the end of the set, Jonathan was on Christian-name terms with Rachael and Griffin—who would soon be his siblings, he was elated to realize. All his life he’d wished for siblings.
But family relations were not always so easy, as Jonathan well knew. As the engagement was toasted again and again, one Chase made a point of excluding herself, declaring she would withhold her felicitations until the marriage was actually accomplished. Though at first taking Elizabeth’s declaration in good humor, as the evening wore on and she remained stubbornly aloof—and eventually quit the room entirely—Jonathan could not help but wonder if her hostility toward him would fade, or if she might never accept him as a brother.
Noah, by contrast, seemed twice as thrilled as everyone else—even when, fortified by eggnog, Claire scolded him for hiding his correspondence with Jonathan.
“It was wrong of me, I know,” he admitted with good grace. “I’m sorry for deceiving you, though at the time I imagined myself to be protecting you. I thought you needed space to heal, an interval to forget. Yet as time went by, and you both seemed more miserable, not less…”
She let him continue apologizing for a while, then brought in Rachael to heap on more abuse, before forgiving him at last.
But no sooner were Noah and Claire at peace than Rachael began to look troubled, even shedding a tear over the year Claire and Jonathan had lost. As Griffin coaxed her away to calm down, her two remaining siblings looked on in astonishment, then spent several minutes debating what had prompted such un-Rachael-like behavior.
Claire concluded she was feeling guilty for having gone off to Cainewood, leaving her hapless brother and sisters to muck about in their folly.
Noah concluded she was with child again.
Whatever the cause, its impacts persisted as the party began to break up. When Rachael embraced her sister and wished her brother-to-be a good night, her eyes grew damp again. “You two have been through so much,” she said tremulously, “and it’s all my fault! If I’d been here to manage things properly…” She sniffled. “But what’s done is done, as Griffin keeps telling me?—”
“To very little effect.” Griffin offered her a handkerchief.
“—and you’re together now; that’s the important thing.” Rachael blew her nose. “I hope you won’t waste any more time. Not a single day! You plan to marry soon?”
“Very soon,” Claire said soothingly. “We’ve already got a special license?—”
“Have you, indeed? Then why not wed tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow!” Claire’s gaze flew to Jonathan’s. “I—well—I’ve no objection, but…”
“Nor have I,” Jonathan assured her. “Only I’m not sure it’s possible. The license is at Twineham Park, thirty miles away.”
“And then there’s the problem of the vicar,” Claire put in. “Last year he made his views on Christmas Day weddings quite plain. I don’t see how we’re to search out another cleric so quickly?—”
“Leave the vicar to me,” Rachael declared, her spirits suddenly improved. “I can manage him. And you”—she turned to Jonathan—“send your coachman to fetch the license. If he leaves now for Twineham, he should easily return by morning.”
