“I was not considering anything,” Miles replied evenly.
“Good.”
“Good,” he echoed.
They moved in perfect unison—backward and in opposite directions—as though repelled by an unseen force. Several guests observed the maneuver with thinly veiled amusement.
In an effort to regain the advantage, Jillian drifted toward the refreshment table, where warm biscuits and tea awaited. Miles, perhaps out of sheer contrariness, arrived at the same instant. Their hands collided over the last ginger biscuit. Jillian felt the faintest spark shoot up her arm, an entirely unwelcome sensation that she immediately attributed to static, nerves, or annoyance—anything but attraction.
“You may have it,” she said graciously.
“I insist,” Miles replied, just as graciously.
“You assume I am unable to share.”
“You assume I would risk taking the last biscuit.”
“On the contrary, I am certain you would.”
“Only if I were in desperate need of sustenance.”
“Well,” she said, lifting her brows, “cultivating such unrelenting contrariness must require a great deal of sustenance!”
Henry cleared his throat rather loudly, though his eyes glimmered with laughter. Several guests glanced toward them, as though observing the early stages of a theatrical performance. Jillian suspected half of them were already making wagers about the two of them, for the upper crust of society loved nothing so much as watching other people’s discomfort while nibbling on holiday pastries.
A second draft swept through the hall, stirring the garland above the mantel. A single sprig of mistletoe detached itself and drifted with uncanny slowness until it landed upon Miles’s shoulder. He stared down at it with an expression Jillian had previously seen only in men who had narrowly avoided stepping on a snake. She lost her composure entirely and laughed, a warm, startled, thoroughly impolite sound that filled the hall.
Miles removed the offending sprig with rigid dignity. “Fairhaven House,” he declared, “is determined to harass me.”
Jillian wiped an errant tear of mirth from the corner of her eye. “At least something finds you irresistible, Mr. Fairfax.”
His gaze flicked to her, startled for a fraction of a second, before settling into something unreadable—cooler than amusement, warmer than disdain, and altogether more dangerous than she cared to examine.
Christmas at Fairhaven had begun. Jillian suspected she would require an entire pot of strong tea, three novels, and a locked door if she hoped to endure it without incident. Unfortunately, with Miles Fairfax in the house, incident seemed practically guaranteed.
Chapter
Two
Dinner at Fairhaven was always lively, but on the first night of the Christmas gathering it bordered on pandemonium. Guests filled the long table bathed in the light as candles burned brightly in their silver sconces. A cheerful din of conversation floated around the room like a particularly determined swarm of bees. Jillian entered with Aunt Gertrude, prepared for holiday chaos, but entirely unprepared for the sight of her place card.
She halted mid-stride, staring at the dreadful piece of folded parchment as though it had personally betrayed her. “No,” she whispered under her breath. “Absolutely not.”
Miles Fairfax stood directly behind her, and when he saw her name beside his, he stopped as well. A muscle ticked in his jaw before he said, in a tone of grave resignation, “It appears we have been trapped.”
“By design,” Jillian replied sourly. She did not need to turn to know Lady Beatrice was lurking somewhere nearby, waiting for her triumph to be acknowledged.
Miles stepped around to pull out her chair with perfect manners, though the slight arch of his brow suggested he hoped she appreciated the agony such good behavior cost him. Sheoffered him a tight smile and lowered herself into the seat with the poise of a woman resigned to suffering.
“Lady Jillian,” he murmured, adjusting his napkin with fastidious precision, “a pleasure as always.”
She lifted her wineglass. “How remarkable that your definition of pleasure aligns so closely with torment.”
Lady Beatrice, positioned on Jillian’s other side, leaned forward with the bright-eyed look of someone observing a stage play. “Is this not delightful?” she asked, clasping her hands. “Seated together again. One might almost believe the benevolent spirits of Fairhaven arranged it.”
On the tip of her tongue, Jillian tasted the bitterness of a comment about Lady Beatrice’s advanced age not quite giving her claim to the spirit world just yet. But she bit it back and managed a slightly less scathing comment. “I believe you arranged it,” Jillian said, not bothering to temper her voice. It made no difference; Beatrice heard only what she wished.
“Fairhaven works through its residents,” Beatrice replied airily. “In mysterious ways.”
