“And look, Aunt Viola, at how he and Abigail are smiling at each other,” Anna said. “Perhaps…Do you think…?”
“I think Christmas is making you sentimental, Anna,” Viola said. “Nevertheless, perhaps…”
They both laughed rather gleefully.
“What doyouthink, Elizabeth?” Anna asked. “Would they not make a lovely couple? And suit each other?”
He had just turned his attention the other way and was laughing over something with Camille.
“I think Abby can be trusted to choose the man best suited to her when she is ready, regardless of what we may think or hope—or fear,” Elizabeth said. “I believe she will choose love or nothing. And I believe Lord Hodges is young and charming and very probably not even considering matrimony yet.” Though she knew he was.
“You are very right, Elizabeth,” Viola said. “About both of them.”
Elizabeth turned her attention back to the fort building, in which Harry and Bertrand and even Winifred were now actively engaged with the three boys. But, against all reason, her thoughts continued to dwell upon Colin. She did not know much about his family situation, but she did know that Lady Hodges, his mother, was a difficult person to deal with and had made childhood insupportable for Wren with her disfiguring birthmark. And she sensed that life had been difficult for the other children too and that they had not had a happy home life. The fact that Colin now lived at Withington House, Wren’s property, instead of in his ancestral home, and that he had rooms in London instead of living in his own town house there, told its own story. So did the fact that he was spending Christmas here instead of with his own family. And he had mentioned to her that he’d never experienced a Christmas like this one.
She was sogladhe was here. He had been right this morning on the way home from church. Theydidhave an easy rapport with each other. She felt as comfortable with him as she did with her own brother. Except that there was an added dimension to her friendship with Colin. She ought not, but she found him—
Suddenly her world turned cold and white and wet, and she gasped and lifted her arms helplessly to the sides as she heard laughter.
“I warned you I was a star bowler,” a voice called cheerfully to her as she clawed snow out of her eyes and spat it from her mouth and tried to prevent it from trickling beneath her collar. Ugh. Oh, ugh!
“Oh, poor Elizabeth,” Anna was saying, laughter in her voice.
“That was remarkably unsporting of you, Lord Hodges,” Viola scolded, though she was chuckling too. “Elizabeth was not even looking.”
Camille and Abigail were laughing merrily. So were the fort builders—and Louise and Mildred.
“A barefaced attack upon my sister,” Alex’s voice called from somewhere to the right. “And I returned in time to witness it. This calls for retaliation.”
“A bigger, better snowball, Alex?” Harry suggested.
“Are you threatening my brother, Alexander?” Wren was laughing merrily with everyone else. “I cannot allow that, you know, even if youaremy husband. Blood is said to be thicker than water.”
“You also warned me that you are a dirty fighter,” Elizabeth said, blinking away some snow clumps from her eyelashes and looking into the handsome, laughing face of Colin a short distance away. “You have just proved your point, sir. Well, war has been declared. Name your team, and I shall name mine. As the aggrieved party, I have first choice, I believe. I pick Alex.”
“Wren,” Colin said without hesitation.
Joel had carried a sleepy Sarah inside for an afternoon nap but was back in time to join Colin’s team after Elizabeth had chosen Cousin Louise’s daughter Jessica.
“Thomas,” Elizabeth said.
“Winifred.”
“Camille.”
“Bertrand.”
“Boris.”
“Lady Estelle.”
And so the teams were formed. And Elizabeth suddenly felt young and invigorated and wildly happy despite her thirty-five years. Colin was laughing and gathering his team about him.
And the fight was on.
•••
His team would have won handily, no question about it, Colin protested when the fight was over, to shouts of agreement from his own troops and jeers of derision from Elizabeth’s. Her team had not played fair, he explained, for they had employedstrategyof all the nasty underhanded things they could have done, probably because they had Captain Harry Westcott on their side. They had delegated two members of their team—the Dowager Duchess of Netherby and Lord Molenor—to the exclusive task of rolling snowballs and stockpiling them so that the rest of the team had merely to pick them up and hurl them. And their two snowball rollers had fast hands.
