Chapter Six
Boswell House wasa monstrosity, it was true. Even with one hundred seventy-six chambers amongst its sprawling wings, there was not one room that called to Harry the way its lake did. The lake was vast, settled into the land naturally so Boswell House presided over it like a monarch reigning upon a throne. As lads, Harry and Spencer had fished in the lake, had splashed in it, had paddled about in wooden boats pretending to be invading navies.
It seemed somehow fitting to return to the lake now with snow a pristine white along its banks and ice forming a beautiful, silver crust of skin over the waters. Especially with Lady Alexandra at his side.
“How lovely,” she exclaimed softly, taking in the view of the glistening wintry lake.
The crisp cold of the air kissed her cheeks with a becoming blossom of pink, and her blue eyes were wide. A stray tendril of copper hair had worked its way free of her coiffure and blew across her freckled nose.
“The loveliest,” he agreed, unable to resist catching the flyaway curl and tucking it behind her ear.
This woman was going to be his wife. How impossible it seemed that days ago, she had not been a part of his life when now he could not fathom a future without her in it. Looking at her took his breath and made his chest feel at once light as a bird and heavy as a boulder. It was the strangest sensation, defying description, and he had never experienced anything comparable.
“You are not even looking at the lake, my lord,” she pointed out softly, the color in her cheeks deepening beneath his regard.
“No,” he agreed, unable to look away from her. “I am not.”
“Cease tarrying, brother,” called Spencer then, interrupting the moment. “By the time you finish gazing into Lady Alexandra’s eyes, it shall be the spring thaw and all the ice will have melted.”
“Rotter,” he muttered beneath his breath, for his brother was no better. He was lovesick for his wife. Louder, he called, “We merely stopped to enjoy the view.”
“I heard that, and I am not a rotter,” Spencer returned amiably. “I have excellent ears, you realize.”
“For an old man,” Harry quipped. In truth, Spencer was only a few years his senior, but that did not mean he was above making the jab, particularly when his brother was enjoying his discomfit so damned much.
“I distinctly recall sharing a boyhood with you, so if I am an old man, I am afraid you are as well,” Spencer said, quirking a brow.
“You always made me be the Spanish Armada,” he remembered without heat. “And then you insisted upon defeating me.”
“I wanted to be Sir Francis Drake,” his brother admitted, grinning unrepentantly. “We could not both be England, after all. There can be one victor and one loser, dear brother.”
As the heir, Spencer had always gotten what he wanted. The trend had not ended when they had become men. Boadicea was the personification of that fact, but somehow, with Lady Alexandra clinging to his arm, Harry no longer felt the ache of remorse or the stinging sense of loss he had once felt whenever he considered the woman his brother had taken as his bride. There was instead a sense of rightness settling over him, the knowledge that though he had not been able to see it at the time, something—or rathersomeone—more uniquely suited to him had come along.
And he could be happy with that someone. Happier than he could have been with any other woman. He knew this instinctively, and the more he considered what Spencer had said to him, the more he knew his brother was right. He could have lost his head with any number of ladies over the years, and yet it had only been her.
Lady Alexandra Danvers.
“While I would dearly love to listen to the two of you argue about playing naval heroes in your youth, the day is cold, and I fear I shall not last much longer outdoors,” interrupted Boadicea then. “We have not even skated yet.”
The feelings he had once nurtured for her had altered, and thank God for that. He could not spend the rest of his days mooning after his brother’s wife, regardless of how lovely and witty she was.
“I have never skated before,” Lady Alexandra ventured then. “I must admit that balancing one’s self upon sharp blades atop a layer of ice covering a large body of water seems like a rather poor choice to make. A form of torture, perhaps, rather than an entertainment.”
Harry chuckled. The intricacies and eccentricities of her mind would never cease intriguing him, he was certain of it. “When you phrase it in such a fashion, the art does sound questionable indeed.”
She flashed him a smile he felt in his gut. “The art of madmen, one might say.”
“You only say so because you have never skated before, my lady,” Spencer said.
What a happy little quartet they made, just the four of them and a handful of servants, having left the rest of the revelers behind in the warmth of Boswell House. Snowflakes began to gently drift from the sky in that moment, flitting to earth like tiny bits of down. Harry could not have imagined such a day, when he could peacefully coexist with Spencer and Boadicea and not have the splinter of jealousy embedded painfully within him.
“You shall have Lord Harry to hold on to if you lose your balance,” Boadicea told Lady Alexandra, her eyes twinkling. “Surely that is the antidote to the torture.”
Lady Alexandra flushed adorably once more. “There is that to recommend it, I suppose.”
She supposed? How he wanted to kiss the coyness from her lips. Instead, he covered her hand on his arm with his, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. “Careful now or you shall bruise my pride unalterably, my dear.”
Her lush mouth twitched, her eyes gleaming with mirth into his. There in that moment, snow swirling around them, laughter in his heart and on her lips, he felt the slide begin. The inevitable, inexorable pull to this woman above all others. He could not shake the belief she was the other half to make him whole. The woman who would drive him to distraction, now and forever.
