Evidently.
There was nothing broken about the woman standing before him. She was hardly the young girl he had left behind three years past.
Emma surprised him by taking a step toward him, her body language now offensive. Lucien’s heart tripped a beat over the game of chess. She was a woman through and through and her gaze offered him no quarter.
Lucien refused to take a backward step as it wouldn’t serve his purpose. He refrained from glancing up at the mistletoe. She was standing so close now that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body, and he longed to pull her into his arms. “Yes, she did,” he agreed. “But that man realized he was wrong.”
“Wrong?” Curious now, she tilted her head, and Lucien thought about kissing her right then and there. “How so?”
He leaned forward, staring at her lips. “Because he realized thathewas the one he had been protecting all along,” he confessed, surprising himself with his own revelation. And yet as soon as he said it he knew it was true. His brows drew together as he thought about the new direction of this thoughts. “The truth is that he felt vulnerable, Emma.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I precisely, but it’s true.”
Her eyes began to glimmer a bit and Lucien wanted to embrace her. Her shoulders set stubbornly, and she stood her ground. “Well, he can’t simply change his mind just like that!”
“Why not?”
She frowned beautifully. “Because she will never believe him again. She doesn’t care.”
“Of course she does,” he insisted.
Emma shook her head. “No, she doesn’t.”
“I can prove it,” he said softly, and pointed up at the mistletoe. “I propose a kiss—as proof.”
She peered up at the mistletoe, stepping backward so she stood directly beneath the crude ball. “What isthat?”
“A kissing ball.”
“I have never heard of such a thing! Where did it come from?”
Lucien shrugged. “Three very lovely children fashioned it for me. Just one kiss, Emma,” he entreated, “and if you should win, I will leave Newgale at first light. And furthermore, I shall have it posted in theTimesthat it was you who cried off, not I.” He seized her hand and held it possessively. “I swear on my mother’s life I will confess to one and all that it was you who did not wish to marry me.”
“But your mother is dead,” she pointed out reasonably.
Lucien shrugged. “Then I shall swear upon my honor.”
A tiny smile began to turn her lips. “According to theTimes, you have none,” she reminded him uncompromisingly.
“But Ineverlie,” Lucien told her. And it was the truth, for no matter what else he might be, he could not seem to wring a single untruth from his lips—not even to save someone’s feelings, which was unfortunately what had brought them to this mess in the first place.
She looked at him warily. “And what if I should refuse?”
“You can’t, you see. It’s Christmas law,” he declared. “When two people are standing beneath a kissing ball, one cannot refuse to kiss the other, else both may never marry ever again.”
Her eyes sparkled with challenge. “I could simply step aside,” she suggested smartly.
“Then you would break my heart,” he declared.
It was poppycock, Emma knew, and yet hope flared to life within her breast.
Peering up at the ball of mistletoe, her heart beat frantically. Wrapped crudely with string, the berry laden boughs hung conspicuously from the ceiling above. As enormous as it was, how she could possibly have missed it coming into the room she didn’t know, but it was clearly the handiwork of her brother’s children. Although at that height only Andrew or Lucien could have hung it—perhaps both. She eyed the door, cursing her brother to Perdition. It would be the cruelest trick in the world if Lucien were simply toying with her heart.
Surely Andrew would not approve.
“And what are the terms of this wager, Your Grace?”
