Mrs. Smith waved a hand. “It’s my special recipe I only make during the holidays. I use Mexican chocolate, which has cinnamon and a touch of cayenne to warm it.”
Of course, Holt thought. “I’ve had something like this in California. I should have recognized it…”
“I want the recipe,” Caitlin interrupted with enthusiasm. “I’ve never tasted the like. I’m sure my friends at home would adore this.”
Mrs. Smith beamed. “I’ll write it out for you and make sure we have a good supply of the chocolate to send home with you.”
Holt’s gut clenched at Mrs. Smith’s innocent offer, an echo of his recent thoughts that made Caitlin’s departure seem that much more imminent and inevitable.
“Would you care for more?”
With a smile, Caitlin held out her mug. “Aye, of course!”
Mrs. Smith ladled out more fragrant chocolate and topped off Caitlin’s mug, then Holt’s. “Have a seat at the kitchen table. I’ve been cooking all day, so this is the warmest room in the house. I’ll just leave you to it and come back later to clean up and get dinner on the table.”
“Thank you,” Holt replied and waited until she left the room. He took a seat next to Caitlin and thawed his hands around his mug.
“This warms me all the way through,” Caitlin told him. “It’s going to be very popular back home.”
“A worthwhile souvenir of your trip,” he quipped but left unspoken his sudden recognition of how unhappy the idea of her leaving made him, or the other, more pleasurable ways he’d like to warm her in the meantime.
“Mrs. Smith and Farrell are treasures,” she said. “I’m going to miss them.”
He pictured her sitting with friends in front of a peat fire, sipping Mrs. Smith’s chocolate and realized if that actually happened, if he weren’t there, too, he’d never be able to drink spiced chocolate again without missing her. With every sip, her cheeks pinked, and her eyes closed in obvious bliss. How he’d enjoy being the one to put that expression on her face, to watch a flush of color rise from her chest to her eyes. Damn it, he had to stop thinking this way. But her sweater hugged enticing curves, and her hair fell across her forehead, making him long to brush it back, then run his fingers down the graceful length of her throat while he kissed her.
They sipped in silence for a few minutes, then Caitlin set her mug aside and frowned. “I’m really sorry, about…before. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been for you and your mother to be chased away from here. No room at the inn….” She trailed off with a frown, then shrugged and continued, “Even though it was summer and not Yuletide.”
Holt struggled for words. He’d been too young to go to his mother’s defense, but old enough to understand most of the invectives her aunt hurled at her. To see the anger and hurt and shame in her eyes as she tried to shield him from the scene.
“I have never forgotten my mother insisting I was not a mistake. At the time, I didn’t know what she meant, not really. Certainly my mother never treated me in any way that suggested she didn’t want me. Though her life would have been much simpler, much better, and perhaps much longer without me.”
“Holt! Nay.”
“I don’t know for certain, but I expect my great-aunt forbade my mother from seeing my father. He wasn’t from a good— in her estimation— family. Wrong social strata altogether.”
“How awful for her. And then to find out she was pregnant…”
“Years later, long after we were chased away from here, Mother told me her aunt kicked her out as soon as she started showing.”
“I see why you never wanted to come back here.”
“And why I’m eager to get rid of this place. Family curse aside, for my mother and me it was and is full of unhappy memories.” So why did the gazebo now appear in his thoughts with Caitlin glowing in the fairly lights rather than the painful daytime image of his great-aunt snarling threats at his mother?
Caitlin drummed her fingers on the tabletop, a nervous gesture he’d never seen her indulge in before. Holt wanted to reach over and take her hand, to soothe away her disquiet. But touching her would do nothing to soothe him. So he stayed still and let her think.
“I want to pull the drawers out of that apothecary cabinet,” she finally said, a change of topic so abrupt, he didn’t understand her for a moment.
“Apothecary cabinet?”
“That’s what I’m calling it. The one with rows and rows of small, square drawers. Tomorrow morning, let’s drag it into the circle of light and see what there is to see.”
“Why that piece?”
“I could say because it’s the next nearest and we don’t have to move anything else out of the way to get to it, but I have this feeling…”
“Feeling?”
“We Scots women put a lot of stock in our feelings.” She straightened and grinned. “We come from a long line of seers, Druids, that sort of thing.”
