Letters at Christmas Read Online Free

to get her attention.
    …
    Sidony was in the stables. Nighttime blurred the edges of the loft but she smelled the sweetness of the hay. The ladder creaked under Hale’s weight. He’d come to her. No preamble this time, and she didn’t require any. He pressed his face against hers and breathed in deep. She kissed the side of his cheek. He turned his head to catch her lips. They kissed as if they had forever, an eternity contained within a single night. His palm felt hot through the thin fabric of her nightgown. He lifted the material, seeking, searching, and she shivered.
    “Sidony?”
    Startled, she jerked back. She swallowed hard as the shadows of her bedchamber came into focus. Had she been dreaming? Yes, she must have been, but Hale wasn’t a dream. He was right there, standing beside the bed.
    “What are you doing here?” Her words slurred together, one foot still in the dream world.
    “Visiting you, as always.”
    She scooted up against the headboard. “That was before.”
    “I figure we should spend the nights together as we used to. To make the wager fair.”
    She groaned. The horrible wager. “I’m not going to do anything with you.”
    “You don’t have to. I’ll just lie next to you.”
    He climbed into bed. And true to his word, lay down next to her without touching. How disappointing.
    He turned to face her, his head resting on the pillow beside hers. “Tell me how you’ve been,” he murmured. “I want to hear everything.”
    Then you should have written me, she wanted to say. But that would be unkind. They’d already established the facts. He’d made promises as a young man before going off to make his fortune. It would be cruel to hold him to them. She was doing him a favor by not marrying him, really. So why did it feel like a mistake? His presence beside her had comforted her so many nights. It comforted her now.
    “I had three seasons,” she offered slowly. They both knew it was only supposed to be one. One season for her, one year of sailing for him. I’ll be home by next Christmas , he had said, and she’d cried all winter when he hadn’t come. Even the lack of promised letters hadn’t broken her faith, but his absence had done so.
    His eyes now were solemn, painted silver-black with moonlight. “Were they everything you’d hoped?”
    The seasons, he meant. She thought back, and whispered it all to him. Dresses and balls and dance cards. Trips to the theatre and exhibitions. A particularly memorable opera where the prima argued with her paramour in the audience. Yes, it had all been diverting and pretty—and so lonely. Though she left the last part out of her whispered confidences.
    Before they’d become lovers, they’d been friends. And now, they were nothing. Supposedly nothing. And yet here he was in her bed, holding her hand.
    “What about you?” she inquired. “Was seafaring everything you had dreamed?”
    “Everything and more.”
    She allowed the wry note, the intriguing hint of regret in his voice to float away on the cool night air. Whatever had made him jaded—a swordfight with pirates, an exotic love affair, changeling prices for tea exports—he had clearly come out of it stronger, richer, better. He had no need of her, which was why she would never accept his proposal. Back then, he had worshipped her. Which was as it should have been, considering how much she’d exalted him. Now she was but an afterthought, a backhanded proposal.
    And if she said yes? He would stash her in some over-architectured, under-gardened townhouse in London. Only take her out when he wanted to play, as if she was some pet, like one of his cats only without claws.
    No.
    They lay in silence, neither willing to share the shadows of their time apart. Once, nothing had been secret between them, nothing sacred. Now they were strangers.
    But she hadn’t let go of his hand. His fingers slid through hers with startling familiarity. Her mind made all sorts of claims about this intruder in