A Kiss For Midwinter
“Mildly scandalous.” He tapped the table. “I have a wager for you, if you’ve the stomach for it.”
Up went her chin again. “There’s no point to a wager,” she said. “There is nothing you have that I could want.”
He ignored this. “I wager,” he said, “that I could show you a situation before Christmas that would be beyond even your capacity for good cheer.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I see the worst of Leicester. In five minutes, I’ll leave for my next appointment. You smile and you wish and you see an entire world set forth in the most optimistic terms. I wager that I can find you a situation that lacks a bright side.”
He didn’t have fastenings, but he did have his version of it—house calls.
She mulled this over for a few moments. “What do you get if you win?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment, if you please. The more salient question is, what would you wish if you win? You could ask me for any favor. You could make me stand on my head in the market square for twenty minutes, if you wanted. Think, Miss Charingford, of all the ways you might humiliate me. Surely that would be worth something to you.”
She frowned and tapped her fingers against her lips. She didn’t look at him as she thought; she just tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. Finally, she gave a nod. “What if I said I wanted you never to talk to me again?”
His lungs stopped working. “That’s…that’s what you’d want?”
“No sarcastic comments. No biting wit. No reminders of my past mistakes.” Her voice dropped. “Yes, Doctor Grantham. That would tempt me. That would tempt me greatly.”
He swallowed. Every word she spoke hurt. She didn’t just dislike him. She hated him. But if that was the way of things… Best that he discover it now.
“What if you changed your mind later? Would I be barred from speaking?”
She considered this a moment. “I suppose that if I should lose my head so far as to want to hear the grating tones of your voice once more, I should be allowed the opportunity to reverse the wager. It needn’t be a permanent condition.” She tilted her head at him. “It will be, of course.”
“Unless I win.”
She waved off that possibility. “And what humiliation will you heap on me if you should prevail?” Miss Charingford asked.
“I want a kiss.”
Her head turned to his. Her eyes widened. She looked into his gaze. He wanted to reach out and touch the tips of his fingers to her cheek, to graze his hand down the line of her jaw until her lips softened.
“A kiss,” she repeated. “You want a kiss. From me.”
“Your ears appear to function with tolerable accuracy.” His own words seemed harsh and clipped. “If you fail, I get a kiss from you. An honest kiss, mind—not some shabby peck on the cheek.”
As he spoke, her eyebrows raised. Her lips thinned. “Do you think me loose, Doctor Grantham?”
“I think you as loose as a citadel. Why else would I have stooped to making elaborate wagers with you in exchange for the smallest token of your affections?”
She didn’t seem to hear that. Instead, her brow furrowed and she looked up. Finally, she nodded to herself as if she’d solved a difficult problem. “I see what you’re about, Grantham. You think to teach me a lesson. You want to show me that the world is more frightening—and more dark—than I believe.”
“Maybe I’m simply looking for an excuse to spend time in your company.” Maybe he wanted her to see him outside the social settings where he performed so poorly. He wanted a chance for her to see him, a chance to break through the impossible wall of her dislike. “Maybe,” he said, “I’m thinking that the days are dark and long, that midwinter is approaching. Maybe, Miss Charingford, all I really want is a kiss.”
If she reached the end of their time together and felt any affection for him at all, she’d never enforce that ridiculous forfeit that she’d asked for. If he won, he’d get to kiss her. And if she didn’t like him after spending time in his company…
Yes, it was definitely preferable to realize it now.
“The more I think on it,” he said, “the more I realize that it is impossible for me to lose.”
“We have more than two weeks until Christmas, and I refuse to shadow you the entire time. Will three visits suffice, do you think?”
Three visits. They’d walk to the calls and back. That might amount to a handful of hours in her company. If he couldn’t convince her to consider him in that time, it was never going to happen.
“Three visits will do.” He paused. “If you’re accompanying me on house calls at Christmas time, you might consider…”
“I’ll make a basket,” Miss Charingford said. “Of course I will.”
“Tomorrow, then, we’ll be going to see a woman who has eight children and one more on the way.” He looked over at her. “Bring something appropriate.”
Chapter Four
THERE WAS A TRADITION THAT HAD BEGUN SIX YEARS AGO, one that was always important to Lydia. These days, she never felt as if Christmas were coming until she’d decorated her father’s office.
Another man might have frowned and ordered her out of the room as he bent over the account books. But then, Lydia had always been aware that her father was rather out of the ordinary.
He sat at his desk as she wound red ribbon about the base of the oil lamp that stood on a side table. He didn’t look up at her. He didn’t say a word. Still, when she cut the fabric and began to add holly, he leaned over and, almost absentmindedly, squeezed her hand.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Tea? A glass of wine?”
“Mmm,” he replied. “A one. I’m missing a one.”
She peered over his shoulder. “You left it on the last page,” she said after a moment’s study. “When you carried the amount over.”
He looked up at her, peering over the rims of his glasses. “Did I, then?”
She ran her finger down the facing page and pointed.
He frowned—not a real frown, that; she knew his moods well enough to know when he was unhappy. And right now, he wasn’t. “So I did,” he said. “So I did.”
But instead of returning to his books, he looked at her—at the heavy gown of dark rose she’d donned, so unsuited for an afternoon at home.