Over the next week and a half, the rains turned to snow, and Thea could no longer take Lady Clarissa out for walks.

Thea should have been discontent at being cooped up. She should have been fretting over what had passed between her and Edmund—and the ever-growing emotion she felt for him, but still refused to name.

Yet they were some of the happiest days of her life. The blanket of white snow resting on the landscape made everything dazzlingly bright. The castle seemed cheerier, softened somehow by a coating of snow.

One morning after a particularly heavy snowfall, inspiration struck Thea. Perhaps it was the nip in the air, or the coziness inside the castle when Lady Clarissa, Edmund, and she sat in the great hall, a fire roaring in the hearth. Or perhaps it was a longing to enjoy the season with Edmund and Lady Clarissa as a family did. Whatever the case, Thea proposed that they organize a proper Christmas celebration.

Thea arranged for the stable lad to bring her several clumps of mistletoe and clippings from pine boughs.

“How downright pagan of ye,” Edmund had commented as she’d arranged the boughs over the hearth and hung the mistletoe over all the doorways. He spoke with one dark eyebrow arched and a smile playing on his mouth, his eyes following her intently enough to send heat into her cheeks.

As she worked, he told her of the season’s traditions here in the Highlands—of Hogmanay and the first-footing, of the singing of Robert Burns’s poem “Auld Lang Syne,” and of Yule and its carolers and the special porridge breakfast called sowens.

They hadn’t spoken of their kiss, yet the mere memory of it knotted Thea’s stomach with longing. It was too good to be true—it must be. Edmund didn’t know the truth about her. If he did, he wouldn’t desire her so. In fact, he would probably throw her out of Kinfallon Castle for her deception.

Some small, selfish part of her wanted to pretend that she was who she said, though, to pretend that she, a governess, could capture the heart of a man like Edmund—and give him her heart in return.

So she carried on, spending time with Lady Clarissa, dining with Edmund, and distracting herself from the aching desire twisting her insides by preparing for Christmas.

She worked with Mrs. MacDuffy and the remaining kitchen maid to plan a Christmas supper menu. They would have goose, plum pudding, and an iced cake for dessert. She even dashed off a missive to her former employers the Braxtons in York, letting them know that all was well and sending them the season’s greetings.

Over breakfast one morning, Edmund turned to Thea and said, “I am off to visit a few of the crofts now that some of the snow has melted, but I have an idea that might help ye with this Christmas scheme of yers, Miss Reynolds.” His green eyes flashed teasingly, and Thea couldn’t help but smile.

“Oh?”

“One of the chambers below Clarissa’s is used for storage,” Edmund said. “If memory serves, we have a few decorations—paper chains and such—left over from our childhood tucked in that room. I believe there is a fine set of silver fit for a Christmas feast somewhere in there as well.”

Lady Clarissa lifted her dark head, her gaze bright. “Aye,” she said. “I remember.”

Edmund rose and excused himself with a smile for his sister and a warm, lingering look for Thea. Lady Clarissa rose as well, already eagerly hurrying toward the north tower stairs. Thea followed, her steps light as she looked forward to the day’s activities.

* * *

By midday, both Thea and Lady Clarissa were covered in dust and half-buried amongst the storage chamber’s contents. Several pieces of furniture, including a three-legged chair and a divan that needed to be reupholstered, took up one side of the room. A half-dozen trunks filled most of the remaining space. The contents of four of the trunks lay spread on the floor.

They’d already uncovered the silver. Trays, cutlery, and even ornate goblets that looked more than a century old glinted dully in the chamber’s dusty, dim light. Now Thea and Lady Clarissa continued on for the fun of it, like two explorers discovering a new land inside each trunk.

“Let’s try this one,” Thea said, turning to the second to last trunk. She wiped a wisp of hair out of her face with the back of her dust-covered hand.

Clarissa settled before the trunk in a pool of blue skirts. Just as she reached for the lid, a soft cough came from the doorway.

Thea looked up to find Edmund leaning against the doorframe, his muscular arms crossed over his chest and an easy smile on his face. He was dressed as he’d been that first night, presumably because he’d just returned from his ride to the crofts.

Thea’s breath hitched and stuck in her throat. She adored him most this way, not confined by his English-style clothes, but looking part-wild and all male confidence in his Scottish garb.

She couldn’t stop her gaze from sliding over him. His boots still bore a few clumps of rapidly melting snow. The gap between the tops of his boots and the hem of his green and blue kilt revealed a fascinating glimpse of his bare knees and the scantest view of the corded muscle of his lower thigh.

He wore a wide leather belt from which a bag—a sporran, she thought it was called—dangled. Above that, his simple dark coat lay unbuttoned over an off-white shirt, which was open at the neck.

When she at last met his gaze, heat flooded her face, for the keen look in his forest-colored eyes told her he knew exactly what she felt when she looked at him—and that he felt the same.

“I thought I’d come see what trouble the two of ye have gotten into,” he said, shifting to lean on the other side of the doorframe.

“Was all well at the crofts?” Thea said, willing her voice to be even and polite despite the desire tightening her throat and melting her insides.

“Aye,” Edmund replied. “Better than well. I’ve met with all the families now. Seeing them only confirms what I’ve found so far in the papers on my desk. Relocating the people of Kinfallon is no’ only cruel, but it is also—blessedly—unnecessary. The estate has gotten by, even without my attention. There are still a few more matters of business to attend to, but I am more confident than ever that I can reject Selfridge’s scheme.”

“Oh,” Thea breathed. “That is wonderful ne—”

The moment was shattered by a sharp cry from Lady Clarissa.

Thea spun to find the woman leaning over the now-open trunk, her dark eyes wide and fixed on what lay inside.

As one, Thea and Edmund went to her side and knelt.

“What is it, Lady Clarissa?” Thea asked gently, but when her eyes followed the woman’s gaze, she had her answer.

Inside the trunk lay a few childish attempts at cross-stitch, several folded girls’ dresses—and a dozen figurines. Some were rag dolls, their eyes sewn-on buttons. Others were wooden, like the one lying at Lady Clarissa’s side. And there were a few painted nutcrackers as well, all slightly different, but made in the same style as the one Lady Clarissa called John.

“Margaret,” Lady Clarissa breathed, reaching out a shaky hand toward one of the dolls. Her voice broke on another moan.

Abruptly, she jerked to her feet and bolted from the room, her sobs echoing through the stone stairwell as she fled to her chamber.

Thea sat stunned, her heart twisting painfully.

“Do these…do these belong to Margaret?” she whispered, tilting her head toward the dresses and dolls.

“Nay,” Edmund replied, his voice low and tight. “All of Margaret’s things burned. These were Clarissa’s, when she was a wee bairn. She was saving them for Margaret until the lass was old enough. But…but Margaret was only a babe of one year when she died in the fire.”

Tears burned up Thea’s throat and into her eyes. “I had no idea she was so young.”

“Aye. She would be three now—likely already playing with one of these dolls or nutcrackers. They always pleased Clarissa as a young lass. She loved to collect them, and our parents indulged her.”

Edmund let his dark head sink into one of his hands, his eyes sheened with emotion as he stared blankly into the trunk.

“I’ll go to her and see what comfort I can give,” Thea said, scooping up the doll and nutcracker that Lady Clarissa had left behind.

“Thank ye,” Edmund murmured.

Thea hurried out of the storage chamber and up the spiraling stairs toward Lady Clarissa’s room. A rhythmic thumping and an unbroken low wail grew louder as Thea reached the door.

She pushed into the chamber to find the mattress once again dragged from the bedframe. Lady Clarissa sat in the middle of the empty frame, clutching one of the wooden posters and slowly banging her head into it. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, her mouth slack as she moaned.

“Lady Clarissa,” Thea said gently. “Please, do not harm yourself.” She crouched opposite the woman and slid a hand between the poster and her forehead. Lady Clarissa drove her forehead into the back of Thea’s hand a few times before she slowed in her rocking.

“I w-want Margaret,” she whimpered. “I want Margaret. And John. I want John.”

Thea lifted the two figurines in her hand and extended them to Lady Clarissa.

But when the woman’s gaze focused on them, her eyes filled with agony and rage. “Nay!” she screamed, snatching both the doll and the nutcracker. She raised them over her head. “I want the real Margaret! I want the real John!”

Lady Clarissa flung both figurines away. The doll landed harmlessly on the mattress lying askew on the floor, but the nutcracker hit the stone wall with a crack before bouncing to the ground, his jaw lying splintered beside him.

Realizing what she’d just done, Lady Clarissa sucked in a sharp breath, then crumpled to the floor as if she, too, were a broken doll. Hard sobs racked her body, making her hunched shoulders lurch and shake.

“Clarissa,” Thea murmured, placing a gentle hand on her back.

Lady Clarissa tensed and shied away from Thea’s touch. “Dinnae say it is all right,” she mumbled through her tear-thickened throat. “Dinnae say that I’ll be fine, that I must let go.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Thea replied, “because everything is not all right.”

Lady Clarissa stilled, lifting her head and fixing Thea with a guarded look.

“At least at the moment things are not all right,” Thea went on. “You are in pain. You’ve experienced a terrible loss. And anyone who tells you that you must let it go—that you must let them go—”

Realization hit Thea like a blow to the chest. Good God, the others—the doctor, the companions, the nursemaids Edmund had hired…they likely had told Lady Clarissa just that. Get over it. All will be well. You must simply let go—of your sadness, of the dolls, of your husband, of your child.

Thea pulled in a breath, holding her tears of outrage and grief on Lady Clarissa’s behalf at bay. The woman needed her to be strong now.

“Has no one ever told you that it is all right to simply hurt?” she asked, slowly circling her hand over Clarissa’s taut back. “That you are allowed to feel?”

Lady Clarissa didn’t speak, but the wave of tears that broke over her was answer enough.

They sat like that for a long time—long enough for the light to fade in the chamber and for Lady Clarissa’s voice to turn ragged with her sobs. All the while, Thea stayed with her, rubbing her back and murmuring nonsense in an attempt to comfort her.

When at last Lady Clarissa’s weeping turned to hiccups, Thea lifted her head and rolled the stiffness from her neck. Her gaze landed on Edmund, who stood like a statue in the doorway, his eyes glazed with emotion.

As if hesitant to break the spell cast over the chamber, he cautiously stepped inside. But instead of going straight for his sister, he moved to where the nutcracker and its small wooden jaw lay.

“I can fix it,” he said, lifting the nutcracker and the broken jaw piece. “Make him good as new. Would ye like that, Clarissa?”

Lady Clarissa blinked bleary red eyes at him, then slowly nodded.

“Aye,” she rasped, her voice thin and raw. Slowly, she crawled over the wooden bedframe and onto the mattress. She curled up, pulling a blanket over herself as she did, and fell asleep almost immediately.

“She’s exhausted,” Thea whispered to Edmund, longing to seek her own bed.

Edmund nodded, then tilted his head toward the door, indicating that they should leave her to sleep.

They made their way in silence down the stairs, but Thea hesitated at the bottom.

“Can you really fix the nutcracker?”

“Aye,” Edmund said, lifting the broken jaw and inspecting it for a moment. He tucked the little piece of wood in his coat pocket, clutching the broken nutcracker in one hand.

When his eyes captured hers, she saw a cavernous well of sadness in their green depths.

“Will she be all right?”

Thea knew he didn’t just mean tonight. He was asking if his sister would always suffer so greatly.

“I cannae help but fear,” he continued quietly, “that I have made things worse for her. If I hadnae hired all those bloody fools who were so cruel and callous toward her, perhaps Clarissa—”

“Edmund,” Thea interrupted. “You hired them because you hoped they’d help your sister. And when they didn’t, you sent them away.”

“Aye, but even I was a damned fool at times. I kept trying to push her out of her grief, instead of letting her feel it.”

“You did all that you knew how to. She knows you love her.” Thea drew in a breath. “And as to her wellbeing…I don’t know if she will get any better,” she said honestly, “but I think she will be all right, even still.”

“Thanks to ye,” Edmund murmured.

She looked up into his eyes, but something above his head caught her attention. She nearly giggled with a mixture of delirium and exhausted astonishment at what she saw.

When Edmund followed her gaze, he gave a weak chuckle. They stood directly under one of the clumps of mistletoe she’d hung earlier in the week.

He raised a dark eyebrow at her in a silent question. She nodded, feeling a foolish grin curving her lips. But Edmund’s mirth fell away as he stared down at her. His eyes turned liquid and dark with hunger—hunger for her.

This time when he kissed her, it wasn’t the gentle, slow brushing of lips they’d shared under the pine tree. No, this kiss was demanding, urgent—and sent warmth instantly pooling low in her belly.

His body connected with hers, but he didn’t stop there. He continued to move forward until he pinned her against the stones lining the stairwell entrance.

When his tongue found hers, a soft moan rose in her throat at the velvet heat. She looped her arms around his neck, savoring his silky hair, pulling him impossibly closer.

Abruptly, he jerked back, his breath ragged and his eyes clouded with lust.

“Go on,” he rasped, nodding toward the south tower stairs where her chamber lay. “Before I forget myself. I’ll see ye tomorrow morning.”

Slowly, he took a step back, freeing her from the wall. Thea’s face was hot—her whole body felt as if it were aflame—but she didn’t care. She met his scorching gaze for a long moment, letting him see just how he affected her, before turning at last and walking on quiet feet toward the opposite stairs.

Thea let a private smile touch her lips as she went. She could no longer deny what grew in her heart. Love. Love for this place, love for Edmund’s family—and love for him.

As she took the stairs to her chamber, that thought warmed her even more than Edmund’s kiss.