A Cottage Christmas by EmmaLee McCrickett

Author:EmmaLee McCrickett [McCrickett, EmmaLee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Holiday
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Somewhere deep in the house one of the grandfather clocks chimed, and a moment later, nearer, another one echoed. It was hard to tell with both going at once, but it seemed to be two o’clock in the morning. Cornelia sighed in the darkness, propped up on several downy pillows. Her injured right shoulder had been tended by the local doctor. She had slept for some time, exhausted from the harrowing events, but the pain had wakened her. She lay still, hearing both clocks’ chiming come to staggered halts. The house was much too silent. She would never get back to sleep now, certainly not with the deep ache in her shoulder. Easing herself up with her good arm—which was achy enough from being tugged on by Geoffrey—she stood shakily. Her toes groped for her satin quilted slippers and she reached for her soft shawl where she had left it at the foot of the bed. Doing her best to arranged it one-handed she slipped out into the hall and made her way down its dimly lit length, stepping in pools of light from the lamps.

She came soon enough to the door she wanted—the Sea Room. Opening it, she slipped inside and leaning against the closed door, sighed. She always found the room the most peaceful of any in the house. The white-sheet-covered furniture rose before her in great white lumps, looking very much like the snowdrifts the sleigh had skirted over earlier. Moonlight shone through the cracks of the floor to ceiling shutters, testament to the ending storm. The room was icy cold, winter chill sneaking through the cracks with the moonlight.

Crossing between covered plant urns and high-backed sofas, Cornelia came to the shutters and pressed an eye to one of the cracks between two slats of wood. Indeed it had stopped snowing as heavily, the moon able to appear between sparse clouds. Flakes still fell, drifting into the steely waves far below. The chill of the room was numbing, dulling the pain in her shoulder some. She flexed her cold fingers, remembering them to have been just as cold in the sleigh, without a glove, and the warmth of Geoffrey’s after he had slid it on her hand.

“You should be in bed.”

Cornelia whipped around, her heart thrumming in her throat nearly as violently as when she had hung over the edge of the cliff. At the shadowy back of the room Geoffrey sat on a wicker chair, a bottle of some amber liquor sitting open on the inlaid table beside him, with a short, empty glass. His collar and cuffs were undone, his vest hanging open. He had to be freezing in just his shirtsleeves, but she realized the liquor must be winning that fight. A white rectangle of bandage lay over his right eyebrow and beneath it his eyes looked steadily—surprisingly steadily, given the low level of alcohol remaining in the bottle—at her face.

Mindful of being only in her linen nightgown, Cornelia clutched her shawl tighter and cleared her throat.

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