Snowy Night with a Stranger by Jane Feather

Author:Jane Feather [Feather, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2008-07-21T05:00:00+00:00

Dear Charlotte,

Be careful, my dear. One day when you least expect it, I may indeed show up on your doorstep and reveal myself to be nothing at all as you imagine.

Your cousin,

Michael

Over the next two days, Ellie noticed that she and Lord Thorncliff had muddled their way through to a sort of truce. He seemed less prickly. She couldn’t attribute it to their decorating, because Charlie insisted that his lordship had called that “Christmas humbuggery.” The man had said something similar about the caroling when he’d rescued them. Clearly he had a peculiar dislike of the season.

Yet he’d not only tolerated their efforts, but was trying to be friendly in his own fashion. Although he spent his days elsewhere while she and the children explored his extensive grounds, he joined them for dinner at night. He even sat with them afterward in the parlor with the walls painted to resemble walnut paneling. He would go through the newspapers, or watch the children play charades, or listen to her read aloud from Byron’s The Siege of Corinth. Sometimes he actually read to the children himself.

But the camaraderie ended after she brought the children up to bed. Then he disappeared, and they reverted to being strangers again. Even if she returned to the parlor, he didn’t. Sometimes, as she read alone or sat with Aunt Alys in her room, she wondered if she’d imagined their amazing kiss.

On their fourth night at Thorncliff Hall, with Christmas Eve coming in two days, the children suggested that they play snapdragon.

“Are you mad?” his lordship said. “It’s out of the question. There will be no burning bowls of brandy in my house.”

“It’s not that bad, you know,” she put in, though his response didn’t surprise her. “If you take the proper precautions—”

“The best precaution is not to play it at all. Such humbuggery gets people killed.”

“Snapdragon?” Percy said skeptically. “It’s but a parlor game, sir. Our mother lets us play it every year.”

“Then your mother is a fool.” When the children bristled at that, he scowled and rose to his feet. “Forgive me, I’m not fit company this evening.”

And with that abrupt pronouncement, he left.

What on earth? She would have thought that a man who experimented with explosives would find snapdragon harmless, if not boring. It certainly didn’t get people killed. That was ridiculous!

As she stared after him, Percy turned to her. “Can we play it now?”

“No, indeed. It would be rude to go behind his lordship’s back in his own house.”

That ended the discussion. But later, after the children were tucked in and Ellie sat on her aunt’s bed relating the day’s events, that last encounter stuck in her mind. She wanted to understand why he was so prickly and unpredictable.

So she asked her aunt a question she’d been reluctant to voice until now, having not wanted to alarm Aunt Alys unnecessarily. “Have you ever heard of a gentleman called ‘the Black Baron’?”

Her aunt let out a heavy sigh. “I wondered how long it would take for you to hear of our host’s reputation.

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