One Candlelit Christmas by Burrows Annie & Justiss Julia & Brisbin Terri

Author:Burrows, Annie & Justiss, Julia & Brisbin, Terri [Burrows, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: First Loves, Christmas Stories, Fiction, Romance, Fiction - Romance, Christian, Harlequin Historical, Single Women, Holidays, Romance: Historical, Anthologies & Literature Collections, Short Stories, Historical Romance, Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Romance - Historical, United States, American, Historical, Families, Love Stories, American Light Romantic Fiction, Anthologies, England, Series, Single Mothers, General, American Historical Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 9780373295197
Publisher: Harlequin Historical
Published: 2008-11-02T07:00:00+00:00

Dusk was falling before she returned. Carleton had spent the rest of the afternoon before the fire, feeding it from the supply of logs that sat in a basket on the hearth, feeling thoroughly wretched. The room in which he had previously felt so secure now resonated with echoes of their quarrel.

Even the way Helena was banging pots about in the kitchen spoke of shattered vows and bitter regrets.

Once he heard the clatter of boots on the garden path that presaged the homecoming of his son. His heart sped up, and a yearning sensation twisted in his gut. Last time the boy had been in the cottage he had come in here, asked him to stay and be his father.

Now that he knew he really was his father, he did not even deign to poke his head round the door to see how he fared.

Carleton lowered his head to his hands. The boy was his. He had no doubts on that score any longer. Harry had seen it too, earlier, when they had been eavesdropping on Peregrine’s plans to dispose of him. Had looked at him with disgust and run off.

He had a son who hated him.

‘My God, Helena, what have you done?’ he groaned.

She might not have had the opportunity to poison his soup just yet, but she had spent the last six years poisoning his son’s mind against him.

Not that he could entirely blame her, he supposed. Not now he accepted that his recurrent dream was no dream at all, but a hazy memory that had kept on trying to break through. He felt outraged even now to think of the ease with which she’d seduced him into her bed, when he’d never had any intention of consummating the marriage. No wonder he’d fled the scene and attempted to blot it out in alcohol. He would have been furious at her attempt to curtail his liberty.

Liberty! A bitter laugh escaped his lips. Only a man who had spent years as a prisoner of war could know what loss of liberty was really like.

He rubbed at the deep furrows ridging his forehead. And yet far from living it up at Lambourne Hall, as he had been imagining, Helena had been languishing on the verge of destitution herself. A condition she had spent years blaming him for, since she seemed to believe he had deliberately blackened her name and then left her penniless.

Hearing her light tread in the passage, he sat up straighter, his eyes fixed upon the door. She avoided looking directly at him as she marched across the room. The tray went down on the table with a slap that sent soup slopping over the rim of the bowl and wetting the handle of the spoon.

‘Broth again?’ he asked. She seemed to have a never-ending supply of it.

She glared at him. ‘That is the last of it, and it is mostly vegetables now. I will have to kill another chicken tomorrow if you want meat.’

‘You look,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘as though it would give you a great deal of pleasure to kill something.

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