You, he thought, and shuddered with longing.
You that I wanted. You I’ve been searching for all of my life.
Aimée inhaled deeply, breathing in the peace of the snowy wood, holding it inside her. Away from the house, she could exist purely in the moment, absorb the naked beauty of the trees and the little mist hanging over the snow; the song of a blackbird hanging on the cool raw air; the prickly green leaves and glowing red berries clustered just beyond her grasp. Tempting. Taunting. Out of reach.
Like Lucien.
The holly leaves pressed against her breast, a hundred tiny pinpricks to counter the sting at her heart. The berries blurred.
She blinked fiercely. She would not mope like a child crying for the moon. Perhaps she would never have the things that she’d once accepted as her birthright, beaux and châteaux and freedom to follow her heart and inclinations. There would still be opportunities for satisfaction. There could still be moments of joy.
All she had to do was find the courage and determination to reach for them.
Gripping her little pruning knife, she stood on tiptoe to slice through the holly branch.
Snow crunched behind her. Someone walking over the ice.
She teetered. Turned. Her heart leaped in recognition and delight.
C’est toi.
“Oh,” she said softly, foolishly. “It’s you.”
You that I wanted. You I’ve been waiting for all of my life.
Lucien left the cover of the trees and strolled forward, his thick gold hair drawing all the brightness of the day. “Allow me.”
He reached over her head, his warmth pressing her back into the bushes, his chest brushing her br**sts. He smelled of wool and sweat and sandalwood, earthy and exotic. His arms were hard and long.
She shivered as he stretched above her, a subtle pressure, a shift of muscles. She heard the rustle of leaves, felt their tiny barbs against her back and him, solid and male against her front.
The branch cracked and broke off in his hand.
Lucien eased away. “For you.” His voice was husky.
He was still close, so close, his hair a disordered halo around his face, his emerald green eyes intent. Something quivered in her belly like a plucked harp string, vibrating like music all along her bones. Her throat ached with longing.
She swallowed.
So did he. She watched the movement of his throat against his starched white collar.
“Where are the servants to help you?” he asked.
Her brain scrambled for words. “I sent them away. Ahead. To cut the log for the Christmas fire.”
In case he came for her.
Her answer trembled between them. They would not be interrupted this time.
She looked up, her mouth dry.
“There you are!” Julia’s voice shattered the bright crystal air. She bustled through the trees, bouncing and breathless, pink-cheeked with cold. Her glance darted from Lucien to Aimée. “I couldn’t imagine what could drag you from the house so early.”
“Some of us were out earlier,” Tom Whitmore remarked beside her.
Julia tossed her head. “Country hours,” she said with scorn.
“You’re a country girl,” he pointed out. “Or you were before Town spoiled you.”
“Your mama asked me to collect decorations for the ballroom,” Aimée said before Julia could snap at him again. She held out the bunch of holly berries. “Aren’t they pretty?”
“I am not spoiled,” Julia declared. “Take it back.”
“Spoiled.” Tom nodded. “And bossy.”
Lucien narrowed his eyes.
“They grew up together,” Aimée explained in an undertone. “Tom and his sisters and Julia.”
He raised his brows. “Not you?”
“At first. When I first came.” The memory made her smile.
Despite being the only boy—or perhaps because of it—Tom had always been dragged into his sisters’ games to play the prince or highwayman. In return, he’d taught the girls to spit and to skip stones and to swim.
“And then?” Lucien inquired.
Lady Basing had caught the girls sneaking into the house one summer afternoon, hair wet, shifts bundled under their arms.
Aimée’s smile faded. She had been whipped and confined to her room for her bad influence on her younger cousin. And Julia and Tom’s childhood friendship had been quashed by chaperoned visits and calculated courtships and the success of Julia’s London season.
“And then . . .” Aimée shrugged. “We could not play together as children anymore.”
Julia stooped suddenly for a handful of snow and smashed it against Tom’s waistcoat.
“They seem to have no trouble taking up where they left off,” Lucien observed dryly.
She snuck a look at his face. He did not sound jealous.
“It is the woods,” she offered, to appease any pang he might be feeling. They had all strayed away from their customary roles and paths this morning, into the woods, into a dream, into a fairy tale. “We played here.”
Tom lobbed a snowball, spattering the bright blue of Julia’s pelisse with white. She shrieked and returned fire.
“Shall we leave them to make up for lost time?” Lucien inquired.
He looked at her, an indefinable glint in his green eyes, an expectant curve to his mouth.
Anticipation quickened Aimée’s heartbeat. She observed the snow battle now raging between Tom and Julia. Would her cousin even notice if they slipped away? Would she care?
That was the risk of the woods. Once you had left the accustomed paths behind, could you ever go back?
“You wanted to speak with me,” Lucien reminded her. “Alone.”
She flushed deeply. “Yes, of course.”
But once they were strolling among the trees, she was at a loss how to begin. Lucien adjusted his long stride to hers, apparently in no hurry to break the silence between them. Mist wreathed the trunks. Above the bare black branches, the sky was cloudless, hazy, tinged with blue. The only sounds were their footsteps and Julia’s fading laughter. The hush, the solitude, the stark beauty of the snowy forest wrapped them in intimacy.
Aimée cleared her throat. “Did you play in the woods when you were a child?”
“No.” His tone did not invite further questions.
He was the illegitimate son of an English nobleman, she reminded herself. She had no notion who his mother might have been. Perhaps his memories of childhood were not happy ones. “How old were you when you went to live with . . .” Your father. “The Earl of Amherst?”