Free Under The Mistletoe by Mary Balogh Page A

thing. I do not believe it. We did everything wrong from the start, did we not? We allowed this marriage to be arranged for us. There was nothing too wrong in that—it happens all the time. But we made no attempt to make it our own marriage. We allowed awkwardness and perhaps some resentment to keep us almost silent with each other. And then my fatherdied and everything fell to pieces. It was all my fault. I should have persevered. I should have been more patient, gentler with you. I should have tried to talk with you.”
    Again, she had heard only one thing, her face still buried in her pillow. My dearest. He had called her my dearest. No one, in her whole life, had ever called her by any endearment, except the shortened form of her name—Lizzie.
    â€œIs it too late for us?” he asked her. “Is there any chance of making a workable marriage of this one we are in together?”
    She shrugged her shoulders but said nothing. She did not trust her voice yet.
    â€œHow have you thought of me all year?” he asked her. “I have thought of you as a beautiful, unattainable, aristocratic icicle. You cannot have thought of me in any more flattering terms.”
    â€œMorose,” she said into her pillow. “Dour, humorless. Wondrously handsome.”
    â€œAm I still all those things?” he asked after a short pause.
    â€œYou are still wondrously handsome,” she said.
    â€œI have assumed,” he said, “that you despise me for marrying social position.”
    She turned her face out of the pillow, though she did not look at him.
    â€œI have assumed,” she said, “that you despise me for marrying money.”
    â€œLord God,” he said after another pause, “you would think that two reasonably intelligent adults who happen to be married to each other would have found a moment in which to talk to each other in a whole year, would you not?”
    â€œYes,” she said.
    He sat there looking down at her for a while. She lay still and did not look directly at him. She felt that a great deal had already been said. But what, really, had changed?
    He got to his feet suddenly and turned to slap her lightly on one buttock.
    â€œGet up,” he said, his voice brisk and cheerful. “Get dressed.”
    â€œPass me my nightgown, then,” she said. He had dropped it over the other side of the bed.
    â€œ Dressed, ” he said with more emphasis. “Put on your warmest clothes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWe are going out,” he said.
    â€œ Out? ” She stared at him with wide eyes. “Why?”
    â€œWho knows why?” He looked down at her and grinned—her stomach turned a complete somersault inside her, she would swear. “We are going to talk. Perhaps we will build a snowman. Or make snow angels. That would be appropriate for the occasion, would it not?”
    â€œThe doors are all bolted,” she said foolishly. “It is almost midnight.”
    He said nothing. He merely continued to look down at her and grin at her.
    He was mad. Wondrously, gloriously mad.
    Elizabeth laughed.
    â€œYou are mad,” she said.
    â€œYou see?” He pointed a finger at her. “That is something you have not known about me all year. There is a great deal more. And I have not known that you could possibly laugh at the prospect of being dragged outside on a cold, snowy night in order to make snow angels. I daresay there is a great deal I do not know of you. I am going out. Are you coming with me or are you not?”
    â€œI am coming,” she said, and laughed again.
    â€œI’ll be back here in five minutes,” he told her, and he strode to the door and left the room without a backward glance.
    Elizabeth gazed after him and laughed again.
    And jumped out of bed.
    Five minutes! Never let it be said that she had kept him waiting.
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    â€œYou lie down on your back,” he explained, “and spread out your arms and