Candle in the Snow Read online

  Candle in the Snow

  Olivia Drake

  This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Candle in the Snow

  Copyright © 1992 by Barbara Dawson Smith

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  ISBN: 9781641970662

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  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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  Contents

  1. CANDLE IN THE SNOW

  Also by Olivia Drake

  About the Author

  CANDLE IN THE SNOW

  Wiltshire, England December 1855

  “Chelsea!”

  The distant voice echoed from her past. Heart leaping, Chelsea Devlin clutched the brown paper parcel tight against her gray wool mantle. Bracings a hand on the stone market cross, she swung sharply and scanned the street. Sunshine glistened on the shop windows. The frosty Saturday in early December rang with the jangle of harness and the clopping of hooves as the townfolk of Rossbury bustled past, tradesmen with mufflers framing their reddened cheeks and housewives hastening about their daily errands. Across the green a trio of boys teased a girl walking her dog.

  The scene looked commonplace, nothing out of the ordinary.

  The tension prickling her skin eased. It couldn’t have been him, Chelsea reasoned. She’d imagined that deep, resonant tone. The snug velvet bonnet must have addled her hearing. Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she resumed her progress toward Miss Max-well’s Academy for Young Ladies, beyond the outskirts of the village.

  “Chelsea, wait!” the voice called again, closer this time.

  She froze for a single protracted moment; then with the sluggishness of shock, she pivoted. The midday brightness dazzled her eyes and lit the cramped, honey-hued buildings of High Street. Only half- heeding the inquisitive glances aimed her way, she squinted frantically at the passersby.

  Then she saw him.

  Tall, lean, and self-assured, he elbowed through the throng of shoppers. Sunlight kissed his broad shoulders, the thatch of coal-black hair, the rakish angles of his face, and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Familiar eyes that had once sparkled with laughter and darkened with passion.

  He stopped in front of her. The parcel slipped from Chelsea’s nerveless fingers and tumbled to a grassy patch beside the road. The world tilted giddily; her gloved hands whisked to her mouth.

  “Sean?” she said in a strangled whisper. “Oh, dear God, Sean!”

  He smiled, his teeth a white flash against healthy bronzed skin. His hands were perched at the waist of a fine navy overcoat which gaped open as if welcoming the wintry weather. “Aye, love,” he murmured, “ ‘tis your Sean.”

  She struggled to grasp the inconceivable. Her husband, alive and well, standing before her! A tumult of emotion burst from her stunned heart: disbelief and joy and panic. He couldn’t be here, he couldn’t be! Not when she’d finally reconciled herself to his death and made plans for the future...

  His smile wavered. Stepping closer, Sean grasped her shoulders. “Faith, Chelsea,” he said, the words raspy with emotion. “Is this how you welcome your prodigal husband home?”

  Her tongue felt tied in knots. Fleetingly she noticed that the lilting caress of his voice had acquired an intriguing hint of an American accent. She could only shake her head and gaze at him in wonder.

  With abrupt impatience, he snatched up her parcel. Then he tugged at her arm. Feeling as wooden as a Punch-and-Judy puppet, she let him lead her into the shadows of an alley between two shops.

  “Let me show you the homecoming I’ve long fancied,” he said.

  Setting down the parcel and pressing her against the rough stone wall, Sean lowered his mouth to hers.

  No, her mind cried out, even as her body softened against his hard chest and her eyes drifted shut. He pushed off her bonnet, so that it dangled by its velvet strings, and worked his supple fingers into her prim blonde bun. Her reason scattered before a torrid wind of rapture. Long lonely years flashed away as she drank in his astonishing presence, breathed the outdoors scent of his skin, absorbed the firm familiarity of his embrace. Sean... her first love. Sean... the man who had introduced her to the mysteries of passion and the bliss of love. Tears pricked her eyelids. How many desolate nights had she dreamed of such a moment, to lose herself in his arms again, to relive the precious brevity of their youthful marriage?

  At last he lifted his head. “Wood sprite,” he said, his voice breaking, his hand stroking her cheek. “Forgive me for staying away so long. Forgive me for ever leaving you.”

  Her mind danced from the long-ago memory of their final, bitter argument. In a daze, she noted the subtle tracery of lines around his eyes and mouth, lines that had deepened during six years of separation. He was still the handsomest man she’d ever seen. No longer a youth, he looked hardened by adventure and more roguish than ever.

  She couldn’t keep from laying a gloved finger against the cleft in his chin, as she’d done a hundred times before. “Sean... Sean. I thought you were dead.”

  His arms bracketed her; his black brows clashed into a frown. “Didn’t your agent report back to you?”

  Your agent. Like a blast of winter air, alarm iced her giddy joy. She swallowed. “Yes. He said you’d perished in a landslide in California.”

  Chuckling, Sean shook his head. “I wasn’t even working my claim at the time. You must have hired a bletherin opportunist who’d lie to gain his fee.”

  “I didn’t...” Chelsea gulped back a hazardous explanation.

  He brushed his lips over her temple, his breath warming her cold skin. “Pleased I was to hear you tried to find me, love. For so long I feared you were ashamed of me, that you never wanted to see me again. But, bless Saint Brenden, you really did care whether I lived or died.”

  His husky words cut deeply into Chelsea’s soul. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Dear Lord, she thought. Oh, dear Lord, what can I say to that?

  “We’ll start anew,” he went on, anointing her forehead with kisses. “ ‘Twill be better this time. We’ve both had a chance to grow up, to realize how much we need each other. I can provide for you at last, Chelsea. I can give you everything you’ve ever fancied. I love you—”

  “No!” Wrenching away, she sucked air into her paralyzed lungs. Once she had dreamed of hearing his tender declaration again, but no more. Reality smacked her like a frozen fist, and she shivered. What had she been thinking, to kiss him like that?

  “You’re assuming too much, Sean. You can’t simply appear after so many years without a word, and expect me to welcome you with open arms.”

  He propped a hand on his hip, drawing back his natty braided coat. “Seems you did just that. And ‘twas a fine welcome, indeed, m’ love.”

  His knowing expression infuriated her. The pain she’d suffered over his callous desertion struck with staggering force. She raised her chin. “You haven’t changed at all, Sean Devlin. You still think you can sail through life, relying on charm and wi
t. Unfortunately for you, I’ve learned that a woman requires much more from a husband.”

  He leaned closer until their eyes were level. “Such as?”

  “A steady provider. A respectable man who won’t run away on a whim. Not a laggard who squanders his life chasing rainbows.”

  “And just supposing there’s a pot of gold sitting at the end of that rainbow?”

  “A pot of gold more important than me?” She scoured her hair into a proper twist at the back of her head. “You and your ridiculous Irish folklore. Imagine, a grown man believing in leprechauns and banshees.”

  He cocked a black brow. “You can’t take pleasure in fanciful tales anymore, can you, love? Old Lady Quincy trained you well... too well.”

  “My guardian preferred me to read the classics, and rightly so. Perhaps that’s something a man of your background can never understand.”

  The cruel insult hung like a storm cloud between them. Suddenly remorseful, Chelsea yearned to call it back.

  A faint bitterness shadowed the blue brilliance of his eyes. “I couldn’t help my lack of schooling,” he murmured. “We were both orphans, but I never had the advantages you did.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...” What did she mean? Her head ached; all level thinking seemed to have flown away. One painful truth remained: as always, she and Sean were arguing. They couldn’t hold a sensible conversation without hurting each other. They’d known only one way to settle their strife: in bed. She was far better suited to a man like—

  Panic punctured her anew. With shaky hands, she rammed the bonnet atop her head. “It’s six years too late for amends and sweet talk from you, Sean. I’ve made a life of my own—I’m an English instructress at Miss Maxwell’s Academy for Young Ladies.”

  He frowned. “A schoolmarm?”

  “And a happy one,” she stated. “So you see, you can cease worrying about my welfare and go back to America. No one need ever know you came here.”

  Sean’s features went dark. “So- you’re saying you didn’t want me to come back? Then why did you send your agent asking after m’ whereabouts?”

  “I...” Her insides clenched into a wretched ball. “I wanted only to learn what had happened to you,” she hedged. “To find out if I was a wife... or a widow.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw; his gaze swept her sedate gown of claret wool, the mantle of gray merino. “So you learned of my supposed death. Yet you aren’t in mourning.”

  “When I moved here from London, people assumed I was a widow. I knew you’d never come back, so I let them go on thinking so. I had to get on with my life, you see.” Knowing she was babbling, she picked up her parcel and edged toward the roadway.

  Sean followed. “And why,” he asked in a razor-edged tone, “did you feel the sudden need to prove your marital status?”

  She wasn’t about to answer that question so near a busy street. Her hotheaded husband might very well make a scene.

  “What are you hiding, Chelsea, m’ love?”

  Her boots slipped on the cobbles and she clutched at the limestone wall. Too late she saw the trap she’d set for herself. Concentration furrowed his brow and his breath fogged the frosty air. His eyes had held such resolution once before, when he’d declared his intent to seek his fortune in the goldfields of America... alone if necessary.

  “Tell me, Chelsea,” he commanded again.

  He gripped her arm none too gently; an unreasoning excitement quivered over her skin. She clasped the parcel like a shield against her breasts, yet her husband’s crisp scent-embraced her like a beloved friend. A pang of longing squeezed her abdomen as tightly as the fingers holding her arm. Her husband. Yet she scarcely recognized this hard-eyed stranger, who seemed bent on plunging her plans into disaster.

  Sudden anger heated the cold ashes of her heart. Why should she guard the truth? Unveiling the facts might drive him away forever.

  “I’ll tell you, then, since you’re so keen on knowing. I’m affianced to a gentleman. We’re to marry come summer.”

  Sean stood perfectly still. Blankness descended over his handsome features, and apart from the faint tensing of his fingers, she might have thought he hadn’t heard her. Odd, he didn’t look at all surprised...

  “What gentleman?” he demanded.

  She hesitated. How could she lay her fiance open to Sean’s wrath? Yet, dear God, her husband must exit her life before anyone discovered his existence.

  “Tell me,” he warned, “else I’ll ask around the village.”

  She forced out the name. “Sir Basil Spottsworth.”

  “ ‘Tis a shame for Sir Basil,” he said flatly. “And for you. ‘Tis sorry I am to smash your dream of marrying into the gentry, m’ love, but bigamy is against the law.”

  “I’ll seek a divorce.”

  “You’ll have to prove adultery. And are you fancying his lordship would stand by you through a sordid trial?”

  Brutal reality crushed Chelsea. Tears of fury and frustration stung her eyes. Blindly she struck at his chest with the hard edge of her parcel. The jarring contact with solid flesh shot frissons of pain up her arms and into her heart.

  “Why did you have to come back, Sean?” she said, sobbing. “Didn’t you do enough damage to me six years ago?”

  “Chelsea...”

  His voice was tender, contrite, ripe with yearning and the remembrances of days gone by. Through the blur of moisture she saw his dark head loom closer. She knew he meant to kiss away her resistance, just as he’d always done. And with fatal alarm she feared she might succumb.

  “Stay away from me!” she snapped. “I despise you, Sean Devlin. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  Yanking free, she dashed into the cold sunshine and hastened along the street, driven by the agonizing need for escape. She saw the village as if through a rain-washed window. Her legs felt numb; her insides ached. Frosty air seared her lungs. She was vaguely aware of startled looks from the passersby, but she didn’t care. A single thought pounded through her head: Sean Devlin had hurt her once already. She wouldn’t let him do so again.

  At the outskirts of the village, someone caught her arm. Blinking, Chelsea looked down at the white- gloved hand detaining her, then followed the black sleeve up to a narrow face with pinched lips and a perpetual grimace. A plain bonnet framed the stark features.

  Chelsea’s heart plunged to the paving stones. “Miss Maxwell!”

  “Mrs. Devlin.” The headmistress peered closely at Chelsea. “You look a fright. Is something wrong?”

  Only then did Chelsea realize what a sight she must have made, barreling along like a madwoman, with tears streaking her face. Mortified, she groped inside her pocket for a handkerchief and dried her eyes. “No. No, I’m perfectly fine now.”

  Miss Maxwell leaned on the handle of her rolled umbrella. “I got quite a different impression, as did half the town. You were making a spectacle of yourself. What is the cause for such unseemly behavior?”

  “I... I left a basket of damson jam with Mrs. Dickerson. She’s so frail and ill... I suppose I was overwrought by her suffering.”

  The clumsy explanation wasn’t entirely a lie. Chelsea had visited the elderly woman before embarking upon her shopping. And before Sean had embarked upon her.

  “An admirable sentiment,” said Miss Maxwell, her thin eyebrows still arched. “But next time, kindly limit such a display to the privacy of your chambers. We must at all times embody the dignity of the academy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I trust the state of your emotions shan’t interfere with the pantomime rehearsal.” Giving a curt nod of farewell, the headmistress marched toward the shops, her back as stiff as the spine of a King James Bible, the tip of her ebony umbrella tapping the pavement.

  Chelsea took a shaky breath. Praise heavens, the lame excuse had extricated her from a sticky explanation. Miss Maxwell employed only spinsters and widows of impeccable character. How was Chelsea to justify the miraculous resurrection
of her brash Irish husband?

  Clutching the parcel, she trudged out of the village. Along a winding lane, the steeple of a Norman church poked above the barren tops of hawthorn and oak. An occasional thatched-roof cottage, smoke drifting from the chimney, hunched alongside the stream. Icicles dripped from the rain gutters, and the black beds of flower gardens lay in winter silence.

  Chelsea looked away from the dismal scene. In her mind, she traveled back to the fragrant springtime of her girlhood when she had first met Sean Devlin.

  She’d been hiding in the darkened morning room of the London town house, and peeping through an opened window at the formal garden, where couples strolled in the cool evening. The strains of a waltz drifted from the ballroom. Leaning on the casement, breathing in the scent of climbing roses, she sighed dreamily and tapped her slippered foot in time to the music. Tonight marked the come-out ball of Daphne, Lady Quincy’s youngest daughter. Barely seventeen, Chelsea had to wait until the next season for her own debut.

  She ached with all her young heart to be courted by a dashing nobleman. He would be handsome and rich, of course, and kind enough to overlook her humble birth. Dipping into the curtsy she had practiced with the three Quincy girls, she pretended to accept his invitation to dance. Then she twirled around and around, imagining herself not in drab schoolgirl navy, but fine gold taffeta over a score of flounced petticoats. In her mind, the shadowed chamber faded into the candlelit brilliance of the ballroom.

  “As lovely a dancer a man could ever hope to see.”

  The faintly foreign lilt of a male voice banished her fantasy. Gasping, Chelsea whirled to an ungraceful halt. In the doorway, the low light from the hall defined the broad-shouldered frame of a stranger.