Falling Stars by Loretta Chase Page B

beauty, of course. He wouldn’t have imagined she could grow more lovely.
    Naturally he wouldn’t. The last time he’d seen her, he had been a callow youth of four-and-twenty who believed Christina was the most beautiful girl in all the world. He’d believed a great many foolish things, once.
     
    ***
     
    Having seen the children settled in the school room under Miss Finch’s competent tutelage, a shaken Christina went to the sitting room to write a letter to her great-aunt Georgiana. She took up a sheet of paper, dipped her pen into the inkwell, then had to wipe the pen and put it down because she couldn’t keep her hands—or her thoughts—steady. She studied her uncooperative hands in dismay, as though they belonged to a stranger. A short while ago, in the hall, she had felt like a stranger to herself. She had behaved like a tongue-tied schoolgirl—like the weak-minded young miss she’d been a decade before—frantically babbling small talk while she turned hot and cold by turns under Marcus Greyson’s intent, gold-glinting stare. Worst of all, she had snatched at the first excuse to run away.
    Rising from the desk, Christina moved to the window. Below her, Greymarch’s formal gardens lay tranquil, their winter barrenness softened by the deep emerald of evergreen shrubs. To her right, the branches of leafless oaks etched dark webs against the vibrant blue of the sky. To her left, well beyond the winding stream, ancient fir trees blocked her view of the old gatehouse.
    She didn’t need to see it to remember, though.
    It had been two weeks before Penny’s wedding. Christina hadn’t seen Penny in several months, but they’d corresponded. Julius Greyson turned out to be just as Penny had described in her letters: tall, dark, handsome, gracious, witty, and obviously in love with his bride-to-be. That much Christina managed to digest before she was introduced to his brother.
    She saw a bronze god: thick, tawny hair streaked with gold, a sculpted, sun-burnished countenance, and intent, amber-flecked green eyes that lit to gold when he glanced down at her and muttered some barely polite greeting. Marcus Greyson was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He was also, at first, the least amiable. Bored, his impatience palpable, he couldn’t be bothered to say another word to her during the subsequent tour of Greymarch.
    As far as he was concerned, she didn’t exist. As far as she was concerned, no one existed but him. To approach a gentleman she didn’t know—who evidently preferred to know nobody—was unthinkable. To keep away was impossible. And so, when the group paused at the gatehouse, she’d walked— shaking in her half-boots—across the clearing and up to him, and said the first inane thing that came into her head.
    He’d snapped at her quite rudely, which no one had ever done in all her eighteen years, and which should have sent her scurrying back to the safety of her well-mannered acquaintances. But he’d leaned against a fir tree, and there was the cool tang of evergreens about her, and some other scent—tansy and cloves, she’d guessed—emanating from him. There was something else as well—strange and different and dark—and this had slowed her retreat. When he’d touched her sleeve, she’d looked up into his eyes. He’d smiled, and she had too, helplessly, because she’d found the welcome she wanted.
    His eyes had not been welcoming this morning. His handsome countenance had hardened to stone the moment he saw her, and the only emotion she’d discerned in those changeable eyes was annoyance.
    Well, the surprise hadn’t been altogether agreeable for her, either.
    Turning from the window and a view that stirred unwanted ghosts from the past, she tried to consider the situation rationally and fairly. His annoyance very likely had nothing to do with her—or, more precisely, with the Christina of the past. He’d surely forgotten most, if not all, of what had happened. After all, she