Christmas By Candlelight: Two Regency Holiday Novellas Read Online Free PDF

hot bricks and extra blankets finally signaled that they were ready to leave.
    “I brought along the last of the meat pie, along with some bread and cheese, in case it takes longer than expected to reach the main road.” Nicholas added several oilskin packets to the items the innkeeper had brought out. “It’s hardly the sort of fare for a refined young lady, but it will have to do.”
    “I am not one of those sheltered misses who has never had a taste of life outside of the schoolroom,” replied Anna tartly. While she did not want to be thought of as a wild savage, neither did she wish him to view her as just another pampered aristocrat. “I have traveled extensively through Europe and Russia, in far harsher conditions than these, sir, so there is no need to be. . . condescending.”
    “My apologies.” He did not sound overly contrite, and wasted little time in raising his book as a barrier to any further conversation.
    She stared at the tooled leather, silently mouthing a rather unladylike word. Lord Killingworth was one of the rare gentlemen she had ever met who had shown a hint of introspection, yet just when the discussion had been taking an interesting direction, he had retreated behind the stiff confines of convention.
    Her disappointment was hard to swallow. How she longed to talk about real feelings with a gentleman rather than engage in banal exchanges about the latest fashionable color, or the state of the weather.
    Which was, she noticed, threatening to turn as dark as her mood. An ominous line of leaden clouds hovered on the horizon, their gathering force a warning that another storm might be headed their way.
    “The sky is now the color of pewter,” she pointed out a short while later, unable to concentrate on her reading.
    “Do you wish to turn back?” asked Nicholas.
    Anna stared out at the fairytale forest, then looked away as her sigh fogged the windowglass. Feeling hemmed in on all sides, she blurted out, “If I had my wish, a Baba Yaga would appear to turn the horses into reindeer and fly the coach to the North Pole.”
    “Surely it can’t be that bad.” His scowl softened to a rueful smile. “It would be awfully cold atop the world, not to speak of awfully lonely. There wouldn’t be another person around for thousands of miles.”
    “So much the better,” she muttered. “But I doubt you know what it is like to be bound by duty and convention, always at the beck and call of others, with no freedom to make up your own mind. Parents, teachers, guardians—Lud, at times it feels as if even the gardener and the groom may fling orders at me.”
    Her breath had turned to ice on the window. Slipping off her mitten, Anna traced random patterns through the crystals with her bare finger. “I assure you, there is little difference between me and a mare put up for auction. Neither of us is ever given free rein. Instead, we are expected to submit docilely to spur or whip.”
    “Gentlemen are not quite as free as you might imagine to run neck and leather through life.”
    “No?” A bitter note crept into her voice. “Judging from the gossip that flows as freely as champagne at the balls and soirees, I find that hard to believe.”
    Nicholas did not answer right away, his attention seemingly caught up by his own view out the window. “If it’s any consolation, not all English lords are gentlemen of indolent indulgence.”
    The fact that he did not respond with a lie or a platitude gave her the heart to continue speaking honestly. “No doubt you are once again thinking me childish, Lord Killingworth. Here I am bemoaning what I do not have, rather than counting my blessings.” Anna fingered the thick sable trim of her cloak. “Believe me, I am not such a selfish creature as to be unaware of how fortunate I am in life. I have every comfort imaginable. And yet. . .”
    Nicholas waited a moment and then murmured, “And yet, not all happiness can be measured in terms of material