Page 154 of Ten Lords for the Holidays

Holly felt her cheeks flame, but she didn’t mind it so much now. Not when he reached up and stroked a thumb along her skin.

“Come,” he said. “I don’t want you freezing to death on me. And of course, I need to tell your Lady Angela that I finally did something right.”

Holly beamed up at her fiancé as he began to lead them inside. Her fiancé. How wonderful that sounded.

“Papa will be more than happy to be rid of me, I assure you,” she said dryly. “And as for Lady Angela. I believe you meanyourLady Angela. You are the reason she’s here, after all.”

He drew to a halt and turned her to face him, frowning down at her in obvious confusion.

“What do you mean, I’m the reason?” he asked.

Now it was Holly’s turn to frown.

“She said that you were friends,” she reminded him. “At the first dinner we had. The night we were reintroduced. I thought it was odd that you’d invited along a guest and not even told us. I had meant to bring it up, but I quite forgot.”

Evan was already shaking his head.

“Sweetheart, I’d never met her before that night.”

“But – but she said you were friends,” Holly repeated.

“That’s hardly the strangest thing she’s said,” Evan pointed out, and Holly couldn’t argue with that. “So, if she’s not your guest and she’s not mine, just who is she, and why on earth is she here?”

Holly could only shrug helplessly.

“I have no idea,” she said, looking through the door they’d stopped at, hoping to see a familiar shock of white hair. “How strange.”

Suddenly, Evan’s hand was on her chin, tilting her face up to his.

“Whatever the reason, I’m glad she appeared,” he said softly. “If it wasn’t for her, this might never have happened. And I’ll be eternally grateful to the interfering old biddy.” He grinned.

Holly answered his smile with one of her own.

“I agree,” she said happily. “Perhaps we should tell her that.”

But when they got inside, there was no sign of Angela anywhere.

Holly searched among the guests who’d been invited to the Hall for their Twelfth Night celebration. Nothing as elaborate as her birthday festivities, but another tradition of Mama’s that she was now only too happy about upholding.

Evan spoke to Lord Northwood, who was delighted that Holly had accepted. And Grandmama was beside herself, promising that she would be as frequent a visitor to Scotland as Holly assured her they would be to Northwood.

Lord Northwood wasted no time in making the announcement to their small gathering of guests. And nobody was all that surprised by the news.

The love between Evan and Holly had been obvious to everyone around them.

After the announcement, the festivities seemed to take on a new life, and their Twelfth Night Party went on far longer than any of them had intended.

All evening, Holly searched for Lady Angela.

But it seemed as though the lady had vanished as mysteriously as she’d arrived.

“I wonder where she could have gone,” Holly said to Evan when he managed to steal a moment alone with her in the sitting room that had been her mother’s. “I hope she hasn’t left. It’s freezing out there, and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”

Evan was staring through the window at the sky, a thoughtful look on his face.

“I think she probably has left, sweetheart.” He turned his head to gaze lovingly at her. “I think, perhaps, she was here for a reason. And her work is done.”

Holly didn’t know what he could mean, but when he bent his head to kiss her, she forgot about everything but him.

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