Page 18 of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
Seven
The frigid air hit her at once, and she imagined the sweat on her skin instantly turning to a sheen of ice. She shivered and considered turning back, but she wasn’t ready for another run-in with Guy. The lights from the castle spilled out across the lawn, crisp underfoot with frost, and where their reach ended, little lights tucked into the earth illuminated the flower beds.
This was Nory’s old stomping ground. She knew that beyond the main gardens was the old folly, always unlocked when guests were in residence, and generously stocked with blankets, wingback armchairs, and brandy. Shaking quite vigorously now with the bitter cold, Nory hugged herself and headed through the archway in the Victorian wall, which led into the formal gardens. Here the beds were organized in smart rows, many of them almost bare, only shorn stumps to hint at what might be sleeping beneath, waiting for spring to warm the earth and reawaken them. She moved through here with the ease of someone who knows the lie of the land of old, and through another arch that led to the Winter Garden.
The Winter Garden had always been her favorite growing up, and despite the cold by now having almost completely numbed her limbs, she walked more slowly. Any plant could dazzle whenthe sun shone warm and the days were long, but to Nory’s mind, it took a special kind of flower to be able to bloom when the weather was freezing and the days were bleak.
The little footlights in the flower beds highlighted purple heathers, bright pink sedums—or “ice plants” as her dad had always referred to them—and winter jasmine, with its showers of yellow stars. But it was the hellebores that Nory loved the best. Their dark leaves with sharp serrated edges, so in contrast with the soft powdery bells and bonnets of its flowers; heavy blooms nodding bashfully toward the earth.
Her joy at being back in her favorite part of the castle grounds was hampered only by the notion that she might develop hypothermia. She was about to hurry toward her final destination when something at the back of a border caught her eye. It was a hellebore, but not one she’d seen before—and if any girl was going to know her hellebores, it was her. Maybe it was the dark playing tricks on her. But still... she bent down, as best she could in her silk sausage-skin dress, to take a look, and she could feel the thin wire that ran the perimeter of the bed cutting into her calves.
“What are you doing?”
Nory jumped, her actions jerky from shock and partially frozen limbs. Unfortunately, her movements were limited by her very tight dress, and she stumbled forward. With gravity pulling her down toward the bed of hellebores, which she would undoubtedly pulverize, she began windmilling her arms wildly to propel herself backward. She tried to shuffle back, but her dress had snagged on the wire. She yanked one leg back hard, and the fabric gave way with a rip that seemed to echo off the garden walls. The force of it sent her off along the path like a spinning top. She came to rest abruptly in a wheelbarrow, the manure init breaking her fall and preventing any major injury other than the crushing blow dealt to her dignity.
For a moment she sat dazed, but the sweet, punchy aroma of cow shit soon punctured any discombobulation. She tried to heave herself out of the wheelbarrow, but she had never been gifted with upper body strength, and her bottom half was practically a mermaid tail due to her stupid dress. She was about to resort to some incarnation of the Worm Dance to wiggle her way to freedom when a man—presumably belonging to the voice that had gotten her into this mess—in a parka zipped up to the top loomed over her, and said, “I’m not going to hurt you. I work here. Take my hands.”
Nory had very little choice. As she reached out her own rather grubby hands, she hoped that he was a security guard and not an armed robber come to burglarize the toffs playing house in the castle... She decided that the latter would probably have left her in the barrow.
With a most unladylike “Ooof!” Nory was lifted out of the wheelbarrow and was relieved to find her feet back on the ground—not that she could feel them anymore, or any other part of her anatomy for that matter. As if reading her thoughts, the man unzipped his coat and held it out to her.
“I’ll make it smell,” she half protested; even from this distance she could feel the warmth he’d left behind in the fabric, tempting her in like a warm bath.
“It’ll wash,” he said simply.
She didn’t need telling twice. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and pulled the heavy coat tightly around her, little moans of ecstasy escaping her lips as the heat enveloped her. She looked up at him then.
“Isaac?” she said incredulously. He had changed, of course, but there was no mistaking him.
The man stared at her for a long moment, a frown causing a crease between his brows, and then recognition dawned.
“Elinor Noel,” he said in a tone that wasn’t exactly friendly.
“Oh my god!” She laughed. “You’re still here!”
She saw Isaac bristle.
“ ‘Still here’ would imply I never left. Which is not the case.”
“Oh.” Nory was a little taken aback.Touchy! I guess some people hang on to their grudges for life.“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything...” She trailed off.Excellent start, Nory!
His frown softened, one eyebrow raised as he regarded her. Isaac. Isaac Malik the head gardener’s son, all grown up and standing before her like a dark-skinned Adonis in green Wellington boots and a cable-knit fisherman’s jumper. And she’d already managed to piss him off. Some things never changed.
“You used to throw mud at my head” was all Nory could think to say.
“I could say the same about you,” said Isaac. “Can I ask why you’re out here in the dark, in the freezing cold, with no coat on, trying to sabotage my hellebores?”
“That’s a lot of questions. Would you like my national insurance number and date of birth as well while we’re at it?”
The corners of Isaac’s mouth twitched.
“No,” he replied, “that won’t be necessary, unless I decide to press charges.”
“Charges?”
“For trespassing,” Isaac explained with a completely straight face. “After all, you’ve got form for that.”
“I’m not trespassing, I’m a guest.”
