Page 89 of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
“Yes.”
“Why would a deer want to eat my salad?”
“Maybe it was on a diet?” Nory suggested.
Nobody laughed.Tough crowd!she thought.
Quite suddenly and dramatically Jenna threw herself back onto the pillows and gave a sigh so sorrowful it was as though a tortured specter had just entered the room.
“This wedding is a disaster,” she moaned. “Both the groomsmen have got double black eyes, I’m being eclipsed by bloody Juliet bloody Finnegan, and a deer ate my salad!”
Pippa walked back into the room and stood next to Nory as Jenna began punching a pillow and wailing, “I hate deer!”
“Congratulations,” said Pippa. “You broke the bride.”
Nory slipped out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut to the sound of Jenna’s high-pitched whimpering: “Is it too much to ask that my wedding breakfast not be eaten by the pissing local wildlife?”
She decided it might be best to lie low for a few hours, and she knew just the place to do so.
Twenty-five
It had snowed again in the night, and the ground had been cold and dry enough for it to stick. Nory found Isaac in the Winter Garden, as promised. He was busy with a pair of elongated clippers, pruning the branches of a large pear tree that hung over the wall. On her way over to him, she stopped to check the unnamed hellebore he had cultivated. Several more flowers had formed, which would last long into the winter months, adding a burst of much-needed color in the gray days to come. The open blooms were striped through with cerise slashes that bled like tiny veins into the pale rose-white petals. The buds resembled fat acorns of deep puce, the petals so tightly packed within that they looked as though they would burst if you squeezed them.
Nory heard Isaac’s footsteps approaching, but she stayed where she was, crouched among the flower beds. He joined her in crouching.
“Checking out my handiwork?” he asked.
Nory smiled but didn’t look at him. “Have you registered them yet?”
“It’s on my list of things to do,” he said.
“What else is on your list?”
She looked at him then and smiled.
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips, and she almost overbalanced into the flower bed.
“Well, that was number one on the list,” he said.
“Glad I could help you tick something off,” she said, pulling herself up to standing and hoping she didn’t look as flustered as she felt.
He stood too and took her gloved hand into his. “Shall we?” he said, motioning to the gate.
“Are weofficiallyfraternizing now?” Nory asked.
Isaac looked coy. “I may have mentioned my intentions to Lord Abercrombie when I saw him last night.”
“Your intentions being?”
“Copious fraternizing!”
A laugh burst out of her. “You did not say that to the marquis.”
“No, I didn’t. But I did tell him that I’d been enjoying spending time with you in an unofficial capacity.”
“And?”
“And he said he was glad that we had finally put our mud-slinging days behind us.”
