“But you are quite right regarding my height,” she said. “I did grow another half-inch. How keenly observant you are.”
Twin sparks lit his eyes. “I did not mean a mere half-inch. I must have confused you with some other girl. There were a great many of them, as I recall.”
“Ah, well, you mustn’t mind the error,” Christina answered in tones laden with compassion. “Failure of memory is common with advancing age—it cannot be helped.”
His expression remained cool, but for the muscle that jumped in his jaw, before he answered, “That’s one frailty you obviously don’t suffer. Your memory is keen indeed. You recall not only how old you were, but your exact height.”
She wanted very much to fling the teapot at his smug face. Instead she smiled. “Not long after Penny’s wedding, I was measured for my own bridal gown. I can’t imagine any woman forgetting what size and age she was when she was wed.”
She felt his withdrawal an instant before his long legs pulled back and his posture straightened. “Yes, of course,” he said tightly. “I had altogether forgotten.”
***
Christina had started it, Marcus told himself as he jammed the diamond stickpin into his neckcloth. She had sat upon the sofa looking cool and detached and superior, listening to Penny speak of him as though he were an ill-mannered child. But Christina had also finished it, he admitted as he turned from the looking glass.
He had only wanted to fluster her, make her blush, obtain some hint that she remembered something, anything. Instead, she had found and pierced a tender spot that shouldn’t have existed: a mere three months after tossing him aside, she’d wed; it had taken Marcus three times as many months to recover. The reminder had hurt. It shouldn’t have, but it had.
A great deal was happening that shouldn’t.
He had spent more than an hour dressing for dinner, when it should have taken a quarter of that time. He’d just spent a full twenty minutes choosing the stickpin—as though she cared a straw what he wore, as though he gave a damn whether or not he met her standards of elegance.
Giving his cuffs an unnecessary tug, he headed for the door, then paused, his fingers inches from the handle, when he heard Christina’s and Penny’s voices in the hall outside.
He didn’t emerge from his room until the voices faded. Then he headed for his nephews’ room, and spent a quarter hour there telling riddles and jokes, instead of offering his customary “good night” from the threshold.
He owed them the attention, he told himself as he left the room. He’d focused too much on the twins all day, and children were sensitive to such unintentional slights—as the girls’ behavior in the playroom had demonstrated.
He was positive he’d done nothing—certainly not deliberately—to win the girls’ affection, let alone lure them to him in the playroom. They’d simply come... as their mama had done once, long ago.
Then, he had believed that she, too, felt the current between them, and the sense of inevitability as their gazes locked. Gad, what a moonstruck young fool he’d been. Obviously all that had drawn her was curiosity or vanity. He had kept away, when other men couldn’t; naturally, this had intrigued her.
What her children saw in him was even less significant. Children took likings and aversions for reasons adults could rarely fathom. Delia liked him as she liked pink and blue dragons; Livy, as she liked starch in her smocks. This sensible adult reflection brought a twinge of sadness.
Marcus paused at the head of the stairs. He really should bid the girls good night as well. One must be even-handed, after all, though they were the children of a stranger.
He was heading toward the guest wing even as he thought it. Halfway down the hall, he felt misgivings, and his steps slowed. But soft light streamed into the hall from their open door, beckoning his reluctant feet on.
He reached the door and looked in. Though a candle was lit, they were buried under the bed-clothes.
He felt the stab of sadness again, and quarreled with it, for the two little girls were simply asleep, as they should be. He spoke anyway, his voice just a whisper: “Good night, my dears.”
Two flaxen heads popped up from the bed-clothes.
“Oh, you have come,” Delia exclaimed. “I told you,” she chided her sister.
“You did not,” said Livy. “You said maybe. I said maybe, too.”
He shouldn’t feel so very gratified, but he did, and all the adult common sense in the world couldn’t keep Marcus from entering the room and savoring their quarrelsome welcome.
“I hope you didn’t stay awake on my account,” he said, though he rather hoped they had.
Their blonde heads bobbed up and down.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “That will never do. Next time, I shall have to dress more quickly. It took me much longer than it should have, I’m afraid.”
“Mama takes hours,” Delia said. “There’s all the things for underneath, and then the things on top of them.”
“Yes,” said Livy. “There’s the chemise, and the corset, and the stockings and the petticoat and—”
“Ladies’ garments can be very complicated,” Marcus hastily interjected while he tried to banish the seductive vision Livy had evoked. “Though a gentleman’s are much simpler, he must contend with his neckcloth, which is not very easy to tie properly.”
Livy gravely considered the neckcloth. “You have a star,” she said. “I like stars.”
She meant the diamond stickpin. It was too gaudy, he decided, too demanding of attention. Someone might think he was trying to impress... someone.
‘It’s not a star,” Delia told her sister. “It’s a diamond.”
“A star,” said Livy.
“A diamond.” Delia drove her elbow into Livy’s arm.
“Do you know what I think?” Marcus put in before the disagreement could escalate into violence. “Maybe stars are diamonds with which angels adorn the heavens. Maybe sometimes they drop them, and they fall all the way to the earth.”
Twin blue gazes swung abruptly back to him.
“Oh, yes,” said Delia. “The ones in the sky do fall sometimes. We saw it, didn’t we?” she asked her sister. “Last night we saw one fall.”
“You promised not to tell,” Livy reproached.
“He won’t tell Mama.”
They lifted pleading countenances to him.
“You won’t tell, will you?” Delia asked. “It was very late, and we went to the window.”
“When you were supposed to be sleeping?” he whispered conspiratorially.
They nodded guiltily.
Marcus crossed the room to the window and looked out. “It’s very pretty, isn’t it? Dark and quiet and magical. When I was a little boy, sometimes I woke very late in the night, and couldn’t fall asleep again right away. I would climb onto the window seat and look at the stars, and imagine things. If I tell on you, I suppose I must tell on me, too. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair, would it?”
The blonde heads shook back and forth.
“Well, I can’t possibly bear to tell on myself. It’s a special secret.”
The sisters looked at each other.
“It was very, very late,” Delia said.
“I counted twelve chimes,” said Livy.
‘Then we saw the star fall, over there.” Delia’s small finger pointed eastward.
Marcus felt a tingle at the back of his neck.