But envy tinged his gratitude. Because however kind this noisy, loving, exuberant clan was, however willingly they included him in their festivities, he remained an outsider.
An outsider yearning after the lovely daughter of the house like grim Hades yearned after bright Persephone. Darkness hungering for irresistible light.
If Serena and Paul reached an understanding this Christmas—and why the hell shouldn’t they?—Giles would have to stop visiting Torver. Not only would he lose the girl he loved, he’d lose the closest thing he had to a family.
The future looked mighty bleak.
He was hunkered down in here because he couldn’t endure seeing Paul and Serena dancing together, beautiful and golden, and from an easier, warmer world than the one Giles Farraday inhabited. If he felt that way now, how the devil would he survive knowing that every night, those two golden beings lay in one another’s arms?
With a closed fist,
he thumped the arm of his leather chair. And wished to God that he was thumping his best friend.
Love was purgatory. He wished it to the devil.
After this afternoon’s antics in St. Lawrence’s, his misery bit sharper than ever. He’d felt so clever coaxing his luscious darling into kissing him, but now he paid for his sins. Because his dreams at last moved into the realm of reality, the pain of knowing Serena would never be his was sharper than ever. Tonight he knew what it was to hold her and drink in her scent and hear her sighs of pleasure.
All evening, he’d burned to touch her again. While she skipped about in Paul’s arms as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Clearly she spared no thought for dark, brooding, lonely Giles Farraday.
With a muffled groan, he raised his brandy glass to his lips, appreciating the liquor’s burn down his throat. He was sick to the stomach of his festering self-pity.
When the library door eased open, Giles glanced up from the old “Blackwood’s Magazine” that he made a show of reading. If Paul intruded upon his sulks, he might just punch that handsome nose.
But it wasn’t his best friend who edged into the room. Instead, it was the lovely girl who had fueled years of dreams and who kept Giles returning to Torver House, no matter how wretched it made him.
The stark truth was that however wretched he felt with Serena, he felt more wretched away from her.
“Giles?” With a furtive air, she shut the door behind her.
The huge library suddenly seemed as small as a shoebox. Just what was she up to?
“I thought you were busy dancing.” As he set his brandy aside, he cursed the remark’s snide note. But he felt like a dog chained and left to starve.
“I was.” With tendrils of hair escaping the loose knot and a flush of exertion in her cheeks, Serena looked utterly beguiling. Dances at a Torver Christmas included vigorous country reels and jigs, as well as measures fashionable in high society. “Why didn’t you stay? I wanted to dance with you.”
“Trying to make Paul jealous?” In a spurious attempt at insouciance, he stood and leaned one elbow on the mantelpiece. “Good move. Machiavellian. At this rate, you won’t need too many more lessons before you’ve mastered the game of flirtation.”
When her gray eyes darkened with hurt, he wanted to kick himself. It wasn’t her fault that she preferred another man. During those rare moments when he rose above his jealousy, he could even admit Paul had every chance of making her happy.
“You’re being horrid. Why?”
Because he struggled to preserve a scrap of pride when he teetered on the edge of humiliation. But that didn’t mean she deserved his spite. “I’m sorry. A case of the seasonal megrims.”
Serena studied him with a troubled expression, her hands loosely linked at her waist. She wore a light blue dress in some floaty material that made him think of summer instead of the depths of winter. “Will you come back and dance with me?”
Stand before all the people he loved and pretend he felt nothing stronger than mild friendship for Serena Talbot? He’d rather have all his teeth knocked out with a hammer. “I don’t like dancing.”
His surliness should chase off a sensible girl. Clearly Serena wasn’t sensible. She drifted further into the room, curse her. “You used to.”
“I’ve changed.”
“That’s true.” The color in her cheeks intensified. “You’ve grown very handsome.”
Heat turned his own cheeks red. And didn’t that make him a soppy sod? In London, he did a fair job of playing the man of the world. Here with Serena, he felt like the awkward schoolboy who had arrived at Torver eighteen years ago. “Doing it too brown, Serena. I’ve always been an odd-looking beggar.”
“You certainly were as a boy.” To his surprise, fondness curved her lips. “Nothing seemed to fit. Your nose was too large, your legs were too long—”
“My feet were too big.”