s come alive. It’s hard to recall what it was like before you burst into my life.”
“You were so stern when I turned up on your doorstep.”
A huff of wry amusement escaped her. “Your fatal charm soon proved my downfall.”
“Will my fatal charm lure you away now, to start our special Christmas Eve?”
“Tempting.” She caught Kitty’s eye, as her mother-in-law glanced up from the crowded hall. “We have guests.”
“Who are all staying until after New Year.”
“Perhaps we can slip out in an hour.”
“I sometimes think you married me purely to become part of my family,” he said with mock self-pity.
She smiled, in a mood to tease. “I’m so sorry you’ve finally realized the sad truth.”
“They love you nearly as much as I do.” He presented his arm. “Shall we go downstairs, my lovely wife?”
Once down in the hubbub, there were no more chances for quiet conversation. Instead Joss was caught up in a riotous game of blind man’s bluff that tripped up more than one dancer, while Maggie joined the older folk around the fire.
It was well beyond the promised hour when Maggie at last found herself dancing a waltz in her husband’s arms.
“Shall we retire soon? Nobody will miss us.” Joss smiled down at her. “Although it seems unkind to remove the prettiest girl from the party.”
Dizzy with love and happiness—it was hard to keep a sensible tongue in her head when all her dreams had come true so magnificently—she smiled back at the man she adored. “You’re too kind, sir.”
“No, I’m not, by God.” He whirled her around, until they came to a breathless halt beneath an elaborate arrangement of mistletoe and red and gold ribbon suspended from the beams. “You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
His kiss was more circumspect than usual—after all, they had an audience—but it still told her how deeply he loved her.
“Oh, Joss, I do love you,” she whispered as he drew away. And blushed when she saw that Kitty and Dr. Black had stopped close enough to overhear her fervent declaration.
Dr. Black viewed them with an unaccustomed misty expression in his faded gray eyes behind their round spectacles. In the last five years, she’d seen more of him than she had in all the time she’d worked at Thorncroft. She’d become very fond of him, although she’d never quite overcome her awareness that once he’d paid her wages.
“Kitty, I’m so glad you wrote to me all those years ago and suggested I find Joss a wife. Putting my godson and Margaret together was a stroke of genius.”
“Thomas, you know that was a secret between us,” Kitty said in horror, as a fraught silence crashed down around them.
Maggie frowned at her former employer. “But you didn’t put us together.”
“Yes, I did.” Dr. Black, who had been enjoying the Christmas punch, blinked at her owlishly. “Wrote to Joss saying I wanted the place modernized, so he’d come up to stay. When any nitwit can see Thorncroft is perfect as it is. Then wrote to you to say to expect him.”
Joss’s arms had dropped from her waist, and some quality in his stance made her shoot him a curious glance. “Joss?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He was frowning into the distance. She stared at him baffled, before she recalled a conversation from their early days as man and wife. He’d smugly declared that he’d found his own bride, and just the right bride for him, without benefit of his mamma’s enthusiastic matchmaking.
Oh, no. Did he imagine Maggie had set out to trap him with the conniving of his marriage-minded mother? Surely he must know his wife had never deceived him. Surely he must remember how unprepared she’d been for his arrival, that night of the snowstorm.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Whatever it is you’re thinking, stop it right now.” She turned to Dr. Black. “I’m sorry, sir. I received no such letter.”
Dr. Black, seemingly unaware of the strained atmosphere, beamed at them both. “Maybe I didn’t get around to writing to you, Margaret. I know I wrote to the boy. Not sure I wrote to Kitty either, now I come to think of it. But I definitely leaped to answer her plea to find my godson a suitable bride.”
“And you did that, Thomas,” Kitty said, casting her son a doubtful look. His reticence was becoming noticeable. “But it was purely good fortune that Joss and Maggie fell in love.”
“So our meeting wasn’t a lucky accident after all,” Maggie said, trying to sound lighthearted.
No wonder Joss’s family had expressed no surprise when he found his future wife in an out of the way corner of Yorkshire and brought her home for a quick wedding. They must have already been bracing for her arrival.