Page 36 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms (Tales from Honeysuckle Street #4)

A snowflake.

As Charlise counted the beats for the chorus, she watched it float languidly through the air.

The small white speck suspended in the lamplight hovered over the audience as if searching.

It might be a sign that this year would be a white Christmas, just like in the books she had read as a child when snuggled into her mother’s side.

She might wake to a London that resembled the magical scenes depicted on the Christmas cards she sent, instead of the soot-weighted dankness she experienced each day.

Charlise brushed the fanciful notion away. It never snowed at Christmas. Not here. Not anymore.

Still, the little white fleck persisted to dance, unnoticed by the gathering.

A decent group were watching this evening, too.

Aunt Petunia would be happy, even though most of the audience were friends and family.

Such details didn’t bother their aunt as long as her choir sang on point and the applause was audible.

Charlise turned the page in her hymn book.

Towards the back of the group, a man, slightly taller than most, paused.

His form a silhouette, he stooped to deposit something on the ground, then stepped into a small ring of yellow light beneath the gas lamp, and Charlise’s breath caught so sharp she had to mouth the next few words in the song.

She pressed her hand to her stomach and forced herself to inhale.

He held himself so casually, like he knew his place in the world was at the back of the crowd, and rather than forcing himself into thin voids where he was not wanted, accepted it with grace.

Broad, wearing a black suit that even in the low light she could tell was worn, his ash blonde hair sneaking from beneath a flat cap, he leant against the lamppost and crossed his arms, tipped his head, and smiled.

The snowflake gave one last flitter, then settled on his shoulder.

‘Are you ready?’ Elise jutted her elbow into Charlise’s side.

‘I think so,’ Charlise whispered, drawing her eyes from the man and refocusing on Aunt Petunia.

She took a long inhalation, rolled her shoulders, and relaxed her torso, as she had practised a hundred times, a thousand times before.

Drawing rooms are not available for you, her father had snapped as he slapped his hand against the piano lid.

You will need to be better than most ladies if you are to hold the baron’s attention.

Charlise tried to follow her aunt’s steady conducting, but like the snowflake, her attention drifted back to the beautiful tall man, just to check if he was still there.

And he was. Watching them. Watching her.

The crowd shifted, and a few coughs and grunts filled the air. The baron edged forward, his gaze narrowing.

Charlise took a breath that failed to banish her jitters, clasped her sister’s hand, and began to sing.

As we watched at dead of night,

Lo, we saw a wondrous light.

She should have sung her lines to the baron, she knew, but her gaze dragged to the man at the back, the ring of light kissing him like a halo, and as she sang, his affable grin lit into an expression she could only describe as wondrous.

A magic crept through her, that glowing fizz that suffused the air only at Christmas, and with an indistinct flash, images of Mother’s arm around her shoulder, Elise snuggled into her side, and the worn pages of The Nutcracker glittered in her memory.

But just as those days had cracked, so did the sparkle of the moment fade as the man looked over his shoulder and into the park.

A part of her cried out as the beauty of the connection slipped.

She tried to call it back with another line, but the chorus joined in, and he stepped from the lamplight and into the evening fog.

It was only after she lost sight of him that Charlise registered the screaming.