Page 27 of Mr Winterbourne's Christmas

Love.

Adam’s heart felt full and hot and he wanted to say those words—I love you. Wanted to lay them on Lysander’s skin between kisses, wanted to shout them to the rafters as they came together. And really, why was henotsaying them? What did he have to lose but a bit of pride?

“Lysander,” he murmured against his lover’s mouth. “Lysander I—”

The door opened.

Not, thankfully, the door to the boys’ bedchamber, but the door to the main nursery. Footsteps followed and murmuring voices.

Adam groaned as they broke apart. “I don’t believe this. This house is enormous but I can’t get you alone for as much as a minute.”

With an exasperated sigh, Lysander made for the door that led to the main room of the nursery. He opened it to reveal two ladies. One held a sheet, and the other was on her knees beside an enormous dolls’ house. They both turned at the noise, twin expressions of surprise on their faces.

It was Lysander’s sister, Mrs. Rodney, on her knees, and Miss Greenhill with the sheet in her hand.

“Lysander,” his sister squeaked. “What are you doing up here?”

“I asked for a full tour of the Abbey,” Adam said smoothly. He turned to Lysander. “So, this is where all you Winterbourne children played?”

“Yes, all of us. Our friends too, and their siblings sometimes,” Lysander replied. He glanced at his sister, “Didn’t Bella Cavendish knock over that dollhouse one time?”

Mrs. Rodney laughed. “Yes, she did, the little horror. Althea and I were playing with it and we wouldn’t let her join in—she was very little and prone to breaking everything—so she turned around and shoved it with all her might and everything went flying!”

Adam stepped forward to peer inside the dollhouse. “It really is a splendid one, isn’t it?” The house was designed like a modern townhouse and had five floors, each one crammed with little figures and furniture and even tiny domestic items, from pots and pans hanging in the kitchen to a silver hairbrush and handheld mirror sitting on the armoire in the master bedroom.

Mrs. Rodney smiled wistfully. “It was a present from Father—we spent hours playing with it, didn’t we, Anne?”

Miss Greenhill chuckled. “We did, though I seem to recall I spent an awful lot of time badgering your brothers to let me play on the rocking horse instead.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Rodney said, grinning. “You just wouldn’t take no for an answer, would you?”

Miss Greenhill’s lips twisted in a smile that was oddly self-mocking. “I always knew what I wanted.”

Mrs. Rodney seemed to consider that for a moment, but she didn’t answer. Merely rose to her feet and began brushing down her skirts.

“We should go back down,” she said briskly. “Althea said she’d arrange for tea and cake to be served in the drawing room, and I for one am starved after that walk.”

She looked up, giving them all a bright smile. “Shall we?”