A LONELY CHRISTMAS

It had been a very lonely Christmas, Annie thought on the bleak, snowy morning following that equally bleak holiday. Whatever Ian Sinclair had intended when he had brought her to his home, she must believe it had not been this.

Of course, there had been a formal Yuletide dinner last night, which had included all the traditional dishes of the season and which she had eaten in solitary splendour in the dining room. The whole house was decorated quite beyond anything she was accustomed to at Fenton School.

What she was 'unaccustomed' to, however, and the lack of which she had felt most severely, was companionship. She missed the girls. She missed taking care of the younger ones and she had worried about them. She also missed having someone to talk to and with whom to share games and cherished holiday pastimes.

If, as her guardian had indicated, his servants had been looking forward to providing a festive Yuletide celebration for his ward, Annie had not, during the long, lonely days she had spent in his home, been able to detect any sign of that intent. They had probably been disappointed that she was not the child they expected. And it was apparent they held her responsible for Mr Sinclair's illness. She didn't blame them. She, too, considered his condition to be her fault.

The doctor, identifiable by his bag, had come and gone several times during the past eight days. From her bedroom window, worried and anxious about the cause of each visit, she had watched him arrive and depart. And her new guardian's older brother, the Earl of Dare, had stayed for several days before finally departing this morning.

Neither of them had spoken to her, of course, although she was perhaps the person most in need of information. After all, no one doubted that Mr Sinclair had been made ill as a direct result of his rescue of her. A rescue that must have surely satisfy every longing for adventure she had ever felt.

A longing she would never feel again, Annie vowed. She saw, thankfully only in memory now, the face of the man with the torch, missing tooth revealed by that ghastly, leering smile, and she shivered. And if it hadn't been for Ian...

For Mr Sinclair, she corrected. It would not do to presume, even in her thoughts, which had centered, almost exclusively, throughout these long days and nights, around her guardian. And some of those thoughts—

There was a discreet knock on the door, and Annie scrambled off the high bed across which she had been sprawled in unladylike abandon. She straightened her dress and then her hair, tucking in tendrils before she hurried across the room. She even bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to give them some colour.

It was not until she was halfway to the door that she realized this visit could not possibly be her guardian.

And she couldn't imagine for whomever else in this household she might be concerned about her looks. The acknowledgement that she would wish to appear attractive before Ian Sinclair was a clear affirmation that she had spent too much time daydreaming about him in the last few days, she told herself sternly.

She opened the door and was confronted by the disapproving features of Mrs Martin, the Sinclair family housekeeper. Unfamiliar with the protocol governing the servants in such a large house, Annie wasn't sure if she should invite the woman in or converse with her standing in the hall.

"Mr Sinclair wishes to see you, miss. Mind you now, no matter what he says, I won't have you tiring him out," the housekeeper warned. "Ten minutes and no more. You understand?"

"Has he been so very ill?" Annie asked, the fear she had lived with through these lonely days rising to block her throat.

"Mr Sinclair allows no discussion of his health. Those of us who wish to keep our positions in his household learned that long ago, something for you to remember," Mrs Martin added.

The housekeeper turned and bustled forward with an important jingle of keys, passing door after door along the long hallway. Annie followed, wondering exactly what her warning had been meant to convey. That if Annie mentioned Mr Sinclair's health, she would be sent back to Fenton School?

An idle threat, considering that during the past week she had pined for its safe familiarity. She regretted the thought as soon as it formed. Whatever Mrs Martin meant, Mr Sinclair had risked his life to save hers.