Read Online A Kiss At Christmastide: Regency Novella by Christina McKnight - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t care what the correct word was—she couldn’t look away from his mouth, a spot of peach still clinging to his bottom lip. His tongue swooped out and captured it. “Succulent.”
    â€œWhat?” Pippa drug her look from his smiling lips.
    â€œSucculent, that is the term I would use to capture exactly how marvelous this jam is.”
    â€œI will let Cook know your pleasure at her canning.”
    â€œOh, please do.” He set the fork aside and stared. Pippa immediately busied herself filling the pie crusts with mincemeat from the sack. “As I was saying before heaven descended upon us and showed me what eternal salvation could be like—not that I am worthy of it—but, why are you not attending the holiday celebration? I must wager that the Sheridan chit is about your age, and you must have associated growing up being you live so close.”
    Pippa wanted nothing less than to answer his question. However, she thought that if she shared a bit with him, maybe he’d do the same. “Lady Natalie and I are friends— were friends. At least growing up. My estate and hers share a village. But…people grow and change. Sometimes, change cannot be explained.”
    â€œWas it you or she who changed?”
    Pippa’s brow knitted. The man was too perceptive for his own good. “Could it not be both of us?”
    He pondered the thought by taking another heaping forkful of jam. “I suppose, yet it is my belief that people cannot change—they can only alter the way others view them.”
    â€œThat is a very pessimistic way of looking at things.”
    â€œIt is far better to think the worst and be surprised when it isn’t as dire than to be taken aback when something negative happens.” He leaned his hip against the countertop where she worked and crossed one leg over the other at his ankle. It was a relaxed pose—as if he felt completely at home in her home.
    â€œThat is very magnanimous of you, my lord.” She finished the first pie and moved to the next. “But, have you stopped to think that maybe we have the same reasoning for not attending Lady Natalie’s holiday party?”
    â€œOh, but I have every intention of attending. It is this storm that keeps me locked here in this primitive house with nothing but sugared jam as sustenance. I may very well perish from hunger before the rain and winds subside.”
    â€œThat is rich, my lord!” Pippa flipped her spoon at him without thought, and a clump of meat hit his white linen shirt.
    â€œAnd bereft of clean clothing, it would appear.” He collected the meat before it dropped to the floor and popped it into his mouth. “If it isn’t the storm, it is the tendency for flying morsels of food.”
    Pippa laughed, unable to hold it in any longer. “I am certain your valet is adept at fixing all the heinous things you do to your wardrobe, my lord.”
    â€œLucas.”
    Pippa’s eyes shot to his, not sure what she’d expected, but finding an openness altogether new. But hadn’t she already thought of him as just plain Lucas?
    â€œMy name is Lucas. Please, call me such.” He grabbed the filled pie and pulled it toward him, taking the flattened top crust pieces and laying them delicately over the meat in expert crisscross fashion, crimping the edges. “And I shall call you Pippa.”
    She wasn’t sure if she was more shocked by her given name on his lips—lips that had been alluringly coated with jam only moments before—or the expert way he completed the pie top, far more uniform than Pippa had ever mastered. “Where did you learn to apply a pie lattice?”
    â€œA lattice?” he asked, pinching the final spot on the crust.
    â€œYes, what you just did.”
    â€œOh,” he looked to her and back at the pie, taken aback by his own skill. “I do not ever remember learning, but I did spend much time in