Page 90

Sophia stopped walking.

“Your books?”

“Yes.”

“Marina,” she said slowly, “do you realize what that means?”

Marina looked at her.

“It means he knows how much you love them,” Sophia continued. “And that he has been paying attention.”

Harper smiled. “I should say he has been paying a great deal of attention.”

Marina felt warmth rise into her cheeks.

“He has been very kind.”

“Kind?” Sophia repeated, sounding almost offended by the inadequacy of the word. “He has been restoring your home.”

“And he has done it without making a spectacle of his generosity,” Harper added. “That tells me rather more about his character than any number of polite speeches.”

Marina remained thoughtful, her mind returning to Ambrose’s strange habit of doing things for her without ever thinking to explain himself. After years of being the target of the neighborhood’s cruelty, she had never expected a man like him to understand what the cottage meant to her.

Yet somehow, he had.

“Of course,” Marina muttered. “The villagers must have seized their opportunity the moment I was not here to frighten them.”

“Then they are cowards,” Sophia declared.

Harper nodded firmly. “And fools, if they imagine such behavior will make you leave.”

Marina moved toward the glasshouse and stepped inside. The scent of damp earth greeted her, familiar enough to make her chest ache. Several pots had been arranged along a sheltered wall, and new shoots were pushing stubbornly through the soil. Some of the plants still bore signs of having been brutally cut, but others were beginning to recover.

Marina knelt beside them, her fingers hovering over the fragile leaves as they always had.

She remembered how she had felt upon discovering the destruction. The shock of seeing years of work reduced to broken glass and ruined plants. And then the astonishing discovery that Ambrose had already begun trying to put things right.

He had not been able to save everything. No one could have done that.

But he had tried.

“And how lucky are you to have such a man?” Harper remarked behind her, her voice filled with genuine affection. After a brief pause, she added with a knowing smile, “He is completely misunderstood. He is not a beast, nor wicked, nor frightening, whatever people insist.”

Sophia nodded in agreement, her expression softening toward Marina. “Perhaps… he is the Christmas magic you have been waiting for?”

For one foolish moment, Marina allowed herself to picture it: how Ambrose had visited her cottage one winter night like a Christmas miracle.

Christmas magic? Perhaps.

But Marina was not certain magic was supposed to leave a woman wondering whether she was wanted or not.

Slowly, she drew a deep breath and settled into an old rocking chair near the window. Her sisters exchanged a glance; they knew that sigh meant trouble.

“Is something the matter, sweetheart?” Harper asked gently, crouching before her with concern softening her features.

Marina lowered her gaze to her hands, watching her fingers twist together before she finally found the courage to voice her thoughts.

“Ambrose does not see himself the way we do,” she confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. “He believes his condition makes him something dreadful. Something no one should have to endure.”