Winter Wonderland Read Free Page A

herself to a buttered scone, “that such a catch as Barnaby is, at his age, still a bachelor.”
    â€œI don’t understand it,” the white-haired Jane Ponsonby mused. “The girls should be pursuing him relentlessly. Why aren’t they?”
    â€œBecause,” Honoria replied in that tone of unalterable affection with which she always spoke of him, “he’s shy.”
    This response brought forth a burst of satiric laughter. “Shy, indeed!” the sharp-tongued Molly Davenham, Honoria’s closest friend, exclaimed. “The man’s as shy as a shark!”
    Honoria stiffened. “Molly! How can you say such a thing?” she demanded furiously.
    â€œI can say it because it’s true.” Molly stirred her tea with perfect calm. “A man with a stinging wit can’t be called shy.”
    â€œAnd didn’t he win a DSO for his bravery at Waterloo?” Jane Ponsonby asked. “Hardly the act of a shy man.”
    â€œBut … but that doesn’t mean—” Honoria sputtered.
    â€œI heard, from my nephew in the Foreign Office,” Lady Lydell cut in, “that your Barnaby is the only man there with the backbone to stand up to the Prime Minister. So how can he be shy?”
    Honoria brushed back a lock of gray-streaked hair with fingers that shook with anger. “Nevertheless—”
    â€œNever mind your neverthelesses,” Molly Davenham said bluntly. “The fact is that every young lady I’ve tried to push in Barnaby’s path was afraid of him.”
    â€œ Afraid of him?” Honoria stared at her friend in disbelief. “What on earth can have made them afraid of him?”
    â€œHe’s forbidding,” Molly said, reaching for a cucumber sandwich, “and if you can’t see that for yourself, I can’t help you.”
    â€œForbidding? My Barnaby, forbidding ?” Honoria looked round the circle for support for her position, but there was none.
    â€œI know what Molly means,” Lady Lydell said thoughtfully, “although perhaps it’s hard to describe just what it is that makes him forbidding.…”
    It was hard to describe, but everyone who knew him agreed that there was something about Barnaby Traherne that put one off. He had a strong, lean face and a body that showed not an ounce of self-indulgence, qualities not necessarily daunting in themselves (in fact, most females found him quite attractive), but when combined with a certain glower in his expression, forbidding he became. His dark eyes, which glittered with saturnine intellectual acumen, had a way of cutting through a lady’s pretensions; his manner of responding to most questions with brusque monosyllables quickly exhausted most ladies’ efforts at conversation; and his icy witticisms easily discouraged the most persistent of flirts. And though his normal expression was only mildly thoughtful, the least annoyance caused it to give way to a frown so glowering that most observers backed out of range.
    But Honoria, who had no children of her own and who’d helped raise Barnaby since he was ten, saw the man with a loving mother’s eyes. “What nonsense!” she insisted sternly. “My Barnaby is as shy as a wallflower. You may take my word on it.”
    But none of the ladies took her word. They all had eyes and ears, and from the evidence of those most reliable of organs, Barnaby Traherne was anything but shy.
    Honoria didn’t pursue the subject, though she knew how wrong they were. There was much they didn’t know about her Barnaby, but his story was not one which she wished to tell, even to these close friends. If only you could have seen him as I did , she sighed to herself as she sipped her tea, eleven years ago, back in 1806, when he attended his first ball … that dreadful ball that altered his character forever.…
    Honoria remembered that ball better than she remembered her own