The Christmas Secret by Julia London

it on her lips. “Then you must call me Eireanne.”
    “Erin,” he repeated, and she giggled.
    “You are a fine dancer!” she said, nodding approvingly. “I had rather feared it, given that your idea of Christmas celebration is to hunt turkeys and sing hymns.”
    “Erin,” he said, frowning playfully. “I am not a fine dancer, I can scarcely dance at all. The fact that I even attempted that dance will entertain my family for days.”
    Her smile seemed to dim a bit. “You must tell them that you looked every inch an Irishman,” she said, and fidgeted with the sleeve of his coat. “When do you see them?”
    Henry instantly wished he’d never mentioned his family. He did not want to think of leaving while he was standing here with Erin. He hadn’t thought of exactly when, but it occurred to him that his work with Donnelly would be completed within a week, and he had a family and a business to attend to at home. He’d already been gone for several months—it wasn’t fair to his brother Thomas. Henry knew that he couldn’t avoid the inevitable much longer. “I should think within the fortnight.”
    Erin nodded and squinted toward the sea. The sound of the fiddle drifted out through the open door; the song the fiddler played was much slower than the previous dance.
    “You won’t leave before the ball, will you?” she asked. “That is, you’ve come all this way, and it’s the Twelfth Night ball, aye?” She risked a peek at him, and her gaze was so earnest that Henry could not imagine denying her anything. Ever.
    He took her hand. “I would dare not miss it.”
    Erin smiled softly, leaned her head back once more, and sighed to the heavens. He wanted desperately to kiss the hollow of her throat just above the small gold cross she wore.
    She squeezed his fingers. “I don’t care to think of you leaving, if you must know. You seem one of us now.”
    “I am flattered.”
    “I mean that in all sincerity. It’s been lovely having you dine with us in the evenings, and that has not always been so with Declan’s guests. He once had a Scot here to work the horses with him, and that man was impossibly boorish.”
    “Was he?”
    Erin glanced over her shoulder at the door, then leaned in and whispered loudly, “He was quite content to discharge the great quantity of air he gulped down with his meal at the table. ”
    Henry couldn’t help but laugh. “I am comforted to know that I shall not be considered one of the boorish ones.”
    “Oh, no! You are kind and well mannered, and so very interesting with your tales of America, and teasing Declan about the racing. I think my brother has not been so happy as this in a very long time, and racing is his great pleasure. Truly, for all of us, it is a pleasure that we may speak of something more interesting than the weather at our suppers.”
    “The review grows more favorable,” he said. “Erin, your company has been the most enjoyable for me.”
    She smiled happily.
    He admired the lobe of her ear. “When shall you return to Lucerne?”
    His question made her sigh, as it taxed her. “In a fortnight, I suppose.”
    She seemed almost sad, which Henry thought curious. “Don’t you want to return?”
    Erin shrugged lightly and peered up at him. “Would you like to know a secret?”
    He wanted to know everything there was to know about her. “I would.”
    She glanced around them. So did Henry. Most of the people who had come for air had gone inside. The only other couple on the veranda was moving that way as well.
    “I don’t want to live in London,” she said, her voice low.
    “Don’t you?”
    Erin shook her head.
    “But it is an exciting town, Erin. There are many diversions.”
    “Many diversions if one has suitable connections,” she said cynically. “My grandmother has high hopes for it, and for a good marriage to restore our name, but I wonder, how shall I get on? I don’t know anyone, I am Irish, I am Catholic, for heaven’s sake . . .” She