A Sprinkling of Christmas Magic: Christmas Cinderella

‘Outside?’ Catherine wriggled into Finn’s evening coat. It held his heat and it smelled like him—apples and spice. She pushed up the sleeves to free her hands. Was Finn really that big? His shoulders were enormous if the coat was anything to go by.

‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’ Finn looked down at her feet. ‘If we’re fast, we might be able to salvage your slippers.’

They sped across the snow-dusted lawn towards the barns, snowflakes twinkling in their hair like wet diamonds. Tomorrow there’d be several inches on the ground if it snowed through the night. Finn pushed aside the stable door and she stepped inside. It was warm and full of the smell of hay and horses. She instantly knew who they’d come to see. ‘Druid!’ Catherine set off down the aisle, skirts held high.

She stopped in front of a stall containing a white mare. ‘Druid, it’s me.’ The mare nickered and stuck her head over the stall door. Catherine stroked her long nose. ‘I can’t believe she’s still here.’ She heard the quiver in her own voice.

‘Of course she’s still here.’ Finn came up behind her, offering the mare a treat. ‘She turned nineteen this autumn. She’s not young, but she’s got years of riding left in her, probably even a fence or two. She’s been well taken care of.’

‘I remember the day we brought her home,’ Catherine said wistfully. She’d been so very touched the Deverills had got her a horse to keep at the stables. It had been like an unofficial declaration of membership into the family.

‘I remember the day she tossed you in the stream.’ Finn laughed.

Catherine elbowed him in the ribs. ‘You would remember that.’

‘And I remember the day you took your first jump on her, the old hedge by Anderson’s farm,’ Finn said more seriously.

Catherine turned to face him. ‘It’s good to remember.’

A little smile played along the seam of Finn’s mouth. ‘There’s someone else who wants to see you.’ He gave a little whistle and Catherine’s mouth went slack. Out of the tack room came a shepherd, more grey than brown in his coat. He walked with a bit of a limp, but his eyes were alert and his ears were pricked up at attention.

‘Hamish!’ Catherine held her hand out to the dog. ‘He’s still walking after all these years.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps you missed your calling. You should have been an animal doctor.’

She studied Finn. ‘You’ve been generous tonight.’ He’d always been generous in his own quiet ways. He was the eldest, but he’d made time for them all, joining them for picnics, no doubt forced into the role of chaperon by his parents. But he’d never complained. She’d not been lying when she’d said family was important to him. He’d been a good brother to them, yet tonight, standing here in the barn, his jacket draped about her, she didn’t feel as if she was with her brother, but with a friend, a good friend. It was an entirely new way to see Finn. Tonight he didn’t seem so dour, so serious.

‘I wanted you to see not everything changes. Much is as you left it.’

Druid took that moment to nudge her rather roughly in the back. Catherine stumbled most ungracefully into Finn, her nose colliding with his chest. ‘Easy, now, maybe that cider was stronger than I thought,’ Finn joked, gripping her arms to steady her.

‘It was Druid! She pushed me with her nose,’ Catherine protested with a laugh, but she could feel her cheeks flushing as she looked up at Finn. Such close proximity had never bothered her in the past, but tonight she was acutely aware that she wore his coat, that it smelled of him, all spice and nutmeg and apples, that his chest where her nose had been crushed was a plane of muscle beneath his shirt. No wonder it hurt.

She rubbed at the side of her nose. ‘Ow, your chest is hard.’

Finn laughed, but didn’t release her. ‘You’ll live.’ Something warm sparked in his dark eyes and that warmth transformed his whole face. The austere cut of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, the set of his brow were suddenly alive. There was nothing dour or withdrawn about this man, so unlike the polite statue that had greeted her in the drawing room upon her arrival. She’d seen signs certainly, when he’d talked of his science, but now the man was in full evidence. His dark head tipped, his lips parted and for a fleeting moment her heart raced at the thought: he is going to kiss me. Finn Deverill is going to kiss me. But he didn’t and the moment was gone as quickly as it came.