A Sprinkling of Christmas Magic: Christmas Cinderella

She saw them right away. ‘Oh’ was all she could manage. A doe and her new fawn were tucked in the copse on a warm bed of fir boughs. Their grey-brown coats made them nearly invisible against the trees.

‘The fawn can’t be more than a few days old,’ Finn said. ‘It’s early, most fawns aren’t born until closer to spring.’

Catherine shot Finn a worried look. ‘Will they be all right?’

It was cold, food was likely to be scarce. Spring seemed a long way away from December.

Finn chuckled and eased them out of the little frozen estuary. ‘They’ll be fine. I’ll have the gamekeeper watch for them and leave out extra grain.’

They skated out, but they didn’t go back to the lake. Finn had another surprise waiting. ‘Guess what, the upper part of the river froze.’ Finn propelled them further away from the skating party until they were out of sight and the winter silence surrounded them, broken only by the rhythmic click and slice of their blades.

The river was breathtaking, its icy beauty entirely untouched. They stood in the middle of the frozen river, taking it in: blacks and greys and whites and a hint of blue where the sun overhead hit the ice. All about them winter’s palette was at its finest. Snow was piled on dark branches. In the distance, a lone hawk cried.

‘It’s like we’re the only two people in the world,’ Catherine breathed. Even her voice sounded hushed as she looked up at Finn. Lord, he was tall! She was forever looking up at him to make eye contact. Tall, and broad. She’d never considered his shoulders until last night.

A thought struck her. ‘You’re a winter person.’

Finn’s brow knitted, but she could see the comment amused him. ‘What does that mean?’

‘You’re like the winter; you’re dark and quiet, yet there’s a lot going on beneath the surface that one doesn’t see unless one knows where to look.’

‘And you know where to look?’

‘Yes, but it sounds like you’re fishing for a compliment,’ Catherine scolded playfully.

‘All right, assuming I am, what else makes me a winter person?’ Finn smiled.

‘You have winter’s colours. You’re dark—your hair and eyes are like those branches leaning out over the river.’

Finn chuckled. ‘At least you didn’t say my hair was grey.’

‘Dark is mysterious and winter is mysterious,’ Catherine pressed on, defending her position, entirely aware there was mystery in the air now. Something was changing between them. She was alert to every aspect of his body, to the breadth of his shoulders, the dark depths of his eyes, of his hand where it rested on her waist as it had so many times before. But never like this.

She began to babble, trying to bring back the safe Finn, the Finn she knew and thought she understood. ‘As for me, I’m a spring person. My red hair, my green eyes, all spring.’

‘You’re a veritable rainforest of colour,’ Finn corrected.

‘Is there lots of red and green in the rainforest?’ She tried for humour in hopes of regaining some neutrality. The conversation was definitely charged with dangerous undertones—dangerous because she didn’t necessarily understand them. They’d taken her at complete unawares.

Finn’s face cracked into a smile that broke the austere planes of his face. ‘There are shades of red so vivid, so intense, they deserve words we haven’t invented yet. There’s turquoise, too, and teals and blues. It’s not just the colours though, it’s the plants, the animals, the sounds. Oh, Catherine, you can’t believe how rich it is.’

But she could believe it if Finn’s passion for the subject was anything to go on. She could almost imagine the trees alive with colourful birds, the air full of new sounds, and vivid sights everywhere the eye turned. ‘How different it must be from here,’ she managed to say, feeling a little foolish. She’d thought she’d come home educated and sophisticated from Paris, that she’d seen the world. In actuality, she’d seen a city. Finn had seen places and things that sounded like fairytale beings come to life.

‘It is different. But rainforests are dark places too.’ Finn’s smile faded and his face became serious again. ‘We explored places where the tree canopy was so tall and so dense sunlight could not filter down to the ground. It was perpetual night.’

That she could not imagine, but it made her shudder none the less. It was also another reminder of all Finn had seen and done. To wander in a land such as the one he’d described was almost beyond comprehension. She knew people explored, of course. She’d just never known someone personally. Finn had had incredible adventures, seeing far-off lands and things most men would never see in their lifetimes.