The Yuletide Child, Charlotte Lamb [best novels to read .TXT] 📗

as if he was invisible. Dylan watched him walk away, sadness welling up inside her. Ever since they’d first met at ballet school they had been so close, almost one person instead of two; it was hard to say goodbye, harder to think of life without him.

She and Ross left for their honeymoon a few minutes later. They flew to Italy and spent two weeks at a small hotel in the Tuscan hills, making love day and night with a passion that excluded everyone and everything else, although they managed to spend a day at Venice and another at Florence. Dylan remembered both days like waking dreams: she and Ross wandered together, entranced, through the cities, looking at each other, not the beautiful buildings, the River Arno, the Grand Canal, the famous paintings, the statues in the narrow, old streets of both those ancient and exquisite cities. They were merely the background of the happiness Dylan and Ross shared, like painted designs on a stage backcloth.

After their honeymoon Ross took her up north to the house they were going to share, and for the first time she saw his forest, the ranked dark green of the conifers, the scent of pine, the darkness in the heart of the trees. There was no other house in sight. There was very little traffic; few cars ever passed along that narrow road.

Dylan was a city girl, used to the busy streets of London, the noise and fumes, the roofs crowding the skyline, other people everywhere. Even during their honeymoon there had always been crowds circling them. Now they were alone, in a haunted landscape.

This was the first moment she felt a stirring of doubt, a sense of panic. She had married Ross without stopping to think about what she was throwing away, leaving behind;the city she had lived in all her life, the pleasure and pain of dancing, the companionship of the ballet company, the partnership with Michael which had been her life for years.

From her first sight of Ross none of that had seemed to matter any more. She had become a driven creature, only knowing she needed this man more than breath itself. Love had not so much obsessed her as consumed her, taken over her whole life.

Now she was alone with Ross and his forest, facing the consequences of her marriage, looking down into the deep abyss between her past and her future, the life she had led and the life she would lead in future. Standing at the window of their bedroom, looking out, she saw nothing but trees and sky, heard only the wind moving the branches, the sigh and whisper of the forest, and fear prickled under her skin.

What had she done?

CHAPTER TWO

AND then Ross came up behind her, put his arms around her waist and kissed her softly on the side of her neck. Dylan leaned back against him, sighing with pleasure, pushing away her moment of doubt and uncertainty. She loved him more than she had ever loved anything or anyone else before. Whatever she had had to give up weighed very little in the scales against having Ross.

‘Come and meet my trees,’ he whispered.

He always talked about them as if they were human, had feelings, could hear what he said to them and even answered him in their own way. Dylan smiled, touched by that, by his passionate commitment to his work That was what she wanted from him—that deep, unfaltering love. She wanted to give as much back, too.

‘I’m dying to!’ she assured him.

His smile of pleasure made her heart lift. He wanted her to share his feelings about the forest. Dylan wanted to be part of every aspect of his life. Wasn’t that what marriage meant? Sharing everything, becoming one flesh, one heart, one mind?

The unforgettable scent of pine met them as soon as they walked through the gate in their garden hedge into the forest. Ferns brushed their legs, flies and midges buzzed them, powdery-winged brown and blue butterflies hovered over spring flowers in the long grass at the forest rim. Under their feet was the crunch of pine needles. Sunlight laid out needle-fine paths in front of them under the fir trees until they faded into darkness.

As the shadows around them deepened Dylan couldn’t help shivering. ‘It’s quite cold in here, isn’t it?’

She was wearing jeans and a light pink shirt, over which she wore a denim waistcoat but no jacket because the weather was warm for late March, so long as you were out in the sunlight. Once they were deep into the forest, though, the sun didn’t penetrate the closely set trees and her skin had chilled rapidly.

Ross gave her a quick look, then took off his tweed jacket and put it round her shoulders. ‘Better?’

She snuggled into the warmth from his body which the tweed retained along with his own particular body scent. ‘That’s lovely. But I don’t want you to get cold. Maybe we should go back?’

‘Oh, I’m used to working out here in all weathers; I never feel the cold.’ He took her hand. ‘Come on, I want to show you something.’

She had to move quickly to keep up with his long-legged stride. The tall pines stretched all around them now; they were deep into the forest, with very little light to show them where they were going, and Dylan was oddly afraid of the pressing tree trunks, the shadows, the cool, pine-scented air.

All the forests and woods she had ever known had had broadleaf trees, oak and hornbeam, beech and ash, which shed their leaves in autumn and did not grow too close together, so that open glades stretched in places, full of light and giving space for wild flowers and tussocks of long grass. She had never been nervous in those woods, but she was nervous now.

At last Ross stopped moving and put a finger to his lips, whispering to her, ‘Keep very still. Look...there...’ He pointed to a tree a