Page 69 of How the Duke Saved Christmas

More than anything…“My family misses me,” she dodged. “They didn’t have me with them over Christmas, and they’d like for me to be with them for New Year. You missed your parents this Christmas, I’m certain. What if you wouldn’t have had your uncle Michael and your brothers and sisters with you? How sad would that have made you?”

She considered that for moment. “It would have been okay without Margaret, I suppose.”

Clara bit her lip. She should have known logic wouldn’t work with a five-year old girl. It barely worked with a thirty-year old man. “You would have missed her, and you know it.”

Susannahlet out a long sigh and drawled out into a hundred syllables, “Isuppppppppoooosssssse... But Uncle Michael is going to miss you more.”

Not as much as I’m going to miss him.“He’ll have you and the others to keep him company, and you’ll all stay busy planning out the Twelfth Night festivities. Won’t that be grand?”

“Not without you.” She stuck out her bottom lip in the biggest pout Clara had ever seen. “Don’t you love us? Don’t you want to stay with us?”

“Of course I love you children, as much as I love my own nieces. That’s not—”

“Don’t you love Uncle Michael? He loves you.”

Another unwitting dagger hit its mark in her heart, and she didn’t have the strength to answer.

“Why can’t you stay?”

Susannah meant for far beyond the holidays. She meant permanently. “Because Northbourne isn’t my home.” And can never be.I can never be the duchess…“My home is in the north with my family. That’s where I belong.”

“You could make us your family and Northbourne your home.” She held up her doll as if to second that assertion and nodded firmly. “You belong here.”

Clara tightened her arms around the little girl. If only it were that simple! “My brother would miss me, so would my two nieces.”

“They could visit you here. There’s more than enough room. And you’d have twice as many nieces and nephews and have Uncle Michael for a brother.”

Her feelings for Michael had never been brotherly. She smiled sadly. “It doesn’t work that way, sweetling.”

“It could.” Another thought struck Susannah, which was apparently the answer to everything, and she smiled like the kitten who’d gotten into the cream. “We could send Mrs. Bailey in your place!”

Clara stifled a laugh, even though her heart was breaking. “Oh, itreallydoesn’t work like that! I have to go home.” With that final declaration, she placed a conversation-ending kiss to the top of Susannah’s head and set her on the ground. “Andwehave to return to the house soon. So why don’t you sneak in another few minutes of skating before Thomas comes for me, hmm?”

“All right.” But Susannah’s disappointed sigh at not winning the argument soon faded into joy at gliding over the ice again—more likely, rather, at having more time on the pond than her brothers and sisters.

Clara eased out a pent-up breath of frustration and grief, and her shoulders sagged as she watched the little girl skate around the ice. She didn’t want to leave Northbourne and Michael, but she had no choice. This place could never be her home; the children and Michael could never be her family.

Already, she grieved at the thought of saying goodbye in only a day or two. But leaving would be painful no matter when she left, so best to do it quickly and before more of her heart could be irreparably destroyed.

She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes and called out to the blurry figure who slipped further and further from the edge of the pond, “Stay away from the center!”

The little girl turned into a tight circle to look back at Clara, raised her red-mittened hand to indicate that she’d heard, then turned back to skate—

A loud crack shattered the stillness of the woods. Susannah screamed as the ice gave way beneath her, and she plunged into the freezing water.

“Susannah!” Clara screamed. Impulsively, she rose to her feet, then crumpled back down onto the bench when her right leg gave out beneath her with a stab of blinding pain. “Susannah!”

The little girl cried out for help and thrashed about, but her hands couldn’t find enough purchase on the slippery ice to lift herself out of the water.

Clara looked around desperately—no one. “Help!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Please help!” The children had been gone long enough to have reached the house, for the footman to be coming back for her—Oh, please, God, let him hear me!“Help us at the pond!”

But there was no sign of anyone. In the middle of the ice, Susannah continued to cry out in fear and panic. Clara knew she only had a few moments—

“I’m coming, Susannah!” Clara slipped down from the bench onto the snowy ground. She crawled forward as fast as she could on two hands and one good knee, dragging her immobile right leg behind her. “I’m coming for you!”

The ice froze her bare fingers as she crawled over the slick surface, and her coat and dress quickly became sopped with water. The cold seeped through her clothes, then into her flesh and all the way down to her bones. She shuddered as hard chills ached through her, but she didn’t stop.Refusedto stop. She couldn’t! All she could think about was the little girl who needed her.

Carefully, she moved across the pond as quickly as possible. When she reached the hole in the ice, she reached out for Susannah’s grasping hand, but her fingertips barely grazed the little girl’s. So she moved as close as she dared toward the edge.