My Merry Marquess (Wallflower's Christmas Wish #3) - Annabelle Anders Page 0,46

he’d never experienced in his life. Resigned now, he grimaced at the inky black sky, snow falling into his eyes and mouth. He was going to die in the snow, in a sleepy little village a week before Christmastide. Couldn’t he have been shot in a duel? Or better still, perished in some woman’s bed? This…this was below his station and utterly ridiculous.

Noelle nibbled at the gingerbread she’d saved from dinner and stared out into the dark night and watched the swirling snow. She hadn’t been able to fall asleep again and had donned her coat and scarf to sit at the window thinking. If only thinking brought her the answers she sought.

She raised the spicy bread to her lips for another bite and closed her eyes so that she didn’t miss a single flavor. It was her favorite and despite everything else that was wrong in her life just then, she would enjoy every mouthwatering bite.

It’s what her mother would have wanted her to do. Her mother would have told her to be grateful that she had a warm bed to sleep in along with delicious and filling food in her belly when others lived in lack.

And Noelle was grateful for all she was provided.

But she missed her life before—before her mother died, before her father had fallen into despair and given up on all of them. Noelle swallowed the bite of her cookie that had suddenly lodged in her throat. Because in that moment, although they were just a few feet away, each in their own chambers, Noelle missed her sisters too. Perhaps most of all, she longed to laugh with them, argue with them, listen to them tease one another and all the other things they’d done when their mother had been alive.

Be grateful.

She glanced dispassionately around the chamber Aunt Winifred had made available for her. The bedding was lovely, the furnishings were of a deep rich mahogany, the drapes of a beautiful silk, and yet vivid in her mind was the bedchamber she’d left behind.

She hadn’t slept through the night once since their father had sent them away. Her breath fogged the window and for the hundredth time, she rubbed it away with her mittened fist.

This too shall pass, she reminded herself as she blinked away tears. Her aunt was a little batty, but she had kind eyes and seemed to want to do what was best for all of them. Feelings of homesickness would fade. They always did. Noelle simply needed to find a way to get her sisters back to normal.

The snow really was pretty. Her mother would have loved a night such as this.

This storm had moved in only a few hours ago and already had accumulated enough that it was impossible to identify where her aunt’s lawn ended and the road began. Having been raised in the country, Noelle found it somewhat of a novelty to live in the center of town, even if her aunt’s house was old and outrageously large and somewhat of a curiosity.

She popped the last sweet bite past her lips and peered outside again. She would hardly recognize the town square beneath all this snow if not for the statue erected in the center. It was supposedly made in the likeness of one of the town’s founders, hundreds of years before.

And then she blinked and tilted her head.

The statue was…

Moving?

She sat up straight and rubbed at the window again. It wasn’t a statue at all, but a man. Oh dear.

Midnight was long past and it was likely already two or three in the morning. What on earth would any sane person be doing outside on a bitter night like tonight? Was he mad?

Noelle narrowed her eyes and focused on the shadowy image as he stumbled and then seemed to sway in the wind. Perhaps he was ill.

Two steps forward and then backward and then…he continued backward until he fell to the ground and disappeared into the snow.

“Get up,” she urged in a whisper, feeling an inkling of alarm. Was he dead? Why didn’t he raise himself out of the snow?

Nothing. Just the sound of the wind against the window rattling the brittle panes and her own breathing.

“Get up,” she urged, louder this time as though he might hear her from inside the house and across the square.

Still. Nothing.

Panic rising, Noelle located her boots and pulled them on over her thick woolen socks before rushing back to the window. She still didn’t see him. Had he risen and