Once Upon A Regency Christmas: On a Winter's Eve / Marriage Made at Christmas / Cinderella's Perfect Christmas
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Julia gasped. The pressure of warm lips on hers increased, but his hands stayed still. Her decision then. Flee screaming as the provoking man suggested, or…not. She jerked at her bonnet ribbons, tipped the thing off her head and into the snow, flung her arms around his neck and returned the pressure. Giles took one staggering step backwards, then his arms were around her.
‘Steady,’ he murmured. ‘There’s all the time in the world.’
Oh, yes. Julia made herself relax, eased the stranglehold, as all her senses flooded back to her. She knew how to assess the quality of silks and cottons by touch, the variety of wood by its weight and strength. Under her hands his hair was silk, a rough, wild variety turning into velvet where it was cropped closer at the nape. His neck was teak, so were his shoulders, his chest. She did not dare think about his thighs, pressed against hers.
She had learned to grade perfumes, spices and essential oils by their scent, by the subtleties of taste. Her tongue stroked over his and discovered tea and that spicy, tantalising man-taste again. He smelt of man, too. Clean linen, slightly musky skin warming under her hands, an overtone of leather, a hint of pepper.
Giles held her, his hands unmoving, only his mouth caressing her, creating an infinite variety of subtle touches and provocations. She had thought a kiss would be an exchange of heat and desire, straightforward, blatant even. But this… She sighed into his mouth and he caught her lower lip between his teeth, gently worrying it as he sucked at the fullness.
She sighed again and he groaned, deep in his chest and finally, wonderfully, his hands moved, slid down. Cupped her behind through the layers of clothes and lifted her against him. Warmth and steady strength and something very like trust. And excitement. She needed to tear his clothes off. She wanted him to tear hers off.
‘The weather is an excellent chaperon.’ Giles released her. ‘There is no danger of things getting out of control when every flat surface is under snow.’
He was making light of this, treating that kiss as though it had been a fleeting moment of flirtation. Nothing to be embarrassed about, simply something that two adults might exchange when they found a mutual attraction. Julia found she could smile. ‘We would sink without trace.’
‘Or start a thaw.’ There was more heat in his regard than she had expected. Perhaps she was being naïve to imagine that this was mere flirtation. Did he want the dalliance he had spoken of last night? Did she?
‘Julia! Do come and help!’
‘Miri is calling. I expect she needs instructions on snowmen.’
Giles picked up her bonnet, shook the snow off and handed it to her. ‘Soggy ribbons, I’m afraid.’
She left them dangling as she took his arm and they retraced their steps through the shrubbery and on to the lawn. Miri had the parts for her family of five snow people and Giles helped her lift the heads into place.
What had happened just then was what she had wanted, surely? The experience of an attractive man’s kiss. She should treat it as a test, to establish whether her secret yearning for a lover was a foolish daydream or something that she truly desired. Because a lover would be so much better than a husband. You could dismiss a lover when you tired of him or he proved not to be the man you had hoped. A lover would not control her money, have no claim on her beyond what she granted him in her bed. A lover would give her pleasure, but would not take her power.
‘We are just going to get some things,’ Miri called. ‘We won’t be long.’
But have I power? How does a woman wield it in this cold country? In India she bought and sold, bargained, traded. Humphrey had believed that all she was doing was carrying out his orders, and, as far as his business was concerned, that was just what she did. No more, no less.
But she had learned how to run a business, had created her own and it had flourished. She had absorbed everything a seventeen-year-old youth might be sent to India to learn in order to return home to England a nabob, rich enough to buy a county. Once she had saved enough money from her housekeeping allowance it had been easy to trade on her own account, to invest in gemstones and gold for herself until she had believed that having such wealth was all she needed to be free, to control her own life. But in London it seemed that she must be a man to play by their rules, to wield the power that money gave.
Perhaps, she mused, as she gathered twigs to make the snow family’s arms, a woman could make her own rules. But I never learned to be a woman. Julia looked down at what she was holding and found her cold lips were curving into a smile. But I can play again, just for a while.
Giles and Miri returned, his arms full of straw and battered old hats, her hands heaped with small lumps of coal and a bunch of wizened carrots. They laughed and joked as they began to dress the snow figures, Miri measuring carrots against Giles’s nose to get the length right for the male figure, him teasing her by sticking handfuls of straw for hair under the female’s hat just when she had adjusted it to her satisfaction.
How long had it been since she had been able to play with as little inhibition, with almost childlike joy? Julia began to break off lengths of fir needles, just long enough to make bristly eyebrows for the snowman, then used more pieces to create ludicrous eyelashes for the snowwoman, stepped back to admire the effect and found she was laughing, too.
Giles came to her side. ‘We have done a fine job with our snow family. Just one more adjustment.’ He took hold of the twiggy arms, tipped some up, some down and there they stood, Mama and Papa Snow holding hands and, on either side, their arms sloped down to take the little twigs the snow children held up. ‘There. A happy family.’
A robin flew down, perched for a moment on the snowman’s old beaver hat, then flew off, its breast a flash of fire in the air. Julia scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her gloved hand. That had been the last time she had played and laughed uninhibitedly, as a child. That Christmas when she had been eleven. The December before Mama died. Papa had never been the same after that.
I want children. I want to share this with them. Simple pleasures, joy that money cannot buy, pleasure without calculation.
But society was hateful to children who were different and she could not deliberately set out to give a child an extra burden to carry. Life could be hard enough. Which meant she needed a husband. It was almost a relief to have her mind made up for her, to have a fixed purpose for returning to England and not just the desire to get away, to be in control of her own destiny at last—even when she’d had no idea what she wanted that destiny to be. But this husband, the father of her children, must be a man with money, who would not care whether she had ten pounds or ten thousand, because otherwise how would she know why he wanted her? For her wealth or herself? But now, if this, whatever this was, happened with Giles—who was clearly not a wealthy man—then she would embrace it for the happiness it might bring them, just for a day or two.
Chapter Five
That had been a pleasant evening. Giles stretched out his legs in front of the cold hearth in his bedchamber, waiting for Julia and Miri to settle in their own rooms before he moved down to the warmth of the drawing room again.
He could hear their voices because the fireplaces were back to back and shared a flue. What they were saying was unintelligible, otherwise he would have moved, but the murmur of feminine voices, the occasional soft laugh, was pleasant after years spent in male company where any women were more inclined to be raucous than sweetly spoken. Even when the regiment was back in camp and there was time for short-lived relationships, the Iberian women had been vivid, vibrant and not much given to whispers.
Claire, of course, being the colonel’s daughter, had been different. Sweet, refined, enchanting to her father’s officers when they withdrew back behind the lines. He had fallen for her, inevitably, it seemed. And she had returned his interest, flirted and then, as his feelings deepened, so had hers. So she had said. A pity that all his not inconsiderable experience with women had been with those who were not ladies, who had not learned the polite art of deceit.
Miri laughed and Giles came back from the dark vortex of his thought. She had been bubbling over with good spirits that even vegetable stew with dumplings, followed by another dried apple pie, had done nothing to repress. The snow was beautiful, she declared. Building snowmen was wonderful and tomorrow they must plan Christmas decorations for the house. She was charming, unspoiled, beautiful, sophisticated in many ways and in others, almost a girl. A product of her upbringing, he supposed.
But she did not attract him, not as a man. Perhaps because of her youth, perhaps because he could not forget the taste of the woman who sat on the other side of the fireplace all evening, quiet, almost abstracted.
Had that second kiss been a mistake? Was he wrong in thinking she would welcome a fleeting affaire? He was attracted, intrigued and confused by Julia Chalcott, which was an arousing and uncomfortable combination when one thing was uppermost in his mind: he needed a rich wife and he needed one soon.
To be exact, what he required was a rich, well-bred, fertile, exceedingly practical wife because what had brought him home, forced the sale of that hard-won commission, had been the news that he was now Earl of Welbourn.
When the news reached him that his cousin Henry had died of blood poisoning he hadn’t thought anything of it, beyond the regret for any man’s death. It had been the culminating tragedy in a series of premature deaths that had brought him close to the title, but Henry had left a pregnant wife to mourn him, and, the family solicitor had delicately hinted, she was expected to be brought to bed of twins. No daughter had been born to the Markhams of Welbourn for almost one hundred years.
When the letter announcing the birth of twin girls had reached him he had been stunned, although not quite as shell-shocked as he was a moment after reading the second page. Mr Prettiman regretted to inform the new earl that the family finances were still in the dire state that they had been in when Henry had inherited. His lordship must hasten to Welbourn Hall without delay. Decisions on the sale of assets could not be postponed much longer.
So here he was, snowbound with two hundred guineas, a horse, his sword and a turkey to his name and a grieving widow with two infants to support from an estate that, somehow, with no experience whatsoever, he must drag out of the mire.
So, a rich wife to fund the recovery. An intelligent, fertile wife who could learn how to be a countess, while he, a clergyman’s son, an army officer, learned to be an earl. A practical wife who would stand at his side while he tackled whatever needed to be done.
And the snow had given him a few days’ respite between his old life and his new, a pause before the distasteful business of finding himself that rich wife, mingling with the nouveau riche who would be delighted to bail out a bankrupt earldom for the sake of a titled daughter and grandchildren.
‘I do like him, although I don’t think him very good looking.’ Miri’s voice brought Giles out of his chilly half-doze with a start before he realised that she must be right by the fire. ‘What do you think?’ There was a thump as a log was tossed into the grate.
Julia’s answer was, mercifully, inaudible.
‘He’s not a rich man, is he? Such a—’ Miri’s voice faded as she moved away.
Hell’s teeth. I’ve been sitting here weighing up Lady Julia’s attractions and it seems what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Serves me right. Giles bent down and tugged off his boots, gathered up his bedding and let himself quietly out of the bedchamber before he heard any more home truths.
‘Have you decided what to do with the house yet?’ Giles leaned on the banister rail of the topfloor landing and Julia looked up from where she sat on the step beside him. They had spent the morning going from room to room, assessing the state of each and listing what work needed doing. As she was used to Indian houses and Giles maintained that his only architectural knowledge related to how to stop bivouacs leaking and how to estimate the strength of French fortifications, she did not have much confidence in their calculations. But at least calculations kept her from thinking about his kisses, even if it did not help when he stretched up to measure a window with the span of his arms and the muscles shifted deliciously in his back, or their fingers touched accidentally—she was almost certain it was accidental—when they both reached for the same object and her breath caught for a second.
‘Sell it.’ She was quite clear about that. ‘But this hasn’t been wasted time. I wanted to be certain that there is nothing here that draws me to the house.’
‘What about the staff?’ Giles asked. ‘I thought they were intimidated by you, but they aren’t, are they?’
‘They know they are needed, that their work, done properly, is valued. They haven’t had any clear direction for an age, since the last tenant left, and they have become purposeless and lacking in confidence.’ She shrugged. ‘Everyone needs purpose and reward. I can give them good references and I hope the buyer will keep them on.’
‘I misjudged you at first.’ Giles shifted his rangy body, getting his elbows comfortable on the rail. ‘I thought you bossy.’
Julia set her hands behind her and leaned back to look up at him more comfortably. It was very easy to look at Giles, unless he met her gaze and put her to the blush. He wasn’t handsome, but he was so male. She wanted his hands on her, not just his eyes. ‘I am bossy,’ she admitted with a laugh, hoping she was not turning pink, that he could not read her thoughts, which were concerned with anything but what the servants needed. ‘No, actually I am decisive and sometimes impatient. Decision and clarity are considered admirable qualities for a man. In a woman they are bossiness.’
‘I like it.’
‘You do?’ she enquired, dubious.
‘I like women who know what they want and aren’t afraid to say so. Not everyone finds that attractive but you will be a breath of fresh air when you return to London. No doubt you’ll do the Season.’
‘It may take more than one Season to become accepted.’ She shrugged. ‘I have no friends in London, no sponsor, so I must ease into society. If I decide to make the investment.’
She meant the emotional investment, but Giles took it, as she intended, to mean the financial cost and shifted the conversation again, away from the sensitive issue of money. ‘You have the freedom to choose anywhere in the country to live.’ He straightened up and went to look at a print hanging crookedly on the wall.
He was right. If only she knew what she really wanted. Other than Giles. Wanting him was becoming an ache.
‘Julia.’ He had moved back and was kneeling right behind her while she had been fantasising about him. Only this wasn’t a fantasy. Could he read her mind? His arms came round her and she leaned back against his chest, eyes closed, lips parted for his kiss. She felt his breath on her lips. ‘Julia, do you want this?’
‘Yes.’ His arms tightened and she felt a stab of panic. Do I? Am I ready for an affaire? Too late, his mouth was brushing over hers, his hands held her as he moved to sit with his back against the wall with Julia sideways on his thighs.
This time she was prepared for the taste and the feel of him, for the thrust of his tongue and nips of his teeth. The warmth of his palm cupping one breast was new and she leaned into the caress, gasped into his mouth as his thumb fretted slowly across her nipple.
‘Julia! Giles! Where are you?’
Julia sat up with a jerk, banging her forehead against Giles’s nose. ‘I must—’
‘In a moment.’ He pulled her back and kissed her again, long and languorous, ignoring her wriggling. After a moment she realised she didn’t know whether she was wriggling to be free or to be closer. He let her go and watched her from his position on the floor, all delicious long sprawled limbs and tight breeches and very evident arousal. ‘You are all dusty, Lady Julia.’
‘And you, Captain Markham, are a rogue!’ She started down the stairs, shaking out her plain woollen skirts. ‘Coming, Miri!’ Three steps down she stopped, turned back and knelt to stretch out to catch his hand. ‘A rogue.’ Then she was running down the stairs, listening for the tread of booted feet behind her.
‘There you are.’ Miri was in the hallway. ‘I was speaking to Paul, the groom, who is something of a weather-wise man,’ she reported. ‘He says this dry spell will hold and predicts a thaw in a few days.’
‘If so, I will see if I can get to my horse tomorrow.’ Giles came up behind Julia, his hand resting unseen at the small of her back. ‘I’ll take one of the carriage team, if one of them is willing to be backed. When the thaw comes I want to be ready to leave here before the rivers swell with melted snow and we start losing bridges or the fords flood.’
‘By all means.’ That was prudent. I don’t want to be prudent. The hand at her back was trailing lines of ice and fire up and down her spine. ‘Is it far to where you left it?’ If the carriage horses could be ridden, then she was going, too. It was so long since she had been on a horse, too long since she had been outside beyond the bounds of walls and roads.
‘I’d walked about four miles when you picked me up, I estimate. So six or seven. I’ll set out after breakfast to make the most of the light.’
‘You had better find out whether there is a rideable beast in the team. Could you check all four? It would be useful to know in case we need to ride them later on.’ She wouldn’t tell him she would go, too, not yet. He would be sure to object that it was too cold, too dangerous, too something and she was bursting with a restless energy that chasing spiders and organising servants was doing nothing to dissipate. In fact, it was getting worse and the remedy was Giles.
Hell, but he was frustrated, aching with the need for Julia. And she wanted him in return, he knew that. The cold of the stable yard was some help as he stamped through the snow to the barn. There was light in the window above the stable door and, when Giles entered, the sound of footsteps from above. He made for the ladder to the loft space, but stopped when a voice behind him said caressingly, ‘Oh, you are a handsome fellow, aren’t you?’
It was Miri. He couldn’t see her, but as she was answered by a series of gobbling noises she was not hard to locate. Giles found her sitting on the hay with the turkey cock leaning heavily against her knee, eyes closed, while she scratched the feathers at the base of his bald neck. ‘You’re a very clever turkey,’ she praised him. ‘Fancy finding that nice Captain Markham to save you. Any other bird would have flown right into trouble.’
‘He’s such a weight I can’t imagine him doing anything but flopping off the stagecoach.’ Giles grinned at her when she looked up with her charming smile. ‘What are you doing in there?’
‘I came to see the horses and he was worrying at the label on his leg so I took it off. It must be his name, don’t you think? Bulstrode sounds so fat and self-important.’
‘Unfortunately I suspect the Family Bulstrode is lamenting the disappearance of its Christmas dinner.’ He opened the half-door for her as she got to her feet with one last caress for the besotted turkey. ‘I assume the men are upstairs?’
‘You will be glad to be on your way.’
He was getting to know Miss Chalcott and the sweet smile and calm façade hid a more complex character than met the eye. One with bite. ‘And you’ll be glad to see the back of me, no doubt.’
She coloured a little at that, but she met his gaze frankly. ‘Yes. I have enjoyed meeting you, Captain. I had fun with the snowmen and I’m grateful for your help with the house. But Julia deserves peace and time to recover herself, decide what it is she wants.’
‘To complete her mourning?’
‘To recover from everything that has happened to her since she was sixteen, Captain. Don’t hurt her.’
‘Well, that’s frank.’ His sense of humour was faltering in the face of the attack.
‘It was meant to be.’
‘I have no intention of hurting her.’
‘Good. I hope you are not offended.’ She smiled again and left the stables, her cloak swinging around her heels, leaving him torn between amusement and irritation.
‘Offended? Certainly not. Why should I be offended by having my amorous intentions questioned by a pretty chit?’ he muttered, climbing the ladder.
‘Captain?’ Thomas, the coachman, looked round the door of the snug room he and the groom occupied. ‘Thought I heard someone talking. Anything amiss?’
‘Nothing at all. Can any of the coach horses take a rider? I must retrieve my own mount and you’ll not want to send out the carriage and team.’
‘They can all be ridden, no problem. Come into the warm, sir.’ He closed the door behind Giles and put down the harness he had been mending. Beside the stove Paul, the groom, got to his feet and nodded respectfully. ‘We train them so they can be ridden to the farrier. Not the smoothest ride you’ll ever have, but any of them will do you for a few miles. I’ll get some short reins on a bridle for you this evening. You’ll be bareback, though.’
‘I’m a cavalryman, Thomas. I’ll ride most things with or without a saddle.’ The room was warm and smelled not unpleasantly of horse, leather, tobacco and hard-working men. It was simple and reassuringly familiar from years spent in billets, in tumbledown cottages, in tents, all made into homes for professional soldiers.
‘Have you far to go, Captain? If you don’t mind me asking.’ Thomas nudged a chair forward and Paul produced a stone bottle that sloshed cheerfully.
‘Under a day, unless any bridges are down or roads blocked. Thanks.’ Giles took the bottle and tipped his head back to take a swallow, then lost the power to breathe. ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he managed after several seconds. ‘What is this?’
‘My old mother’s winter tonic.’ Thomas accepted the jug and took a hefty swig. ‘Secret recipe handed down for generations. Here you are, Paul, keep it moving, lad.’
Ah, well, there are worse ways to spend a snowbound afternoon than blind drunk, that time-honoured way to deal with the pain of a woman on your mind.
Chapter Six
‘Oh! Are you sickening for something?’
Giles came through the door into the dining room and stared at the food on the table as though he were not quite certain what it was for.
Julia stood up, took his arm and pushed him into the nearest chair. ‘You are the most ghastly colour. Let me feel your forehead. Have you a fever?’ No, his skin was cool. ‘I’ll see if Mrs Smithers has any tonics or medicines in stock.’ Under her hand she felt him shudder.
‘The last thing I need is a tonic. Thank you. Coffee. Please.’
‘No coffee, remember? It will have to be strong tea.’ Miri, smiling wickedly, lifted the pot.
‘Very strong. Sugar.’ He took the first cup, appeared to inhale it and took the second, which she had already pushed across to him. ‘More.’
Light dawned. ‘You are drunk.’
He finished the third cup. ‘Hungover.’
‘So that is where you were yesterday afternoon! Have you drunk the cellar dry?’