A Little Winter Scandal: A Regency Christmas Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  “Yes, I loved him,” she whispered.

  Olivia nodded at Alexandra. “And look at what it has gotten her.”

  And there was still the Duke of Danby to deal with. “Is he furious?” Alexandra’s frightened tone left little question as to which he she referenced.

  Emma chewed her lip and peered around the room in a vain attempt at nonchalance. “What?” Alexandra pressed. “What?”

  Emma opened her mouth to speak but there was a rap on the door.

  “Enter,” Olivia called.

  A maid popped in. “His Grace is ready for you now.”

  “Lady Alexandra will be down momentarily,” Olivia informed the maid who dipped a curtsey and closed the door.

  Alexandra wanted to wail. “That was hardly thirty minutes.”

  Emma laughed gaily. “Don’t you know Grandpapa controls time as well?”

  Alexandra thought about the alacrity with which Danby had found out about her scandal at the Williams’s ball and the short amount of time it had taken him to send round a note requesting her presence.

  She sighed. Danby controlled more than time. He controlled everything and everyone.

  Chapter 6

  “You!”

  Nathan set his steaming cup of black coffee down and opened his mouth to speak—

  “You foul, despicable cad. Whatever are you doing here?”

  Even being only guest seated at the Duke of Danby’s dining room table, Nathan still glanced around to verify he was in fact the intended recipient of such vitriol.

  “Good morning, Lady Olivia.”

  If looks could kill, well then Nathan would be sitting in a pile of ash at the bottom of his half-drunk cup of black coffee.

  “Good morning? It was a splendid morning until, until…this!”

  Olivia had always been a warm and teasing towards him. He’d come to view her as a younger sister. The loathing in her young gaze struck him with an aching sense of loss. Could he blame her? She was fiercely loyal to Alexandra.

  He gestured to the sideboard loaded with breakfast meats and flaky pastries. “Perhaps you might like to join me for breakfast.” His pointed look at the servant whose eyes were downcast was a subtle reminder. Servants talked.

  Which apparently Lady Olivia cared not one bit about.

  “I’d sooner join you in Hades.”

  Well, she hadn’t said she’d never join him, so perhaps all was not lost with little Olivia.

  “Nay,” she bit off. “I would never, ever join you anywhere. Why if I were a man, I’d call you out for how you hurt Alex.”

  He sighed and took a distracted sip of his coffee. It hardly boded well for his cause if Alexandra’s sister wanted to call him out. Nathan could only imagine what Alexandra wished to do to him. Have him drawn and quartered?

  Regardless of Olivia’s glaring fury, she moved further in the room, closer to Nathan’s seat. Clearly, for all her fury, she had reasons for not quitting his presence.

  He took another sip and then set his cup down, holding it between his hands while he looked at her expectantly.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked angrily. “How could you hurt her? She loved you. Even though Father warned her you were a blackguard, she trusted you.”

  Nathan’s hand tightened so hard around the cup between his fingers he nearly shattered the glass. Telling his fingers to release the cup, he set them on his lap.

  The truth was not for Olivia’s ears. She was a child. And even if she weren’t an innocent girl, Alexandra deserved to hear the words spoken from his lips first.

  “I do not have a good enough answer for you, Olivia.”

  Olivia’s eyes narrowed to small slits. “That is Lady Olivia.”

  He sighed. “My apologies, Lady Olivia.”

  Motioning to the seat next to him, he waited with bated breath to see what she would do.

  With arms folded across her chest, Olivia stood there glaring at him for the better part of two minutes. When ascertaining that he was not going anywhere, she tugged out her own seat, waving a servant off.

  “Aren’t you going to make a plate?” he asked.

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  “Are you daft? A plate? How could you be so cavalier?”

  Well, his intentions had been gentlemanly. Apparently he’d missed the mark. And badly. It would seem her intentions were to sit there and harangue him for his deplorable treatment of Alexandra.

  It was no less than he deserved.

  “So?”

  Nathan arched a brow.

  A beleaguered sigh escaped Olivia. “So what do you have to say on it?”

  “Nothing that would earn your understanding, Olivia.”

  Her jaw set resolutely. “No, you are probably right on that score. Lady Olivia,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

  He dipped in head. “Again, my apologies, Lady Olivia.”

  An uneasy silence descended, the two of them sitting their eyeing each other warily. Reaching for his cup, Nathan found it empty. He set it aside and drummed his fingertips distractedly on the tabletop.

  Olivia eyed them with no small amount of annoyance. “Must you do that?”

  Faced with Olivia’s icy displeasure, he brought them to a sudden stop. The palpable tension urged him up and out of the hostile dining room. Yet the alternative, finding a recently wed, blissfully happy relative of Alexandra’s, nauseated him. So he opted to remain there, seated next to his feisty adversary.

  An adversary who at the moment was stretching her neck and perusing the elaborate spread on the sideboard, before directing her attention to his untouched dish of baked eggs and toast and gingerbread.

  “That is the last of the gingerbread.” Her tone was accusatory.

  A quick look at the sideboard confirmed her findings.

  Wordlessly, he shoved the plate over towards Olivia, who eyed it with a blend of longing and reluctance.

  “Take it,” he urged.

  Olivia snatched it and nibbled an edge. “I took it, but only because you don’t deserve it.”

  “I do not disagree on that score.”

  Even with the table as a barrier, he still heard her stomping a foot under the table in frustration. “You aren’t supposed to be agreeable to everything I say. And you certainly shouldn’t be giving the last gingerbread treat to me.”

  For the first time since he’d scratched the bloody wager down in the books at White’s, Nathan smiled. Olivia didn’t wait for him to speak.

  “I don’t believe a man such as you is even capable of love.”

  Nathan flinched. Now that hurt. For all the mistakes he’d made, for his betrayal of Alexandra, he had never for one moment ceased to love her with such depth that it frightened him with its intensity. The moment he’d seen her stamping through Lady Williams’s card room, her face etched in agony, Nathan had felt the only part of him that resembled something good wither and die in his chest. He had been the monster to inflict a pain deep enough to harden the perpetual smile in her eyes.

  “Well, what do you say to that?” Olivia pressed, jerking him to the moment.

  “I’d say I would agree with you on most scores today with the exception of that charge. I loved your sister. I still do.”

  Olivia’s mouth fell gaping open. “I don’t believe you.”

  So now he was a liar. Which in thinking on it, Olivia was correct there as well.

  She continued. “I am certain there are many good, honorable gentlemen out there, men who will give freely of their heart. You, sir, are not one of those men. I can no longer sit here and converse freely with you.”

  A servant rushed forward and pulled her seat out. She climbed from it as regally as if she were the lady of the manor and stormed from the room.

  Nathan stared several moments at the open doorway and noted when Olivia cautiously reappeared. Clearing her throat, she glided back towards the table and snatched the partially eaten gingerbread up. “I still say you do not deserve the treat.”
<
br />   With that, she took her exit.

  And confirmed his road to winning Alexandra back was going to be an arduous one, indeed.

  Chapter 7

  “What kept you, gel?”

  Alexandra tried not to jump at the question barked across the Duke of Danby’s office. She took a steadying breath and entered the lair.

  “Your Grace.” She prided herself on the steady way she delivered that greeting.

  “Close it,” he instructed a hovering servant.

  She cast one longing glance towards the exit. This had been the moment she’d dreaded since the scandal had erupted. She was alone with the dragon.

  Alexandra sighed. She’d always been a bit of a coward where the duke was concerned.

  “I don’t have all day, Alexandra. Take a seat.”

  She dropped her eyes demurely and counted the steps it took to place her directly in front of the Duke of Danby. “Twenty.”

  “Twenty what, Alexandra?”

  Alexandra gave a startled shake of her head. “Nothing, Your Grace,” she murmured and slid into the seat. It was large, so large it nearly dwarfed her. She felt like a child about to be delivered a stern scolding, which, in a way, she supposed she was.

  “You know why you are here.”

  “Because you missed your granddaughters and Mother and desperately and wanted to see us?” She blinked at the boldness of her own cheeky retort.

  Danby gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Seems you acquired a backbone during your time in London.”

  And a broken heart.

  “I’m getting on in age, girl. I’m not as hale as I once was.”

  “You seem to be in fine health,” she countered.

  “Yes, yes. You and the physician are of like mind. That isn’t the point. I’ve had enough of reading about the scandalous behaviors of my offspring. I never expected it of you, though.”

  Alexandra sighed. “I never expected it of myself, Your Grace.”

  He leaned forward in his chair. “So then why did you make a cake of yourself over some gentleman?”

  She could give him two thousand and twenty-five reasons she’d counted in the carriage ride. She settled for one. “I loved him.”

  Danby arched a brow. “Loved? Are my granddaughter’s sentiments so fleeting then?”

  Alas, someone who didn’t expect her feelings for Nathan to simply vanish like a cold breath of air on a winter’s day. Who would have believed the Duke of Danby would be the one?

  “No, Your Grace. I love him still.”

  “I take it your sniveling father was not particularly fond of Pembroke.”

  “That is putting it mildly, Your Grace,” she concurred.

  “What? That your father is sniveling or that he wasn’t fond of him?”

  Alexandra’s lips twitched with her first real amusement since she’d learned of Nathan’s betrayal. “Both, Your Grace.”

  Danby laughed and settled back into his seat, eying her. The easy camaraderie they’d shared dissipated under his ducal regard.

  She shifted in her seat.

  “You said you love him?”

  This again? Must he torture her?

  “Yes,” she said patiently.

  He drummed his fingertips on the desktop, the quiet staccato the only sound in the otherwise silent library. “My reports indicated Pembroke is a handsome chap. Is that what captured your fancy?”

  Indignation swelled in Alexandra’s breast. She gritted her teeth. “I assure you I am not so empty-headed to fall in love with a gentleman simply because he is handsome.”

  She tried not to be offended when Danby didn’t concur.

  “You do know the previous Earl of Pembroke was a rotten bounder? I’m sure his son is not very different.”

  Alexandra flew from her seat. “He is nothing like his father. Why he is hard-working and kind and—”

  Danby arched an intimidating brow, bringing her words to a staggering halt as she realized she’d not only challenged the duke, but also defended a man wholly undeserving of her support.

  Perhaps it was fatigue from her two and a half days of travel at a breakneck speed. Perhaps it was the presence of her grandfather. But all energy seeped from her and she slid into her seat. Alexandra closed her eyes and wished, for the thousandth time, that some mistake had been made, that Nathan was not a scoundrel, and that her father had been wrong.

  “Are you finished, Alexandra?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve always been something of a counter.”

  She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  Danby waved his hand. “As in numbers. Certainly an odd habit, but no need to apologize for it.”

  Alexandra couldn’t help it; she dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her eyes in weary consternation. Was there anything he didn’t know?

  “I pride myself on knowing everything there is to know about my offspring,” he said in response to her silent question.

  If she weren’t so blasted frustrated by his uncanny ability to anticipate her questions before she even vocalized them, she could admit there was something almost sweet about those words…well, minus the way he referred to them all as offspring. It put her in mind of his neatly-kept, well-organized, prized stables.

  Seeing as Danby’s words were more statement than question, they didn’t merit a response. However, Alexandra chose to respond anyways. “Yes, I’m a counter.”

  He placed his elbows on the desktop and leaned forwards. “Hardly a habit to be so grim about. It is not as though you are drinking and gambling like that cousin of yours.”

  Alexandra passed a hand over her mouth to smother a laugh. With a vast number of cousins, Danby’s words could be applied to any one of them.

  “Uh, thank you, I think, Your Grace.”

  “Just stating a fact, gel. Definitely another skill you didn’t get from that father of yours.”

  “No, you are correct, Your Grace.”

  He snorted. “Of course I’m right. Your mother was always the one with a head for figures. Too bad she wasn’t born a lord.”

  Alexandra’s head was beginning to spin, and not from fatigue, but rather the odd direction Danby’s course had meandered down. She couldn’t quite determine why he should make mention of her peculiar little habit.

  “Tell me, Alexandra,” Danby asked, interrupting her silent musings. “Someone who counts as much as you do must have counted a host of reasons Pembroke was worthy of you.”

  And that was not the direction she’d thought the duke had been taking her down. Her breath whistled between her teeth, and she clasped her hands, clutching them to her stomach to stifle the pain.

  “You cannot possibly wish me to enumerate the reasons I loved—”

  “Love.”

  “The Earl of Pembroke,” she spoke over his interruption. Duke be damned, she’d run out of patience with the steady line of questioning from him and his offspring.

  “I’m not asking, gel.”

  I’m demanding.

  She sighed. His point had been made. So be it. How much more could it hurt to tick off her list of reasons she’d fallen in love.

  “I can enumerate a thousand and two reasons I love His Lordship. He knows I loathe being called Alexandra—” and instead called me, my love—“when most don’t even know I have any preferences. He taught me to play hazard because I asked it. He makes me laugh. He humors my love of poetry. He has taken to counting—”

  The duke rang for a servant, interrupting her recitation. She fell silent. A short knock sounded at the door.

  “Enter,” Danby barked.

  The door opened and she craned her head over her shoulder to see the butler enter, bearing a silver tray with a calling card.

  “Show my next guest in.”

  Milne nodded and hurried off to do Danby’s bidding. Alexandra was mildly curious to know which poor relation had arrived to face the duke’s displeasure—mayhap one of the gambling and drinking ones.

  She waited,
like a child spared from practicing her letters, for Danby to request a continuation of her list. Instead he rubbed his jaw line.

  There was another knock.

  This time Alexandra didn’t turn around to see who entered.

  “Come in, come in,” Danby called, jovial towards the sudden guest. He waved the individual over.

  Apparently, whoever it was had earned the duke’s favor because his face was wreathed in an aberrant, wide smile.

  Finally curious, Alexandra peeked over her shoulder…and nearly fell out of her seat. Standing before her was the same man who’d sent her running to Danby’s Yorkshire estate, the very same man who’d broken her heart—Nathan.

  Chapter 8

  Nathan hungrily devoured Alexandra with his eyes. Since the moment she’d walked out of that card room seven days ago, he’d been filled with guilt for having hurt her and more pain that he’d ever imagined possible at losing her. A fog of emptiness had besieged him—until that summons from the Duke of Danby.

  Longing for any connection to her, he’d set out at a reckless speed, uncaring it had been sent by her grandfather, one of the most powerful peers in the realm. His meeting with Danby, however, had been nothing short of staggering.

  “Your Grace, my lady,” he murmured, unable to tear his eyes away from Alexandra’s stiffly held form.

  Her skin was pale, and it appeared a strong winter gust of wind could knock her from the very seat she occupied. He ached to cross the room, to pull her in his arms, and erase all the hurt he saw there.

  But he’d lost that right.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  Nathan didn’t speak. Words, in that moment, eluded him.

  Alexandra seemed to emerge from the daze of confusion, for she gave a forceful shake of her head and flew from her chair. She glared at him then whipped around to face the duke.

  “Order him from the grounds at once, Your Grace. Tell him…” Her words faded on a gasp.