A Little Winter Scandal: A Regency Christmas Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  Patrina folded her arms to her stomach. What would a gentleman such as him say if he were to know how truly dishonorable she was? Guilt knifed at her. She’d managed to delude herself into believing it was entirely respectable to have her maid join her in Hyde Park for her daily constitution. Mary allowed her the privacy of her own thoughts, which was so very appreciated. Only now, Patrina had betrayed that trust. Just as she’d betrayed her mother. And brother. And three sisters.

  And now… She gazed off at the distant crest, Charlotte and Daniel had disappeared to. The peel of their laughter spilled out into the cool, winter air. And now, by being in their presence, she posed a risk to the reputation of Weston’s children.

  She drew in a shuddery breath. She could not be selfish. Not again. Not as she wanted to. Not when her own self-centeredness had cost her family so much. She’d stolen from her sisters the opportunity to make, advantageous matches with good, honorable gentlemen. Shame burned like acid in her throat. She could not force that misery upon Weston’s children.

  “You’ve gone quiet, Patrina. Have I said something to offend you? If I have—”

  Patrina waved a hand. “No. No. Not at all.” He’d not offended her. Rather he’d unknowingly wounded her with the memory of mistakes she’d gone and made. He’d merely reminded her of the need to be truthful. “I’m…I’m just a bit melancholy at the mention of my father. What of you, my…Weston? I imagine you think of your wife quite often.”

  His jaw tightened. A flinty glitter sparked in his eyes. “I think of her with no real fondness.”

  Charlotte’s infectious laughter behind them mocked the coldness of such an admission. They paused and turned as Charlotte and Daniel darted about the snow, tossing snowballs at one another.

  Burning fury laced his curt words. Under her cloak, gooseflesh dotted the skin of her arms. Questions burned her lips, but she tamped them down. She’d learned after Albert’s treachery the pained awkwardness of people posing their questions; questions they didn’t deserve answers to.

  In the absence of any suitable reply for Weston, she said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, my…Weston.”

  A muscle ticked at the corner of his eye. “I imagine you think me heartless.”

  Patrina shook her head. “No. Not at all.” Not heartless. She suspected Weston was a man who’d surely been burned by the sentiments of love—much the way she had. “I wonder as to your response, is all. Of course, it is none of my affair,” she said on a rush when he opened his mouth to speak.

  He chuckled, the grating sound mirthless and devoid of any real humor, belied only by the warmth in his gaze as he stared at his playing children. “You wonder because you’re young, Patrina. You can’t be any more than eighteen, perhaps nineteen? A lady such as you is surely filled with hopes and dreams of a future that doesn’t exist as anything more than the sonnets penned by silly romantic poets. You can’t know the ugliness of a faithless mother such as my children’s mother.” Something hard and condescending laced his heated charge, more in line with the man who’d first berated her at Hyde Park nearly a week ago.

  Patrina straightened her back. How dare he presume to know what she had and hadn’t experienced in her now nearly twenty-one years of life? “You speak with such absolute certainty. You speak as though you know how I live and of my experiences based on nothing more than my age and your perception of what a young lady is.” No, he didn’t know she’d loved and lost in the cruelest kind of way.

  He scoffed. “Would you disagree with my supposition?”

  “I would,” she shot back. “I don’t presume to know anything about your life because I see you in the park with your two children and a serious expression on your face.” He might have known pain at his wife’s cruel hands, but ultimately he’d become a parent, and now had two precious, if precocious children—two impossibilities Patrina couldn’t even hope to have.

  Weston studied her with such intensity she shifted on her feet. He opened his mouth, as though he wished to ask the very same questions she herself had fought back a short while ago, but then pressed his lips into a single, tight line instead. “You are correct. I should not presume to know your life. Forgive me.”

  Patrina gave a brusque nod, unaccustomed to others making apologies to her. She’d grown up in a noisy household among siblings who believed they were each, always in the right. A gust of winter wind stirred the untouched snow around them, and sprinkled her skirts with tiny remnants of the flakes. A stray curl escaped from the brim of her bonnet, and she shoved the recalcitrant strand back, but it only fell over her brow yet again.

  “Here,” Weston murmured softly. He lifted her bonnet slightly and her breath caught as he tucked the strand behind her ear, and then lowered the velvet piece back into place.

  Her heart pounded wildly as she studied the chiseled planes of his face. “Th-thank you,” she whispered. He possessed a hard beauty, like a marbled Adonis, so very different from Albert’s stocky, non-descript plainness. Only, Albert’s appearance hadn’t mattered. She’d been so blinded by his false adulation.

  “I wish I could ask you what causes such sadness in your eyes,” he said quietly. “But I suspect you’d not answer, nor do I deserve one.” He captured her fingers and turned them over. Even through the fabric of their gloves, her palm warmed at his gentle touch.

  She should pull away. She should be indignant at his bold touch. But then, she’d done a whole number of things in her life that she should have done altogether differently. But he was wrong. “You deserve an answer.” Because she couldn’t allow him to meet her here with his children and risk jeopardizing Charlotte’s future opportunity of making a match.

  He lowered his eyebrows, his expression somehow probing and menacing all at the same time.

  She wasn’t a coward, but the words froze on her lips. She fought to free them. He made to speak. “I eloped with a gentleman,” she said on a rush. Humiliated shame set her body ablaze with heated color.

  His body went taut. He said nothing.

  She continued before her courage completely deserted her. “Last spring. It was a colossal mistake and it is therefore in the best interest of your children, and you to avoid being seen in my presence.” A sob worked its way up her throat and she disguised it as a cough. Her vision blurred by tears, she glanced down at the hole in the snow left by her now empty glass of muscadine ice. She bent and retrieved the delicate piece. Before he could utter another word, she fled, all the while wishing she’d made very different decisions in life.

  Chapter 8

  Smith pulled the doors open and Patrina stepped inside. Her snow-drenched skirts left a trail of moisture upon the marble floor of the foyer. She shrugged out of her cloak, awkwardly moving the crystal glass she’d fled Hyde Park with to her other hand.

  The butler took the garment. “My—”

  Patrina held a finger to her lips and implored the old, faithful servant with her eyes.

  “Where have you been?”

  She winced. Too late. Through the years, Mother possessed an uncanny sense of knowing just when her children were up to something they shouldn’t be. Such motherly intuitiveness seemed heightened after Patrina’s grand folly. The countess hurried down the stairs, a glare fixed on the crystal glass in Patrina’s hands.

  Patrina swallowed hard and managed a forgiving smile for the regretful Smith. “Mother,” she said with forced cheer.

  Mother stopped at the base of the stairs. She jabbed a finger at her eldest daughter. “To your brother’s office.” After all, Patrina’s scandalous act had reminded Mother that not all her servants were entirely loyal.

  Patrina glanced down at her damp skirts. “Might I first…?”

  “No you may not. Now, Patrina.”

  She bristled with insult at her mother’s sharp command better suited for scolding a small child and not a woman grown. Of course, she’d lost all right to be truly indignant. With a reluctant step, she followed behind her mother feeling more like one
of the queen’s terriers. They climbed the stairs and walked briskly on to Jonathan’s office.

  Mother didn’t even knock. She tossed the door open and pointed her finger inside the room. Patrina sighed and entered in front of her mother.

  Her brother stood with a hip propped on the corner of his desk, arms folded across his chest. “Trina,” he drawled.

  She feigned a bright smile and tucked the crystal glass into the folds of her skirts in a futile attempt to keep it from his sight. “Jonathan. How are you—?”

  “Enough of the pleasantries,” their mother snapped. “Where were you?”

  She wet her lips, resenting the lack of trust but certainty understanding it. “Where was I?” She searched for an appropriate response.

  Mother continued her barrage. “And what is that glass in your hand?”

  Patrina blinked, her mind racing. “What glass?” She angled the crystal in a way that her skirts buried the damning piece of evidence.

  Jonathan coughed into his hand. “I believe Mother refers to that particular one.” He gestured lazily. “The one you’ve hidden in your skirts.”

  Her cheeks burned. “Oh. This glass.”

  His lips twitched. “That is the one.”

  “Er…” The crystal warmed in her hand as she remembered her meeting a short while ago with the marquess. Except there was nothing to say. How could she explain the urge to see a gentleman who’d first been a frowning bear of a man to the man who’d carried a crystal glass of muscadine ice beside the frozen river?

  “Say something, Jonathan,” Mother snapped.

  “Excuse us, Mother.”

  Mother’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened and closed, giving her the look of a trout floundering outside of water.

  Patrina pressed her lips into a firm line to bury a smile that wouldn’t be at all appreciated. That had clearly not been the “something” Mother had been expecting. Nor Patrina for that matter.

  With a glower for her son, their mother turned on her heel and stormed from the room.

  Jonathan scrubbed a hand over his cheek. “You do know she’s going to be a good deal less than pleased with me?”

  She sidled over to the vacant seat in front of his desk and sank into the chair. “I’m certain her displeasure with me will far outweigh any annoyance she might feel toward you.”

  He didn’t disagree. Instead, he tipped his chin toward the damning glass. “Who is he?”

  If his tone was harsh and disapproving she thought she might not answer. As it was, she’d brought too much disappointment to her brother. She sighed and glanced down at her hands. “I know what I’m doing, Jonathan. Which is nothing,” she said on a rush when he lowered his black eyebrows. “There was a little girl who’d become lost from her nursemaid and I helped deliver her home.”

  Perhaps it was because her brother had been something of a rogue through the years, before his wife had properly reformed him, but he eyed her warily—a man who recognized there was more to the story, information she withheld. He glanced beyond her shoulder. “You know I can never forgive myself for having failed you as I did, Patrina.”

  She closed her eyes. “Not you, too, Jonathan.” Mother, Juliet, Jonathan. Everyone blamed themselves for her actions. It grew tiresome dwelling amongst people who existed in a perpetual state of guilt. After all, she had a sufficient amount of guilt for the whole Tidemore clan combined.

  He went on as a though she’d not spoken. “I didn’t pay enough attention to the gentlemen striving for your attention.”

  Probably because there’d not really been any gentlemen desiring her attention.

  “And as a result, Marshville took advantage of…of…” he cleared his throat.

  “My naiveté? My foolishness?” she said in a self-deprecating tone. My desperation.

  “Your innocence.” He squared his jaw. “And I’ll not have you make the same mistake again.”

  “I can’t really make the same mistake, though, can I Jonathan?” She gently reminded him. After all, once ruined, forever ruined. The risk she danced with every time she met Weston further jeopardized her sisters’ future hopes of a respectable match. That in itself should compel her to stay well-clear of the marquess.

  It appeared she was the same selfish ninny she’d been nine months ago. Logic should keep her from the marquess, yet a desire to know more of him kept drawing her back to him.

  Jonathan drummed his fingers on his desk. “I’m going to ask you the question I should have asked you more than nine months ago. The question that would have saved you from yourself.” That she appreciated. His assigning her responsibility for her own actions. “Who is he?” he asked with a bluntness that made her wince.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll not see him again.” Sadness pulled at her heart. Foolishly, she wished to see him again. She enjoyed his company. Welcomed that he was the only one to speak freely with her and didn’t look on her with pity or scorn as the rest of Society did, family included.

  She curled her toes into the soles of her slippers. Then, that had been before he’d known the truth of her past. After she’d shared it with him, she could be assured he’d fall into the pitying category or the scandalized category. Odd, she couldn’t seem to place a powerfully confident man like Weston in either category.

  Jonathan groaned.

  Patrina started. “What?” she said with a frown.

  “You’re wool-gathering.”

  Her frown deepened. “And?”

  “And I recognize all the implications of wool-gathering,” he muttered more to himself. “I wool-gathered when I fell in love with Juliet.” How very odd to hear her once-scoundrel brother speak so freely of his love for his wife.

  She crossed a hand over her heart and schooled her features. “You may be rest assured I’ve no intentions of falling in love.” No, it would be the height of foolhardiness to go and do something so irresponsible. Patrina stood. She reached for her glass.

  “Stop,” Jonathan instructed, the tone belonging more to commanding earl than affable brother.

  She froze mid-motion.

  “Ices in winter?” Of course he’d recognize the patent glasses given out at Gunter’s. The crystal pieces were usually carried back and forth from Gunter’s to waiting carriages across the street during warmer weather. Weston, however, had purchased the glass for her. And for his children, of course. “Please, don’t make me ask you again, Patrina. Who is he?”

  It was the please that did it. She directed her gaze to the delicate glass in her hands. “The Marquess of Beaufort.” Maybe Jonathan didn’t know him. She’d not heard mention of Weston in any of her Seasons.

  “Beaufort.”

  She nodded.

  “Beaufort.”

  Well, this repeating business from her brother certainly didn’t bode well.

  “Beaufort.”

  She wet her lips nervously. “Er…do you know him?”

  “I do.”

  She bit down hard on her tongue to keep the questions from tumbling forth. “How do you know him?” What was the harm in asking one question?

  “We moved in the same social circles at one point,” he said curtly.

  “What happened?” Why did you stop? And more…what if he’d continued his friendship with Weston? Perhaps, just perhaps he might have then been properly introduced to Patrina and there would have never been an Albert Marshville or a scandal or a—

  “He fell in love.”

  Patrina flinched. That she’d not been prepared for. “With who?”

  Jonathan seemed to be searching his mind. “A Lady Cordelia Something-or-Another,” he supplied. “It was a love match.”

  She considered Weston’s harsh coldness when speaking of his now-deceased wife. What had happened to the loving couple? “Did—?”

  “You do realize for a young lady who’s not at all interested in the marquess beyond returning the gentleman’s son—”

  “Daughter,” she amended.

  “—to him, yo
u have a good deal of questions.”

  She screwed her mouth up tight. Yes, she could certainly see how it would appear that way. “I just—”

  “Be careful, Patrina. I just want you to be happy.” A muscle ticked at the corner of his eye. “I couldn’t forgive myself if I failed you.” Again. The word danced in the air between them, unspoken yet somehow still real.

  “And you don’t believe Wes…” Her brother’s eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Er, the marquess,” she corrected, “could make me happy?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “He can’t. He’s a dark, serious, somber, withdrawn fellow—now. You deserve better than that.”

  Patrina gave a tight nod and stood. She dropped a curtsy. “You have nothing to worry over, Jonathan,” she assured him.

  “I certainly hope not,” he said under his breath.

  As she took her leave she considered Jonathan’s words. He seemed so confident in saying she deserved better than Weston. She staggered to a slow stop. Her pulse drummed a steady beat inside her ears. Only, what if she didn’t want anything more than the Marquess of Beaufort?

  Chapter 9

  Weston passed a brandy back and forth between his fingers and stared down into the hearth. A roaring fire blazed within the grates, and warmed him. He braced for the not unexpected question.

  “Your children need a mother, Weston.” Ah, there it was. His sister, Amanda Callaway, the Viscountess Merewether usually wasted little time with her needling. Her visits usually began with the same six-word utterance.

  Not, how are you doing? Never, it is a delight seeing the children. Rather… Your children need a mother, Weston.

  He turned and held his glass up in salute, and then raised it to his lips. He took a much needed sip, welcoming the warm trail the fine French liquor blazed down his throat. “I thought you and Oliver intended to leave for your country seat for the holiday.”

  She slipped neatly down his path of distraction. “Do you intend to join us? I’ve asked you for the past three years since…since…” she waved a hand. The words needn’t even be spoken. “But you’ve never accepted and so, of course you’d be welcome.”