A Little Winter Scandal: A Regency Christmas Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  The old woman stopped and turned to face her with a kind smile on her lips. She started. People did not smile at her. Largely because she gave them little reason to. Even though you’ve secretly hungered for even a scrap of kindness. When she spoke, her voice faintly trembled. “I w-will take my meal below.” Then striving for her smooth affectedness that protected her from the knowing in the old innkeeper’s eyes, Cara tossed her head. “I’ve matters to attend belowstairs.” Which wasn’t altogether untrue. There was the matter of finding her borrowed driver and obtaining her trunks.

  “Splendid!” The innkeeper’s wife widened her smile and then without waiting for Cara to follow, made her way slowly down the remainder of the hall and to the stairs.

  With the woman safely ahead of her, Cara paused and cast a furtive glance over her shoulder at the door next to hers. Was Will still in his chambers? She thrust away the thought as soon as it slipped in. Cara scoffed. A bold, commanding figure such as Will who’d quelled the words on her lips and ordered her servants about, was not one to hide in his chambers. Most especially from a lady such as herself. She wrinkled her nose and started after the innkeeper’s wife. Nor for that matter was he the reason she was making her way downstairs. Only, she knew she lied. Even as that precious gift given her by her mother should be the focus of her thoughts, and not one of those pompous, powerful men who ruled the world, instead her mind and heart raced with an equally alarming speed with the memory of Will. And there it was again. That sentiment she’d been immune to all these years, visiting her not once, but now twice, since she’d arrived at this ramshackle inn—remorse.

  As she descended the stairs and into the taproom, she resolved to be that woman she’d been all these years—one who didn’t feel guilt or cry in her room or long for someone to care, if even in some small way. Cara knew how to be that woman; she’d been that empty soul since her mother died. She did not, however, know what to do with the maelstrom of emotions swirling in her breast since she’d left Mrs. Belden’s. Her feet touched the hardwood floor and her gaze slid involuntarily about the darkened space. A fire raged in the hearth. Even for the earliness of the day, the storm battering the countryside cloaked the outside in thick, gray skies that barely penetrated the frosted panes.

  She moved her gaze over the taproom. Her heart dipped. But for the earl’s driver alone at a corner table, the room was empty. Will was gone. How else was there to account for his absence? What reason had he to stay? Surely not for me. Cara curled her toes into the soles of her boots and then looked about once more. He’d gone and would be nothing more than a memory…just like that last, tangible connection to her mother lying in the Godforsaken countryside collecting snow. Cara steeled her jaw. She thought not. Her gaze landed on the earl’s driver.

  The servant of middling years leapt to his feet. “My l—”

  “Have you collected my belongings?” she cut in.

  The man skittered his gaze about and then touched one hand to his chest.

  Cara gave a brusque nod. Who did he think she spoke to? Or perhaps it was more he wished she spoke to someone other than him.

  “Er…” He pointed a quaking finger at the front of the establishment. “It is still snowing, my lady.”

  Setting aside her earlier resolve to be the duke’s cold daughter, Cara gave a wry grin. “Is it?” She infused a droll edge into her tone. Wind beat against the window. “Who knew it still stormed out?”

  The driver blanched.

  Alas, she’d never been lauded for her humor or her ability to elicit smiles.

  A pang struck. Was that the effect she had on all people? Even those who’d known her but a handful of hours, and hardly at that if one considered their time together had been with him perched atop his box and her in the confines of the earl’s carriage. Giving a snap of her skirts, she started for the groom, when Will’s judgmental words pricked her conscience. “You’d send a person out into this Godforsaken weather for your fripperies, brat…”

  Was it a wonder he’d have nothing more than a kiss and then be gone from her life as though she were…nothing?

  She froze mid-step. The fire cracked and hissed noisily, punctuated by the ping of ice hitting the window. Cara squared her jaw. Will had taken her as one of those pompous, self-important ladies, but then isn’t that how she’d gone through life these eleven years now? She remained unmoving, aware of the innkeeper and driver eying her with trepidation teeming from their gazes. Yet, she could no sooner speak or walk than she could displace her father from power and name herself duke. Since the loss of her mother, in a bid for her father’s affection, she’d striven to be what he expected of her as a duke’s daughter. She’d buried her spirit and all hint of emotion to become a perfectly flawless, rule-abiding lady. From the color and fabric of her gown, to the practiced smile on her lips, she’d given the world what they expected to see.

  “My lady?” the innkeeper whispered, taking a cautious step forward.

  Cara fairly twitched with the urge to break free of the ton’s suddenly suffocating mold. Well, bloody hell, she’d not prove that kiss-stealing stranger correct. Not in this regard.

  “I-I will see to your things, my lady.” The servant grabbed the hat on the empty chair and stuffed it on his head. He started for the door.

  She slowly straightened her shoulders. “No.”

  It took a moment for her words to register, but then the driver came to a slow halt. He stared perplexedly back at her. The driver tugged at his collar and shifted back and forth on his feet.

  “That will not be necessary,” she spoke in even, well-modulated tones.

  A flash of surprise lit his eyes, followed quickly by relief. She peered at the window where the storm continued to rage outside. Cara scoffed. She’d not be daunted by a blasted snowstorm.

  “You are c-certain, my lady?” he asked hesitantly, fiddling with the brim of his cap. The wary gleam in his eyes matched the look of one who feared he had his foot in a snare.

  “I am certain,” she said stiffly. She didn’t require anyone’s help to collect her belongings. Turning on her heel once more, she spun in a flutter of noisy taffeta and marched abovestairs to her rooms and over to the crude armoire. “Only think of myself,” she muttered and jerked her wrinkled cloak free. She pulled the garment about her person and fastened the grommets.

  With furious steps, she stomped out of the room, down the hall, and returned belowstairs, finding the driver gone. The man had likely taken his leave in fear that she’d return and put another request to him that would send him out into the storm. She did a cursory search for one particular man. Her heart dipped at finding him absent, still.

  It matters not that I won’t see him again. It matters not that he’ll only live in my memory as my first kiss—and one man who’d not given a jot about my status as lady and challenged me in every way…

  Ignoring the shocked stares of the old innkeepers, she made her way to the door and yanked it open. The sharp sting of cold sucked the breath from her lungs, momentarily stunning her. A howling gust of wind slapped her face with snow. Cara sputtered and dashed the flakes from her cheeks. Finding her breath, she stepped outside, and shoved the door closed hard behind her.

  She burrowed in her cloak. “I found my blasted way here not a day ago, I c-can c-certainly find my way once m-more.” Those whispered words echoed like thunder in the raging blizzard.

  And then she started forward.

  Will stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back. He stared out into the swirling storm, still raging. The violence of that powerful wind battering the leaden panes and the thick, gray-white, winter skies suited his mood. And where he’d previously mourned the warm kiss of the Caribbean sun on his skin, now he embraced the cold.

  He was due home. It was, and always had been, an inevitability. He’d have to return to the world of sedentary lord who oversaw his future responsibilities as duke. And more…the time would come that he’d wed. Yet, the woman who occupied
his thoughts was not the future bride his parents would bind him to, but rather, another—a lady who wept in private and cursed with an inventiveness that would have earned the praise of any wordsmith.

  A woman he’d taken for an ice princess. Cara.

  He let his arms fall to his sides and then scrubbed a hand over his face. That charge he’d leveled at the rigid lady one day earlier now mocked him. For in the quiet of the halls last night, while the world slumbered on, and the storm buffeted snow on the countryside, with her lips and whispered entreaties, Cara’s molten heat could have eternally thawed the harshest winter.

  He let fly a curse to match the ones the lady herself had uttered in the privacy of her chambers. In his years of traveling, and all the women he’d kissed, never before had one slipped into his thoughts and dug in with this tentacle-like grip. In large part due to the life he’d lived, traveling. There was no place for emotional entanglements. Even less place when there was a lady his parents would see him wed.

  And after but a handful of meetings with the lady he’d first taken for the manner of cruel, unkind miss his future betrothed was purported to be, he’d been silenced by the very real truth—there was, just as the innkeeper had said, more to the lady than a mean-spirited mistress who ordered her servants about. I have no right peeling back the layers to discover who the lady truly is… For nothing could ever come of knowing anything more of Cara, the young lady who’d refused to give him so much as her surname. Another life awaited him. Just as another life awaited her.

  Will curled his hands tightly at his back. His father had been far more lenient than any other duke ought with his son and heir gallivanting about the globe. How much of that leniency had been born of parental guilt at that unofficial, but not unspoken, contract they’d have him enter into with the Duke of Ravenscourt’s daughter? He’d long resented the expectation for him to join himself with that woman. Though not one given to gossips, it would be hard to ignore the whisperings as they pertained to the woman his parents would see him wed. Words lent credence by his own father’s confirmation about the lady’s character. Still for that, his mother’s bond to Lady Clarisse Falcot’s late mother was such that she’d ask him to overlook a wife who was cold, cruel, and calculated because there was more there than any of Society saw of the lady.

  He snorted. His mother had long been hopeful, seeing the best in all. He gave his head a shake. Those charges about a young woman, coming from her own godmother before she’d even made her Come Out were hardly endorsements where his future bride was concerned. And for two days he’d not given a thought to the grim future awaiting him, but rather the tart-mouthed lady who challenged him one moment, and the other moments eyed him with a soft, doe-eyed expression that could drive a man to madness.

  For only madness could account for this hungering after Cara. From the windowpane, his packed saddlebags reflected mockingly back at him. That same insanity required he leave, winter storm and all. But twenty miles from his family’s estate, the ride would be slow and arduous but hardly impossible. He sighed. A man who’d endured a trek in Nova Scotia during the heart of winter could certainly manage twenty miles or so by horseback. The longer he remained here with her, the more his world was thrown into question.

  It was time to leave.

  A sharp rapping at the door cut into his thoughts. With a frown, Will strode to the door and pulled it open. The innkeeper stood, worrying his hat between his hands. Concern glimmered in his rheumy eyes. A knot tightened in Will’s stomach that came from years of intuitive preparedness of danger. “What is it?” he asked, when the man remained fixed in silence.

  “It is the lady,” the servant blurted. He continued on a rush, “She’s gone out.”

  He cocked his head. By God, just twenty-six, there was no way his hearing was faulty and yet it had sounded as though the man had said—

  “In the storm, my lord. She’s gone out in the storm. And my wife urged me to go fetch you because the lady’s driver is off hiding from the lady and I knew you could likely bring the lady back with a good deal more ease than myself—”

  Another blast of winter wind shook the thin walls and William sprang into action. With the man still rambling on, he started around the wizened innkeeper and took off at a quick run. He clenched and unclenched his teeth as he surged through the narrow halls. The wooden floors groaned and creaked in protest as he bounded down the stairs and charged for the door. Will jerked it open with such force it shook the frame. Snow stung his eyes and momentarily blinded him. He slammed it shut behind him.

  Fear warred with frustration in his chest and he fed all annoyance with the lady. For as he trudged through the snow, more than a foot deep, panic licked at him. He damned the high banks that slowed his pace. The bloody, foolish chit. What in bloody hell was she thinking? Did she not have the sense God gave an ant?

  He squatted and the freezing snow penetrated his breeches, stinging his flesh with the wet cold. A pressure squeezed at his chest. What protection did the lady have? Her cloak and some too-thin gown she’d borrowed from the innkeeper? He ran his gloved palm over the small footstep left in the otherwise undisturbed snow. Will lifted his gaze and followed the steps as far as he could with his eyes, squinting into the thick swirl of snow. Coming to his feet, he then set out in pursuit of those smaller prints, footsteps belonging to a bloody, foolish chit.

  What business did she have going out in—?

  He came to a stop and narrowed his eyes. “Her belongings,” he hissed. Will cursed again and then resumed his determined path for the lady. Fury ate away his earlier fear and he funneled it into that far safer sentiment. As he made his way to the road, he’d have wagered the joy he found in traveling these years, just where Cara had gone off to.

  Sure enough, as he converged on a clearing a few moments later, the carriage pulled into focus. The doors hung open with the wind battering them. Cara stood perched precariously on the edge, with her gloved fingers straining for the black trunk atop. A thick haze of red clouded his vision. This is what the lady would risk life and limb for? “What in blazes are you doing?” he shouted into the wind.

  Cara emitted a sharp shriek and flailed her arms. She crashed backward into a small drift and her bonnet flew from her head and sailed noiselessly into the snow.

  “Cara!” Fear roughened his voice. Anger forgotten, he trudged the remainder of the way to the carriage, damning his strides slowed by the thick snow.

  He reached her side. William braced for the vitriol in the young lady’s eyes at finding herself indignantly sprawled in the freezing snow. Instead, a wide smile wreathed her face. That unfettered happiness sucked the thoughts from his head and he just gazed down transfixed. She lay upon the cold earth with her blonde curls blanketed about her and her sapphire blue skirts vibrant in an otherwise colorless landscape. Snow clung to her golden eyebrows and, but for the reddened tip of her nose, she may, in this instance, very well be the ice princess he’d professed her to be—magical and fey, she’d sucked the breath from his lungs.

  Their gazes caught.

  “Y-you s-startled me.” All the lady’s sure attempts at bravado were spoiled by the loud chatter of her even, pearl white teeth.

  That snapped him to the moment. He cursed. “What in hell are you doing out here?”

  She opened her mouth, but promptly closed it as he bent and picked her up. Through the dampened fabric of their garments, the crush of her breasts against his chest sent heat spiraling through him. Unnerved by this inexplicable pull, he cursed again. “You are so fixed on your blasted belongings that you’d risk your foolish life?” He set her down on her feet and she sank into the snow.

  Cara nodded once. “Yes.” She yanked the hem of her skirt up.

  Ice slapped at their faces, leaving a painful sting to the flesh. Will ignored that slight discomfort. “Yes?” he seethed. Disappointment and anger filled him. For just then, he despised that she’d proven herself, once more, to be a woman to so value those useless i
tems that sat atop her fine carriage. So cherish them that she’d place more value on them than her very life.

  She nodded once more. “Y-yes.” Had that tremble been attributed to unease with his sudden silence he’d be somewhat mollified. Except, she turned awkwardly in the snow and gestured to the top of the black lacquer carriage. “As you are h-here, would y-you be s-so good as to take down my trunk?”

  Will narrowed his eyes. Why, she was out of her living mind.

  Chapter 7

  Will was displeased. Shivering in the snow with the wind buffeting her flimsy cloak, Cara took in the muscle ticking at the corner of his right eye. She fiddled with her skirts, burrowing into the largely useless fabric of her wet cloak. Nay, the man was a good deal more than that. She’d only once before bore witness to such disappointment and fury—the day she’d gotten her half-sister sacked from Mrs. Belden’s, Mrs. Munroe had looked at her with a like expression.

  She cocked her head. She’d been very clear as to what had earned the other woman’s upset. Now, with Will, she could not account for the taut line of his mouth and his palpable fury. She widened her eyes. Of course. Given his lessons on proper treatment of servants, he’d expect some courtesy, on her part. “P-please,” she blurted.

  He puzzled his brow.

  Humph. The lout expected more in terms of her gratitude. She inclined her head. “Will you please help collect my trunk?”

  Will leaned down, shrinking the space between them. With a hairsbreadth of space between their mouths, her lips tingled with the fresh memory of his kiss. “Do. You. Think. I. Am. Angry. Over. Your. Lack. Of. Manners?”

  By the manner in which he bit out those terse words, she’d wager not. Another gust of wind slammed into them and whipped the fabric of her cloak and gown against his leg. “You are d-displeased o-over something else?” She shivered, the winter chill seeping past the momentary warmth his nearness provided.