Have Yourself a Merry Little Scandal: a Christmas collection of Historical Romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 1)

by Anna Campbell

  Arousal rushed through him. And dismay. For the first time in years, he felt warm. More, he sampled a fugitive peace. Although peace was a strange companion, when he was as hard as a damned flagpole.

  She made a sleepy protest, but praise every angel in heaven, she didn’t get up and leave.

  After a hesitation, she snuggled back into him and whispered, “Merry Christmas, Malcolm.”

  He supposed it must be well after midnight. “Merry Christmas, mo chridhe.”

  Malcolm waited for her to object to the endearment, but she remained silent. A few minutes later, her steady breathing told him that she indeed slept. Another sign of trust.

  Moisture stung his eyes as he stared unseeing into the firelit darkness. He blinked the tears away, even as poignant gratitude found a place in his lonely heart.

  Life had been flat and gray for so long. For years, Christmas had turned into just another flat, gray day in a barren landscape. Whatever happened after this, he would have tonight. At this moment, he didn’t even particularly mind that he and Rhona lay side by side, like brother and sister.

  His love was alive and with him. His love had come to him and offered her warmth to melt the chill that had ruled his world since she’d gone.

  He heaved a deep sigh, tinged with her delicious scent, and cuddled closer to Rhona. She gave another of those drowsy murmurs and curled her hand over his where it had settled on her hip.

  He refused to sleep. He didn’t want to miss a second of this night.

  And on that thought, he slept.

  Chapter 8

  When Patrick appeared the next morning, Rhona was sitting in the kitchen, enjoying a cup of tea in front of the fire. He was a young man now, and one she was proud to call her son. But at times like this when he was all untidy hair and sleepy eyes, she couldn’t help remembering the sweet toddler who had always been so happy to see his mother.

  He bent to kiss her cheek. “Happy Christmas, Ma.”

  “Happy Christmas, Patrick,” she said, hugging him, then pulling back to smooth the lock of hair sticking up above his forehead. “You’re up early.”

  His pointed glance made her wonder if he guessed that she hadn’t spent the night in her own bed. The blood rose to her cheeks. She’d always been a martyr to blushing. She’d hoped she might grow out of the affliction. She’d hoped in vain.

  “So are you,” Patrick said in a neutral voice.

  Rhona lifted her cup to her lips to hide her embarrassment. She suspected she hoped in vain there, too. She was up early because she didn’t want her son to know she’d slept with Malcolm. Even if that phrase held only its most innocent meaning.

  Except that wasn’t the full truth. Oh, Malcolm had kept his word and treated her with a chivalry that had filled her heart with tenderness. But she’d woken to find his hand curled around her breast and his leg thrown over hers. His body was pressed against her back and his rich scent surrounded her, enough like the scent of the boy she’d loved to make her feel safe and cherished.

  Which was dangerous in itself. It would be so easy to drift into a sentimental dream, where she and her first love picked up where they’d left off. But that was impossible. They were different people, and it had been so long since they were lovers. How could whatever had brought them together in the first place survive all the pain and separation?

  But however she arranged the future, in the here and now, Malcolm’s arrival had stirred her dormant carnal needs to life. Even if she ignored their past, Malcolm was an attractive man. And she was attracted. Powerfully so. The breast he’d cupped with such gentleness had swelled with longing, and her nipples had formed hard points, begging for a man’s touch. For Malcolm’s touch. The hot, heavy weight in the base of her stomach might have been long absent, but now it returned and she recognized the restless demands of arousal.

  She’d found it far too difficult to leave that warm bed and that sleeping man without waking him to seek satisfaction. It might be best if she sent Malcolm on his way today, before she made a fool of herself over him yet again.

  But as she’d stood over the rumpled bed and stared down at the man who had held her in his arms all night, her heart had sorrowed over what she saw.

  Asleep, he looked vulnerable and drawn, and there was no chance of mistaking him for the beautiful boy she’d once adored. Even in slumber, his thin face showed the marks of strain, and the thick, silvered hair told its own tale of what these last years had cost him. She’d found herself blinking back tears of pity for all he’d endured. Worse, she’d had to fight the urge to crawl back into bed and take him in her arms.

  She could imagine where that would end up.

  So she left him to sleep. He was so deep in oblivion that when she left the room, he’d only made a drowsy murmur without surfacing to awareness. She’d come out to sit by the kitchen fire and give herself a lecture full of dispiriting common sense, about what a disaster it would be, to try and turn back the clock to a boy and girl who no longer existed.

  “Would you like some tea?” she asked Patrick, setting down her cup and lifting the pot.

  “Yes, please.” Patrick brought a cup and saucer across from the dresser and watched as she poured for him. “I’m going into the church to practice my solo. The storm seems to have passed, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting to the village.”

  Patrick had inherited her talent for singing, and he’d become a mainstay of the Muirburgh church choir. Because he was such an important part of the services, she and her son usually postponed their Christmas celebrations until the midday meal, when they ate roast goose and plum pudding and exchanged presents. Most years, Rhona traveled into the village with Patrick for the early service, then came home to cook.

  She rose and crossed to lift a heavy frypan from a hook on the wall. “You’ll have breakfast first?”

  “No, thank you. I slept too late for that. I’ll take some fruitcake. That will have to do. Are you coming to church this morning?”

  She noticed that they were both very careful not to mention that a man was sleeping in her guest bedroom. She put down the pan. “Not this year.”

  Patrick’s searching stare reminded her that he wasn’t a child anymore. “Are you going to ask my father to stay for Christmas dinner?”

  Oh, dear, the subject was broached, forcing Rhona to stop pretending that this was a Christmas like any other. “Would you like me to?”

  “Yes, I would.” Patrick’s gaze remained steady. “But then, I don’t have anything like your history with him. If you still hate him, I’ll understand if you don’t want him to stay.”

  “I don’t hate him. It turns out I misjudged him all these years. He never stopped searching for us.”

  “Then I’m glad he found us.”

  Rhona had told Patrick that the man who had fathered him had deserted her, but nothing much beyond that. “He should tell you his story.”

  “And you should tell me yours. I don’t know much more than that you’re Scottish and you came to London to seek your fortune.”

  “Not exactly,” she said with a grim twist of her lips. “Oh, the Scottish bit is true. But I had no choice in coming to London. I fell in love with the laird’s son on the isolated estate I grew up on. His parents didn’t like the idea of an ignorant crofter’s daughter marrying the heir, particularly after they discovered I was carrying you. So they arranged my abduction. Until last night, I thought Malcolm had also been in favor of getting me out of the way. It turns out that his father locked him in the dungeons to stop him following me.”

  “Dungeons?” Patrick picked up on the least important part of what she’d said, reminding her that the child still existed inside his tall body. Her son was young enough to find the idea of dungeons romantic.

  “Yes. Malcolm is the Laird of Dun Carron, and he lives in a castle.”

  Patrick sent her a direct look. “So he really is a questing knight.”

  Rhona gave a wry laugh. “Where do you get your imagination?
”

  Her son looked unimpressed. “Perhaps from my father. Do you think I can visit Dun Catherine—”

  “Carron.” It should feel odd to hear Patrick call Malcolm his father, but instead it felt right.

  “…and see this castle?”

  Given Malcolm’s intention to make Patrick his heir, Rhona would pretty much guarantee it. But that piece of news was for Malcolm to deliver, not her. “I’d say it’s likely.”

  “Capital.” Patrick sobered, proving that the grown-up was there inside him, too. “And you were only my age when this happened.”

  Rhona was always fascinated with the way he was maturing. Watching him change from that affectionate toddler to this kind and clever young man was the greatest joy of her life. A joy she was aware that life had stolen from Malcolm. She’d been luckier by far in their separation than he had.

  “Seventeen.”

  “You must have been terrified.”

  “I was. I’d never been to Inverness, let alone Edinburgh. London was a horrifying monster, full of people I couldn’t understand and who didn’t understand me. Without Samuel, I dread to think what would have happened. I’d never been anywhere that I didn’t know every single person who lived there.”

  “Samuel was a good man.”

  “He was.”

  In the silence that followed, she felt Samuel’s benevolent ghost hover close. He’d loved having all his acting company and friends around him at Christmas. If his soul lingered, it wished her no ill, she knew.

  Patrick looked troubled. “Samuel would want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy.”

  “You’re lonely.”

  Rhona was surprised that he’d noticed. She kept busy, and on her good days, she achieved a simple contentment, but it wasn’t the same as having someone she loved to share her joys and her troubles. “I have you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  To her regret she did, although Patrick had never been very keen on any of the men who had courted her. “Don’t start knitting up happy endings, Patrick.”

  He paid no heed to her warning. “What does my father want? Does he mean to marry you and carry you back to his keep and make you the Lady of Dun Carron?”

  Her laugh held an artificial note that she hoped her son didn’t pick up. Because that was exactly what Malcolm did want, as mad as it sounded when they hadn’t spoken a word to each other in eighteen years. It seemed her son’s romantic imagination did indeed come from his long-absent father. “We’re strangers.”

  “You didn’t seem like strangers last night.”

  “You only saw us exchange a couple of words – and for my part, the words were ‘get out.’”

  Patrick didn’t smile, although she’d tried to inject a mocking note into her answer. “It was enough. And you spent a lot of time last night talking to him.”

  “Were you eavesdropping, you dreadful brat?”

  He shook his head, although he did smile at her calling him a brat. “No. But you were a long time in the stables and even longer in the kitchen, and it was late when you put out the lights.”

  “While you were skulking in your room to avoid a stern talking-to.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re never that stern.”

  It was true. Thank goodness for the intrinsic sweetness of Patrick’s nature, or else he would have become the brat she called him. He just had to look at her with those bright black eyes and she was putty in his hands. Even worse, he knew it.

  He watched her now with more curiosity than trepidation. “My father wouldn’t have made it to the inn through the blizzard. And you’ve forgiven me for asking him to stay anyway. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have taken him supper or let him sleep in the house.”

  “We cleared up a lot of misunderstandings last night.”

  “I’m glad. You seem…lighter this morning, as though you’ve put down a crushing load.”

  Rhona wasn’t sure she liked her son directing this level of perception at her. A lot of her thoughts right now weren’t suitable for him to guess.

  He was right about one thing. These last years since Samuel fell ill and died and she’d made the move to Scotland had been full of hard work. She’d started to feel like she was wholly a mother and a farmer. Malcolm’s arrival reminded her that she was a woman as well, and one not past the stage of experiencing a thrill at a handsome man’s interest.

  The problem was that the handsome man in question brought a lifetime of complications in his wake. He might look at her with a desire that made her blood pump faster than it had since she was a girl. But she and Malcolm could never come together free from the burden of their history.

  She spoke in an airy tone to try and distract Patrick from looking too closely and divining the sinful impulses Rhona harbored toward Malcolm. “That’s because it’s Christmas. I’m always happy at Christmas.”

  That wasn’t true. When she’d first married Samuel, Christmas had been a reminder of everything she’d lost when she was banished from Dun Carron. But by the time Patrick was old enough to understand what the festival was all about, she’d come to love her small family and the unconventional theater people who crowded into her house to celebrate this holy day.

  Patrick wasn’t to be put off. “No. It’s more than that. It’s like you’ve given up something that has weighed you down all your life.” He paused. “Hating the man who gave me life can’t have been easy. Especially when every time you looked into my face, you must have remembered him.”

  Rhona regarded her son in horror. “No, Patrick, I could never hate you.”

  His smile was easy with confidence. “I know you love me, Ma.”

  Relieved, she felt her shoulders lower to a more relaxed line. “That’s good. Because I do.” She paused. “And you’re wrong about my hatred being destructive. It was far too easy for me to hate Malcolm. It served to keep me from breaking my heart in grief. It’s a long time ago now, but we were very much in love when we were young. It took me years to get over the separation.”

  “Now you have no reason to be bitter.”

  Oh, the innocence of youth. She remained furious with Malcolm’s parents, and with her father for being so spineless when it came to protecting his daughter. She was still devastated that Malcolm had spent his life searching for them and wasting his remarkable capacity for happiness in sorrow and isolation. She was angry that he’d never had a family and a chance to discover the day-to-day pleasures she’d enjoyed with Samuel and Patrick.

  Perhaps she wasn’t quite so angry about that last. Although if she was the sort of woman she’d like to think she was, she should be.

  But while in the abstract, she wanted Malcolm to find contentment without her, something in her relished the knowledge that he’d never stopped loving her. That same weak something positively crowed with triumph that he’d never found another woman he wanted to wed.

  Oh, dear, it was clear that the Christmas spirit needed to do a bit more work on her unworthy self.

  “You know, I do feel better,” she said, which given her turmoil over her reunion with her first lover was an enormous surprise. Perhaps carrying around all that unresolved resentment had affected her more than she’d realized.

  Patrick laughed. “I’m pleased to hear it.” The clock on the mantel chimed half past six. He gulped down his tea, although it must be cold by now. “I’d better go. You didn’t say if you’re going to invite my father for Christmas dinner.”

  Rhona caught a fleeting glimpse of something she should have expected but which nonetheless startled her. Patrick was avid to know his father.

  She supposed she couldn’t blame him. This was his chance to discover where he came from. All his life, she’d done her best to give him security and love. Now she saw that she’d never been able to supply the one thing that he longed for – a father who shared his blood.

  Patrick’s pleading black gaze had its usual effect. And today was Christmas. It seemed an act of unforgivable meann
ess to exile Malcolm to a lonely lunch at the inn, when he’d already been lonely for so many years. “Of course he can stay.”

  The relief in Patrick’s smile betrayed how much her cooperation mattered. “And tonight perhaps you can tell me just what happened in Scotland all those years ago.”

  She supposed he had a right to know that, too, although she wasn’t quite ready to confess every youthful sin to her son.

  After Patrick left, she made another pot of tea and sat down before the fire. Once she dressed, she had to check the animals, but that wasn’t urgent. Yesterday, she and Patrick had made sure that they had water and plenty of fodder. Yesterday, when she’d imagined this was going to be a Christmas like all the others she’d spent at Muirburgh. Even on Christmas Day, a farmer’s work never stopped. But Rhona always organized things so the holiday meant light duties.

  Then she had to get the dinner on. Patrick would be starving when he got home, if he started the day with only a piece of fruitcake. He was always starving anyway. She often looked at that lanky body and wondered where all the food went.

  Malcolm had been a similarly long and lean stripling, although over the years, he’d filled out to fit his frame. Too well for her peace of mind. Despite his thinness, that strong, sinewy body was hard and masculine and virile. Last night when she’d seen his bare torso, she couldn’t take her eyes away from him, and her palms had itched to discover just how his skin would feel under her hands.

  She’d learned to see Patrick as an individual, separate from the man who she believed had betrayed her. But it was still a shock to confirm how much her son looked like his father. Not to mention how much like Malcolm he was in other ways. The expressions on his face, his gestures, the tone of his voice, the way they both lounged in a chair with catlike grace.

  Patrick was right about one thing at least. Giving up her hatred had freed her in so many ways, not least in her willingness to see her son as the product of the love she’d given his father.