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

by Anna Campbell

  He cleared his throat. “I see,” he said, responding to her reveal. “I do not believe your father was aware of this.”

  “Likely not,” Jane said. “And I would implore you not to say anything until after the baby is born. It was one of the reasons Mary left — so that she and Billy could be married and bear their child before anyone was aware of all that had happened.”

  Duncan scratched his temple, unsure of just what he was supposed to do now. He didn’t look at Niall or Keith, for he knew the two of them were finding this entire situation far more humorous than it actually was. He honestly did not much care over the loss of Mary’s affections, for he knew he had never been the recipient of them in the first place. It was his pride that was hurt, although he would never reveal that to anyone else, most especially Jane Campbell.

  “Mary is… happy here, then, with her preacher?”

  “Very much so,” Jane said, bobbing her head, a small smile quirking her lips. “In fact, they were married just last week.”

  “They were what?”

  “Married,” she said, drawing out the word as though he might not understand it. “They wanted to do so before Christmas.”

  “Christmas,” he said, practically spitting out the word. “How very… English.”

  “Hogmanay, then, for Mary,” she supplied helpfully. “They are going to share their traditions, celebrating both Christmas and the New Year in equal measure.”

  Duncan scoffed, muttering an oath under his breath regarding his thoughts on the English.

  “We were supposed to be married just after Hogmanay,” he said, placing his hands on his hips.

  “Mary does feel quite sorry for what she did to you,” Jane said quietly, and Duncan wondered if she was telling the truth or simply attempting to placate him. “Perhaps, when you return me to her home, she might have the opportunity to tell you so.”

  Duncan knew he was unable to keep his dismay from his face.

  “She will do no such thing,” he ground out, “for you are not going to be returning to her home. I may not be able to force Mary back to Scotland and to your father, but I certainly will not leave you here! One daughter is better than nothing.”

  Jane winced at his words, but she was already shaking her head before he finished.

  “Unfortunately, I must stay,” she said in that calm, practical manner of hers. “You see, Mary’s pregnancy has proven quite difficult. She wrote to me asking that I would come be with her and make sure that all is well. I am a healer of a sort, you see. So, I will not leave until the baby comes.”

  “I cannot return without you,” he said, forcing himself to release the fists he had formed at his sides, though he couldn’t help the anger in his tone.

  “Well then,” Keith supplied, his hulky frame rising from where he had been sitting on the floor, watching the both of them through this entire exchange, “I suppose you will just have to stay here, Duncan.”

  “Absolutely not,” Duncan and Jane said in unison.

  It was the first thing they had agreed upon.

  But Duncan was not leaving without Jane, and she had no intention of going with him.

  Neither was giving in.

  Chapter 3

  They had remained at a deadlock for over an hour now. When Duncan had dug in his heels and told her that in no one’s wildest imaginings would he be leaving her in London, Jane had decided there was only one thing to do — she would have to return to her sister’s home with or without his help.

  He had, however, decided that was not going to be an option, as he stood in front of the door and barred her exit with his massive body.

  “You cannot take me prisoner,” she protested.

  “You are not a prisoner,” he had returned, “but you must remain here until I decide what I am going to do with you. I cannot allow you back into the winter night alone. It is nearing midnight, for one thing, and it is freezing out there. How would I explain to your father that I had allowed you to catch your death in the cold?”

  “Well, that would be both your own fault and his, as you were the one who undertook this nonsensical and quite unnecessary rescue.”

  Duncan took a deep breath as he stared at her, his eyes running from her toes all the way up to meet her eyes once more. His were an icy blue that caused all kinds of quivers to race through her — ones that she didn’t want to put a name to, nor did she care to spend any time further considering.

  “Very well,” he said. “If you are going to be so ornery, then I will take you back in the morning.”

  Jane stared at him in horror.

  “Me, ornery? Duncan,” she tried to reason with him, “you must take me back now! I cannot stay here all night.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t have much of a choice. Besides, what does it matter?”

  “For me to stay here with the three of you? Do you know what sort of scandal that would be?”

  He snorted. “We’re Highlanders. We don’t care a fig for what the self-righteous English think of us, do we?”

  “My father would never allow it, if he knew what you were about.”

  “I think he would. ’Tis better than running off with an Englishman, is it not?”

  Jane turned around, rubbing her temples with her two index and middle fingers. She was tired, but she needed to find her way back. She thought she had masked her exhaustion, but it seemed Duncan was more observant than she had supposed.

  “You can sleep in my bed.”

  His voice rumbled from across the room, sending little shocks through her chest.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, you can sleep in my bed.” He waved toward a back room. “The rest of us will make our bedrolls out here.”

  “This is outrageous,” she said, at a loss, wishing she was more like Mary, who always got her way, no matter the circumstance. “I don’t have any of my belongings. My sister must be desperate with worry—”

  “Was she sleeping when you left?” Duncan interjected.

  “Well, yes, I suppose.”

  “Then there is nothing to worry about. You’ll be back before first light.”

  Jane realized that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with this pigheaded man and turned in disgust to the small back bedroom, finding that there wasn’t much within but the bed itself. She was surprised to see that the bed was quite carefully made, and when she pulled back the covers and crawled in, she was instantly enveloped by the musky, heady scent that was all Duncan McDougall. He must have slept here the previous night. She both loved and hated the fact that when she pulled the blankets around her it was almost as though he was there with her, holding her close in an embrace.

  For all she could think about as she drifted off to sleep much faster than she would have ever expected given the circumstance and the strange bed, was that her sister was fortunate she hadn’t married such a man. Very fortunate indeed.

  “Looks like you’re going to be spending some time in London, then, Dunc?”

  Duncan wanted to lean over and wipe the smile off of Niall’s face, but the unfortunate truth was that his friend was right. He had backed himself into a corner and he didn’t see any other way out.

  “It’s quite the commitment when you’re just doing this as a favor,” Keith added to the conversation as he poured them all another drink, to which Duncan only grunted.

  For this was far more than a favor. He had lost a woman. Not only lost her, but she had chosen another man over him. That stung worse than anything else he could fathom. He had promised her father, on his word, that he would retrieve her and return her to their family. If Jane was telling the truth, it didn’t seem that was likely to be possible, but he certainly wasn’t going to leave the sister behind as well.

  “I’ll talk her into leaving soon enough,” he said gruffly. “She’s a Highlander through and through. She’ll learn to hate the English, especially since the Christmas season is upon us.”

  “You know, I’ve always wondered about the En
glish Christmas,” Niall began to muse, but stopped when Duncan shot him a look that told him just what he thought about Niall’s wonderings.

  “It’s fanciful,” Duncan said, waving a hand in the air. “Their celebrations have nothing to do with the actual reason for it. I only hope we will be long gone from here within the week before it arrives, and that we will be back to celebrate Hogmanay in Scotland, where we belong.”

  “Have fun with the English,” Niall said with a wink. “As much as I would love to stay and watch how this all plays out — and spend a bit more time with the lovely Jane — I have to be returning. I cannot begin to fathom how this is going to end.”

  “Me neither, Niall,” Duncan muttered. “Me neither.”

  Jane woke sometime in the middle of the night, although she had no idea what time it was. A small bit of light shone in through the slit in the dark window curtains. She didn’t think she would ever get used to lights that never went out on the streets of London. At home, in the Highlands, when the sun set, the world turned black until morning but for the stars and moon to guide their way.

  She heard an odd rustling and sat bolt upright in bed.

  “Who’s there?” she asked when a muffled curse reached her ears.

  “Just me,” came Duncan’s muttered voice. “Forget that I’m here.”

  “I cannot pretend that you aren’t here,” she said practically, knowing that, if nothing else, Duncan’s pride and honor would prevent him from actually attempting anything untoward. “I thought we were keeping from scandal. I hardly think your presence in the bedroom is helping things.”

  “No one will know,” he said. “I’m just looking for my plaid. I must have left it in here. Ye wouldn’t want me to freeze tonight, now would you?”

  Jane heard the slur of his words then and she fixed her gaze toward where she could now see his silhouette.

  “Are you drunk?” she asked, somewhat incredulous.

  “Nay,” he insisted, but then she heard him stumble again, though how, she wasn’t entirely sure, considering there was hardly any furniture at all in the room.

  “Whose house is this?” she asked, suddenly struck by the concern that the three of them had found themselves a vacant house in which to reside for the night.

  “A friend of Niall’s,” he said, before a long pause. “I think.”

  “Oh, dear,” she responded with a sigh, before sensing his nearing presence.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, tucking herself deeper into the covers now.

  “Looking for my plaid,” he repeated. “Have you seen it? It’s the McDougall red. Can’t miss it.”

  “Of course I know the McDougall plaid,” Jane said, while deep within her she wondered why this strange nighttime conversation with a man she hardly knew somehow seemed rather… comfortable. “Everyone knows it.”

  “Right,” he said, his voice close enough now that she could practically feel the deep rumble in her own chest. “So…”

  “I have seen it,” she said slightly despondently as she was already quite chilly, for the room’s grate was bare and none of them had provided her with any intention to light a fire. “I’m lying underneath it.”

  “You— oh,” he cursed. “I had forgotten. Keep it.”

  “No, you take it,” she said, burrowing deep within to steal as much warmth as she could muster before it was gone. “There’s another blanket below it, although it is somewhat thin…”

  “What do you take me for?” he said gruffly. “I’m not the sort of man who would leave a woman in the cold.”

  “Well…” Jane wasn’t sure if she should say it.

  “Well, what?”

  “You did take me from my sister’s comfortable home into a freezing cold evening and forced me to stay in an empty house in a fireless room.”

  Jane held her breath as she awaited his response, and was equal parts relieved and disappointed when she was met only with silence, until she saw his shadow turn and begin to retreat from the room.

  “What are you going to use for sleep?”

  She wasn’t sure what had made her ask him. It shouldn’t matter to her where he slept, or what he slept under. She was the victim here, and he had done nothing but cause her misery since the moment he had taken her.

  And yet… she could sense that while he was too proud of a man to ever admit his mistake, he regretted his actions — and not just because he had taken the wrong sister.

  He stopped in the doorway, his body taking up the entire frame.

  “On the floor.”

  “Without a blanket?”

  He turned his head to look back at her over his shoulder, and while she couldn’t see his face, she could hear the grin in his words.

  “I’m certainly not going to ask Niall to share.”

  Jane took a breath, her heart beating hard when she realized just what she was about to suggest. There was every reason in the world for why she should say nothing and allow this man to keep walking out that door as she went back to sleep to prepare for what was sure to be a long day tomorrow.

  But she didn’t have it within her to see another creature suffer — even if it was a big, hulking man who deserved to freeze throughout the night.

  “You can sleep in here.”

  He snorted. “Is this some kind of ploy to force me to return you tonight? For I most certainly will not be allowing you to sleep on the floor.”

  “No, I mean…” This was a bad idea. A terrible one. “You can sleep on the bed. With me.”

  That got his attention more than anything else had. He turned around completely in the doorway, and while his face was in shadow, she could sense how incredulous he was.

  “You’re asking me to sleep with you?” he said, his voice filled with such disbelief that Jane wanted to throw the blankets overtop of her head and hide.

  “You don’t need to sound so disgusted,” she said, allowing her vulnerability to show. She was well aware she was far from his first choice, but she would never have suspected to have been so thoroughly rebuked.

  “It’s not that,” he said, his words now holding a hint of seductiveness as he took a step closer. “I just wouldn’t have thought that a woman who was so worried of imbuing scandal would actually invite a man she hardly knew to her bed.”

  “I certainly do not mean that!” she gasped out, realizing now just how her suggestion had sounded. “I meant that, perhaps, you could sleep beside me — but on top of the bottom blanket and just under your plaid. To sleep. And only to sleep,” she emphasized, closing her eyes as she lay back down, wishing she could take back the last two minutes of her life.

  “Ah, I see,” he said, and Jane wondered for a moment if there was a hint of disappointment in his words. Surely not. The man cared nothing about her, and had, in fact, been so enamoured with her sister that he had travelled all this way to London from the middle of Scotland to retrieve her. While his methods were somewhat suspect, Jane begrudgingly had to admit that there was a touch of romance to it. She only wished someone might one day do such a thing for her.

  “Well.” He heaved a sigh. “I suppose that is agreeable.”

  While Jane was well aware, of course, that this had been entirely her idea, the moment he sat down on the edge of the bed that was, quite fortunately, rather large, the entire mattress heaved over to his great weight and she blinked a few times as her heart began to beat ever faster at the thought of a man like Duncan sleeping so near.

  He rustled around as he found his way between the two blankets, and while there was still a thin barrier between them, Jane had not been lying when she had said the one blanket was thin. There was, however, one advantage to this arrangement, and that was the heat which practically radiated off him and was like a fire itself. She couldn’t help but shift slightly closer to him, so that only a couple of inches — plus the thin blanket — separated them.

  Soon she was warmed all over, although it didn’t take long to discover that it was not only his heat that
was causing the hot tingles to shoot through her. It was his nearness, she told herself, and that she had never had a man in her bed before. That was all. It was the suggestion of what could happen, and not that she actually wanted anything to.

  For this was Duncan McDougall. The last man on earth she should want anything to do with. She should be running away from him as fast as she could, not cuddling next to his side.

  But as much as she told herself that, she couldn’t help the slight smile that touched her lips as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 4

  “I am only staying long enough to convince you to come home.”

  “I am not coming home.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Duncan followed Jane up the steps, pounding sharply on the door before she could open it.

  “I do live here for the time being, you know,” she said, tilting her head to look up at him. He was so tall that it was rather difficult to do so. “I can let myself in. Besides, there is no one else to greet us besides my sister and her husband. Unlike at Galbury Castle, there is only one maid who will not arrive until later in the day.”

  “Galbury is not overrun with servants,” he defended himself. “We do most everything on our own now.”

  “Even so,” she said quite primly, “I have never known such luxuries.”

  “Your father is a physician,” he said, annoyed that she would suggest he think so highly of himself when she didn’t even know him. “Surely you have some assistance.”

  “We have one maid,” she said, but then she shivered and Duncan was reminded of the chill. He was aware that he didn’t feel it as harshly as some others. Jane, slim as she was, seemed to turn into an icicle the moment she stepped out of doors.

  He was now too aware of her body temperature.