Christmas with THAT Duke: Regency Romance (Regency Scandals Book 3)

by Arietta Richmond

  He eased the door open, and stepped out into the room.

  *****

  Violetta struggled to keep her mind on reading. The salacious nature of the material, from the very first few pages, was not helping her keep her mind off Kit – far from it. It reminded her of her own innocence as a young girl, and of the crude understanding she had arrived at of relations between men and women, from the way that her father had treated her mother.

  His cruelty had been excessive, and his ability to conceal it from public view remarkable. It was only when she met Kit that Violetta had discovered that affection between man and woman might turn to passion without violence. She had first met him at a Ball, the year she came out, when she was barely turned eighteen. It had been love at first sight, for both of them. Or so she had thought, fool that she was.

  She had seen him at every event, and soon, he had called upon her. She had thought that her father would be pleased, for he would be a Duke one day. But the lavish gambling of Kit’s father had made the family anathema to her own penny-pinching parent, and he had forbidden Kit to call, forbidden her to see him.

  Which, of course, was all it had needed to drive her to subterfuge and deceit. They had, after careful planning, managed to slip away together – only a few times, when she had dared to escape her father’s house in the depths of the night, and take a cab from blocks away to the tawdry Inn he had selected. Those few times had been heaven, and she had surrendered her virtue willingly, discovering in his arms what pleasures might be had with a man.

  Pleasures she had not experienced since.

  Not since Kit had betrayed her.

  It was not that William hadn’t bedded her, once her body had healed from the effects of her loss – the Earl of Caldicot might have been old when he’d married her, but he had not yet been unmanned by his age. It was simply that Caldicot had not truly known how to pleasure a woman. She had endured, out of duty, and the hope that there might be a child. There had not been.

  She had resigned herself to that fact, to the idea that there would likely never be one, that she was broken in some way, and had moved on, determined to enjoy her independence, after his death had left her well-off.

  Now, here she was, reliving it all in her mind, and discovering that she was not, after all, resigned to anything. That, damn him, Kit still held the power to arouse her, just by existing. She drank more of the wine, feeling it ease her mind into a state where she could regard everything with somewhat more distance, and closed the book. Violetta felt heated, perhaps by the fire, perhaps by her thoughts, and shrugged out of her short jacket, revealing the top of her gown with its undone buttons down the back, and sipped more wine.

  The chair was comfortable, and she leant back into it, relaxing. If she must remember, she would dwell on the good parts, the short span of that one Season, when she had thought herself truly loved, and had taken his gift of pleasure without reservation. She closed her eyes, and sighed softly.

  She drifted, on the edge of sleep, yet aware, mentally reliving pleasure, her body responding to those memories, and rising to an aching desire. Then, from behind her, behind the chair, there came a sound.

  The door. The door to Kit’s room, opening.

  Soft footsteps moved across the room, and Violetta regretfully opened her eyes, allowing the image of the passionate Kit of the past to be replaced by the real presence of the cruel man, now.

  He poured himself a glass of wine – for the maid had brought two glasses, when she’d brought the food – sipped it, and turned, apparently intending to sit by the fire. He stopped, shocked at the sight of her.

  He had cast off his jacket and cravat, and his waistcoat was undone, allowing her a view of the fine linen below, which pulled against his body in a way which let the firelight delineate his shape. Her breath caught. He was beautiful in body – he always had been. The firelight also caught the hints of deep dark red in his near black hair, and reflected from his green-gold eyes.

  Eyes which were surveying her with as much intensity as she surveyed him. Eyes which, she was quite certain, had taken note of the fact that she wore no stays under her gown. She swallowed. This would not do at all.

  “Violetta…”

  So, she was not Vee. He was being formal, despite his undress. She should have wished it, but she did not – instead, it hurt.

  “Yes?”

  “I thought… that you would be abed…”

  “I am not, as is patently obvious, Kit. I was reading, someone fortuitously abandoned a book in the other room.”

  “Oh? Could you not sleep?”

  “No more than you, it appears.”

  He took a large swallow of the wine, and she watched as it stained his lips a richer red. Lips which she had just been remembering, as they had trailed across her body, ten years before. She stood, suddenly feeling the need to be more on the same level, and he watched her, his eyes sliding over her body. He might as well have touched her, for heat bloomed in the wake of his gaze. She looked away, for a moment, and when she looked back, he had moved, was still moving. The wine she had drunk had affected her more than she’d thought, and now that she stood, she wavered a little. He stopped in front of her.

  “Why?”

  The question took her by surprise. What did he truly ask? She did not understand what he might mean – he had abandoned her, what had he expected her to do? Surely it was obvious, why she had done as she had – assuming that was what he meant by the word?

  “I ask you the same. Do not be disingenuous Kit. If you ask what I think you do, the answer could not be clearer.”

  He shook his head slightly, as if her words made no sense.

  “So you will not tell me? Your cruelty is most refined, Vee. But in answer to your question, I will be a little more forthcoming. Because I had no choice.”

  Because he had no choice? What did that mean? How could he possibly have not had a choice? And why did he think her cruel? It was he who had led her on, lied about his love, and abandoned her when, by doing so, he had doomed her utterly.

  There was ruined, and then there was completely ruined.

  She spun away, putting her back to him, the flood of grief and loss overwhelming her.

  A fingertip traced her spine, with nothing but the sheer muslin of her chemise between it and her skin. She had forgotten about the undone buttons.

  Her breath stuttered, her heart raced, and her mouth was dry. How dare he! Yet she did not move, did not step away, did not do anything but savour the sensation of Kit touching her again, after so very long.

  Then sense finally made its way through the haze of sensation and desire, and she spun again, scooping up her wine glass, and tossing back the remainder of its contents.

  “You no longer have the right to touch me so. You forfeited that when you abandoned me.”

  *****

  Kit clenched his jaw at her words. The sight of her back, so exposed to him, had left him bereft of all sense for a moment there, and he had not been able to stop himself from touching her. It had been the worst kind of mistake.

  He wanted her, achingly, desperately, despite everything. And he would not permit himself to feel that way. For her to accuse him of abandoning her… that took some gall, given what she had done. It made no sense at all – she had always seemed a clearheaded woman, yet such a statement defied all logic.

  Obviously, it was all acting, again. She had chosen to cast their story into a light which left her the victim, and now she expected him to accept that?

  He would not.

  “I see that your acting skills have not diminished with time.”

  “Acting skills? Why do you speak in riddles, Kit?”

  “So you deny it? Very well. That just proves to me how foolish I was to ever trust the words from your mouth. A mouth which, I must say, was as skilled at other matters as it is at dissembling.”

  Shock coloured her features, so well done that he almost believed it for a moment. He laughed, and it sou
nded harsh to his own ears. She flinched, and the bitterness drove him. He had dreamed, for ten years, of revenge, or reconciliation – it seemed clear that reconciliation was not an option.

  Revenge it was, then.

  She had reacted to his touch, even though denying it. Let him see how much more strongly he could make her respond, then walk away. He swallowed the last of his wine, and set his glass down beside hers. She watched his lips, and he smiled, as sardonically as he could, allowing his bitterness to colour the expression. Then, as her eyes widened, he reached out, and took her by the shoulders, pulling her to him, and bringing his lips down hard on hers.

  There was nothing gentle or loving about it. Instead, it was all heat, all anger, all the banked fires of a desire ten years wrapped in ice. She tasted of the wine, and of Violetta – a unique, distinct flavour, that was all of memory and more than that of pain. For just a moment, she melted into it, her lips moving against his. He drove it harder, plundering her, taking, just this once, what he had been long denied.

  She jerked herself out of his grasp, and brought her hand up in a stinging slap to his face – a slap which would have fallen far harder if she had not wobbled a little.

  “You are nothing but a cad!”

  He laughed, despite the inner pain, and delivered a deep bow.

  “At your service, my Lady. And your lips are just as talented as I remembered them, although the wine has spoiled your precision in chastising me.”

  She drew herself up, apparently preparing to speak again, but Kit simply turned on his heel, and left the room. Behind him, as he closed his door, he heard what sounded like a most colourful, and unladylike, curse.

  *****

  He was gone.

  Violetta stood, muttering curses, even as she registered the taste of him still on her lips, and the heat that warmed her skin where his hands had rested. Whatever he believed of her seemed to have very little to do with reality. It was as if they played a farce, where the main characters were always speaking at cross purposes, with only the audience understanding what the truth of things was.

  A pity that she was a player, and not the audience – comprehending the truth would have been useful.

  For ten years, no man had truly affected her – not her aged husband, before his death, nor any of the hopeful gentlemen who had attempted her seduction since. She had become known for living a quiet life, doing some charity work, and spending time with friends. Yet less than four hours after finding herself in Kit’s presence, she had been kissed with passionate violence, argued with him continuously, spent hours in erotic daydreams – of him - and been accused of something – she was not, truly, sure what.

  It was all too exhausting, and confusing.

  She would go to bed. Tomorrow, she would restore her composure, and maintain a positively frigid demeanour towards him, lest she be tempted in any way. And perhaps, if she was lucky, she might work out what he had meant.

  If she was even luckier, the blizzard would have abated overnight, and the roads cleared enough for her to travel on. The roar of the wind against the shutters was not, however, encouraging.

  *****

  In the end Kit slept, but it was a sleep full of tortured dreams of lust and betrayal. When he woke, the wind still howled outside, and snow falling still reduced the ambient light to more than half darkness. It took a moment for him to realise that Carlo would not be coming to wake him – that he would need to rise, ring for an Inn servant, and ask them to send the valet up.

  The fire had died back to embers in the night, and the room was icy cold. When he went to the basin to wash his face, the water was rimed with ice. The touch of it brought him to full alertness, and his thoughts filled with the events of the previous evening.

  How could one woman drive him so utterly to madness?

  How could he despise her for what she had done, and yet crave her kiss as badly as he did?

  In ten years, no one had ever made him so lose control as to act as he had last night – yet a few hours in her presence…

  He dried his face, and slipped his banyan around him, before stepping out into the parlour to ring the bellpull. Thank goodness, Violetta was nowhere in sight. He poked at the fire, and put more wood onto it, then stood there, appreciating the growing warmth, until a tap came at the door.

  He opened it. A footman stood there.

  “You rang, Your Grace?”

  “I did, please ask my valet to come up here now – he was sleeping by the fire downstairs, I believe.”

  “Yes, Your Grace – will there be anything else?”

  “Some breakfast please, for me, and for the Lady. Tell me, has the snow eased at all?”

  “It has not, Your Grace – it’s worse. I doubt we’ll see the roads cleared for two days or more. I will tell your valet, and have the breakfast sent up – oh, and the Lady’s trunk, which her footman managed to retrieve from the carriage, during a lull in the snow just before dawn.”

  The man left, and Kit turned, to see Violetta watching him from the door of her room. If not for her angrily despairing expression, he would have found her state of dishabille to be most tempting. But her expression reminded him of his need to remain aloof.

  “A few days? How dreadful. At this rate, I will not arrive at my destination before Christmas.”

  “Dreadful? Is it? Is my company so impossible to stand, Vee?”

  “Yes. But in the circumstances, I will endure, if only so that it might madden you.”

  Chapter Four

  Violetta’s trunk was delivered to the rooms at the same time as breakfast. She considered, and, in the end, food won out over the presentation of a respectable appearance. There was, she thought with wry amusement, no one that she needed to look respectable for. Kit did not deserve the honour of her bothering.

  He had disappeared into his room with his valet, no doubt to rapidly emerge looking the very picture of a fashionable gentleman. She did not care – he could bother, or not, as he wished. Right now, the grumbling of her stomach mattered more, especially as she had that slightly sour feeling which came from just a little too much wine.

  She took a seat at the table, and served herself from the tray, glad that, if she had to be trapped somewhere in a blizzard, at least it was somewhere with a decent cook.

  Two cups of tea and half a plate of food later, Kit emerged. His valet bowed, and departed the room, leaving them alone. Kit regarded her for a moment.

  “Shall I be mortally offended that you regard me so little that you did not wait for me to be seated before eating?”

  Violetta rather ostentatiously finished her mouthful, then gave him her best patronising smile.

  “You may be as offended as you wish, Kit – it makes no difference to me. I believe that I have pointed out to you, a number of times in the last twelve hours, just how little I regard you.”

  For a fraction of a second, some unknown emotion flickered across his face – then his expression returned to the genial, amused façade which it seemed he presented to the world at large.

  “Then there is no point in my being offended, is there, if it will not affect your opinion. You are a cruel, hard woman, Vee, to so cut a man down.”

  “In cruelty, Kit, I believe that you are a match for me. But then, it has always seemed to me, society forgives such things far more easily in a man, as has been amply proven to me by my own experiences.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as he settled into the chair opposite her, and reached for the food. She felt oddly comfortable with him, even as their words to each other were thrown like knives. There was a rightness to sitting down together to eat, to speaking to each other without the formalities which society normally demanded.

  They had been too close, knew too much about each other, for formality to provide either a shield or a weapon. And yet, she thought, it had become obvious, here in this Inn, that they did not know each other at all. His words had conveyed, over and over, that his beliefs differed from
hers.

  His perception of what had happened ten years ago appeared to be vastly different from that which she remembered – enough so that she had lain there, last night, and considered, for at least a few minutes, the idea that she might be deluded. But she was not, she was sure. Was he? Or was there more to it?

  She pushed that aside – even if there was, what could it change? He had abandoned her, after taking her virtue, and had shown no remorse. He deserved her anger and unkindness.

  She ate, as did he, in silence. But she watched him from under lowered lashes, drawn, despite herself. Ten years had barely touched him – if anything, it had given him a maturity, a lean and balanced strength, which had not been there before. It made him even more damnably attractive. Had she fared so well? Likely not. Her body had suffered somewhat from what it had been through, and she no longer had that fresh-faced glow that came of being eighteen. Did he still find her attractive? The thought slipped into her mind, and she half choked on her food.

  Why should she care? What he thought did not matter. Once she escaped this Inn, she would be on her way, and likely never be in the same room with Kit again. But… she realised with chagrin, she wanted him to still find her attractive, even if just so that she could spurn him, as he had her, so long ago, and see him suffer, as she had.

  She finished eating, drank the last of her tea, and rose, leaving him there without a word. It was time to achieve what ablutions she might, and make her appearance at least moderately respectable – although what she could do with her hair would not be anywhere near as suitable as what Amelie normally did.

  It would have to do.

  She shut the door, and pulled off the little jacket, which she had made sure she wore to cover the mostly undone buttons on her travelling gown, and undid herself, then went to the basin and quickly washed as best she could with the icy water. She paused, considering, then went to the trunk – it contained precisely one gown, one chemise, one pair of stays, and one small box with a soap, a hairbrush, some pins, and not much more.

  She lifted the gown out, and her heart sank. More buttons.