by Carrie Lomax
9
Spiced cider curdled unpleasantly in Finlay’s stomach.
The ground had shifted between him and Amity this afternoon. For one glorious hour, he had believed in their if you were mine exchanges. Then Holly had appeared, and in a split second, Amity had turned against him. It made him wonder whether he understood her at all. The woman she had become, not the girl she’d been. Amity the girl had been so adventurous. When had her meek reticence emerged? He hungered to fill the gaps in his knowledge of her life.
At midnight, Mrs. Mayweather threw open the front and back doors to Wells House. The women, led by Mrs. Mayweather and Holly, chased the spirits through the rooms of the first floor to invite good luck. They slammed the doors, laughing.
“Ridiculous tradition!” Mr. Mayweather huffed. “A waste of good firewood too.” His cheeks were red with too much brandy and spiced ale. Lunt sat nearby, propped up on the sofa and picking at a tray of ginger snaps. The two men appeared to have mended fences. Thick white strips of linen encased Lunt’s leg.
Only Finlay seemed unable to chase away the muted sadness that had settled over him after his afternoon interlude with Amity in the library. If she were his… But she never would be unless he spoke up and risked damaging his relationship with his closest neighbor.
Over a woman.
Every sensible fiber of his being railed against the wisdom of spoiling such an important friendship. A gentleman did not go back on his word, no matter how desperately he wanted a woman.
Amity’s green eyes met his briefly. If Holly possessed the talent of the keys, Amity possessed a singing voice fit for angels. “We twa hae run about the braes / and pou’d the gowans fine; / But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit / sin’ auld lang syne.”
Memories tumbled through his mind as the words’ meaning in plain English raised specters of his youth. We two have run about the slopes… Amity’s bright green eyes and snub nose morphed in his memory. And picked the daisies fine… The chains of white flowers morphed into orange blossoms and a veil in Finlay’s imagination.
Finlay choked, coughed and rejoined his voice to the song. New memories crowded out the old. Amity’s hooded green eyes darkened with lust as he, on his knees, teased her quim with his tongue. Her pants of pleasure as he explored her body with trembling hands. Lust rolled through him. He closed his eyes against the tide of feelings.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?
He had forgotten Amity too long. As the final notes faded, Mrs. Mayweather laid her hand on his arm.
“I am so looking forward to introducing you as my future son-in-law at our Twelfth Night ball in a few days,” she said warmly, sotto voce. “I trust you won’t dash Holly’s hopes.”
Finlay swallowed. By the time he disengaged from his hostess’s embrace, Amity had ensconced herself on the sofa next to Lunt. She cradled her mug like a dragon guarding treasure as they conversed with heads bent close. He clenched his fists at his side. Across the room, Gibbs sulked as he played cards with Mrs. Mayweather’s elderly aunt. No doubt Amity had been avoiding the man.
Good. It bought Finlay a bit more time to speak with Foster Mayweather about proposing to Amity instead of Holly. It would be uncomfortable, but if necessary, he could retreat to his neighboring home, Weston Manor. Even with the staff on paid holiday while the masons shored up crumbling stonework, Finlay could pass a warm enough Twelfth Night knowing he could look forward to claiming Amity as his bride.
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Mayweather said loudly and clapped to get the crowd’s attention. “I have an announcement.”
Amity and Lunt sat next to one another on the settee. Her hands were clasped in her lap, gaze glued to the floor, her cheeks stained pink. Foreboding slowed time as Finlay absorbed Mrs. Mayweather’s speech.
“Mr. Lunt and my niece by marriage, Miss Amity Mayweather, have agreed to marry.”
No. Time stopped. Cold horror washed through Finlay’s body.
“So much for refusing to accept a proposal from any man on short acquaintance,” muttered Gibbs furiously from across the room. His face had turned a mottled red of alcohol and indignation. “Or is it only me you couldn’t abide?” Affronted, Gibbs stomped out of the room.
Silence descended for a beat in his wake. Finally, Amity raised her eyes to meet his. Guilt. Regret.
Finlay shook his head as understanding cleaved his heart into two. He had dithered too long. Still, anger surged within him. How dare she give her body to him, and then promise her heart to another?
Well. Just because his oldest friend had rejected him in favor of a boorish lummox didn’t mean Finlay had to endure the rest of this evening alone. He broke gazes with Amity. It felt like tearing his beating heart out with his bare hands, but he could not look at Lunt’s smug possessiveness for another second.
With two strides, he was at the piano. Holly’s bright blue gaze met his, twinkling with delight. “Might I have a private word?”
“Anything you have to say can be spoken in front of my family. Besides, no one is paying us any attention, except my cousin.” Holly’s voice flattened, and her mouth tightened at the corners with disappointment.
Fine. If Holly wanted him to propose in front of everyone here, he would do so. “Holly Mayweather, would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
Holly cocked her head. “Um…” Her eyes darted to Amity, whose embarrassment had faded and left her cheeks drained of color. She looked miserable. “I am cognizant of the great compliment you have given me. However, I regret I must decline.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I do not accept your offer of marriage,” Holly replied with impish pity. “I fear my heart is given elsewhere.”
“But…but why?” Finlay sputtered. “Why did you lead me to believe you welcomed my advances?”
“Do we have another happy announcement?” asked Mrs. Mayweather expectantly as she glided toward them.
“I am afraid not. Your daughter has rejected my offer,” Finlay declared bitterly. By now, the entire room was watching. His humiliation was complete.
“Holly Mayweather,” her mother warned. Her ringlets trembled at her temples. “What are you doing?”
“Papa told me he wouldn’t pay for my fourth season in London unless I proved that I might find a suitor. Now that I have demonstrated my ability to attract a proposal when I wish to receive one, Papa must let me return.” Holly grinned sweetly and leaned back on the edge of the pianoforte.
“This is about that rake, Lord Stockton, isn’t it,” Mrs. Mayweather declared in a tight hiss like an angry goose, trying to keep her voice low and failing.
Finlay groaned. “You cannot be serious, Holly.”
“I beg your pardon,” the lady who had rejected him so publicly echoed back at him. Her chin jolted upward a full inch. For one awful moment, Finlay hated her.
“If you think Stockton will ever seek your hand as wife, Miss Mayweather,” he said with all the amusement he could muster, “you are utterly deluded.”
Holly’s gaze narrowed into slits. “Does it wound your pride that I aim higher than your admittedly enviable station, Mr. Weston?”
He laughed. The shining, unmitigated gall of this woman. “Not in the least. You have spared me the long consequences of what would have been an unfortunate match, had you accepted me.” Finlay bowed. “I find the tradition of chasing out bad spirits has left a few behind. I shall take the remaining demons with me.” He turned on his heel. Everyone in the room was riveted upon the scene playing out beside the lacquered pianoforte. Everyone except Amity. “Summon my valet,” he ordered a footman, who scrambled to comply. “I depart in a quarter hour.”
Silence blanketed the room. Finlay couldn’t look at either of the women who had so betrayed him. He stomped toward the door as flustered as he had been upon his arrival. The New Year of 1817 would go down as the worst ever in his personal history boo
ks.
“Wait, Finlay, I—” Amity rushed after him.
Finlay had no further appetite for scandal, however. “Miss Mayweather, I wish you great happiness in your forthcoming nuptials.”
Amity regarded him as though he had slapped her straight across the cheek.
As Finlay exited in a huff of wounded masculine pride, Amity reeled from more than a few sips of cider and a too-warm, too-crowded room. For an hour she managed to hold herself together. Lunt touched her constantly. When Amity eased her hand out of his grasp, the man slipped his arm about her shoulders. She shifted away and found his uninjured leg pressed against her side.
Amity hadn’t meant to accept him. After their interlude in the library, she had expected Finlay to make some kind of gentlemanly gesture, even if it wasn’t an offer of marriage. But tonight, he had scarcely acknowledged her presence. Lunt had caught her off-guard with his “Will you consider doing me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“Yes,” she had replied, half listening, her mind focused on the word “consider.” Consideration meant time to mull the idea, in her view. Certainly, it meant more time than a single evening—but once her overexcited beau had whispered the news to Amity’s aunt, the misunderstanding had crystalized into fact before she’d had time to time to consider Lunt’s proposal. Her love was not limited to a single man; she had sisters to consider. If Finlay wasn’t going to offer for her, and the alternative was to accept Gibbs, then Lunt’s proposal was as good as she could expect. A woman in reduced circumstances ought to be grateful for any offer of marriage she received.
But she could never bring herself to be happy. It was all she could do not to physically recoil from Lunt’s touch.
The man whose touch melted her core, however, had regarded her with blue eyes turned to icicles. Her heart had frozen over at the accusation she’d found in Finlay’s scowl. What had she done? The responsible thing. The right thing, even if nothing felt right about it at all. He, of all people, ought to understand the meaning of honor and self-sacrifice.
Yet here she was in her mother’s ruined bedsheet dress adorned with lace from a baby’s christening gown. Amity had known the afternoon spent in Finlay’s arms was never to be repeated. If you were mine…
But he wasn’t.
Finlay had turned away from her and toward Holly. With their heads bent together over the pianoforte, it had been clear there was a very serious conversation going on. Most of the guests hadn’t cared—at least, not until Amity’s aunt had made a fuss over Holly’s rejection.
Amity cornered her cousin just outside the parlor. “Why did you do that?”
Holly cast her a cool, sidelong glance before straightening her shawl. “You know why. I love Stockton.”
“You might have said something sooner,” Amity chided.
“I did, Amity. I would have told you about my father’s stipulation that I receive one proposal before I am allowed to return to town for another season, had I thought you would pursue Mr. Weston.”
“What?” Amity’s mouth popped open in a
“You, cousin, have become shy and meek in the years since we last met.” Holly swept down the hall in a very countess-like fashion. Her head jerked to indicate that Amity was to follow. “After our talk in my bedroom, I thought for certain that you were going to let Finlay know you wanted him instead of passively waiting for him to come to you. Men like women with a bit of fight in them. No one wishes to spend their life with a limp rag.”
“I am not a limp rag,” Amity protested hotly. “If I may be truthful, Holly, London has transformed you into a calculating, capricious flirt, dear cousin.”
“At least I know how to interact with gentlemen,” Holly replied indignantly. “It’s as if entertaining a gentleman’s attentions is a foreign concept to you. I suggest you take pointers from me before you are indisputably on the shelf.”
“Pointers.” Amity scoffed. “From you.”
They came to Holly’s bedroom door. “Suit yourself, Amity. Finlay will have no difficulty finding a replacement for me. A replacement for you will not be so simple.”
“You cannot expect me to dash over to Weston Manor and ask Finn to marry me. What of Lunt?”
“I expect you ought to say something before he posts the banns,” Holly remarked as she fiddled with her key. The lock clicked open. She yawned. A clock down the hallway struck an hour past midnight. “Mr. Lunt doesn’t strike me as the type of man to take rejection lightly.”
“Finlay isn’t either,” Amity declared.
Holly shrugged. “If you wish Mr. Weston to be your concern, I recommend you tell him as much—and advise Lunt of your change in affections. If you’ll excuse me.” Holly sketched a curtsey. “I find this evening has taxed me greatly.”
10
Escaping her accidental engagement to Lunt proved more difficult than extracting one’s boot from bog muck.
“Do you ever intend to speak up?” asked Holly the night her mother’s relatives returned for the Twelfth Night ball. The poor harvests this year meant few families were hosting the customary grand balls. Even the lord and lady of Willoughby Hall, the finest residence in Hertfordshire, had declined to hold a ball this year. With the infusion of more guests, Amity had once again lost her private guest room. Back in Holly’s bedroom, the cousins sniped and needled one another. It was far less pleasant than the gushing happiness that had marked their initial reunion—but to Amity, the newfound honesty was refreshing.
“Concerning Lunt?” Amity dragged a brush through her stick-straight hair.
“For a start,” Holly replied tartly as she examined he contents of her wardrobe. “This would suit you.”
“I told you, I’m wearing the blue and gold.”
“That dress is woefully out of date and badly faded. We are similar in height. Please borrow one of mine, Amity. No? Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter if Finlay Weston isn’t going to attend. This is far too fine for the likes of Lunt. Your blue and gold suits him fine.” Holly had given up any effort to conceal her exasperation.
“Has Finlay responded to your mother’s letter?” Amity asked, picking at her nightgown. Mrs. Mayweather had forced Holly to write an apology for rejecting him so rudely. The footman had returned with a hastily dispatched note that Finlay held no ill feelings toward Miss Mayweather and wished her much success in winning Stockton’s heart. Mrs. Mayweather, sensing hope, had immediately dispatched a second letter to assure Finlay that he was still welcome to attend the Mayweather’s Twelfth Night party, if he could find it within his heart to forgive the insult. Their frozen footman had returned an hour later with news that Mr. Weston had departed the hall in a great hurry only a few hours since. Despite daily inquiries as to his return, the workers had no further information—only the peculiar news that several of the household staff had been recalled to the property earlier than expected. The masons and plasterers had been asked to hasten repairs on the interior in preparation for arriving guests in before Twelfth Night.
Holly shook her head. “No. Everyone is most perplexed.” She tapped her fingertip against her lower lip. “Weston House wasn’t expected to be ready until the springtime. It is odd that he should disappear so abruptly. To say he’s expecting guests…what could he mean by that? Is he planning to throw a rival ball?”
Amity snorted. “Is that what your mother thinks?”
“It’s precisely the sort of thing she would believe.” Holly nodded sagely. “My parents like to pretend my dramatic impulses are unique, but my mother will tell anyone who listens how I take after her. She has undoubtedly invited half the countryside in a bid to prevent him from having any guests at all.”
“As though we can fit another family here at Wells House,” Amity scoffed. “It’s packed to the rafters. Even the carriage house has been remade into lodgings for the Mayweather families.”
“It’s too bad that so many of the new arrivals are Mayweather relations,” Holly remarked with a glimmer of mischief in her eye. “
Otherwise, you might have an easier time finding a replacement for Lunt.”
Amity tossed an embroidered cushion at her cousin’s head and nearly took out the lamp. Her heart ached with confusion. She missed Finlay’s steadfast presence. If she knew where he’d gone, she might commandeer a horse and footman to go after him. But he had simply disappeared, leaving her to wonder whether he had ever cared about her beyond a kiss beneath the mistletoe and an hour of happiness in a cold library.
“We must change horses, my lord.” His driver’s teeth chattered as he spoke. Curse the unbearably cold weather that made the drive take twice as long as usual. Thick, unyielding snowdrifts were piled up at the sides of the road, replenished hourly with new falls of fat snowflakes.
“Come inside,” Finlay demanded. “I shall take your place.” Cold bit his cheeks the instant he exited the relative warmth of his smallest, lightest carriage. The horses trudged on, dejected, their flanks twitching. Finlay stopped them to pull extra blankets from the boot and tuck them snugly around the horse’s backs. They went on. There was nothing else for them to do. To stop in this storm meant freezing to death—and Finlay had too much to live for. He had to get back to Amity before it was too late.
“Mr. Lunt,” Amity interrupted—again.
“I should like to wed within the month, as soon as the banns have had time to post. Will that be enough time for you to prepare?” her putative fiancé asked, which was a bit better than half an hour ago when he had simply informed her about his plans to make her his wife. Marriage negotiations had been simple. She did not wish to marry him. There was no agreement to reach—not until her mother had had a chance to speak with Amity’s prospective suitor.
“Mr. Lunt, I cannot proceed with any planning without my mother’s direct involvement.” Amity had a strong feeling her mother would agree to anything Mr. Lunt desired if it meant some relief from their grinding poverty.