Mischief & Mistletoe (A Christmas Novella)

by Crosby, Tanya Anne

  It took Emma at least another full half hour, and a dozen glimpses into the looking glass, before she felt confident enough to leave her room. But once she did, she felt more than prepared to face the duke of Willyngham at long last.

  As expected, she found the fiend ensconced in the library with Andrew, the door slightly ajar as they spoke in low tones behind it. She stood for an instant, bracing herself for the worst, and overheard him saying, “I assure you, Peters, I have not changed my mind.”

  “Willyngham… have you given the least thought as to how this may appear to others?”

  “It’s for the best,” the duke insisted.

  Even as she told herself it didn’t matter, Emma’s heart twisted a little at his words.

  “I had hoped with time—”

  Emma didn’t wait to hear any more.

  The last thing she wished was for Andrew to change the scoundrel’s mind. With as much dignity as she could muster, she threw the door open wide and entered the library, lifting her chin as she met her brother’s surprised gaze.

  “Good morning,” she said cheerily. “Pardon, I couldn’t help but overhear. But the duke is correct, Andrew. It is the best recourse for all. I only wonder why it took so long for His Grace to finally make up his mind.” At last, she glanced at the duke, and at the sight of him, her heart tumbled a little in response.

  As though he were master of this domain, he was seated in her brother’s deep blue damask chair before the window, while Andrew paced before him like an uninvited guest. Demon, that he was, his dark brows arched at her bald declaration, but he did nothing more to acknowledge her. No greeting, nothing. He simply sat, observing her, his dark blue eyes appearing slightly amused.

  He wore blue, but a blue so dark as to appear black—like his eyes, she reasoned. And his boots, indeed, were black as well—black and coated with sand. Her brows rose. Had he gone down to the cliffside? she wondered. To relive the moment of her greatest humiliation, no doubt—but really, it didn’t matter. She narrowed her eyes, daring to lift her gaze to his face again. This time she resisted the urge to wrench her gaze away. Though Lord-a-mercy, that face—it was the same face she recalled, the one that had deceived her, the one that she had fallen in love with at first glance. His cheeks were still shadowed, his eyes still jaded. Indeed, it was that same face that had once led her to believe she could make a difference in his life.

  He tilted her a look, one that might have once made her heart go aflutter, but she refused to let it affect her any longer.

  Her brother sounded appalled. “But Emma, you cannot mean to say you are in agreement with this madness?”

  Emma tore her gaze away from the duke. “Of course, I am.” She was through being mesmerized by the man. If her heart skipped a beat whenever he looked at her, well then, it was on account of her fragmented nerves and not a trifle more. Arching her own brow with equal disdain, she turned to face her brother. “It has been sheer folly drawing this out so long. Really, Andrew, we must thank His Grace”—she gave the duke a pointed glance, one with little benevolence—“for taking Father’s passing into consideration, but now it is past time to be done with this business—long past time to make this very mutual decision public. In fact, we should post it in the Times today.”

  “Mutual?” Andrew and Lucien both echoed at once.

  Devil take him if he’d meant to challenge her, but the question came of his mouth of its own accord.

  Lucien straightened within his chair as Emma turned to face him, her smile decidedly frosty.

  “Of course,” she said without flinching. “Do you not agree, Your Grace?”

  Her barbed use of his title was beginning to grate upon his nerves, but for the first time in his thirty-one years, Lucien found himself at a complete loss for words. She stood before him, proclaiming his decision a mutual one, challenging him with her dauntless posture and with those deep brown eyes—eyes that were far more knowing then he recalled. She had seemed such a fragile little miss then, with unwavering doe eyes that had managed to make him feel profane in comparison. He frowned at his thoughts, and her chin lifted another notch. He nearly choked over the challenge. “Yes,” he relented, clearing his throat. “I do… I do, indeed agree.”

  “Gad, Emma! Post it in the Times?” her brother asked incredulously.

  “Of course,” she answered flippantly. “Why not?”

  “You may rest assured it shall be posted,” Andrew said irascibly, “though the account will be anything but lauding, I assure you. The truth is that those hounds will write what they choose and not what you please!”

  “Not necessarily,” Lucien countered. “I have connections.”

  “Oh?” she challenged. “The same connections who once affiliated you with Lady Victoria perchance?”

  Lucien opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. Bloody shrew. The question completely gobsmacked him. He had not, in fact, impregnated Lady Victoria, but until she had been found to be a virgin and the growth in her belly to be a medical mystery, everyone assumed it. In fact, all Lucien had attempted to do was to solicit the help of an expert physician for the poor woman—a chap he had met while in the Navy—the same man, in fact, who had treated their father. It was through him that Lucien had kept abreast of the Admiral’s illness.

  “Emma,” Andrew pleaded, ignoring him.

  “Andrew,” she countered, returning her brother’s plea.

  Lucien forced himself to settle back into the chair to watch the two spar, respectfully abstaining from their quarrel. He stole a sip of the port Andrew had offered him, and then Emma managed to astound him yet again and it was all he could do not to choke as he swallowed.

  She smiled and asked pertly of her brother, “Andrew, dearest, might you excuse us a moment, please? I have something I wish to say to His Grace. Alone.”

  Clearing his throat in surprise, Lucien downed the half-full glass and set it down upon Peters’s desk.

  “Please, Emma,” her brother entreated.

  Her voice was calm but firm. “I shan’t be but a moment, Andrew.”

  Her brother heaved a weary sigh. “Very well, though I shall be waiting in the corridor.” He came forward and grasped her shoulders, placing a tender kiss upon her forehead, and then he eyed Lucien pointedly, looking in the moment exactly like his father. “Willyngham,” he said as he withdrew, and Lucien recognized it for the warning it was meant to be. He had to give the man his due. He seemed to care not a whit for the difference in their station when it came to his sister. Lucien nodded his acknowledgment, and then waited until Andrew had closed the door behind him before looking at the little shrew.

  Curious how he didn’t recall her as such.

  “How dare you come here?” she hissed the instant he met her gaze. Her eyes narrowed furiously, and her hands went to her hips in anger.

  “What? No more Your Grace?” he asked blithely. Clearly, she knew he was not the intended recipient. “I was so beginning to enjoy the sound of it upon your lips,” he remarked.

  She took a step forward, and Lucien thought she might fling herself at him in outrage. “How dare you, sirrah! If you had any true affection for my father, you would have stayed away!”

  He did care for her father. It was the reason he had drawn this out so long. And yet he had no notion how to respond to her accusation, for he’d truly believed he’d done the proper thing by coming to Newgale to inform her of his decision in person. Certainly it would have been easier to make the announcement, send her a message by courier and be done with it.

  “I thought you’d prefer a notice in person,” he said with genuine surprise.

  She marched a step forward, giving him a look to curl his liver, and Lucien stood at once and retreated behind the damask chair. Truth to tell, he’d never trusted snappish misses—and this one particularly less so for she was behaving entirely out of form.

  She wore the most God-awful morning dress. It made her appear ancient and gray, yet something about
her intrigued him, nevertheless. The glint in her eyes? Perhaps it was because the cynicism expressed there so mirrored his own. Christ. What had he done to her? The mere thought twisted his gut, for he wasn’t unlike Midas in that way—only instead of the golden touch, he seemed to turn everything bitter in his wake. He had to remind himself that while she was angry now, this was still very much the right thing to do.

  Hell, he could never have truly pleased her, never given her what she deserved. He was just like his own father, a true Morgen—incurably rotten to the bone. He could only expect that, with him as her husband, that sweet smile he remembered so well would turn bitter over time and her tender heart would quickly harden.

  As hard as his own.

  In the end she would have wilted, as did his mother, because he couldn’t reciprocate her feelings. He couldn’t love her. He couldn’t love anyone. Damned if he even knew the meaning of the word.

  No, she was better off without him, and for once in his life he intended to do the proper thing—for her father’s sake—the only one man who had ever believed in him—as much as for Emma’s sake.

  “Ink and paper would have sufficed,” she informed him tightly. “You have no license to intrude here on such a reverent occasion. Have you no concern at all for how this visit might distress my family?”

  “Your family?” he found himself repeating, his tone incredulous.

  Not her?

  “Yes, my family!” she reiterated, her cheeks suffused with an angry blush. She gave him a cool little smile. “Did you think I would care one whit, Your Grace? After all this time? Did you think you would find the same bran-faced pea-goose girl you last beheld?”

  Leaning forward upon the chair, Lucien found himself inspecting the bridge of her nose, looking for those freckles she referred to and found them indeed gone. And pea-goose wasn’t precisely the term he would use for the termagant standing so impudently before him.

  “Well,” she continued in a heated whisper. “If so, you will be delighted to discover otherwise. She took another step forward and set a small silver box down upon the desk. Lucien had a suspicion as to what it might be, though he hadn’t had the balls to ask for it’s return before now.

  He met her gaze, and she actually smiled. “Now I suggest you pack your possessions upon your phaeton—or whatever it is you rogues go about in—and be gone with a free conscience. Neither I nor my brother will trouble you further. You are free to go.” She waved him a way with a flick of her hand.

  Lucien blinked. “Britschka,” he corrected. But then he simply stood there, staring at her.

  She glared at him a moment in confusion and then said with conviction, “I really don’t care what you came in. Nor am I particularly concerned with what you depart in—be it by boot, carriage, or sleigh—merely that you go. Now... if you will pardon me, Your Grace—” She lifted those god-awful skirts and marched past him toward the tremendous wall of books at his back. “I shall procure what I came for and be along my merry way.”

  She could have fooled him, Lucien thought ruefully. He was pretty certain what she’d come for was his neck!

  He had a sudden vision of her doing him bodily harm, and he flinched as she reached out to pluck a green cloth book from one of the lower shelves behind him. He half expected her to box him with it, but she merely turned and marched across the room, leaving him staring open-mouthed after her.

  In her wake, the subtle scent of lavender drifted by, and his blood simmered as his gaze lit upon her lovely backside.

  Damn.

  All those years ago, as lovely as she had been, he hadn’t been able to stir himself at the thought of her. The shock of his body’s response was quite unexpected and more than unwelcome.

  But of course, she didn’t leave before offering one last word of counsel. Typical of females, he thought wryly, to require the last word.

  “Oh, but I should caution you, however. You should leave Newgale at your earliest convenience,” she said haughtily. “Else my dear brother might get the addle-brained notion you owe me a wedding after all.” She smiled coolly and then said with obvious relish, “We wouldn’t wish that, now would we, Your Grace?” She raised one lovely brow and then added smartly, “Godspeed, sirrah!”

  She snatched the door closed, without awaiting his response, and Lucien found for an instant that he could merely stare at the door in bewilderment.

  After an instant, he reached forward and plucked up the silver box from the desk, opening it to reveal his mother’s ring.

  Bloody hell.

  She had dismissed him—just like that—but after having been so thoroughly dismissed, he found he suddenly didn’t wish to go…

  Chapter Two

  If there was one thing Lucien trusted it was his gut. It had rarely led him astray. Although he might purposely throw down a gauntlet or two, or walk into the fray—particularly during his more rebellious years—he tended to be quite decisive.

  Not at the moment, however.

  He found he couldn’t stomach the notion of leaving after what he’d apparently done to Emma. That he’d turned the once sweet girl into an embittered shrew plagued him to no end.

  He’d had only the best of intentions by begging off their engagement—had done so purely out of respect for her father. He hadn’t wished to dishonor the man by dishonoring his daughter, and though her father had seemed so certain a marriage between them was precisely what both Lucien and Emma needed, Lucien was equally certain that marrying her would lead to just the sort of degradation of their relationship he wished to avoid.

  As it seemed, he had managed to do everyone a dishonor anyway.

  For a long moment he sat, staring out of the open door of his carriage in disgust of himself as a vision of the sweet girl he’d first met loomed before his eyes.

  How old was she now? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Past age to be married, but still too young and too naive for the likes of him, even if she had been one hundred and one. He needed heirs, but not so much that he could bear to destroy some gentle creature’s life for the sake of his name.

  While the notion of marrying had never wholly appealed to him, he had been perfectly amenable to doing his duty. As the last remaining Willyngham, he was now responsible for ensuring the continuation of his family line, but he hadn’t been prepared for Emma.

  He was much too jaded, cynical, and selfish—a combination as lethal to the soul as acid over a thriving bloom. He was like his father, he feared, and the truth was that he hadn’t loved the Emma of three years past—hadn’t really even known her—and while she’d certainly appealed to him in a very basic way, he hadn’t foreseen that he would ever develop such a devotion to her.

  She was too sweet and naïve.

  His mother’s death had been deemed accidental, but even if she hadn’t been aware of the deadly dosage she had taken, she had been slowly poisoning herself for years. Lucien well knew why, and once he’d realized that fact, he’d understood the folly of marrying someone like Emma—someone who wanted more from a marriage than jewels and a name.

  Damn.

  He had hoped to find someone he could like, and he did like Emma. But more than that, he had hoped to find someone who would be content to live her own life and who would simply leave him be. He didn’t want her to be wounded if he took a mistress, didn’t want her to care.

  Emma was far too vulnerable... and if she could love him so easily—if she did love him—and she had once said she did—he could not, in all good conscience, condemn her to a life with the likes of him.

  Someday she would thank him.

  So why the devil did he feel this sudden, unexpected hollow in his soul?

  Muttering an oath, he punched the rear facing seat with a clenched fist. And scowling, he lifted up his coat. Devil a bit! He’d managed to botch even this, and he’d never liked himself less than he did at the moment. The least he could do was to stay and right this wrong somehow. He owed Emma that much—an explanation at least.

&nb
sp; Alighting from his carriage and shrugging on his coat, he sought out Peters, hoping to explain his intentions to her brother. He found Peters within the stables, handing the reins of his bay to a young stable hand.

  “She’s a bit of blood,” Peters remarked when he spied Lucien.

  “Emma?”

  Peters chuckled softly, his dark eyes assessing. “Her, too,” he allowed.

  “Odd that I do not recall her that way,” Lucien confessed.

  “Perhaps because you never knew her,” Peters said, and tossed him a narrow-eyed glance as he started out of the stables.

  Lucien followed, frowning at his own sense of confusion.

  “I presume you will be departing Newgale?”

  “Yes, well… as to that…” Lucien sucked in a breath. This morning, he’d escaped a fist up the nose, but he might just get one now. Scarcely believing what he was about to say, he cleared his throat and proposed, “In fact... I thought I’d remain yet another day?”

  Emma’s brother halted abruptly and spun to face him, looking as perplexed as Lucien felt.

  At the instant, he looked exactly like his father sans the uniform, and despite that Lucien stood at least a good half-foot taller than Peters, he’d never felt more anxious awaiting another man’s decision.

  Peters was entirely within his rights to ask him to leave. Whatever the difference in their station, this was his home, and feeling as awkward as a tot under his scrutiny, Lucien ran nervous fingers through his black hair.

  “You say you’d like to stay another day?” Andrew repeated dubiously. Even his brow lifted as would his father’s, and Lucien found himself easily relating his concerns for Emma.

  Andrew Peters’s brows drew together as he scrutinized his sister’s soon-to-be-former betrothed.

  The duke placed his hands behind his back, probably hoping the nonconfrontational stance would set Andrew at ease. “I thought perhaps there might be something I could do to help ease this for her,” Willyngham explained. “Certainly, I had no intention of wounding her so deeply.”