He gestured around the room with a vague sweep of his arm. “This. And that. All of it!”
“Oh.” The maid’s nervous frown gave way to a beaming smile. “Isn’t it lovely, Your Grace? Why, I cannot recall a time the manor has ever looked so festive! Have you seen the gingerbread house in the solarium yet?”
Eric blinked. “The ginger what?”
“It’s absolutely marvelous,” the maid gushed. “Why, Her Grace even made little gingerbread men!”
His jaw tightened. For most people, Christmas was a time of joy and celebration. But the winter holiday had never brought him much joy, and listening to his parents scream at one another had hardly been cause for celebration.
On the rare occasion his mother hadn’t been in the arms of another man and his father had been sober enough to recall what day it was, they’d managed to have breakfast together as a family, but that was always where the revelry ended. There had never been any opening of presents in front of the fireplace, or kissing under the mistletoe, or burning the yuletide log. And there’d certainly never been any gingerbread men.
“Where is she?” he growled.
“I – I believe Her Grace is still in her bedchamber,” the maid squeaked. “Is there anything I can–”
But he was already gone.
“Anne, could you leave us please?” Caroline said calmly when her husband stormed into her bedroom, his face as dark as a storm cloud and his steely eyes flashing with temper.
Dropping the comb she’d been using to style Caroline’s hair into a neat chignon, the maid was only too happy to scurry from the room. She closed the door neatly behind her, and in the brittle silence that followed her departure the quiet click of the tumbler falling into place sounded like a gunshot.
Drawing her robe more closely around her shoulders, Caroline met Eric’s hard gaze in the silvery reflection of her dressing mirror. Like Perseus and Medusa, she thought, the corners of her mouth twitching. An apt comparison, given how Gorgonesque her husband had been acting as of late. If only defeating him could be so easy. Cutting off a monster’s head was a straightforward endeavor. Melting a duke’s heart was much more difficult.
Mayhap even impossible.
Picking up the comb Anne had dropped, she began to work it through her long hair, careful not to let the ivory spines catch on any tangles. “I see you have not yet left for London.”
He jerked an irritable shoulder at the window. “We are completely snowed in. I wouldn’t be surprised if the roads were not cleared until well after Christmas.” He paused. “I see you have been decorating.”
Surprised that he had noticed, she inclined her head ever-so-slightly. “There are still the second and third floors to be done, but the first is nearly finished. I’d planned on completing the library this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you decorating?” he asked between gritted teeth. “No one asked you to.”
“Because it is Christmas,” she said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. “I did not realize I needed your permission.”
“You don’t. It’s just…never mind,” he muttered, glancing away from the mirror as a muscle ticked in his jaw.
Caroline frowned. “Do you not like Christmas?”
“No. Not particularly.”
“But it is the happiest time of the year,” she said, aghast at the idea of someone disliking Christmas. Who didn’t love a house that smelled of fresh evergreens and carolers singing by candlelight and finding the perfect yuletide log to burn in the hearth?
“For you, perhaps. But not for me.”
“How can you hate Christmas?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “It’s a time of joy and giving. Of celebration and festivity. Of hope and–”
“I get the bloody idea,” he said curtly. “Not everyone was raised in the same fairytale family as yours. For some of us Christmas is simply another day.”
She barely managed not to snort. “I would hardly call my family a fairytale. You’ve met my mother.”
“And you should consider yourself lucky that you’ve never met mine.”
Something in the way he spoke caught her attention. Her winged brows drew together over the bridge of her nose. “I…I am afraid I do not understand. I thought your mother was…”
“Deceased?” he drawled when she hesitated. “Hopped the twig? Popped her clogs? Gone to a sticky end?”
Caroline gasped. “I really don’t think you should speak of the dead in such a manner. Especially your own mother.”
“The old witch isn’t dead.” He rubbed his chin. “Or at least I don’t think she is.”
“You mean you do not know?”
“How would I? We haven’t spoken in nearly ten years after she made it clear that her various lovers were more important than her own sons.” Although he managed to keep his voice steady, he couldn’t quite disguise the flash of pain in his eyes. “Your Christmases may have been spent roasting chestnuts by the fire, but I can assure you I do not have such happy memories.”
It was the first time Eric had ever revealed anything of a personal nature, and her heart ached for the boy whose mother had been so callously selfish that she had preferred the company of another man to her own children.
No wonder Eric held love in such bitter disregard! Her own mother was hardly perfect, but at least Caroline knew that she was loved. What would it have been like to grow up without that assurance? Terribly lonely, she imagined. No wonder her husband thought himself incapable of love. How could he know what it felt like to love someone if he’d never been loved himself?
As a new sense of understanding for the complicated man she’d married softened the hard edges of her anger, she set her comb aside and gathered her long mane at the nape of her neck. “Would you mind helping me?” she asked softly. “Anne makes it all look so easy, but I fear fashioning a chignon is much more difficult than it appears.” Her lips curved in a self-deprecating grin. “Or perhaps I would simply make a poor lady’s maid.”
Eric crossed the room to stand behind her and she felt her spine tingle with awareness when he gently rested his hands on her shoulders, warm fingers sliding beneath the lace edge of her dressing robe.
“What do you need me to do?” Their eyes met in the mirror, pale gray sinking into deep, dark blue. She saw the arousal in his gaze. Felt it in the heat pulsing from his body. Heard it in the husky velvetiness of his voice. If only she could magically turn his lust into love! There was plenty of it to spare. But of course it wasn’t that simple. Nothing worth having ever was.
“Just hold – hold this pin,” she said, her breath catching when his thumbs slowly traced along the edges of her collarbones.
“There’s only one problem,” he murmured, his breath warming her cheek as he leaned in close. He smelled of brandy and the faintest hint of peppermint. Heat pooled between her thighs and she squirmed on the velvet stool as a wave of desire swept up through her body, threatening to drown out all common sense.
“What – what is that?” she asked weakly.
“I like your hair down.” He slowly drew her hands away from her hair and it tumbled down her back in a curtain of burnished gold. Sweeping it to the side, he started to kiss his way down her neck, but when his hand slipped between the folds of her dressing robe and cupped her breast she stiffened.
“W-wait,” she gasped as logic pushed against longing. “This will not solve anything.”
“I can think of at least one thing it will solve,” he said meaningfully, capturing her wrist and placing her hand on his hard phallus.
She began to touch him through his breeches, her head falling back on a moan of pleasure as he captured her mouth and boldly slid his tongue between her lips in a series of long, drugging kisses that left her dazed and disoriented.
His hand slid between her thighs and they fell open. She was already damp with need. He growled his approval as he parted her curls and began to stroke the sens
itive bud nestled above the heart of her femininity. Six long, sensuous slides of his finger against her quivering flesh and she was completely lost.
Logic? What was logic when she had passion? This was what she craved, after all. To feel desired above anything or anyone else. To feel needed. Need was a poor substitute for love, but in the moment it was all she had…and she clung to it with the desperation of a drowning sailor trying to keep his head above water.
Her palms bit into the marble edge of the dressing table when he dragged her to her feet. Drunk on desire, she vaguely heard the crash of the stool as he kicked it aside. She hissed out a breath when he hiked up her robe and the cool air brushed against the back of her legs, but then he plunged himself into her warm, wet sheath and there was only heat.
Chapter Twelve
“I – I did not realize you could make love like that.” Feeling suddenly, inexplicably shy, Caroline busied herself with straightening everything that had been knocked askew on the dressing table during their…exertions.
Eric grinned at her in the mirror as he tugged on his breeches. “There are all kinds of ways to make love. We’ve hardly scratched the surface.”
Her interest piqued, she stole a quick glance at him over her shoulder. “Do you know all of them? The ways, that is.”
“Hardly.” Wrapping an arm around her waist, he yanked her against his chest. “But luckily for you, I’ve decided to devote myself to learning each and every one,” he whispered throatily into her ear.
A blush stole across Caroline’s cheeks. “That’s – that’s very naughty of you.”
He bit her neck. “I know.”
She watched snow fall from the pale, moody gray sky as she remained wrapped in the duke’s arms, content to listen to the shallow rasp of his breaths and the steady thump of his heartbeat. He was warm and comforting and on a soft sigh she let her head fall back against his chest as her eyes drifted closed and a small smile curved her mouth.
This was all she wanted. To feel loved. To feel special. To feel like a real wife, not a mistress to be picked up and discarded when the mood struck.
“This is nice,” she murmured, but no sooner had the words left her lips than Eric let her go and stepped back. Bereft of his body heat, she shivered as she turned, fingers sinking into her ribcage as she hugged her arms around herself. Then she saw his expression. His cool, distant expression. And she shivered for another reason all together.
“You may decorate the first floor as you see fit,” he began, speaking in the detached tone of a lord addressing a servant instead of a woman he’d just been inside of. “But leave the second and third floors alone. I won’t have my bedchamber filled with holly and mistletoe and God only knows what else.”
This time her heart didn’t ache.
It shattered.
“It will never be any different, will it?” she whispered as tears born of misery and despair burned the corners of her eyes. “You and I. Our marriage. It will never change.”
“If the bloody evergreens mean that much to you–”
“It isn’t about the evergreens!” she burst out. “I mean I suppose it is, a little bit. But it really isn’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not making a damn bit of sense.”
“And neither are you! How can you hold me so tenderly one moment and speak to me so coldly the next? Am I nothing more than a – a warm body to you?”
“Do not be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “You’re my wife.”
“Your wife. Your wife.” Hysteria bubbled up inside of her, pitching her voice up an octave and curling her hands into fists of bewildered outrage. “I am no more your wife than you are my husband. You said it yourself! This marriage is nothing but one of convenience.”
“And?” he said expectantly.
“Oh!” Reaching blindly behind her, she picked up the first thing within reach and launched it at her husband’s head. The perfume bottle missed by several feet and crashed against the wall, filling the bedchamber with the scent of honeysuckle and night jasmine. “If you were too thick-skulled to understand the first time, I am not going to waste my breath explaining it once more!”
“Now see here,” he growled, but she jumped back when he reached for her.
“No.” Hair whipped across her cheek as she shook her head from side to side. “You’re not going to lull me into complacency with your – your charm and your kisses. Not again!”
“Lull you into…what the devil are you talking about?”
“I am sorry your mother did not love you the way you needed her to.”
Eric’s eyes flashed a deep, ominous blue black. “This has nothing to do with my mother.”
“Of course it does!” she shrieked, and for the first time a genuine flicker of alarm crossed the duke’s countenance.
“Caroline–” he began, but she was not having any of it. Having gone this far, she wasn’t going to stop until she finally said what was in her heart. Her poor, battered, broken heart.
“Don’t ‘Caroline’ me. You may be blind to the fact that whatever poor relationship your parents had has given you a misguided notion of what love should be, but I’m not.” She drew a deep breath.
“I know you are capable of more than what you’re giving. I’ve felt it when you touch me. I’ve seen it in your eyes when you look at me. It would be easier if you really couldn’t love me. But I know you can. I know it.” Tears spilled from her lashes and streamed down her face. “You just don’t want to.”
“Caroline–” he tried again, but she no longer wanted to hear what he had to say.
“Please leave,” she said hoarsely.
“I really think we should–”
“Leave.”
“Fine.” He squared his shoulders. “You know, I am beginning to think this is really a marriage of inconvenience. I never should have picked you.” And with that last cold, cutting remark, he turned on his heel and strode from the room.
Caroline allowed herself precisely one hour of self-pity. Then she picked herself up off the bed, dusted herself off, and walked out of her bedchamber as if nothing were amiss. If her husband truly did not love her – which he’d just proven yet again – then she wasn’t going to waste another second’s worth of time and energy trying to convince him otherwise. And she most certainly was not going to allow him to ruin Christmas.
Thankfully the manor was very large, and over the next few days she only saw Eric twice. Once while she was having breakfast in the solarium and she glimpsed him walking out to the barn, and another time when she ducked into the library late at night to pick out a book to help her sleep.
He’d been reading in front of the fire and they’d both caught the other off guard. For the span of a heartbeat their gazes had met before she’d snatched a book blindly off the shelf and fled with what little dignity she had left.
During the day she kept herself busy by decorating every nook and crevice she could wedge a piece of holly into, and by the time Christmas Eve dawned the house was nearly complete.
Candles burned in every window, clumps of mistletoe hung from every doorway. There was garland twisted through all of the bannisters and red bows pinned to the drapes. A large wreath hung on the front door and a matching one had been nailed to the mantle in the drawing room.
There was only one thing missing.
“You there,” she called out brightly to a footman. “Could you have Buttercup saddled for me, please?”
“You’re going for a ride now?” Emerging from the parlor balancing a silver tea tray, Anne glanced out the window. “But it will be dark in a few hours. And it’s cold.” Her nose wrinkled. “And snowing.”
Caroline wrapped a long wool scarf around her neck and drew up the hood of her fur-lined cloak. “I will not be gone long and I won’t be going very far. Just to the tree line and back.”
“If it’s fresh air you’re after the footmen have shoveled a path around the garden. Why not a short walk instead?” her maid suggested. “
I don’t know if His Grace would want you riding out alone.”
Caroline’s mouth thinned. “His Grace doesn’t give a donkey’s behind what I do.”
“That’s not true,” Anne protested.
She lifted a brow. “Isn’t it? I won’t be gone long. I promise.”
“But where are you going?” Anne called out as Caroline opened the front door and stepped out into the lightly falling snow.
“The Yule log!” she called back over her shoulder. “I am going to get the Yule log.”
Chapter Thirteen
“With all due respect, you cannot hide in here forever, Your Grace.”
Looking up from the ledgers he’d been tallying, Eric scowled at his butler. “I am not hiding,” he growled as he pushed his chair back and stood up. “I am working.”
“And I suppose it is just a coincidence that you have been ‘working’ ever since you and Her Grace had a falling out?” Newgate asked.
“How the bloody hell do you know about that?”
“Aside from the fact that you have both been taking great pains to avoid one another for the better part of a week, Her Grace’s bedchamber still smells like perfume. Adelaide threw a candlestick at my head once,” he said, smiling vaguely at the memory.
Walking around to the front of his desk, Eric crossed his arms and leaned back against it. “What did you do?”
“Before or after I regained consciousness?” the butler said dryly.
It wasn’t often that Newgate spoke of his wife, who had died nearly eight years ago of consumption. She had been a sweet woman, constantly sneaking Eric biscuits when she thought her husband wasn’t looking. Which of course he always had been. There wasn’t very much that escaped the butler’s notice, then or now.
Including the dismal state of my marriage, Eric thought silently. Picking up a feather tipped quill, he twirled it absently between his fingers.
“You and Adelaide seemed happy, Newgate.”
My Winter Rogue: A Regency Holiday Collection Page 30