Regency Christmas (Holiday Collection)

by Jillian Eaton

  “Are you Mr. Betram’s new friend, then? We shall have to come up with a name for you, and some food as well. I imagine the mice are fairly scarce this time of year. I sincerely hope you do not have fleas,” she said, her nose wrinkling. The cat tilted its head to the side and meowed again, louder this time. Lily bit back a smile. “You are right. That was quite rude of me. Well, if you don’t mind, I need to borrow Mr. Betram. I shall return him safe and sound, I promise.”

  The cat returned to its bucket and Lily gently woke up the beagle. He rolled to his feet with a snort and a snuffle, blinking the sleep from his big brown eyes, and when he saw who had come to visit his tail began to wag with such enthusiasm he knocked the cat’s bucket aside and sent the smaller animal dashing into the shadows.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Lily said as she righted the bucket before tying a long piece of rope to Mr. Betram’s leather collar. Even half blind and deaf the beagle was prone to wandering, and Lily’s greatest fear was that he would run off after a rabbit and never be able to find his way home again. Kneeling, she gave him a quick hug, laughed when he licked her face, and led him out into the snow. “Come on, then. Just a quick walk and then you can go back to sleep.”

  The beagle toddled along obediently, pausing every now and then to sniff and scratch at the frozen ground, but a gentle tug was enough to get him moving again.

  They walked side by side down the middle of the long, twisting lane that led to the main road. The snow that had fallen thus far was undisturbed, smooth and white as a fresh piece of parchment. Smoke curled cheerfully from the chimneys of the houses they passed, but the windows were dim and nothing stirred save Lily, Mr. Betram, and four black crows that clacked and cawed high up in the trees. No doubt everyone was still tucked cozily in their beds, which is where Lily would have been had her mother not woken the entire household at the crack of dawn with her fretful pacing.

  Her mouth twisting, Lily stepped off the side of the lane to let Mr. Betram sniff at a tree trunk while she mulled over her options.

  There was no question time was running out. Wreaths swathed in red ribbon and decorative candles beaming from nearly every window were constant reminders that Christmas was only a few short weeks away. She needed to find a husband, and soon.

  When the will was first read Lily had been arrogant enough to assume she would be able to find the perfect man before her father’s deadline. That idea had quickly gone by the wayside following Sarah and Devlin’s ball, where she quickly discovered there were no perfect men. At least none where she was concerned. The only one who had come too close to sparking her interest was Captain James Rigby, but the damn man had run away rather than kiss her, and even though she’d looked high and low there had been no sign of him for the remainder of the ball.

  “Impossible,” she muttered under her breath, kicking hard at a lump of snow. Unfortunately the lump turned out to be a rock, and Lily cried out in pain when her toes collided with the unyielding object. Even more unfortunately it was at that precise moment that Mr. Betram miraculously spotted a fox across the field, and when he yanked against his rope in an effort to give chase Lily was so focused on her bruised foot she forgot to hold tight.

  With one deep, resounding bay he was off, belly crawling under an old, decrepit wooden fence and bursting out the other side with such enthusiasm he tripped over his own paws and rolled twice, coating his wiggling body in snow before he scrambled to his feet and headed pell-mell for the other side of the field as fast as his short little legs would carry him.

  “Mr. Betram, NO!” Hobbling forward, Lily wrapped her hands around the top rail of the fence and yelled for her beloved beagle until her voice was hoarse, but it was to no avail. Mr. Betram was gone.

  James was out for a peaceful morning ride, hoping to clear his head of the demented thoughts that perverted it during the night, when a woman’s alarmed shrieks sliced through the air, spurring him into action.

  He chased the noise to its source, not knowing what he would find, but automatically fearing the worst. An overturned carriage with bodies scattered in the snow, their limbs twisted at grotesque angles. A highway robber with a dagger pressed up against a man’s throat while his wife screamed and pleaded, her face ashen as the snow. A young child floating face down in the icy water of a pond while his mother cried in anguish from the shore. Scenario after gruesome scenario flashed through his mind as he cantered down the lane, each one more horrible than the last.

  Instead, he found Lily: clutching a fence, hopping on one foot like a deranged lunatic, screaming another man’s name.

  He shouldn’t have known it was her. She wore a heavy cloak, the fur lined hood pulled up and over her hair. Her face was turned away, her brilliant amethyst eyes hidden from view. Still he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the same woman who had turned him inside out at the ball was standing before him now.

  No, not standing.

  Hopping.

  “Might I ask what you are doing?” He dismounted in an awkward shuffle of legs and limb – following the amputation his doctor warned he should never sit astride a horse again; James had told the man to go to hell – and led his mount to the side of the road.

  Lily startled at the sound of his voice and whirled around, causing the hood of her cloak to fall back and her hair to spill out in a wave of dark silk. Her eyes narrowed, then widened with recognition. “Good morning, Captain Rigby.”

  James had the sudden, foolish urge to tip his hat, but he kept his hand wrapped tight around his horse’s reins and nodded his head instead. “Lady Kincaid.”

  “Out for an early ride?” she inquired politely, as though she hadn’t just been yelling at the top of her lungs into an empty field.

  James blinked. The woman, he decided, was mad as a hatter. “I am.”

  “Excellent. I fear people spend far too much time indoors during the winter which, as I am sure you know, is bad for the constitution. At least I think so. What do you think, Captain Rigby?”

  He thought she looked beautiful standing in the snow with her hair a tangle of curls around her shoulders and her cheeks flushed from the cold. He thought she was, without any sense of exaggeration, the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. And he thought he wanted to push her up against the fence, cup her lovely face in the hard palm of his hand, and ravish her mouth until they were both senseless and gasping for breath. “I…” He paused, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I agree.” Even though by now he had no idea what the hell he was agreeing to.

  Lily smiled, although a slight line between her brows indicated her distress. “I was taking Mr. Betram for a walk, but then he saw a fox and I forgot to hold tight and now he has run off,” she explained, although of course for James it was no explanation at all.

  Beside him his horse snorted and rubbed the length of his face against James’ thick wool jacket. He returned the show of affection in kind, absently rubbing behind the bay’s ear in a spot he knew the older gelding liked scratched, and the horse blew smoky plumes of air through his oversized nostrils, warming the side of James’ neck.

  “Your horse likes you,” Lily said. She sounded surprised.

  “We like each other,” James acknowledged. “I have owned him since he was a two year old colt.” Gangly and untrained, the bay had been a gift from his father. The gelding – named Biscuit for his brown coat – was nearing his twentieth year. He did not possess the energy he’d once had as a youngster, but his spirit was unchanged, and with the exception of Natalie he was the greatest treasure in James’ life.

  “What did you do with him when you went away to war?” Lily asked curiously, tipping her head to the side as she studied Biscuit beneath long, snow covered lashes.

  It was an innocent enough question. James could have answered it easily enough. He should have answered it easily enough, but when he opened his mouth to form the words they would not come. He was not ready to speak of the war, nor of anything that referenced it, no matter how small or incons
equential. “Who is Mr. Betram?” he asked instead, blatantly ignoring her question in favor of his own.

  Instantly Lily’s entire face seemed to crumple, and she turned her back on him to resume gazing out at the empty field. “Mr. Betram is my dog,” she called over her shoulder. “He’s a dear old thing, half blind and completely deaf, and I fear he got away from me.” She spun around, her violet eyes wide and beseeching. “You have to help me find him, Captain Rigby. I fear he will freeze to death if I do not bring him home.”

  It was an accurate assumption. The winter elements were kind to neither human nor beast, and the snow was only going to increase in intensity with every hour that passed. Dark clouds warned of a storm blowing in from the east, a storm James believed would be the hardest hitting yet. It was one of the reasons he’d wanted to get his daily ride in so early in the morning; the other being he enjoyed the solitude. After being surrounded by noises for so long – gunfire, cannon blasts, the agonizing screams of men – James craved the silence.

  For that reason and that reason alone he should have ridden on. He should have made an excuse, any excuse, and left Lily Kincaid to her own devices. She was the opposite of silence. The opposite of peace and calm and quiet. The rational part of his brain told him this, even as the other part – the bloody foolish part – had him nodding his head and following her footsteps, now almost completely covered in snow, down to the dilapidated fence line.

  Biscuit followed, navigating the slippery terrain with ease, and stood obediently at his master’s side, ears pricked towards the distant trees.

  “Do you think he would return on his own?”

  Lily shook her head. “No. Mr. Betram does not have a good sense of direction. He is probably wandering in circles. Oh, I have to find him. I absolutely must.” She blinked, her lashes fluttering in rapid succession, and James was stunned to her eyes were sparkling with tears.

  He knew women cried. He’d seen evidence of it in his own household, both from his mother and from his sister, but for some reason Lily did not strike him as a woman who shed tears easily, nor as one who used them for manipulation. She was too strong for that. Too honest. And yet here she was, fighting back tears over an old dog who had wandered into the woods.

  It made him feel… protective. And the protectiveness made him wary. Wary of his feelings towards this slip of a sprite with her tangled mane of black silk and glimmering eyes made of jewels. Wary of what he might do because of them. Wary of what she would do in return.

  He set his jaw, determined in that moment to turn on his heel and walk away, but then Lily sniffed — a tiny, unladylike sound of pure distress — and he was lost.

  “I will find your Mr. Betram and return him to you.” With practiced ease he slipped Biscuit’s reins over the gelding’s head and readied himself to mount, praying he wouldn’t be made the fool when he attempted to use his right hand where he once would have used the left. “Where do you live?”

  Lily pushed away from the fence and lifted her chin. “I am going with you, Captain Rigby.”

  James paused with his boot half in the stirrup and looked incredulously at her over his shoulder. “Into the woods? You bloody well are not. Go home, Lady Kincaid. The winds are picking up and heavier snow will soon be upon us. It is too cold for—”

  “A woman?” she interrupted, lifting one dark brow. “Please spare me your lecture on propriety, Captain Rigby. I brought Mr. Betram out here, and I will see him safely home. If your horse can carry two I will ride, if not I will walk, but be certain I will go with you either way.”

  James stared hard at her. She returned his stare unflinchingly, her posture as rigid as any general’s. Hooking his fingers under the pommel of his saddle James mounted, swinging his right leg over without incident. He took the reins in hand, rubbing his thumb across the smooth leather. Biscuit tensed, his muscles rippling and shifting in anticipation of his master’s cues. He mouthed the bit, clanking the metal between his teeth and tossing his head.

  “Open the gate,” James said at last.

  “And?” Lily challenged.

  “And you can ride with me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Fate, Lily mused as she took in her new surroundings, was a complicated beast. Three hours ago she had been arguing with her mother and sister in the cozy confines of a parlor and now she was stranded with a man she barely knew in a small, forgotten caretaker’s cottage tucked away in the middle of the forest.

  Snow fell mercilessly outside the small, two room cottage, covering everything in a thick blanket of white. Standing on her tiptoes – the better to see beyond the drift that was rapidly accumulating outside the kitchen window – Lily peered up at the darkening sky, exposed in slivers of gray and angry blue through skeletal tree branches that clicked and clacked with the wind. A quiet whine had her reaching down to skim her hand across the top of Mr. Betram’s head.

  They’d found the wayward hound sitting in a thicket of brambles. He hadn’t barked when they approached; instead he simply wagged his tail and tilted his head, as though to say: what took you so long?

  Unfortunately, by the time they retrieved Mr. Betram the winter storm had moved in with enough force to make a return trip nigh on impossible, and they’d been forced to seek shelter.

  Lily had been the one to spot the cottage through the trees.

  Sitting in the midst of an overgrown glen it was clearly abandoned, but the front door was unlocked and the furniture from the last inhabitants still in place. Besides a round wooden table with two mismatched chairs in the nook that served as the kitchen, there was a small writing desk, a musty smelling sofa, and a free standing bookcase stripped of books. Two wing chairs upholstered in faded blue fabric flanked a stone hearth and curtains, heavy with dust, framed the cottage’s four windows. There was a bedroom as well, complete with a bed, which both Lily and James were resolutely ignoring although she’d caught his gaze straying towards the partially open door on more than one occasion.

  Mr. Betram’s fur was still damp from the snow and Lily wiped her palm on her skirt before she turned and directed her attention across the room to where James was kneeling in front of the stone hearth, attempting to start a fire.

  His hand was cupped in front of his mouth and he was coaxing the flames to life with his breath, summoning them up from the depths of the kindling until they attacked the larger pieces of wood with a ferocity Lily found quite impressive.

  “Have you done that many times before?” she asked, shuffling a few steps closer to the fire and extending her hands towards the warmth now emanating from the hearth. The flames crackled merrily, lighting the room in a soft glow. It was curiously cheerful, if she ignored the fact that she was stranded a good furlong from home with only a strange man for company. And yet, she did not feel ill at ease in James’ presence. In truth he’d hardly said more than a dozen words to her since they began their journey, and she certainly did not feel in danger of being ravished. If anything he’d gone out of his way to avoid touching her, both on the horse and off, and Lily was left with the distinct impression that he was far more uncomfortable with the situation than she.

  Her thought was proven correct when he leapt to his feet and jumped warily to the side, as though she were some carnivorous beast intent of devouring him whole instead of a tiny woman trying to get warm.

  “Have you done that before?” she asked.

  “Have I done what before?”

  “Started a fire without a tinderbox.”

  For some reason, her clarification prompted a scowl. “Yes,” he said shortly. “I have.”

  Captain James Rigby, she decided, was a man of few words. Which was perfectly fine, as she had more than enough for the both of them. “How long do you think we will have to stay here?”

  Another innocent question, another scowl. He was standing to the side of the hearth, his countenance half in and half out of shadow. It made him appear forbidding. Ominous, even. Lily knew she should have been afraid. Any
woman in her right mind would be. Instead she was… intrigued? Yes. Intrigued was as good a word as any to describe the fluttering sensation in her chest.

  “When the snow stops and settles we can leave,” he said.

  Lily bit the inside of her cheek. “But it may not stop snowing for hours, and by then it will be dark.”

  James’ expression was unreadable. “Then we will leave at first light.”

  At first light…

  First light meant dawn. Dawn meant morning. Morning meant… She sucked in a breath. Morning meant spending the night here. With James. Alone.

  For the first time, Lily considered her reputation and the possible repercussions that would follow if anyone found out where she’d been. She would be ruined, completely and irrevocably. Society was not kind to women who broke the unwritten rules; principle among them being one did not spend the evening alone with a gentleman without a proper chaperone. It hardly mattered if anything happened between her and Captain Rigby. She would be considered spoiled goods, and men seeking wives of high moral character did not want anything that was spoiled, no matter that they were hardly coming to the marriage bed a virgin themselves.

  “Are you certain there is no way we can get home before nightfall?” Anxious now, she returned to the kitchen where her cloak was drying on one of the chairs. The fabric was still damp, but it was certainly wearable and all things considered she would much rather risk a chill than condemnation from her peers.

  James remained by the hearth but his eyes followed her. When she turned with the cloak bundled tight in her arms he was staring at her unabashedly, an odd expression on his face. “I am sorry, but it does not seem likely. Biscuit will be unable to carry additional weight through the drifts and your dog—”

  “I can carry him!” Lily cried. Except she couldn’t, not really, and the look James gave her said as much. He cleared his throat.

  “I will not… I will not do anything untoward, if that is why you are concerned.”