A Renwick House Christmas Boxed Set

by Rachel Van Dyken

  “Papa?”

  “Anastasia. You’ve arrived!” He smiled broadly at her with a twinkle in his eyes. How could he be so happy when he had just had such a tragic conversation? A wave of nausea swept through her.

  “And how was your journey, my sweet?” he prodded, acting like nothing was wrong in the world.

  “It was tolerable.” Her gaze wandered to Baldwyn. He sat staring at the full glass in his hand, not bothering even to acknowledge her presence. At least he had the good grace not to try to cover the betrayal that had just transpired. He presented his true colors and gave her the cut direct.

  “Have you had dinner? Cook has set something aside for you.”

  “I find myself with no appetite this evening. Perhaps the wear of the road. I believe I shall retire.”

  “Very well, my dear. Shall I see you to your room?” Lord Marks suggested.

  “No, thank you, Papa. I can find my own way.”

  He seemed disappointed and cast a glance in Baldwyn’s direction. Perhaps expecting him to volunteer to take the task on himself. The duke appeared not to notice and adjusted the cuff of his jacket sleeve.

  After a long pause her father rose and kissed her on the forehead. “Pleasant dreams, daughter. We shall speak on the morrow.”

  “Good night, Papa.” With that she turned and left the room, not daring another look at the duke, who seemed already half into his cups.

  Baldwyn lost track of how much he had consumed somewhere after his third glass of brandy. The silence filling the house told him everyone else had retired for the night. It was a shame he hadn’t paid closer attention when Lord Marks explained which room was his.

  Vaguely he recalled he would have to go up the stairs to the find it, but after that he was at a loss. He stood and steadied himself before moving toward the door. Why was the room tilting to the left? With a shake of his head he made a slight navigational adjustment and began the arduous quest to find his bed.

  He must have had more to drink than he thought, because the trek up the stairs was reminiscent of that tortuous voyage to the Continent so long ago, as if he was fighting the pitch of the sea. Taking a firm grasp on the banister, Baldwyn pulled himself up the stairway to the wing he knew would house the guests.

  Back and forth he staggered, trying to find firm ground on which to place his next step, but the floor seemed to give way beneath his feet as he moved. After what seemed like an eternity, he cast a hazy glance about him. Every door looked the same. Could they not have labeled each room with a name? That would have been so convenient. Certainly he was only going in circles now.

  Much longer and he would fall to the floor and sleep where he landed.

  Out of desperation, he pounded on the door closest. When there was not an immediate answer, he rapped again, louder and longer until a soft click of the latch told him someone was there.

  The door opened only a crack. Through it a dark almond- shaped eye peeked out at him, blinking against the candle light in the hall. Such long dewy lashes, batting so invitingly.

  Baldwyn blinked and stared back at it.

  A soft voice floated out to him, falling on his ears like that much warm molasses, sweetening his clouded mind.

  “Is all well, your grace?”

  “I—I am uncertain,” he said, the slur of his voice coming belatedly to his ears.

  Concern leapt into her expression, and the door opened wider. It was Lady Anastasia. A sense of guilt pricked at the back of his mind, as though there were some reason he should apologize to the lady, but he could not for the life of him grasp what it was.

  “Might one of you show me to my room?”

  “One of us, your grace?”

  “Yes, you or your identical twin.” Perhaps he was seeing things. There were two of them, weren’t there?

  “I believe your grace has had a drink or two this evening.”

  “That is very true.” He took a step toward her but stumbled and launched himself into the wall instead. “Will you help me?”

  She glanced down the corridor and then back to him. “Very well, your grace,” she said with a sigh and lifted his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. “It’s just a bit farther.”

  He didn’t remember her smelling so good. Like Scottish bluebells and primroses. Perhaps the brandy was heightening his senses. The floor pitched again, and he stumbled over his own feet.

  So, perhaps only his sense of smell…

  “Your grace, I will see you to your room, but you shall have to make an effort to keep your feet under you.”

  “Yes, of course. I do apologize, my love,” he slurred. She stopped suddenly in her tracks, jolting him. “What? What is it?” he asked.

  “This is it.” Her brown eyes searched his face.

  “Oh. You are angry with me.” Baldwyn hung his head. If only the thick fog in his brain would clear. “I know I have been awful.”

  “You misunderstand, your grace. This…” she waved a hand toward the door before them, “…is your chamber.”

  “Ah, yes. Very good.” She turned away, leaving a cold void where she had held him. “Anastasia…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, he just knew he wasn’t ready for her to leave him.

  “Your grace?”

  “Your grace, your grace!” he mocked her. “Must you always be so proper?”

  “Pardon me?” A flash of anger lit up her eyes. “Did you not just—”

  But he stopped listening. His eyes focused on her lips. He didn’t understand a word coming out of her mouth, but it didn’t matter. Ever since he had kissed her at Montmouth’s ball, the memory had plagued him. He would kiss her again. Now. And to the fire with propriety.

  “You arrogant, self-righteous pr—”

  His lips crushed to hers, stopping the words in her throat.

  It was easy to rationalize it. It was his duty to show her how dangerous it was for her to be gallivanting about the hall in her dressing gown… at night… in her own house. Put that way, of course, it sounded much less chivalrous.

  He knew he shouldn’t, but the logic of it seemed to make perfect sense. And in the instant his lips touched hers he was lost — lost in a sea of desire of need, and powerless to fight what he’d been craving to do for the past four days.

  The lady was innocent, unsure how to respond. Baldwyn could tell that much in his drunken state.

  If he was to be chained to her for the rest of his life, he may as well teach her how this was done. Surely that was his responsibility as well.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her, intending only to gain a better angle from which to begin the lesson. Still unsteady on his feet, he lost his balance and stumbled toward the wall, slamming her back to it and falling against her forcefully. The gasp that escaped her throat left her mouth slightly opened, enough for him to taste the moist warmth of her mouth. His brain was on fire and had no room for any other thought.

  Her whimper was all the encouragement he needed, and he pulled her flush against him. The softness of her pressed against him drove him deeper still into the flames that consumed him body and soul.

  His hands wandered on their own then, with no regard to propriety. He couldn’t stop if he wanted to.

  Anastasia squirmed in his grasp. He took her mouth wholly with his, pulling her tighter, wanting with every fiber of his being to somehow stumble into his bedroom and ruin her completely. Perhaps it was the liquor, but it seemed like a perfectly lovely idea.

  Her hands pressed to his chest like a barrier between them, keeping them apart. Why wasn’t she embracing him? He tangled his fingers into her long wavy brown hair which hung down her back and about her shoulders like cascading velvet. Baldwyn traced her shoulders, down her arms, and finally finding her hands, he interlaced his fingers with hers and gently urged them away.

  She startled as if caught off guard, pulling them off balance once more, and the two of them lurched to the side, slamming against a hall table which held an old vase and
a pair of silver candlesticks.

  The vase tipped over and rolled to the floor. The resounding shatter echoed through the hall, bringing Baldwyn abruptly back to earth.

  He took a step back and turned to Lady Anastasia. She seemed frozen in that moment of time. Both her tiny hands covered her mouth in what appeared to be horror, and she shook her head. Tears brimmed in her eyes and began to slip down her cheeks.

  “I—” she began. Wrapping her arms around herself, she began to back away from him.

  Baldwyn wanted to reach out. Comfort her. Protect her from whatever was causing her sorrow… her fear.

  “Your room is here, your grace,” she whispered quickly, then whirled around and hurried back to her own room, closing the door behind her. The latch clicked into place, and the creak of a key turning in the lock immediately followed.

  And with that metallic snap of the mechanism, the realization came.

  It was he who’d caused her sorrow.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He was a great idiot. That was not up for debate. Unfortunately the episode the previous night was clear enough in his memory to cause violent pangs of conscience… which were only compounded by the pounding in his head.

  By some miracle he had found his way down to the dining room, though he was less interested in breaking his fast than he was in spending the day in his chamber, nursing the skull splitting ache in his head. Benedict would have the cure. The man was notorious for his drinking binges and always seemed to come out on the other side without so much as a twitching brow.

  “Good morning, cousin!” Benedict announced far too loudly while pounding him heartily on the back.

  Baldwyn cringed at the sound ricocheting through his brain like a French cannonball.

  “I see very little good about it,” he whispered. Benedict only smiled back at him like he had lost his mind. Baldwyn peered at him through half-open eyes.

  “It’s a lovely morning! And there shall be ice skating!” If it were possible, the devil’s grin grew even wider. There was something wrong with him.

  “Why are you so—” Baldwyn searched his mind for the perfect word to capture the essence of Benedict’s ailment.

  “Handsome? Intelligent? Well-endowed?” Benedict offered.

  Baldwyn snorted, then cringed at the stabbing pain. “I was going to say happy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so disgustingly merry.”

  “And so I am… all of those things!” His cousin threw his head back with a raucous laugh and slapped Baldwyn on the shoulder once more.

  “Cousin, you must stop doing that.” He clutched his head in his hands and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the devil duke stood beside him grinning like an imbecile and staring across the room at none other than Lady Katherine Bourne, the accident-prone wench the dowager had designed for his future.

  Nausea rolled through his stomach and he shook his head in disbelief.

  “Oh, no.” There was no hope. No hope for a man such as Baldwyn if even the devil duke was susceptible to the dowager’s schemes. Hot fury rose in his chest. He wanted to kick. He wanted to scream. If only neither of those activities would make his head explode.

  “Excuse me, Benedict,” he muttered. Baldwyn would get to the bottom of her hold on him. The ton’s last great bachelor could not go down so easily.

  In four long strides, he stood beside her. His indignance overshadowed the throbbing pain in his head. He grabbed the plate from her conniving little hand and began scooping large amounts of eggs onto it. “Allow me.”

  Lady Katherine stared at him in amused confusion. “Thank you—” her voice broke off with a questioning lilt, and she reached for the plate to take it back, but Baldwyn pulled it back just out of her reach.

  “What the devil did you do?” He was seething. He had to stop this. Had to break her spell over the last great hope of bachelors everywhere.

  “Pardon?” Such an innocent face. But underneath she was a scheming hoyden, out to put a stranglehold on all eligible gentlemen.

  This would never do. It was one thing to force the two dukes to marry. To forge betrothal contracts in their names. To plot their demise. To design and plan and weave a twisted web in which to trap the two. To force a marriage with any young chit. But it was another matter entirely to engineer a match that sucked every last bit of life out of the notorious rake, leaving him nothing more than a shell of his former moody self. Baldwyn couldn’t take it.

  And he knew. As he had known the first night in the garden at the Montmouth ball.

  His heart was next in line for the fall.

  Anastasia hadn’t slept. And now she was wishing she had remained in her room until everyone else had finished eating. It felt as though all eyes were on her when she stepped through the door, as if they knew what had transpired between Anastasia and her betrothed the night before. But how could they?

  Across the room Lady Katherine accepted a plate from Baldwyn and smiled at him. She was forever smiling at him. Baldwyn’s gaze reached Anastasia. She thought there was a spark behind his eye. A spark that was for her. Undoubtedly a spark of resentment.

  He blamed her.

  He’d attacked her in her own house, and somehow it was her fault? And after all that duty and responsibility talk. The speeches about guarding her virtue. Give the man a few drinks, and he was an absolute rake.

  And he was coming her way.

  Warmth spread through her as he approached.

  “Good morning, my lady. Did you sleep well?” He reached for her hand and planted a quick kiss on her wrist. It was difficult to read him. His eyes were glassy and his voice was low.

  “Not at all, your grace.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Any reason in particular?” He glanced around the room as though he cared little what her answer would be.

  “Surely you jest, sir.” Anastasia stared at him in disbelief. Was he truly going to pretend nothing had happened? Still he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “Are you—” she began but was abruptly cut off by a sudden commotion amongst the servants.

  “Look alive! She is here!” one footman called.

  “Quickly, quickly!” another rushed toward a group of maids near the door.

  Anastasia glanced around the room to determine the cause.

  Her father’s servants were rarely this upset. Was Casper crying?

  Beside her Baldwyn seemed to tense and freeze. She traced his gaze to the door on the other side of the room. There stood the Dowager Duchess of Durbin wearing an icy glare as she looked down her long aristocratic nose at everyone.

  “I didn’t know my father had invited her.” Anastasia’s voice was no more than a breath, but it reverberated in the air between them like the clash of a cymbal.

  He sighed and turned to Anastasia. “I believe our best course of action is to join the ice skating.”

  “As you wish, your grace.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sky was clear and deep blue as they sat around the frozen pond lacing up their skates. A few feet away, the servants stoked a small fire and heated mulled cider alongside the roasting chestnuts.

  A gust of winter wind blew Anastasia’s bonnet from her head, and it flapped against her back avoiding her grasp. Beside her, Baldwyn caught the offending article, replaced it on her head, and retied it securely under her chin.

  His gaze was intent on the task at hand, though Anastasia couldn’t help but search his eyes. They seemed a deeper blue out in the sunshine. His fingers fumbled with the strings of her bonnet, lingering longer than necessary.

  “That should hold,” he said finally, allowing his hand to brush her chin and glancing to her eyes briefly before abruptly turning away and offering his arm. “Ready?”

  “Yes, thank you, your grace.” She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and buried the other deep in the fur muff hanging from her neck as they slid onto the ice.

  Baldwyn was silent as they made their first pass around the ice. After
several minutes Anastasia ventured to speak.

  “How is your head, your grace?”

  He glanced at her as though startled by the question.

  “It is causing me some discomfort, I must admit,” he answered at last. “How do you fare this morning?”

  “Lovely. Thank you.” In truth, she had hardly slept a wink all night and was frightfully tired, but it didn’t seem the proper thing to say.

  Anastasia allowed the silence to encompass them again for several minutes. When it grew burdensome, she cleared her throat to speak again. She wanted to say something. Anything to clear the air. Perhaps speak of the kiss the night before. Somehow to understand how things stood between them.

  “Your grace, I—” she began, but in that moment the Duke of Banbury and Lady Katherine skated up beside them.

  “Paisley, you skate like a woman,” Banbury baited his cousin with a wicked grin. “I am certain I could make it twice around the pond before you made it halfway to the other side.”

  A tiny smirk played on the corner of Baldwyn’s lips, and he turned to Anastasia. “My dear, I fear a challenge has been made. Shall I accept it?”

  The special attention sent a tingle of joy through her heart. “Most sincerely, your grace. You must defend your family honor.”

  “Very well. Banbury, I accept.” They swung a wide graceful arc and made their way back to the bank. Anastasia fairly floated on his arm as they went.

  Katherine and Anastasia settled onto the bench to watch the race.

  “May I wear your colors, my lady?” Baldwyn asked with a gallant bow and a wink at her.

  “Paisley, you’re stalling,” Banbury taunted.

  Anastasia slipped her handkerchief out of her muff, tied it around his wrist, suppressing a giggle when he kissed her hand and spun around to the starting mark.

  This was the Baldwyn she remembered from long ago. The playful knight. Rescuing her from her distress, fighting for her honor, chivalrous to a fault.