Marquess of Mistletoe

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by [No data]




  The Marquess of Mistletoe

  * * *

  Grace Burrowes

  “Marquess of Mistletoe” Copyright © 2016 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations or excerpts for the purpose of critical reviews or articles—without permission in writing from Grace Burrowes, author and publisher or the work.

  Published by Grace Burrowes Publishing, 21 Summit Avenue, Hagerstown, MD 21740.

  Cover design by Author's Lifesaver, Inc.

  Cover photos by Period Images.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  The Trouble With Dukes

  * * *

  Chapter One

  * * *

  “Choosing a bride is a pragmatic undertaking for a man newly saddled with a title,” Leopold, Lord Cadeau said. “You will please cease your sentimental maunderings on a topic about which you know little, Raphael.”

  Leopold had left military life behind months ago when a second cousin’s title had been dumped in his lap, as unappealing and demanding as a squalling infant.

  Raphael Jones, Leo’s former batman, had marched with him across Spain, through France, and at Waterloo. When Leo had acquired the title, Rafe had appointed himself valet, general factotum, and conscience to the new Marquess of Cadeau. Nothing Leo promised, threatened, or demanded dislodged Rafe from his post.

  Perhaps Leo’s marchioness would know what to do with an old soldier who refused to follow orders.

  “It’s Christmas Day, your worship,” Rafe said, as if corner glee clubs tipsy with wassail, shouted holiday greetings, and the very calendar had escaped Leo’s notice. “To be looking over a lady during the holidays as if she’s a mare on offer at Tatts is a sacrilege.”

  The cold had numbed everything Leo owned—from his toes to the tip of his nose to his saddle-weary fundament—but it hadn’t quite driven out his doubts. Rafe had a point: What sort of man ignored Yuletide family gatherings to interview a prospective wife?

  A man who wanted the whole business concluded. Leo had endured months in Vienna as a marquess with means, and didn’t care to repeat that ordeal in London. Forced marches were one thing, German princesses popping out of powder rooms—and their bodices—were quite another.

  Though what sort of woman spent Boxing Day looking over a prospective husband instead of socializing?

  “Your cork-brained notion of courting will be the death of us both,” Rafe went on. “Can’t imagine you’ve asked a lady to travel in this weather. And at Christmas.”

  Cold alone wasn’t that much of a challenge. Between stout wool, a sound horse, and common sense, Leo could deal with cold. But the wind…

  The bitter weather came straight at them, as if Nature herself was determined that Leo not reach his objective. Leo couldn’t say if snow was falling, but it was certainly blowing in his face, a million grains of frigid misery, telling him to seek shelter and rethink the contract he was considering signing.

  “You will please recall,” Leo said, above the soughing of the wind, “the lady has asked me to travel at the holidays, and she’ll be looking me over too. I’m to be her Boxing Day gift, or my wealth and title are.”

  “Can’t take wealth and a title to bed, your royal pigheadedness. Can’t make babies cuddling up to wealth and a title, can’t—bloody, bedamned stinking excuse for a spavined mule, watch where you’re going!”

  Rafe’s horse had slipped, likely from fatigue, for the snow wasn’t deep.

  “Spend more effort guiding that creature, and less haranguing me, and you won’t risk his hide.”

  “I’m trying to guide your perishing self,” Rafe said, patting his horse. “Thankless, hopeless job though it is, and this being Christmas too.”

  The season of the Christ child’s birth was an ironic time for Leo to become engaged. He’d once dreamed of children and a future with a woman who’d have made a wonderful mother and a devoted wife. Marielle Redford had been his best friend, his dearest delight, and then she’d become his deepest regret.

  Now she would be nothing but a memory, which was for the best. She’d married another, Leo had gone for a soldier—not in that order—and life had moved on, one bitter, bleak mile at a time.

  “See what you’ve gone and done,” Rafe said, half a mile later. “You’ve lamed my poor, wee Wellington with your mad scheme.”

  Wellington stood eighteen hands in his bare feet, could pull a laden canal barge without breaking a sweat, and—unlike his owner—was the soul of uncomplaining calm. He’d been a gift from Leo to Rafe years ago, and the pair took excellent care of each other.

  “He’s not lame,” Leo said, assessing the horse’s gait. “He’s tired of listening to you whine and prattle, as am I, as is Beowulf.”

  Leo’s horse shook his reins, suggesting at least one creature in all of creation still had some respect for his employer.

  “I tell you, the old boy’s going off, just like he did north of Toulouse.”

  Which, thankfully, had been more than two years ago. “He wasn’t lame, he was simply tired and you were drunk.”

  Leo obliged Rafe with further argument for the next two miles, mostly so they’d both stay awake. The wind howled, the horses plodded onward, and London came inevitably nearer. Leo was riding toward his future, toward marriage to a woman of suitable rank to marry a marquess.

  Somehow, years ago, Marielle Redford had managed to walk up the church aisle and put youthful dreams behind her. How had she done it, and had she spared a thought for the young man who’d once loved her more than life itself?

  “We’re stopping at the next inn,” Rafe declared. “A man who’s served the crown loyally for years deserves to use a chamber pot in a nice cozy parlor rather than freeze his pizzle off in the inn yard. I could also use a toddy, should some kind soul be interested in preserving me from a cruel death on the road. A plate of cheese toast wouldn’t go amiss either.”

  They’d reached a hamlet west of Chelsea. Leo hadn’t been here for years, hadn’t let himself acknowledge that his travels would take him past this monument to his dashed hopes.

  “Looks like a right, snug establishment with a proper respect for the joyous season,” Rafe observed.

  The Ox and Ass was festooned with pine roping, wreaths hung in the windows, and red ribbons had been twined about the porch pillars. Evening was an hour away, but the lamps in the yard were already lit, and two noisy boys were pelting each other with snowballs.

  “We’ll stop long enough to rest the horses and get warm,” Leo said. “Then we push on to Chelsea, because I must be punctual for my appointment tomorrow morning. A gentleman does not keep a lady waiting, no matter the weather.”

  Or the holiday.

  “A gentleman,” Rafe said, “does not marry a lady he’s never met, nor undertake his courting in the office of a bedamned, useless, sniveling solicitor on Boxing Day.”

  Next Rafe would visit the topic of the head injury Leo had supposedly sustained at Badajoz, or the daft notions of the Quality, for if nothing else, acquiring a title had promoted Leo from gentry to Quality.

  “My solicitors don’t snivel,” Leo retorted. They fawned though, and they sent along bills for services at a great rate.

  “Methinks you need a toddy,” Rafe said. “The cold has gone to your brain.”

  “For once, I agree with you. A toddy is in order, and we can drink to the health of my bride.” His potential bride. Nobody had signed any settlements, nobody had agreed
to anything, but Leo was prepared to be generous.

  “He’s gone barmy,” Rafe informed his horse. “Poor sod left the better part of himself on the battlefields, and this damned title has about finished off his common sense. What has the world come to, when a man whose bravery was noted by Old Hooky himself, an officer whose men marched through hell for him without complaint…”

  Rafe’s litany continued as they rode into the inn yard, ceasing only when the ordeal of dismounting had to be faced. Leo swung down carefully, and his frozen feet accepted his weight with a predictable agony of protest.

  Nothing for it, but to solider on. Leo hoped the woman he was to court was more sanguine about their union than he could be. Fate had landed him at the last place he’d kissed Marielle, and the least he could do was raise a warm glass of spirits to feckless dreams and the woman who’d inspired them.

  * * *

  The dreariest excuse for a Christmas Day blew snow squalls about beneath a bleak sky beyond the window of Marielle’s sitting room.

  “I was an idiot for choosing to spend the night here.” A sentimental idiot.

  “Yes, milady,” Petunia muttered as she poured Marielle another cup of tea.

  “You aren’t supposed to agree with me that easily,” Marielle countered, returning to her seat near the fire. The room was chilly, except for the small area near the hearth circled with fire screens. Even there, the carpeted floor was drafty.

  “Yes, milady. I mean, no milady.” Petunia passed Marielle a teacup that did not match its saucer. “Shall I ask the innkeeper’s wife for a tisane, milady?”

  Milady, milady, milady. Marielle had been born a plain miss, and then she’d become Lady Drew Semple, wife to the third son of a marquess. Nearly a decade after becoming a wife, she still wasn’t comfortable being addressed as my lady.

  Which she’d just have to get over.

  “I do not need a tisane. Traveling at the holidays ought not to agree with anybody.”

  Petunia’s face was carefully expressionless, suggesting she’d heard the talk about Marielle’s ancient history. A competent companion walked a slippery path between status as a family member—Petunia was a cousin-in-law at some remove on the Semple side—and the upper servants. She was unfailingly polite, but never quite warm.

  As Marielle’s feet hadn’t been warm for days. “I have good memories of this inn,” Marielle said, rubbing one slippered foot over the other.

  She also had sad memories.

  Petunia wrapped a linen towel about the tea pot. “I had the maid put your sheets on the beds, and we’ve a private dining room reserved for supper.”

  A Christmas feast, the innkeeper had said, though from what Marielle had seen, nobody else had been demented enough to travel on Christmas Day, braving weather that would freeze Lucifer’s ears off.

  “You might as well eat the shortbread, Petunia. I don’t care for it.” Leopold had loved shortbread, and so Marielle had made it for him at Yuletide, batch after batch. When adolescence had begun adding inches to his height at a great rate, he’d gone so far as to put both butter and jam on his shortbread.

  “I do care for it,” Petunia said, “especially with a dash of cinnamon to mark the holidays. I have never met a proper Englishwoman who takes so little interest in the Yuletide season as you do, milady.”

  The tea was tepid and weak, which did not stop Petunia from dunking her shortbread into it.

  “Do you imply I’m not a proper Englishwoman, Petunia?”

  “Of course not, milady. I suspect the holidays make you sad.”

  The holidays made Marielle angry. She’d taken years to figure that out. “I have both fond and difficult memories of this time of year. I’m going out.”

  The shortbread didn’t make it to Petunia’s mouth. “But the weather!”

  “Is simply weather. I won’t be gone long.”

  Petunia didn’t offer to accompany her, which was fortunate. Marielle wanted to be alone when she revisited the place where she’d last kissed Leopold Drake, the same place she’d waited for him until the bitter weather had given her a lung fever from which she’d nearly died.

  * * *

  “Go inside and secure us rooms under your name,” Leo said, taking Wellington’s reins from Rafe. “And order us a double round of toddies while you’re about it. Mind you don’t mention the title, or we’ll be charged a king’s ransom for a night’s lodging.”

  “At once, your highness,” Rafe said, saluting. “On the double, despite the fact that my old bones are nigh frozen to death. I live to serve, and—”

  The entire point of the exercise was to get Rafe’s old bones indoors before lung fever stalked him. “I can no longer court martial you, Raphael, but I can sack you.”

  “And put coal in my stocking too, sir. A dire fate for such a loyal—”

  Leo took Rafe by the shoulders and gave him a small shove in the direction of the inn, for Rafe would hover over both Leo and the horses like an anxious guardian angel.

  “Two plates of cheese toast,” Leo said. “And some victuals for our next leg of the journey.”

  Rafe was as solid as a barn door, but couldn’t be moved half so easily. Leo had rank, two inches of height, and some muscle on the older man, all of which he applied as gently as he could.

  “There will be no next leg of the journey for me,” Rafe said. “Not today. Here I shall bide, for it’s Christmas—”

  “March, Raphael.”

  Rafe trudged off, pausing long enough to pitch a snowball at one of the dodging, shrieking boys. The children were happy—today was Christmas—and once, long ago, Leo had been such a boy, grateful for a holiday and a playmate.

  “Come along,” Leo said to the horses. “There’s a warm stall, hay, and a rest for you both. I’ll ask the grooms to take the chill off your water, and they’ll think I’m daft, but a soldier learns things. Can’t charge into battle on a colicky mount.”

  Can’t make babies cuddling up to wealth and a title. Rafe’s words followed Leo into the relative warmth of the stable. A stable lad swaddled in mittens, scarf, and gloves greeted them at the door, though Leo would see to his own horses. A marquess probably wouldn’t be allowed that courtesy in Merry Olde England, but a soldier would.

  A former soldier.

  Leo waved the groom away, and sent Welly into the first empty loose box. Beowulf got the one beside it because comrades should be billeted together when possible.

  “A guest is in the saddle room,” the groom said. “I’m up the steps with the coachmen, if you need anything, sir.” He tugged his cap and went scampering up wooden steps that lead to the hayloft, and apparently, to winter quarters for the stable help.

  Within minutes, Wulf and Welly were dispatching their hay with the steady munching of hungry equines. Leo stacked his saddle over Rafe’s and carried both down the barn aisle to the saddle room. He couldn’t open the door to the saddle room with arms full of gear, so he set the saddles on a rack and pushed the door open.

  The guest in the saddle room was female. She sat on a trunk, her back to the door. Beneath a lovely red velvet cloak, her shoulders were hunched with what could only be dejection. Leo considered turning tail and retreating, but a thought stopped him: The lady was quietly weeping, and she was alone. A gentleman, be he a soldier or a marquess, would not leave a damsel in distress without offering his aid—especially not on Christmas.

  * * *

  The memories assailed Marielle like so many blows to her dignity. Waiting and waiting in this same small, tidy space, the scents of horse and leather twining with her hopes as the minutes, then the hours crawled by.

  Leo had left her here alone in a deepening winter chill to face his abandonment and to face her future.

  Before that, on many occasions Leo had kissed her here and promised her the world. They’d done more than kiss—a lot more—and only Leo’s honor had prevented them from anticipating vows that had never been uttered.

  As a girl of seventeen, Ma
rielle had spoken those vows in her heart. Whether Leo had left her a maid out of good sense, honor, or an unstated plan to leave her for an officer’s life, she didn’t know. She’d bitterly regretted never having made love with him—he might have at least shared that much with her—but now, for the first time, she could thank him.

  She’d gone to her husband a chaste, if unenthusiastic bride, and Drew had been a good husband.

  Marielle had convinced herself that the friendship she and Drew had developed was a far more trustworthy basis for a relationship than the passion Leo had inspired, but a decade later, her tears were hot and heartfelt.

  She and Leo had been so young and so in love, and the whole world had thought them daft—the whole world being their parents—but such a love had deserved a chance.

  Leo had bought his colors instead, and Marielle still kept him in her prayers. He’d never been named among the dead or the missing in battle, and she took comfort from that.

  “Madam,” said a masculine voice. “You will please cease your tears.”

  A widow in tears exercised a right no other woman in the realm had—to order men about. “Go away,” she said, keeping her back to the intruder. Her nose was likely red, and her eyes were puffy, and she was entitled to privacy with her regrets. “I mourn for a soldier lost to me years ago. You will leave me in peace if you’ve any charity—”

  Bootsteps sounded on the plank floor, and the scent of damp wool blended with the other scents of the saddle room. A hint of vetiver joined the barnyard bouquet. Leo had worn vetiver…

  “It’s Christmas,” the man said, coming around to stand before Marielle’s perch on the trunk. “Surely your tears can wait for some other day?”

  He was tall, and his great coat swirled about him with the drape of fine tailoring. Other impressions—broad shoulders, dark hair, riding boots damp from the snow—registered beneath the timbre of his voice.

 

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