Charmed at Christmas

by Claire Delacroix

  If only the world didn’t agree with him—both in his beliefs in alchemy being a step away from witchcraft, and his desire not to share her company. By and large, other people found her too peculiar, too cold, too brusque to warrant their affection.

  Which was why she couldn’t rely on Nicholas to save her.

  When they were children, Nicholas had always said she was too “mechanical” for him to understand. She, on the other hand, had hated his polished manners and his innate sense of the right way to respond to any given situation. He’d always reminded her of all the ways she was lacking. She was too abnormal, too unfeeling, to ever feel comfortable among the ton.

  Felicity picked up her basket, and set off down the shore. For years, she’d walked this very path with Margaret, this same basket swinging between her hands.

  Margaret would have known just what to say to make everything better. She’d always understood what Felicity needed, even when she couldn’t properly express it.

  What would Margaret have advised?

  Deal with the things she could control first, and then consider the rest. Until Nicholas usurped her—which hopefully wouldn’t be for months—she functioned as lady of the estate. There was a party arriving at the estate soon. Usually, she despised having guests, but this time she’d be hosting Lady Hettie Hughes and her niece Mallory, one of the few people on God’s green earth that had never minded Felicity’s direct, oft-deemed-inappropriate-but-in-the-name-of-science questions.

  Quickening her pace, she plucked out her watch from her pocket and checked the time. Two hours until the Hughes arrived, give or take a few minutes, because the peerage could never be trusted to be prompt. She did not like this. Lateness indicated a general disregard for others, usually accompanied by the belief that said individual’s time—and life—was worth more.

  Felicity did not need any further reminders of her place in the world.

  Turning, she retraced her steps more briskly. She’d made it about halfway up the beach when a figure appeared in the distance, stopping her in her tracks.

  She shaded her eyes against the sun, squinting. Yes, that was definitely a man striding over the dunes toward her. Trust her luck that her company would be early. Lady Hettie must have sent her footman to find her.

  Frowning, Felicity dropped her hand, setting off again. He was too close to the rockiest part of the beach, where the tide sometimes pooled in the small crevices made by the stones. It wouldn’t do for the poor footman to get his livery sopping wet. Sand clung horribly to starched fabric.

  Hitching up her skirts above her ankles with one hand, Felicity set off at a rousing clip toward him. Knowing the seashore as she did, she was soon close enough to identify him clearly.

  And in that instant, everything Felicity had assumed came to a screeching halt.

  Nicholas was here.

  Bloody, bloody hell.

  She didn’t even have time to compose herself before he was right smack in front of her. Looming over her, really. How had he become so tall? She did not remember him like this. But, she hadn’t seen him in six years.

  Confound it all, the man was so…muscular. His perfectly tailored black coat emphasized broad shoulders that tapered down to the narrow vee of his waist—and certain other regions she’d certainly never thought about with him. She couldn’t stop her gaze from traveling down his frame, taking in the way his breeches so encased his strong thighs. His jet black Hessians shined, even in all this sand and grit, the tassels silver to indicate he was still in half-mourning.

  That broke whatever hold he had over her. How dare he act as if he cared—truly cared, the way she did—about Margaret’s passing! He hadn’t even come to her funeral, claiming that he was too deeply involved in the passage of some highly important law in the House of Lords to leave London.

  Of course, his absence had made it easier. She’d dissected Margaret’s body without interference, preserving her with formalin, zinc salts, salicylic acid and glycerin. Her organs had been removed and packed in salt for conservation. The family mausoleum had been the perfect resting chamber, as the stone made it easier to keep the body at optimal cold temperature.

  Nicholas hadn’t known any of that, and if she had her way, he never would. No one but her best friend, Tressa Teague, knew the full extent of her experiments.

  And Tressa had made it clear she was concerned by Felicity’s attempts to tinker with the natural cycle of life. Her friend supported her—as she always had, with that fiercely loyal, compassionate way of hers—but she did not understand Felicity’s desire to bring back Margaret.

  No one did.

  “Hello, Lissie.”

  She grimaced. He knew she hated when he shortened her name like that—but then, he’d never cared about her preferences for anything.

  “Hello, Nicholas.” She did not try to force warmth into her voice.

  Instead of wounding him, her briskness amused him. His lips formed that same smug smirk he’d always had, except now it didn’t contain any of the awkwardness of youth. Somehow it managed to make him look even more attractive: chocolate eyes dancing, chin notched high, self-satisfaction permeating his every inch. The sun lit the golden highlights in his short, brown hair, adding to the effect. The lanky, autocratic boy she remembered had become a well-toned, chiseled Corinthian aware of his own attributes and very used to getting his own way.

  Bloody, bloody hell, indeed.

  She knit her brows. She wasn’t some simpering miss he met in a ballroom. She was Felicity Fields, the last of her line. Even if she didn’t have a right by law to be here, Tetbery Estate was her home and he wouldn’t take it from her without a fight.

  She couldn’t fail. If she had any hope of bringing back Margaret, she needed to remain at Tetbery.

  Drawing herself up to her full height—which was a head shorter than him, she noted with chagrin—she eyed him with all the steel and mettle she could summon. “What are you doing here?”

  Chapter 2

  Tetbery Estate never ceased to be an adventure.

  At least, that was the polite, proper term for it. From the day he was born to the day his father passed, Nicholas Harding had received a strict education in propriety from his governesses, his private tutors and then teachers at Eton, and most importantly, his own family. Those with good breeding must have good manners, so that they made good choices which led to good alliances with other families of equally good bloodlines.

  Good, good, good. As he stood on this bloody cold beach in the out-of-the-way, tiny village of Bocka Morrow, the litany repeated in his mind. It had been his mother’s favorite word, applied to everything from a pleasant day to a catastrophe of epic proportions, because Amelia Harding did not believe in pessimism. In order to be morose, one must be willing to admit that there was something wrong with one’s life, and Amelia clung firmly to the illusion presented to greater society that she led an enviable, idyllic life as the Duchess of Wycliffe.

  Even if her marriage to Nicholas’s father had long ago passed loveless and veered into petty manipulation and cruel aggression on both sides. Until the day his mother took a fatally large dose of laudanum, Nicholas had never dared speak of his life as anything but good.

  Now, with both of his parents gone, he was still a Harding, and Hardings kept up appearances. Nicholas, as the only son and heir to Wycliffe Manor and all its holdings, had been raised to believe that his word counted.

  Most people treated his authority as a foregone conclusion.

  They did not look him in the eye and demand—the audacity of her, his mother would have said—to know why he’d arrived at his own blasted property.

  Even if it was property he’d never wanted, property he’d gone out of his way to avoid until it had become painfully obvious to society that he wasn’t doing his duty. He couldn’t afford the beau monde’s scorn, not if he hoped to have a better session in the House of Lords than the previous Season.

  That was what mattered. Not this unsettlingly
wild and dark estate, and definitely not Felicity Fields’s lack of respect for him.

  After spending so many summers here, he ought to know that Felicity was not like normal people. Since arriving at Tetbery as a child, she’d never left the estate. No trips to London for a proper Season, like her position should have dictated. His aunt had insisted upon seclusion after the death of the earl, and Felicity had paid the price for it.

  Not that she’d ever seemed to mind. She said the first thing that popped out of her mouth and did precisely what she wanted, with no repercussions. He envied her for that.

  But like this blighted estate he’d never wanted, Felicity was his responsibility now.

  So things had to change. Starting with how she spoke to him.

  “This is my estate,” he reminded her, matching her coldness with his own brand of disregard—lofty hauteur, perfected from years of reminding people who he was. “And it is, after all, the holidays. I wished to spend it with the people I care about.”

  That was true, at least. He cared about Felicity—he just didn’t understand her.

  “Then you should have stayed in London, or gone to Wycliffe Manor. Not come here.” She peered down the bridge of her nose at him, making him feel as though he were much, much smaller than he was.

  It was clear she did not share his sentiment. He ignored the tiny twinge of hurt at that realization, reminding himself that he did not need her to like him to do right by her.

  “I would have asked you to come to London for the holidays, but then the wedding happened.” His friend getting married had provided a convenient excuse to leave Town after the failure of his first bill.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to leave here.” Not only did she narrow her eyes, but she dropped her hand to her hip—a very shapely hip, he was dismayed to admit. That didn’t seem fair at all.

  At thirteen, she’d been all long limbs and too-thin body, like a baby deer who hadn’t quite grasped how to be graceful yet. He remembered her wild red locks: frizzy waves back then, not the defined curls she boasted now. Some errant crimson wisps had escaped from underneath her bonnet, caressing her heart-shaped face gently in contrast to her bellicose way of sizing him up.

  Her eyes took on a softer light, a small smile pulling at her all-too-full lips as she turned, facing the grayish-green waters of the Atlantic Ocean. He wondered, as he had so many times during his youth, what made her like the waves so much. He saw nothing special—Tetbery’s shoreline had always felt too unkempt, too fierce. He preferred the smoke and soot of London with its tall buildings, heralding a new era of trade and prosperity.

  She let out a deep, contemplative sigh. “I am exactly where I want to be.”

  That made one of them. He hadn’t been at home in his own skin since his days at Eton, surrounded by the same friends he was due to meet in a few days’ time.

  He’d agreed to attend Lord Blackwater’s wedding because he’d felt he needed to, as if by seeing his friends again he’d be reminded of the optimistic lad he’d once been, convinced the world was at his feet.

  And if nothing else, it beat spending the holidays alone.

  “Sometimes in life, we do not get what we want.” Sadness slipped into his words, catching him by surprise. He must be out of sorts, if he had forgotten how to pretend that everything was fine.

  She spun on her heel so jerkily, yet with such speed, it was as if an unknown hand had pulled her strings. He was used to those quick, shaky movements; struggling to make sense of her, his juvenile mind had often compared her to a marionette. Yet he was not used to what came next—the flash of ire in her eyes, the angry flaring of her nostrils. He could not remember when he had seen Felicity impassioned.

  “What would you, Duke, know about not getting what you want?” Each word hit him like an arrow to the chest, so absolute was her aim.

  She’d always been able to cut him to the quick, she who always told the brutal, unflinching truth—the words he did not want to hear, because they revealed just how little he truly knew about himself.

  When they’d been younger, he’d been able to feign amusement. She hated being laughed at, above all other things, and so he did it often because it was the swiftest way to make her hurt the way he did. He was not proud of that, but he’d been a boy, unable to fathom why this flat, unemotional girl affected him so.

  He still did not know.

  He stood up straighter, peering down his nose autocratically at her, but he could not summon up the energy to laugh. He was too tired—from the journey, he told himself, and not from pretending all of his bloody life to be someone he was not.

  After all, as Felicity had reminded him, he was Duke.

  That should be enough. It had to be enough.

  “I know enough about the world to understand that you desperately need someone to curb your wild ways.” He managed not to wince at how much he sounded like his father, delivering one of his famous diatribes on conduct. Nicholas had never matched up to his father’s standards.

  But hadn’t that made him stronger? He knew how the world worked now: money and power granted him certain privileges, gave him a chance at success.

  He only wanted the same for Felicity. She ought to be taking her proper place in society, not wasting away on this backwater estate. If he didn’t help her, she’d end up as the strange spinster children told stories about and pointed at when they passed her in the market. Hell, she already had the gothic estate to fuel their tales.

  “As though you are the one to teach me. You, who is an irresponsible rogue.” Felicity let out a caustic laugh. “What makes you so uniquely qualified, Nicholas? It is not as if you are smarter than me.”

  He knew that was true—hell, he couldn’t think of a single person more learned than Felicity—but it stung to have it pointed out so bluntly. “This is precisely what I’m talking about. You cannot go on informing people that you are smarter than them.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “But I am.”

  “It’s not polite.”

  “The truth rarely is.” She shrugged. “This is why I do not concern myself with what’s polite, only what is factual. If you asked me, you could stand to learn that too.”

  He had forgotten that talking to Felicity was akin to beating one’s head against the wall repeatedly. “No one asked you. No one ever asks you. You simply give your opinion whether or not it’s wanted.”

  Instead of looking defeated, Felicity’s eyes took on a calculating gleam he found highly troubling, because it usually indicated he was about to be thoroughly intellectually trounced. “Which is precisely what you are doing. It’s not fun, is it? Having someone appear suddenly, disrupting all your plans, and then they have the audacity to demand you should change who you are?”

  He ignored the last part of her statement. “What do you mean, suddenly? I sent word I was coming.”

  “No one told me.” Her eyes narrowed as her lips pursed into a thin red line.

  His stomach tumbled. That was her going-to-war face. Oh, his staff was rightly and truly buggered. He should probably go warn them, but for the moment he was relieved her ire would be directed at someone else for a while.

  “I’m sure that was just an oversight.”

  That was the wrong thing to say, because her eyes narrowed even more, until she was basically looking at him through tiny slits. The brisk wind picked up around them, ripping through his thick wool coat as though it was nothing. It was always colder by the seashore—one of the many reasons he loathed Tetbery. He shoved his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders to keep the wind out.

  If he’d been speaking with anyone else, he would have long ago insisted they move indoors. But because it was Felicity, he simply stood there like an imbecile, as if remaining out in the fearsome cold would abate the fire of her temper.

  It did not work.

  Unlike him, she did not hunch. She was properly prepared for this weather, with her long black wool coat atop her long-sleeved black walking gown, and an
enormous black bonnet draped with black crepe. She still wore full mourning, even though it’d been six months and custom indicated she should move to half.

  She’d never been one for half-measures.

  He told himself her fearsome appearance was why he felt intimidated. Her ivory skin was a stark contrast against the inky darkness swallowing her whole. Were it not for the fiery red of her hair, or the hint of pink upon her cheeks from the December air, he might have thought her a ghost, so otherworldly did she look.

  And for a moment she was silent—maybe he’d get a reprieve.

  But then she notched up her chin, looking him dead in the eye, and he knew this was battle was far from over.

  “Interesting.” Felicity still had the startling ability to make one-word answers as destructive as a black powder bomb.

  He had the unsettling sensation he was going to regret this, yet he asked, “What’s interesting?”

  “I find it interesting—” Those four words sounded like the basest of insults “—that you can show up for a wedding, but not for the funeral of your supposedly beloved aunt.”

  “I sent word about that too.” He had, hadn’t he? The last six months had been a blur, with constant debates in the House of Lords about the Night Watch Bill he’d written—the first bill he’d taken the lead on. “I couldn’t leave London. The bill would have failed.”

  He’d had so many hopes for that bill. The logic was sound: London needed a policing force that worked as an efficient machine, with accountability and communication between all the different subsections of the city.

  His bill would have made that possible. Brought justice to the seven people who had brutally lost their lives on Ratcliffe Highway—for seemingly no reason at all. Months later, the only tie the Runners could find between the victims and the murderer was that they all lived in the impoverished East End.