The Risqué
RESOLUTION
a holiday novella
By
Jillian Eaton
The Risqué Resolution is a work of fiction.
All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products
of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously.
Copyright © by Jillian Eaton 2013
http://www.jillianeatonbooks.blogspot.com
All Rights Reserved.
Except for use in any review, the
reproduction or utilization of this work in whole
or in part in any form is strictly forbidden.
Other Titles by Jillian Eaton
The Winter Wish
The Runaway Duchess
The Spinster and the Duke
A Brooding Beauty
A Ravishing Redhead
A Lascivious Lady
A Gentle Grace
Praise for Jillian Eaton
“My first book from this author and it won’t be the last. Once I got started I couldn’t put it down.” A Ravishing Redhead (Laurie, Bitten by Paranormal Romance)
“A must read for any historical romance readers who love a good romp through England.” The Runaway Duchess (My Book Addiction and More)
“Love at its most romantic heights.” A Brooding Beauty (Lauren, Amazon Reviewer)
“Jillian Eaton finds the perfect balance between intense emotions, sizzling chemistry, and light-hearted humor.” The Runaway Duchess (Steffi, Swept Away by Romance)
For Aga.
I don’t know what I would
do without our Wednesday vent
sessions. Thank you for
always making me
smile.
CHAPTER ONE
Kincaid Country Residence
Devonshire, England
37 days until Christmas
“Let me make sure I understand you clearly.” Sucking in a deep breath, Lily Kincaid pinched the bridge of her nose and fought the urge to scream. “Due to a clause in Father’s will, I must marry before the year is out or everything we own will be given to Cousin Eustace?”
Mr. Guthridge, the Kincaid’s lawyer for the better part of two decades, bobbed his head and rattled the paper he held in his hand.
A short, stout man with an impressive salt and pepper moustache and a propensity for stuttering, he looked as though he would rather be anywhere else in England than where he currently was: standing in the middle of the late Lord Kincaid’s study delivering the worst news imaginable to his eldest daughter. “Y-yes, I am afraid s-so. Your f-father made it quite clear before his p-passing that in order to receive your inheritance in full you will need to marry.”
“Before this year’s Christmas,” Lily clarified, her violet eyes narrowing.
“Yes,” Guthridge confirmed miserably. “That does seem to be the case.”
Unable to remain still, Lily began to pace the length of the narrow study. Her skirts moved in an agitated swirl of green between her ankles before she abruptly stopped in front of the window, braced her arms against the sill, and peered out across the back lawn.
Courtesy of a storm that had swept through two days before, the shrubbery surrounding the Kincaid’s tidily kept country estate was blanketed in a layer of fresh, powdery snow. Morning light reflected off the skeletal branches of a towering oak, its limbs heavy in winter slumber. Icicles, glistening bright as diamonds, clung to the wooden fence line that wrapped around the edge of the lawn. The very same fence line, Lily thought absently, that her father had been planning to repair before he passed away peacefully in his sleep at the not so advanced age of four and fifty.
For three months Albus Kincaid had been promising his wife he would fix the fence, but something or other had always come up. A new invention to create. A new discovery to unearth. A new recipe to learn. Albus had been a loving father and husband, but he’d never been a practical man, not in life nor, it seemed, in death.
“Mother is not going to like this,” she murmured under her breath.
“What was that?” Guthridge asked.
Lily turned and leaned against the window, letting the chill from the glass cool a rising temper that had nothing to do with the man standing in front of her and everything to do with the one who had placed her in this rather unfortunate predicament. “Was my father of sound mind when he dictated the will? Because if he was not of sound mind then—”
But Guthridge was already shaking his head before she had even completed her sentence. “I am afraid, Lady Kincaid, that your father was of very sound mind. He even wrote a letter” – the lawyer paused while he rummaged through his leather satchel before removing a square piece of parchment – “saying exactly that. Would you like to read it?”
Read one of the last things her father wrote before he died? Lily, who had not shed a single tear during the funeral or the three days since while her mother and younger sister wept buckets by the hour, felt her throat inexplicably tighten. “I… No,” she managed before she spun around and once again faced the window. “No, Mr. Guthridge, I… I believe you.”
“Very well, Lady Kincaid,” the lawyer said quietly. “If there is nothing else, I will leave all of the documents on your father’s desk for you to examine at your leisure. Although, I pray you do not take much time, for my next visit shall be to your cousin’s house.”
“My cousin?” Lily said blankly.
Guthridge cleared his throat. “I am afraid so. As he will be the main benefactor if you do not marry within the time allotted, he must be made privy to the will’s contents.”
Lily let her forehead fall against the glass with a dull thud. “What is the date, Mr. Guthridge?”
“The eighteenth of November,” the lawyer answered promptly.
“Thirty seven days,” she whispered.
“What was that?”
“Thirty seven days,” she repeated as she turned around. “I have thirty seven days to find a suitable match, convince him to marry me, and save my family from financial ruin.” She smiled weakly. “You are not in the business of giving out Christmas miracles, are you Mr. Guthridge?”
Looking more uncomfortable now than ever before, the lawyer shook his head. “I am afraid not. But perhaps with the help of your mother—”
“Oh no.” The very idea was enough to cause Lily to cringe. “Mr. Guthridge, I realize this is a bit unorthodox, but you must promise not to tell my mother about the will’s conditions. It will send her into a panic,” she continued hastily when the lawyer opened his mouth, “and right now she is so distraught I fear more bad news would be very ill advised. She loved my father very much, you see, and his death… Well, his death has been hard on all of… on all of us.”
There were those blasted tears again. They had a habit of sneaking up when she least expected them, no matter how hard she tried to keep them at bay. It was not that she did not want to cry. It was just that once she started she did not know how she would stop, and with her mother and sister falling into hysterics at the drop of a hat, someone had to remain strong.
Taking a deep breath, she ignored the burning in her throat, blinked away the stinging in her eyes, and said, “I appreciate you coming here at such an early hour, Mr. Guthridge. You have been immeasurably helpful.”
Gathering up a few wayward papers, the lawyer tucked his satchel under one arm and rubbed his mustache. “I am happy to be of service, Lady Kincaid, especially during this trying time. However, I really do believe your mother—”
“No.” Lily tempered the sharp command with her most brilliant smile. “That is to say, I would prefer you kept the clause to yourself… at least for now. Two
weeks,” she said, confidant she could find a solution in that length of time. “Two weeks and you may tell my mother whatever you wish.”
She knew the lawyer didn’t like it, but in the end he gave a nod – albeit a reluctant one – and vowed to keep the most unfortunate part of the will to himself for the length of fourteen days.
Lily saw him out, all smiles and bright assurances that everything would be ‘quite well’, but the moment the door was closed she slumped against it, the last of her strength draining away as she closed her eyes. “Oh Father,” she whispered brokenly, “what have you done?”
CHAPTER TWO
Captain James Rigby, formerly of the second company in the eighth British battalion, was done fighting. Had been done, if truth be told, for the past two years, but it wasn’t until his arm was severed from his body that he was officially declared unfit for duty and sent home to England.
Losing a limb was a funny thing, James reflected as he sat in his study and stared blindly out the window at the darkening sky. He’d watched the doctor cut it off himself, watched him hack away at the rotting flesh and bone with all the finesse of a butcher while he drifted in and out of consciousness. And yet still he was caught by surprise every time he glanced down and saw nothing on the left side of his body save a neatly pinned shirt sleeve.
It had taken three men to hold him down on the table. A fourth to force his jaw open and pour the laudanum down. Even now, five months removed, he could still taste it, just as he could still feel his arm.
He closed his eyes, replaying the bloody memory that still haunted him day and night. A memory he wished he could cut away as easily as the doctor had cut away his flesh and bone.
James’ remaining hand curled into a tight fist of frustration that pounded uselessly against the top of his desk, shaking papers and sending a glass figurine toppling over the edge. He waited for the figurine to break. Waited for it to break, as he was broken. Waited for it to shatter, as he was shattered.
But the glass remained intact, and the irony that such a delicate thing could survive a fall unharmed while he, a strong, strapping man of only twenty seven had been reduced to little more than a cripple, did not escape his notice.
He wanted to curse. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout to the high heavens about how bloody unfair it all was, but he knew once he started he might never stop, and so he bottled up the self pity and the anger and the emotion and buried it in a place so dark it could not help but fade into oblivion.
His heart.
A timid knock sounded at the door, alerting James to who was on the other side even before he heard his sister’s soft voice through the thick wood.
“James, are you all right?” she asked hesitantly. “I thought… I thought I heard something.”
“Something fell off my desk. Come in, Natty.”
The door creaked open a few scant inches and a pale face, oval in shape and quite pretty in design, peeked through.
At seventeen Natalie was a girl on the brink of womanhood, not that James liked to think in such terms although he supposed he would have to start. An arm, he reflected grimly as his once bright, vibrant sister darted nervously into the room, was not the only thing he’d lost during the war.
Time.
The only thing in life that was given and taken in equal measure.
When he went to France five years ago he left behind a rambunctious girl with dirt on her knees and pigtails in her hair. He’d returned to find a somber woman full grown, a woman who knocked where she once would have rushed in. A woman who frowned where she once would have smiled.
They said war changed the men who fought within it, and James knew that to be true. But he also rather thought it changed those left behind as well. The ones forced to wait and worry, never knowing if the next day, the next hour, the next minute would bring good news or bad. The ones forced to carry on with their lives as though nothing were amiss. The ones forced to grow up without a father, a son, a brother…
“I do not want to disturb you,” Natalie said, her blue eyes wide and wary.
“You’re not.” He spoke curtly, adopting the same brusque tone he’d used to send soldiers into battle. A tone that had no place in a gentleman’s study. Natalie faltered a step, her lips parting in dismay, and James bit back a growl of frustration. He already garnered enough frightful glances when he walked down the street – he did not need his own sister to fear him as well. And yet fear him she did, if the twist of her hands and the worried look upon her countenance was any indication.
Making a deliberate effort to soften his voice, he nodded towards the leather chair facing his desk and asked if she would like to sit. Natalie did so with great caution, perching on the very edge of the seat as though preparing to flee at a moment’s notice.
A silence rose between them like a wall, as unfamiliar as it was uncomfortable, and James could not help but wonder when he’d lost his sister.
Was it the day he left, when she clung to his side and begged through her tears for him not to go? The long months and years that followed? When their father died and she was forced to live with their aunt? Or after he returned, more a monster than a man, with no idea of how to live in polite society?
Frustrated beyond all bearing, James thrust a hand through his hair, pulling the long, unkempt ends taut. He was in desperate need of a haircut, a shave, and, he thought with a sardonic twist of his lips, a new wardrobe with all of the left sleeves removed.
“You look… nice.” Belatedly noting Natalie was wearing an ivory ball gown trimmed with light blue lace, James studied her with more attention to detail. Her chestnut brown hair was pulled back from her face and twisted up into one of those bewildering coiffures that defied gravity. Pearls – their mother’s, if he was not mistaken – clung to her ears and wrapped around her neck. “Very nice,” he said, a frown weighing heavily on his mouth. “What is the occasion?”
For a moment – a moment so quick if he’d blinked he would have missed it – a flash of irritation flickered in Natalie’s eyes before she slumped back in her seat, stared up at the ceiling, and mumbled something under her breath.
“Speak up,” James demanded, then immediately winced. You are not on the bloody battlefield taking a report, he reminded himself sternly. Calm yourself, man, before you frighten her further.
“I said,” Natalie began, her dark eyebrows pulling together, “I knew you would forget.”
“Forget?” His frown deepened. “Forget what?”
“The ball at Winswood Estate, hosted by Lord and Lady Heathcliff. It is fine,” she said hastily before James could say a word. “I… I did not want to go.”
Heathcliff. The name rang a bell of memory deep within the recesses of James’ mind. He struggled to recall its origin for a moment, then shrugged and let it go. He would remember in due time. He always did.
Leaning forward onto his remaining arm, James did a sweeping glance of Natalie’s attire and said dryly, “Is that why you are wearing a gown fit for a queen?”
Instantly a deep blush took hold of Natalie’s cheeks and her hands passed in a nervous flutter across her lap, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from the thick folds of her dress. “I told you about the ball over a month ago but I… I suppose you were otherwise occupied.”
That was one way to put it. Another – even though he cringed to think of it now – was that he’d been a raging lunatic, drunk off his arse from sunup to sundown, with nary a coherent word spoken (or retained) in between. The pain in his arm had driven him to drink. The fact that the pain came from an arm he no longer had drove him to the brink of lunacy. By sheer will he’d brought himself back from the edge, but the journey had not been an easy one, and James was not so foolish to think it was even halfway finished.
How long would it take, he wondered, until he stopped trying to open a doorknob with a hand that no longer existed? How long until the phantom aches eased? How long until he woke in a bed not soaked with his own sweat? How long until he fe
lt a shred of normalcy return?
“I take it the ball is tonight?” he asked after a long pause. The last thing he wanted to do was feel the weight of a dozen stares as he played the part of chaperone, but he supposed there was no getting around it. If he wanted to reacquaint himself into society – which he did, if only for his sister’s sake – then there really was no way around it.
Balls were long, tedious affairs filled with intricate dance steps he had never been able to successfully master and idle gossip he had no interest in taking part in. Although now, given his situation, there was one upside. No mothers would be sending their sparkly eyed daughters his way to dance, for who in their right mind would want to court the attentions of a cripple? He would be left in peace, Natalie would be able to waltz to her heart’s content, and hopefully she would begin to treat him as she used to.
That was all he wanted.
Not an enormous mansion, or a fleet of carriages, or a gorgeous woman on his arm. No, his desires were much simpler than that. All he wanted, all he needed, was for life to go back to ‘used to’.
“The ball began an hour ago,” Natalie whispered, still fussing with her skirts, her eyes downcast and her shoulders rigid.
James stood up. “Then I’d best get changed.”
“You… You want to attend?”
Someone – a maid, he assumed – had placed a sprig of holly on the corner of his desk in celebration of the impending holiday. The leaves were a dark, glossy green and felt like wax when he picked up the sprig and twirled it absently between his thumb and forefinger, sending the red berries spinning in circles. “Why don’t you ask Mrs. Fieldstone to have the carriage brought round,” he said, referring to their head housekeeper, a plump, pleasant woman who had loyally served the Rigby household for three generations. “And I will meet you in the foyer in five minutes.”
The Risqué Resolution Page 1