CHAPTER SIX
29 days until Christmas
“We are ruined. Absolutely, positively ruined.” Clasping a hand to her forehead, Regina Kincaid staggered dramatically across the room and flung herself onto a chaise lounge. Reclining until she was flat on her back, she closed her eyes and moaned loudly. “Please have one of the maids fetch me a cooling cloth, Elsa. I fear a terrible headache coming on.”
Lily’s sigh was long and suffering. “Elsa, remain where you are,” she said, directing her sister a narrow eyed glare that had the younger girl hastily returning to her chair. “Mother, you are not ill. It is your imagination.”
“It is not,” Regina insisted even as she sat up on her elbow and opened her eyes. “I really do not feel well. A fever,” she said decisively. “I am most definitely coming down with a fever.”
“And furthermore, we are not ruined,” Lily continued as if her mother had not spoken a word. “I will take care of everything. I promise.”
The weight of that promise weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she kept her back straight and her chin up. She even managed a smile, although it was more for Elsa’s benefit than her own for the poor dear looked absolutely terrified. Crouching in front of her sister, she took both of Elsa’s hands in hers and squeezed tight. “Look at me,” she said firmly. Elsa lifted her head, her blue eyes clearly troubled. “Nothing will happen to us, do you understand?”
“But Cousin Eustace said—”
“Cousin Eustace is a pig.” And that is a compliment compared to what I truly think of him, Lily added silently.
Yesterday evening Eustace and his wife Venetia, a stick like woman with dark squinty eyes and a penchant for cruel gossip, had joined them for dinner. Eustace made quick work of revealing the will to Regina, who had – as expected – taken the news quite poorly. It took all the self control Lily possessed not to kick out the cousins on the spot, and she’d spent the rest of dinner plotting the most creative ways to throttle Eustace and his smirking wife.
All through the night in the bedroom across from hers she had heard her mother tossing and turning. This morning Regina wasted no time in calling a family meeting in the library – the only room below stairs boasting a fireplace – and it was clear the contents of the will were weighing heavily on her mind.
Lily hated seeing Regina and Elsa so worried. They were both sweet, gentle souls who looked to others to care for them, and now they were looking to her. Self doubt nagged at her like a sore tooth, the source of the discomfort vague and relentless. What if she couldn’t find someone to marry before Christmas? What if everything they owned really did go to Cousin Eustace and the terrible Venetia? What if this was one problem she could not solve?
“Lily?” Elsa’s timid voice cut through Lily’s dark thoughts like a beacon of light.
“Yes darling, what is it?”
“I am frightened,” her sister confessed.
“Frightened?” Giving Elsa’s hands one last squeeze, Lily bounded to her feet and feigned her brightest smile yet. “Frightened of what, dearest?”
“Of what will happen to us.”
“Nothing will happen,” Lily said firmly. “Isn’t that right, Mother?”
Regina may have been a woman of small courage, but she’d always stood strong where her daughters were concerned. “You know your sister always has an answer for everything, just like her father. We will be fine and you are not to worry.” Sitting up, Regina shook her finger at her youngest daughter. “You know when you worry you frown, and frowning is how wrinkles grow.”
“Oh for heavens sake,” Lily muttered. “Mother, Elsa does not have wrinkles. She is sixteen years of age!”
“She doesn’t have wrinkles yet,” Regina said with a sniff, “but she will if she keeps frowning! Why, Lady Hatfield’s daughter is only fourteen and the poor dear already has crow marks! It is because she laughs too much. Giggling all the time, that one. Never a sober thought in her head.”
Elsa’s fingers drifted to her face. “Do I have crow marks?” she asked worriedly.
“Let me get my magnifying glass and see.”
Regina sprang out of the chaise lounge with surprising zest given she had been on death’s door but a few moments ago, and Lily stepped neatly to the side, never one to get in her mother’s way when she was on a mission. She wanted to shake them both for being so ridiculous, but she knew it was better for Regina and Elsa to worry about make believe lines and wrinkles than the real problem at hand.
“I am taking Mr. Betram for a walk,” she announced when Regina returned from the parlor with an oversized magnifying glass and promptly held it up to Elsa’s face.
“A walk?” Regina said without looking up. “Lily dear, it is snowing out. You know Mr. Betram doesn’t like the snow.”
Lily glanced out the window and saw that it was, indeed, snowing. White flakes spiraled lazily down from an overcast sky, slowly covering the frost tipped grass in a shifting blanket of white. “I will not take him very far. Just to the end of the lane and back. It’s good for him to stretch his legs.”
Mr. Betram, so named because he bore a striking resemblance to their dressmaker’s husband, was the Kincaid’s family dog. A short, squat beagle with sorrowful brown eyes and a permanently puzzled expression, he lived in the barn behind the house and took his job of guarding the old, dilapidated structure quite seriously even though he was half blind and more than likely fully deaf. Time and again Lily and her father had tried to coax him to stay inside the house, but within an hour or so he always began to howl and scratch at the door, two sounds Regina could not abide.
“You should not go by yourself. Take Aunt Fontaine with you. It will be good for her to move about as well. Oh, Elsa, I believe I have found a wrinkle!”
Over her sister’s distressed squeals Lily said, “Aunt Fontaine is still fast asleep and likely to remain so until afternoon tea. I will not be gone for more than an hour.” She paused in the doorway, waiting for her mother to object, but Regina’s mind was on other matters and she waved her eldest daughter on with an absent flick of her wrist.
Bundling herself up in a fur lined cloak, dark red scarf, and matching mittens Lily tuck her curls to one side, drew the hood up over her head, and hurried outside before her mother came to her senses and realized she was leaving the house without a proper chaperone.
She walked briskly between the snowflakes, following a narrow footpath that led around the side of the house and meandered down to the barn. The metal latch was frozen shut, but after a few strategic kicks of her boot the door slid sideways with a groan. She found Mr. Betram curled up in a pile of straw, his deep, even breaths indicating he was fast asleep. A stray cat, its white fur sticking out in tufts, watched her with lofty regard from atop a bucket.
“Good morning,” Lily said politely.
The cat meowed, stretched, and leapt down to twist around her legs, butting her with its tiny head.
“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 to 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 inconsequential. “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 ever 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 h
ave 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?”
The Risqué Resolution Page 4