A Captain For Christmas (Blushing Books 12 Days of Christmas 1)

by Louise Taylor

  "I am changing, Mama!" Serena called, looking at the state of her hair in disbelief. Hurriedly she undid the braids that her maid had plaited this morning and ran a brush through it.

  "Open this door at once, Serena!" her mother said.

  She did as she was instructed, and her mother stormed into the room.

  "Where is Mr. Luttrell?" she demanded.

  Serena did her best to look innocent.

  "I have no idea," she said. "The last I saw him was in the stables before luncheon. Perhaps he went for a ride?"

  Her mother stared at her piercingly, then swept her glance around the room. Serena held her breath and hoped that her mother did not start looking under the bed or in the wardrobe.

  "Typical," the older woman said eventually. "His first day as a guest and he's nowhere to be seen when he's wanted."

  "You want to speak to Mr. Luttrell?" Serena asked, confused.

  "Your father has taken William out across the estate and one of the footmen has fallen and hurt his back," her mother said irritably. "I need one more tall man to help with the placing of the holly and mistletoe around the house, and I wanted to make Mr. Luttrell useful."

  "I will dress my hair, and come and help you look for him," Serena said firmly.

  "Very well," her mother said. "It is nice to have one child that you can rely on," she said, unexpectedly, before turning and walking briskly up the corridor.

  Serena closed and locked the door again before letting Jonathan out of the wardrobe.

  "She wants you to help hang the holly and mistletoe," she told him, before opening the window and peering out. Satisfied with what she saw, she nodded to him.

  "You can climb down the ivy and come in through the front door. Pretend you've been walking in the gardens," she told him.

  "I can't climb down ivy!" he said, horrified.

  "Well, you can't go out the door!" Serena snapped. "She'll see you leaving the corridor!"

  "Damn and blast it," Jonathan muttered, peering out of the window to the ground below.

  He climbed out gingerly, not wanting to let go of the windowsill.

  "I'm not sure this will take my weight," he said dubiously.

  "It better had," Serena said, watching as he started to inch his way down the thick luxuriance of ivy that grew up the side of that wall of the house. Some strands did give way in his hands, and there was a worrying groaning sound coming from the plant, but he didn't so much climb down as slide, using the ivy to stop himself from accelerating too quickly. Once she saw that he was safely on the ground, she shut the window, bundled her hair up hastily into a simple roll and pinned it into place.

  She winced as she left the room and hurried down the corridor. Walking and sitting were going to be painful for a while.

  This had been a most eventful day, she decided, as she rounded the corner to the main staircase and started her descent to her impatient mother in the hall below, just as Jonathan walked in cheerily through the front door and greeted her mother warmly.

  Little was she aware of just how eventful the next day would be!

  The day of the Christmas party was a busy one for the women of Olston House, both family and servants. While the maids scrubbed the house from top to bottom and the kitchen staff laboured to create a grand selection of foods for the guests to pick at in the buffet, the ladies of the house were responsible for the decoration of the rooms used for the dancing, eating and talking as well as arranging the flowers that had been grown in the hothouse specifically for this event. As the flowers were Lady Olston's special pleasure, she had ceded the job of creating the mulled wine to Serena. They had an old family recipe that was followed to the letter, involving nutmeg, loaf sugar, egg yolks, cinnamon, ginger, mace and cloves. The expensive spices had to be steeped in the wine in little muslin bags, and the wine gently heated over a small fire for several hours before it could be decanted into a giant silver punch bowl and served to guests.

  Serena had been assisting her mother for years with this task – one of the first sewing tasks she had been given as a child was making the small bags for the spices. She was more than capable of making the wine, and as such had been holed up in a small parlour close to the ballroom for most of the afternoon before the party started, creating the famous Olston mulled wine.

  Helping her mother with the flowers and giving orders to the maids about laying out the buffet tables had kept her away from Jonathan all day. He loitered about the downstairs rooms for a while, clearly hoping to speak to her, but there were too many people around. Serena was glad of it.

  The events of yesterday afternoon – the spanking, the pleasuring – had left her horribly confused. She was sure that she should hate him for letting him use her body in such a way, especially after the discovery about the kiss in June. If anybody ever found out that it had happened, her reputation would be in tatters and any chance of a marriage with anybody could be dismissed. However, she did have to admit to herself that her destruction of his property was wrong, and that she hadn't really given him much of a chance to apologise. She would never be able to forget clinging to his body as he touched her so intimately, either, or the intensity of the pleasure he had given her.

  So, she decided, it was best to ignore him as much as she could. The party made this easier than it normally would be to dodge a houseguest. She had left the wine steeping over a small fire and stationed a maid to watch over it as she was bathed and dressed for the party. Once she had been dressed in her best dress, a cheerful gold gown with silver embroidery, she took over her station in the small parlour again. The room smelled of rich red wine and spices, and she stirred it cheerfully as she heard the commotion of horses arriving, guests flooding into the entrance hall and the musicians starting up a merry tune. The Yule Log would be lit in the ballroom's fireplace and the whole house was festooned with greenery.

  The silver punch bowl was by her feet, and she carefully began to transport the warm wine from the pot over the fire to the ornate heirloom with a jug. Once the large punch bowl had been filled, she opened the parlour door to find the footmen who were to carry it into the dining room and start doling it out into cups for the guests. The punch bowl was far too heavy for her to move alone once it had been filled.

  As soon as she opened the door to the parlour, Jonathan slipped in.

  "Get out!" she demanded.

  "Not until we have time to talk," he said quickly.

  "We have nothing to talk about," she said icily. "Leave, please, before we are discovered."

  "I have to talk to you about yesterday," he said, stepping to one side of her, and then the other, to prevent her from leaving the room. "About what happened after I spanked you."

  Serena could feel her blush starting from her chest and work its way up to her face.

  "I need to get this punch bowl out to the guests," she said. "I have to summon footmen to lift it."

  "Oh, I can lift that," Jonathan said dismissively, heaving the large bowl up onto the table. "Now, Serena, we must talk."

  "There is nothing you can say to me that I need to hear," she said, taking a step back from him. "Yesterday, we both made mistakes. We should be lucky that my parents did not discover them."

  He frowned. It was not fair, Serena thought crossly, that the man was just as handsome when he was upset as when he smiled.

  He ran his hand through his hair in frustration.

  "When you told me it was you that I had kissed in June, you surprised me," he said suddenly. "If the truth is to be told, I have been thinking of that night for some time, but when I, ah, met with Miss Hortop again, it wasn't the same."

  "And now we know why," Serena said frostily.

  "And now we know why," he agreed, sounding ashamed. "If I had known that you were Penscombe's sister that night, I would never have taken you out of the dance."

  "Because I am William's sister?" she asked, annoyed.

  "Because you are little Serena," he said, smiling. "The annoying younger sister
that tagged along on our adventures as children, and wouldn't leave us alone to do the rude and nasty things that small boys do."

  "I see," she said stiffly, stepping away from him, but he reached out quickly and grabbed her wrists.

  "And then you weren't little Serena, but the beautiful Lady Serena, ready for her debut," he said, pulling her near him. "I stayed here the winter before your presentation at court, and all of a sudden you were a gorgeous young woman, and so far out of the reach of a third son with few prospects, no matter how much he realised that he was, against his will, falling in love with you."

  "You will have your grandmother's estate," she said, allowing herself to be pulled closer after hearing those magic words. "And my dowry is big enough!"

  "I do not wish to live off my wife's dowry," he said sharply. "I want to be able to provide for her. And there's not much chance of that," he said bitterly. "My father has just bought me my commission," he told her. "As soon as the festive season ends, I am to report to my new commanding officer in the Life Guards."

  "You are going into the army?" she asked, appalled. "But Jonathan, the newspapers say that Napoleon will try to invade England!"

  "Once he has swallowed up the rest of Europe, I have no doubt that he will try," Jonathan said grimly. "The army has need of me, and I have need of it. If I work hard, and can be promoted, then perhaps one day, with my pay and my grandmother's estate…"

  "But you might die!" Serena cried, anguished.

  "I have no plan to do that," he told her loftily, although his smile did not quite reach his eyes.

  "You will not marry me," Serena said quietly, watching for confirmation in his face.

  "Serena, I cannot marry you; I cannot support you," he said, sounding deeply unhappy. "And I cannot ask you to wait for me. I have no idea how long I will be fighting, or when I will return to England."

  "You will not take my dowry?" she pleaded.

  He shook his head stubbornly. "I can't," he said simply.

  She let out a hopeless sigh, and let herself be enfolded in his arms.

  "I don't want you to go," she said into his broad chest.

  "And I wish with all my heart that I could stay," he said, his voice sounding thick with emotion.

  "But you can't," she finished for him, and there was nothing for him to do but sigh in response.

  "Let me have one more kiss," she said bravely. "To tide me over until you come back home, and you marry me."

  He shook his head, but smiled anyway.

  "I don't want you to wait for me," he repeated.

  "And I don't want you to go," she told him tartly. "It seems that neither of us is getting what we want in this affair."

  He smiled again, this time more warmly, and brought his lips down to hers. He had meant it to be a gentle kiss, she could tell, but she would not let it stay that way. She brought her hands up to his face and grabbed him, keeping him in place as she raised herself up onto her tiptoes and pressed her body against his. It did not take him long to respond, his kiss turning passionate and wild. She ran her hands through his hair and he responded by picking her up, carrying her towards the large table in the middle of the room where she had been preparing the ingredients for the mulled wine all day.

  The table that now contained the large punch bowl full of wine, sitting a little too close to the edge for safety.

  He sat her down on the table with a thump, his fingers stroking her collarbone and the top of her breasts. She hooked a leg around his waist, bringing him closer. The combined bumping against the table of the two of them caused the punch bowl to topple from the edge of the table with an almighty clang that resounded throughout the room. The wine rushed forth, spilling over the floor and out underneath the closed door.

  They looked at each other in horror and just had time to untangle themselves from each other before the door was thrown open and Lady Olston stalked in, ready to shout at clumsy servants for ruining the mulled wine. Instead, she found her daughter sitting on a table looking dishevelled while the man she was with was trying to straighten his clothes.

  If Lady Olston had been alone, perhaps the whole incident could have been hushed up. However, she had been in the company of some of their neighbours, who saw what had happened in the room all too clearly. Their squeals of shock and glee soon brought others running, and before two minutes had elapsed it seemed the whole of the party knew that the innocent daughter of the house had been caught in flagrante delicto with a handsome house guest.

  The party, of course, was abandoned, which was enough of a scandal in its own right. A crying and pleading Serena was locked into her bedroom for hours, until her mother came to see her in the early hours of the morning.

  "Where is Jonathan?" Serena begged. "When are we to be married?"

  That had been the sole ray of light in this dark mire she found herself in – he would have to marry her now, if only to save her reputation. It would not be ideal, she knew, living on the interest of her dowry and his salary, but she was sure that they would manage. They were in love, after all. That had to mean something, didn't it?

  Her mother's face was haggard, and she seemed to have aged ten years in a single evening.

  "Mr. Luttrell has packed his things and left," she said bitterly. "When your father asked him if was prepared to marry you, he said that he was not. Your father challenged him, of course, but the coward left before seconds could be organised."

  Serena was in shock. Jonathan was gone? He had abandoned her? Surely, this could not be!

  "This cannot be true!" Serena said, rising and going to her mother. "Mama, please – ah!"

  The sound of the slap her mother delivered to her cheek rang through the room.

  "Because of you, Luttrell ran away like a coward," her mother told her, anger now in her voice. "And if ruining your reputation and the Olston name wasn't enough, he took William with him."

  "William has gone too?" Serena asked, her hand still covering the red mark on her face.

  "He has stolen my son!" her mother shouted, all reason now lost. "My boy, my only boy, and he is gone with Luttrell God only knows where!"

  "The army," murmured Serena numbly. "He has a commission in the army."

  Her mother screamed then, a scream of real fear and pain at the thought of her only surviving son running away to put his life in danger. Her scream brought maids running, who sent for the butler, who sent for the earl. It was the earl who managed to quiet the sobbing, raging countess enough to get her standing up again and walk her off to her bedroom.

  Serena was left alone in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of her bed, still reeling at Jonathan's betrayal. She began to understand the terrible position he had left her in – ruined socially, a pariah, known to everybody at the party as no better than a whore. Her whole life began to crumble around her and she cried, huge, wrenching heartfelt sobs as she mourned the death of a life she had not yet begun to live.

  ***

  London, 1817

  "I suppose you have come to punish me again for the destruction of your clothing," Serena said, looking pointedly at his ruined uniform.

  "That is not why I am here, and you should know it," he said, shaking his head.

  "All I know about you is that you deserve absolutely nothing from me," she said coldly.

  He flinched, acknowledging the truth of her words.

  "I was an idiot ten years ago," he said, shrugging. "As soon as I got to the bottom of the drive I knew I had made a mistake, but I could not turn back."

  "William," Serena said bitterly.

  "William," he agreed. "He was so desperate to leave Olston House and your parents behind that he was willing to go in the company of the man who had destroyed the reputation of his sister."

  "My mother broke down when she heard of it," Serena recalled. "When he sent word that he had bought a commission she took to her bed for a month. She was positive that he would be killed on the battlefield. That he survived to return to us was nothing short
of a miracle."

  Jonathan said nothing, which was all the confirmation Serena needed.

  "He would have died," she said heavily, "if you had not been there to get him out of trouble."

  "There were a few sticky spots," he allowed, clearly not telling her the whole truth. "But by the end, we needed each other. He stopped being that angry young boy frightened of taking his brother's place and became a man."

  "He shouldn't have gone the way he did," Serena said angrily. "He scared my mother half to death and my father has lived most of the last ten years sure that he would be the last Earl of Olston."

  "No, he shouldn't have done that," Jonathan agreed. "But you have to understand how utterly terrified he was at the thought of inheriting. He had grown up assuming that he'd inherit some little estate your father held up in Northumberland, all moorland and sheep. Then, overnight, he suddenly has to take on the Olston estate knowing that his brother would have made a far better job of it."

  "At least he managed to get away," Serena said, looking back to the fire. "I had to stay at home and witness the pain he caused, as well as the pain I brought to my parents. Do you know what my life has been like for the last ten years?" she demanded.

  "A little," he said carefully. "I know that you were sent to live with your aunt Charlotte for some years, and then back in Kent more recently."

  "How do you know that?" she asked, dumbfounded, turning back to face him.

  It was a mistake, she knew. Her feelings had always been jumbled where Jonathan Luttrell was concerned, but the power his eyes held over her had not changed in ten years. Their beauty drew her in.

  "I used to read the letters you would send to your brother," he admitted.

  "Aunt Charlotte made me write," she told him. "At first, I had no desire to do anything but tell him what a blockhead he was."

  "Oh, those were the good ones," he said, smiling. "I used to sneak them out of his jacket pocket and pretend you were shouting at me."

  "If you knew where I was, why didn't you write to me?" she asked, confused and more than a little hurt.

  "But I did," he said indignantly, stepping towards her. "I addressed them to Olston House at first, and then when I realised you were living in Herefordshire, I wrote to you at your aunt's address. When you never replied, I thought that you must hate me too much to reply. I apologised so many times, Serena, and wrote asking you to marry me."