It Happened One Christmas: Christmas Eve ProposalThe Viscount's Christmas KissWallflower, Widow...Wife!

by Carla Kelly

  ‘Better off?’ His smile faltered, though he tried hard to hang on to it. ‘We miss you.’

  She did not believe him.

  He must have seen it on her face. ‘Pettigrew wrote to the solicitor Papa used in London about not seeing the girls. He’s travelling to Nottingham, despite my assurances all is well. Wants to see them for himself before he hands over any more blunt next quarter-day.’

  Finally, the truth. ‘Why do you care? It’s a pittance compared to your income from the mills.’

  He glared at her, picked up the knife she used to cut her wicks and turned the blade so it caught the light. ‘The factories are not doing too well. No demand for cloth now the war is over.’ He grimaced. ‘I had a run of bad luck at the tables.’ He put the knife down with a lift of one shoulder. ‘Debts of honour. A gentleman always pays his debts.’

  A true gentleman looked after his womenfolk. But Herbert wouldn’t see it that way. His concern had always been for himself. For his standing with the men he called friends. He didn’t give sixpence for the welfare of his sisters. ‘I’m sorry for your troubles, Herbert, but I think we are better off here.’

  He lunged for her. Quick as a snake. Grabbed her arm. ‘You will tell my sisters to come with me now if you know what is good for you.’

  She pulled her arm free. Backed away. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Cheeks red, he glowered. ‘If you don’t, I’ll be swearing out a warrant for your arrest.’

  Her heart thundered. ‘For what crime? Stealing your sisters? I am sure the solicitor will be interested to hear how you misappropriated their funds.’

  He waved off her accusation as if it was nothing. ‘For stealing the family jewels.’

  She gasped. Stared at him. ‘I took nothing that was not mine.’

  ‘The jewels you sold were my mother’s. I have a hundred witnesses to say they were. Including old Pettigrew.’

  ‘They were my bride gift from your father to me personally.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  She couldn’t. The jewels had not been mentioned in her husband’s will. Nor had Pettigrew known Clifford’s first wife.

  Triumph beamed from Herbert’s face. ‘And then of course there is the money you took from my desk in the study.’

  Throat suddenly dry, she swallowed. Her shoulders sagged. She could see from his expression that he knew he had her in a cleft stick. She had no proof the jewels were hers to sell. Or that she had not taken his money. She’d have to let him take the girls or risk prison.

  He stepped closer, his smile triumphant. ‘Well, Lady High and Mighty. If you care for your liberty and your life, stop this nonsense and come home with me now.’

  Hot fury coursed through her veins. She snatched up the broom leaning against the wall. ‘Out! Get out.’

  It wouldn’t be the first time she had given Herbert a trouncing. He also clearly recalled the occasion he’d attempted a slobbery kiss and she’d slapped his face. He backed away. He narrowed his eyes, while maintaining a safe distance.

  ‘You leave me no choice, then. I will be back with the authorities and we will see who has the upper hand.’ His smile widened. ‘Oh, and what it this I hear in the village, dear Stepmama, about the friendly widow and her landlord? Not a good example to set two young girls, is it? Or to impress the courts.’

  She stared at him, mouth agape. ‘Sir Josiah was an octogenarian.’

  ‘My father was not much younger. That is your method, is it not? Marry an old man and pilfer his money.’ He waved an airy hand. ‘It is all a great heifer like you could possibly hope for. Too bad this one died before you had a chance to get him to the altar.’

  Her face flamed. Herbert really knew how to twist a knife in an opponent’s breast. ‘Leave before I do something you will regret.’

  ‘With pleasure. But make no mistake, I shall return.’ He bowed. ‘I wish you good day, dearest Stepmama.’

  He swaggered off.

  Rage mingled with fear blocked her throat. Blood roared in her ears. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She put down the broom and walked out to the lane to be sure Herbert was gone. He would be back with the magistrate. No doubt about it, if he was that desperate for funds. But not today. Sir Josiah’s death meant there wasn’t a magistrate closer than fifteen miles.

  She swallowed. Thank heaven Mr Royston had departed before her stepson’s arrival. The shame of him hearing those terrible accusations of theft would have nigh killed her.

  She ran back into the house. ‘Girls,’ she called out. ‘Start packing. We leave first thing in the morning.’

  ‘But tomorrow is Christmas Eve,’ Diana wailed from the top of the stairs.

  Standing at the bottom, watching her, Lucy’s face showed sadness and understanding. Emotions far too old for such a young child. ‘I’ll help you, Diana. It will be fun. We’ll sing carols while we fold.’

  Curse the unfairness of it all. Damn Herbert, she would not let him win.

  * * *

  The snow had stopped. Adam stared out into the darkness, looking across the lawns he could not see, staring in the direction of Ivy Cottage, wondering what Cassie was doing. Tomorrow he’d go. He was packed and ready to leave at first light. He wouldn’t let another day pass and risk his father sending out a search party. Hopefully it would stop snowing by morning. He unbuttoned his jacket with a sigh.

  He should have left that morning, but after a night of dreams, some bad, some ridiculously erotic involving a certain woman whose gorgeous body he adored and whose feelings he’d hurt, he had finally dropped deep asleep near dawn. Naturally, he’d woken at noon, far too late to think of setting out. He’d also recalled that he hadn’t finished going through the last of old Sir Josiah’s ledgers.

  Excuses.

  He’d spent the balance of the day arguing with himself about whether he should or should not pay one more visit to Ivy Cottage. So why had he walked away last night? Going to bed alone, when he could have been in the arms of a warm and willing woman, made little sense. She wasn’t after a husband. He liked her, perhaps more than he’d liked any woman, even—

  Shocked, he stilled. Guilt swamped him.

  He clenched his fist and pressed the side of it against the cold glass. How could he think of liking any woman better than Marion? It wasn’t possible he could be so disloyal.

  A twinkle of light flickered through the trees.

  He frowned. Usually he could see nothing of the cottage from this window at night. Only in daylight did the smoke rising above the trees from its chimney give its presence away. Perhaps it was some sort of trick of the light, reflection on snow.

  The light seemed to grow brighter. And it was flickering in an odd... Fire!

  He raced downstairs, grabbed up his overcoat and gloves and was outside in minutes. He ploughed through drifts that in some places were shin deep. His heart thumped painfully in his chest. The cold stung his ears and his cheeks. His frosty breath was whipped away by the wind. A wind that would fan flames.

  Blast. He had to be in time. He would not let it be otherwise.

  He turned up the narrow lane to the cottage. Flames had already engulfed the interior of the lean-to shed and were now licking up through its thatched roof. A thick oily smoke filled the air. Sparks flew about on the wind and landed on the roof of the cottage. Thank God for the layer of snow. Where the hell was Cassie? And the girls?

  He banged on the door. ‘Cassie,’ he yelled.

  No answer. One of the upstairs casements was ajar. The smoke from the fire would have trickled inside, stunning the occupants or worse. His heart lurched. Fear set his heart thumping and his brain racing. He ran to what was left of the woodpile, found the axe, broke open the kitchen door, horrified to see flames eating through the parlour wall. He tore upstairs.

  At the
top he found Cassie, coughing and struggling on the landing with a girl on each arm. He swept the girls up and carried them downstairs, depositing them in the kitchen. Smoke billowed through the room. He closed the parlour door as Cassie arrived, still coughing with her arms full of coats. ‘Boots by the back door,’ she gasped.

  Together they got the bleary-eyed shivering girls into their outerwear and outside into the lane. The girls clung to each other.

  ‘Wait here,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll see if I can put out the fire.’ He ran to the back of the house. The shed was little more than a pile of collapsing timber, but only one wall of the parlour was affected, the one adjoining the shed. Someone must have boarded up a window in that wall when the shed was added.

  Cassie rounded the corner. ‘Heaven help us.’

  ‘Buckets,’ Adam said.

  ‘In the kitchen. I’ll get them. You work the pump.’ She dived through the back door hanging precariously off its hinges.

  Adam pumped a steady stream of water into the two buckets Cassie brought. Without words they worked together. While he took one bucket to the fire, she filled the next.

  Slowly, slowly the smoke lessened and he became aware of the two little girls standing in the corner of the yard shivering and cold with tears running down their faces.

  ‘I think we are done here,’ he said to Cassie. ‘Take the girls into the kitchen and get them out of the wind.’

  She stopped pumping and blinked as if the words made no sense.

  He gave her a little push towards the back door. ‘Take the girls inside and pass me a lantern so I can make sure there are no lingering embers.’

  She nodded and led the girls back into the house, returning seconds later with a lamp. She patted his arm in thanks, but also as if to reassure herself he was real before going indoors.

  He crossed the yard and peered inside the shed. It was little more than a burnt-out shell. Nothing left but scorched beams overhead and on the floor, ashes, burnt bits of wood and lumps of melted metal.

  Something glittered in the lamplight. He gazed down, then crouched to get a better look. Now, what were bits of glass from a broken lamp doing outside when the fire had started within? He forced himself not to think of what might have happened if he hadn’t arrived to help. With the parlour also catching fire, Cassie might not have got the girls out in time.

  He glanced around the little courtyard. There were footprints in the snow, small ones, his larger ones, and some he could not identify. Lamp held high, he walked out of the back gate. He could see where he had run into the yard. And he could see where the other prints came and went from the direction of the village, not from Thornton House. They’d appeared since it stopped snowing some time after dusk. He’d bet his now-ruined best boots that this fire was no accident.

  Mrs Melford had an enemy.

  Perhaps he would not be leaving in the morning after all.

  He doused the remains of the shed and the burnt part of the parlour wall with several more buckets of water before returning to the chilly comfort of the smoky kitchen.

  Cassie glanced up, her eyes full of despair.

  ‘Is it out?’ Diana asked, her eyes huge.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It stinks in here,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I know,’ Adam said. ‘You are all going to come with me to Thornton House.’

  Cassie stared at him. ‘We couldn’t possibly trespass—’

  ‘You cannot stay here.’ He didn’t want to scare her, but he would if he had to make her see reason. ‘What if the fire starts up again?’ Or whoever set the fire came back.

  She blanched. ‘Very well. We will stay at Thornton until the morning. At which time we will be leaving as planned.’

  It was then he noticed the valises on the floor in the corner. He narrowed his eyes. ‘You never mentioned you were leaving so soon?’

  Her gaze slid away. ‘I decided we should go after you informed me Thornton is to be sold.’

  A lie. She was afraid for some reason. That settled it, he was going to get to the bottom of the fire and find out exactly what Cassie feared.

  Realisation swept through him. For the first time in years he felt tenderness, the need to protect, the longing to care for someone.

  Something he’d never expected to feel again.

  Not that he expected or deserved that she should care about him. He didn’t. But he would do everything in his power to make sure she was safe.

  Chapter Five

  While she’d made the beds in Thornton’s guest chambers and put the girls to bed, Adam had lit fires in the bedrooms and the kitchen. And now he had tea sitting ready for her when she came downstairs to bid him goodnight. She sank onto a chair with a sigh.

  He put the teapot in the middle of the table with an understanding smile. ‘Your daughters are as courageous as their mother.’

  He was trying to bolster her spirits and she could not help but once again be struck by his kindness. ‘They are good girls,’ she said, hoping he would put the roughness in her voice down to the smoke from the fire and not her overwrought emotions. It wasn’t until she had put the girls to bed moments ago that she had realised how few choices remained. The fire had destroyed any hope she might have had of supporting herself and the girls until the bees were ready to give up their honey once more.

  The sharp glance he gave her let her know her hope was in vain, but at least he left her with her dignity by not commenting. He sat down beside her on the bench far closer than a man who was not a relation should sit and she took comfort from his large warm presence. It wasn’t as if they were strangers. They had kissed after all.

  ‘Is there someone who might seek to injure you and the girls?’ he asked, pouring tea into their mugs.

  Her breathing hitched. She tried to hold his searching gaze. ‘Why would you say such a thing?’

  He added cream and sugar and stirred for them both, pushing a mug at her. ‘Cassie, the fire was no accident.’

  She closed her eyes briefly, fighting for composure, for calm. If she told him the truth, that she had stolen two little girls from their legal guardian, he would likely be horrified. Any man would. ‘Why would you think so? I must have spilled some wax. Or burning soot fell from the chimney after I damped down the fire.’

  His lips thinned and he shot her a disbelieving glance. ‘Someone deliberately tossed a lit lamp through the window. I found glass outside and footsteps in the snow.’

  A feeling of panic threatened to swamp her. Herbert could have burned them in their beds. She could not believe that had been his intention. He’d merely meant to frighten her into going back. But with Herbert’s accusations of theft, did she dare tell Adam the whole story? She had no proof of her innocence and everything she had done since leaving Nottingham spoke to her guilt. ‘It might have been lads from the village playing a prank. A group of them let Mr Driver’s bull in with his cows this summer.’

  He sipped at his tea thoughtfully. ‘If so, it was a prank that could have had far more serious consequences than a few gravid cows.’

  She wanted to sip at her tea, too, but feared her hands were trembling too much. ‘Boys are extremely foolish when they get together in a gang.’

  ‘Then I will have a word with the local magistrate first thing in the morning.’

  She swallowed. The local authorities were the last thing she needed at her door. ‘I can do it if you wish.’

  He looked angry, but also sad. ‘I think not. The cottage is my responsibility.’

  She ducked her head, avoiding that penetrating emerald gaze. ‘I beg your pardon. I am used to looking after my own affairs...it is kind of you to care.’

  ‘Strange you had already decided to leave though, hmm?’ His voice was a low growl.

  Her heart stumbled. He suspected her of some
thing. ‘A coincidence.’

  Scepticism coloured his expression. ‘Where do you go from here?’ He took a breath. ‘I know it is not my business, but I need to know you and the girls are not wandering the highways and byways in the middle of winter without a destination in mind.’

  He was not going to let her go without assurances she would be all right and something like tenderness stole through her at his caring. While she could give him nothing else, she should at least give him the assurances he seemed to need.

  ‘I have friends not far distant who will give me shelter until I can find a new property to rent.’ Lies upon lies. But it was the best she could do right now.

  His fingers tightened around his mug and then relaxed. ‘What friends?’

  She shook her head. ‘Adam, we have to end this. Now.’

  His face shuttered. ‘Then there is no more to be said.’

  ‘I would ask you for something,’ she said softly. ‘I would request that you ask Lord Graystone to have someone care for my bees in the spring.’ Her voice broke. ‘I am more than sorry to have to leave them. They have been good to me.’

  ‘I will do what I can,’ he said, his voice gruff, diffident, perhaps even disappointed.

  Having given his word, he would do his very best, she knew. He was that sort of man.

  * * *

  Adam hated the idea someone trying to harm Cassie and her daughters. He also hated the idea of her travelling alone to these vague friends she had mentioned, but there was little he could do if she refused his offer of aid.

  He put his arm around her shoulders, drew her close against his side. And thank all the heavenly beings she leaned against him as if drawing from his strength. Warmth flooded his deepest reaches, gratitude that she would accept this small token of support.

  ‘What about money?’ he asked. ‘Do you have enough?’