Miss Amelia's Mistletoe Marquess

by Jenni Fletcher

  ‘If that’s really what you want, sir.’

  ‘It is. More importantly, it’s what my wife wants. Ah, the bride herself.’ Cassius smiled at the sight of his housekeeper traversing the hallway. ‘Felicitations to you, too, Mrs Turner.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’ She looked startled as he pressed a kiss to her cheek.

  ‘Now go and celebrate!’ He started eagerly towards the staircase. ‘I don’t want to see either of you for the rest of the day. Until Boxing Day, in fact!’

  He took the stairs two at a time, giving a cursory knock on their—her—door before pushing it open.

  ‘Millie?’ At first glimpse, the room appeared to be empty. He was about to leave again when he noticed her standing beside the window, staring out. It was the exact same spot where she’d stood the previous evening, as if nothing had changed. He felt his heart plummet, but he still had to try to talk to her.

  ‘There you are.’ He advanced slowly. ‘Shall we celebrate?’

  ‘Celebrate?’ She looked towards him and then away again quickly, her voice sounding strange.

  ‘About Kendrew and Mrs Turner. I thought she’d been to see you?’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes, she did.’

  ‘That?’ He stopped. ‘I thought you’d be more excited, especially since it was your doing.’

  ‘I only told them that marriage was allowed.’

  ‘But if it hadn’t been for you then they’d probably never have thought of it. I certainly wouldn’t have. Give yourself a little credit.’

  ‘I suppose...’

  ‘Millie.’ He touched a finger to her chin, turning her face towards him as her voice trailed away. ‘Will you tell me what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened. I’m just...’ She gave her head a small shake. ‘I don’t know what I am, but seeing Lottie again, and getting news of Silas... There’s been a lot to take in.’

  ‘But it was all good news, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She drew her brows together as if she were concentrating on finding the right words. ‘I just didn’t appreciate how much was going to change in my life. I suppose I’m feeling a bit confused about who I am.’

  ‘I thought we agreed you wouldn’t think about any of that until after Christmas?’

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve. That’s close enough.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head quickly. ‘I just need to think.’

  ‘Maybe there’s one thing I can do.’ He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then steered her towards a chair by the fireplace. ‘Just wait here and don’t move until I come back.’

  ‘Why? What are you going to do?’

  ‘Wait and see. I was going to wait until tonight to give you your Christmas present, but maybe now is the right moment.’

  ‘Cassius?’

  He ignored her questioning look, running headlong down the stairs, out to the stables and then back again with a wooden box.

  ‘Here you go.’ He deposited the box on the carpet, relieved to find that she’d stayed where he’d left her. ‘Only don’t try to pick it up. It’s heavy.’

  ‘But what is...?’ She stopped mid-question at the sound of a faint meow, her eyes widening in surprise as she reached down and tore off the lid. Four green eyes in a pair of grey-and-white faces stared back.

  ‘Cats?’ Her expression seemed dazed.

  ‘Orestes and Electra!’ he announced, crouching beside the box to watch her reaction. ‘They’re brother and sister.’

  ‘You got me two cats?’

  ‘You said it was what you’d always wanted.’ He frowned. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Of course I am!’ She seemed to come back to herself suddenly, reaching down and scooping them into her lap. ‘But where did they come from?’

  ‘When we did our tour of the estate the other day Mr Petch happened to mention they’d had a litter of kittens and were still looking for homes for a few.’ He grinned. ‘I sent a couple of the stable boys over to collect them this morning.’

  ‘They’re adorable. Oh, yes, you are, aren’t you?’ She gave a delighted laugh, rubbing her hands over a pair of grey heads while the recipients purred approvingly. ‘And they have white socks! Oh, they’re lovely, Cassius, thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad you approve. Now all we need is a chaise longue, a box of macaroons and then you can lie around and read novels all day. Just for one day, of course.’

  ‘Oh...yes.’ Her smile faltered. ‘I said that, didn’t I?’

  ‘I want to give you your perfect day, Millie.’ He tickled one of the kittens under the chin, letting it curl its tiny paw around the rest of his hand. ‘I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted.’

  ‘I don’t expect anything else, Cassius.’

  ‘But I want to give it to you.’ He took a deep breath and then ploughed on. ‘You’ve given me so much already. When we first met, I thought all I wanted to do was to hide from the world and be left alone. I thought that I was broken and beyond saving, that I had no joy or love left in me. You’ve shown me I was wrong. I’ve only been half-alive for the past year, but you’ve made me feel as if I can get better in time. You’ve made me feel again. And I don’t want to be alone any more. I want to be with you. Not because we were compromised, but because you’re the kindest, most caring, most determined, most alarmingly hard-working person I’ve ever met and I love you.’

  ‘You love me?’ She seemed to go very still all of a sudden.

  ‘Yes. I don’t expect you to say it in return. It’s not what we agreed when we married, but I want to say it anyway. I love you. I’m in love with you and I’ll do whatever it takes, wait as long as it takes...’

  ‘No.’ She picked up each of the cats in turn and placed them back in the box. ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t.’ She stood up although she didn’t look at him. ‘This is wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’ He felt as if his blood had just turned to ice. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was a mistake. All of it. It started with a mistake and it’s led to more and more mistakes. You can’t be in love with me.’

  ‘Do you think I’m lying?’

  ‘No.’ She stole a fleeting glance at his face. ‘But you have to go. Take the cats, too. I can’t keep them.’

  ‘Millie?’ He reached for her, but she darted quickly out of his reach, her face ashen.

  ‘Just go! Please!’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Millie!’ Five people shot up from the table in unison as she burst into the Malverlys’ dining room, three of them exclaiming her name.

  ‘Darling?’ Her mother was the first to reach her, closely followed by Alexandra and Lottie. ‘What’s happened? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve left Cassius!’

  ‘You’ve done what?’ A pair of arms wrapped comfortingly around her. ‘And you’re frozen! Surely you didn’t walk here?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not cold.’

  She laid her head on her mother’s shoulder. It was true, she didn’t feel remotely chilly at all. On the contrary, she felt far too hot. After scribbling a hasty note she’d fled from her chamber at Falconmore Hall only a couple of minutes after Cassius had left, pausing only to put on a cloak and bonnet before running out of the house and almost the entire way back to the village. She’d had no choice. Those three words, I love you, should have been everything she’d wanted to hear, but instead they’d had the opposite effect. For one brief moment her heart had glowed at the words, but then her skin had turned cold, as if she’d just been scorched and frozen at the same time. It had been too much to bear, too much happiness and guilt joined together in one terrible moment. All she’d known was that it was impossible, that she couldn’t be Millie, the impulsive, adventurous side of her charac
ter who lived only for herself and her desires. It was the opposite of everything she’d been for the past ten years. How could she just walk away from Amelia?

  ‘I think a walk around the village may be in order, wouldn’t you say, King?’ George made a beeline for the door.

  ‘Good idea.’ Jasper followed a few steps behind, throwing Lottie a speaking glance as he went. ‘We’ll take our time.’

  ‘Now tell me what’s happened.’ Her mother drew her towards a chair. ‘Why have you left Cassius?’

  ‘Because he said he loves me!’ Millie looked at each of her female relatives in turn and then dissolved into tears.

  ‘He said...’ Her mother looked from Alexandra to Lottie and then back to her again. ‘I don’t understand, dear. Why would his saying he loves you make you want to leave him?’

  ‘Because it’s wrong!’ she heard herself wail. ‘I should never have agreed to marry him in the first place. It was all a mistake. I can’t be a marchioness. I can’t live in a big house and have thirty servants at my beck and call. I thought I could learn, but I can’t. I’m Amelia, not Millie, and I belong at the Foundation.’ She clutched at her mother’s hand. ‘I want to go back to London, Mama. You’ll take me back with you, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course, if you really want to go, but...’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Alexandra drew up a chair beside her and sat down. ‘You’re not going anywhere. It’s about time something like this happened.’

  Millie looked up at her incredulously. ‘You think this is a good thing?’

  ‘Yes, actually. A young woman ought to cry sometimes, especially over a young man, and you, my dear, went straight from childhood to middle age with nothing in between. I take this as a very good sign. In my experience there’s only one thing that makes a person behave quite so foolishly or dramatically. You’re in love, too.’

  Millie stared at her cousin, dumbstruck for a few seconds before flinging her hands up over her face and bursting into a fresh bout of tears. ‘I know! But I shouldn’t be. We weren’t supposed to fall in love. He said that he couldn’t love anyone so I tried not to think about it at first, but then I couldn’t help myself. And now it’s too late and we love each other and he gave me two cats!’

  ‘Dearest.’ Her mother touched a hand to her cheek. ‘I think perhaps you’re not thinking clearly. Arranging a ball at such short notice must have been quite exhausting. Perhaps you’re just overwrought?’

  ‘That’s another thing!’ Millie shot upright again. ‘I don’t get overwrought! I don’t even cry! Lottie’s right, I’ve changed. I’ve become a bad person.’

  ‘What?’ Lottie looked startled. ‘I never said you were a bad person.’

  ‘But I have changed!’

  ‘Yes, but I meant your clothes and hair and the fact that you were smiling. None of those things make you a bad person.’

  ‘But they do!’ she wailed. ‘They do because they’re all about me! I have a big house, beautiful clothes, a husband I love who loves me, too, and two cats! It’s all too perfect!’ She heaved another sob. ‘It can’t be right!’

  ‘Well...’ Alexandra shook her head ‘...if you want my opinion, bearing in mind that I intend to give it anyway, this is what comes of being too virtuous. You think that you don’t deserve to be happy unless you’re miserable.’

  ‘I do not!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean miserable miserable. I mean that you can’t be happy unless you’re being selfless, too. But you can do good in the world and still enjoy yourself once in a while.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing but enjoy myself for this whole past week and it can’t be right for me to have so much. It feels selfish.’

  ‘I doubt you could be selfish if you tried. Unless, of course, you abandoned a man who says he loves you just because you think that being happy is wrong. What about his happiness? How do you think he’s feeling now?’

  Millie shuddered at the memory. ‘When I told him our marriage was a mistake it was like I’d stabbed him in the heart, but I didn’t know what else to say. I had to get away. Oh, dear, I’m afraid I hurt him very badly.’

  ‘Very likely.’ Alexandra pursed her lips.

  ‘But not deliberately.’ Her mother put a comforting hand on her knee. ‘And hopefully not irreparably. I think perhaps you panicked, dearest. Alexandra’s right, you’re so used to thinking about other people that you don’t know how to think about yourself, but being happy doesn’t make you selfish.’

  ‘But to have so much...’

  ‘Tell me this, do you think you could be happy without Cassius?’

  ‘No...’ She sniffed and rubbed a hand over her nose. ‘I told you, I love him.’

  ‘What about the house and the clothes and even the cats? What if you lost all of those things, but still had Cassius? Could you be happy then?’

  ‘Ye—es. As long as the cats went to a good home.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Her mother smiled. ‘But I think then we can conclude that Cassius is the determining factor. You haven’t become materialistic or selfish, you’ve just happened to fall in love with a marquess who comes with a big house and cats. But you might just have to forgive him for those shortcomings. Nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘So you don’t think it would be wrong or wicked of me?’

  ‘I think that denying love would be wrong.’

  ‘What about the Foundation? I’m the little mother.’

  ‘We’ll manage.’

  ‘But it’s Father’s legacy. I need to uphold it.’

  ‘No, dearest, your father’s legacy is you and Lottie and Silas, wherever you are and whatever you do. The Foundation was his work. He was proud of it, but his family was his life. The way to uphold his legacy is to find your own path and be happy.’ Her mother touched a finger to her butterfly brooch. ‘Do you remember what he used to tell you and Lottie about this?’

  ‘Yes.’ Millie gave a loud sniff. ‘He said these were what we’d grow into one day, when our wings were fully grown.’

  ‘Exactly. Now I think they’re ready, don’t you?’

  ‘But you need me...’

  ‘Actually, my dear, you’re dismissed.’

  ‘What?’ Millie blinked in surprise.

  ‘You’re dismissed from your post at the Foundation. We thank you for your many years of good service, but your services are no longer required.’

  ‘But you can’t just...’

  ‘Actually I believe that I can. And now that Lottie’s getting married I thought I might start looking for smaller accommodation, too. So you see, there’s really no place for you in London any more.’

  ‘Alexandra?’ Millie turned towards her cousin.

  ‘Don’t look at me.’ Alexandra folded her arms pointedly. ‘You’re not staying here.’

  ‘Or with me and Jasper,’ Lottie chimed in.

  ‘So you’re all ganging up on me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her mother smiled. ‘Because we all want you to be happy. And you have been happy since you married Cassius, that much has been obvious. You’ve been like your old self, the free-spirited girl I remember. I don’t want to see her fade away again. So blame it on me if you have to, do it to make me happy, but let yourself be happy, too. You deserve to follow your heart, Millie.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ She rubbed the palms of her hands over her cheeks. ‘I’ve been very foolish, haven’t I?’

  ‘It happens to the best of us.’ Her mother smiled. ‘But we won’t tell anyone.’

  They all jumped and then looked to one side as the front door banged and George and Jasper’s voices became audible in the hallway.

  ‘That was quicker than I expected,’ Alexandra called out to her husband.

  ‘It’s snowing again.’ George peered tentatively around the door, looking as if he were about to bolt at the first sign of tears. ‘Dashed cold, too. We thought we
might take refuge in the library and open a bottle of sherry instead.’

  ‘There’s no need to take refuge.’ Millie smiled. ‘I’ve had a good telling-off and I’m thoroughly chastened.’

  ‘Are you, by Jove?’ He looked impressed. ‘That was quick. My wife takes a lot longer when she scolds me.’

  ‘George.’ Alexandra gave him a look. ‘We shall discuss that comment later.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, my dear.’

  ‘I have to get back to Falconmore Hall.’ Millie stood up determinedly. ‘As quickly as possible.’

  ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid.’ George tapped his nose with a sage expression. ‘The roads will be impassable soon.’

  ‘Surely it’s not so bad?’ Alexandra crossed to the window and looked out. ‘Ah. Much as I hate to admit it, my husband is right.’

  ‘But I have to go!’

  ‘We’ll see how it looks in the morning. In the meantime, I’m afraid I can’t risk my coachman or my horses on a night like this. If only we had a sleigh.’

  ‘Then I’ll walk.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. Love is love, but survival is rather important, too.’

  ‘But I need to put things right with Cassius!’

  ‘And you will, but not tonight.’ Alexandra gave her a meaningful look. ‘On the plus side, in this weather, at least we know he’s not going anywhere.’

  * * *

  Cassius crumpled the piece of paper in his fist. She’d gone. Not just from the room, but from the house and for good. It was all too much, her letter said. She was sorry, but she could never belong there. She could never be a marchioness. The words had blurred as he’d read them, none of them concealing the real meaning beneath. She didn’t love him.

  He spun on his heel, making for the door that led to his adjoining chamber. His old army bag was stored in the bottom of a wardrobe and he tugged it out and stuffed a few items of clothing inside. She was gone. That was the one thought clamouring inside his head. But if she could leave, then so could he. He had to get away or he’d go mad.