All I Want for Christmas Is Blue

by Shana Galen

  “How did you know she was my wife?” Blue asked.

  Bonde gave him a weary look. “Because I’m the best.”

  Blue was of the opinion that he was the best, but Bonde was no one to scoff at.

  “You didn’t think me a...resident of Sodom?” he asked, curious as to how much of her knowledge was from investigation and how much skillful deduction.

  “Actually, I thought you could go either way.” She pulled herself through the hatch and onto the roof—a feat of strength that would have taxed him and been impossible for most women. Her head appeared in the opening again, snow now sprinkled over her hair.

  “Happy Christmas,” she called down.

  Blue reached up and slammed the hatch closed.

  Helena fumbled for the curtains, peering out into the dark night. “But how will she get down?”

  “Oh, she’s part ape. And why the devil does everyone think I’m a—I prefer baritones?” He looked down at his evergreen coat, the velvet trim flecked with snow, and his rumpled violet waistcoat. “Is it my hair?”

  Helena bit her lip, no doubt suppressing a smile. “It’s not your hair, darling.”

  He patted it, the lace of his sleeves brushing against his forehead. “Perhaps I should wear it shorter. Or longer. Or more tousled...”

  With a laugh, she curled up against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Don’t change a thing, my love. You are perfect just as you are. And Blue?”

  “Yes?”

  “When we are finally home and in bed, we lock the door.”

  He heartily agreed.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks and appreciation go to Abby Saul for her copyediting, Joanna MacKenzie for her editing, and Molly Foltyn for her help with the blurb.

  Reader, if you enjoyed this novella, it’s due to Joanna MacKenzie. I called her on November 6-ish and said, “I have a crazy idea.” She didn’t think it was crazy, and a month later, here’s the finished product.

  About the Author

  Shana Galen is the bestselling author of passionate Regency romps, including the RT Reviewers’ Choice The Making of a Gentleman. She taught English at the middle and high school level off and on for eleven years. Most of those years were spent working in Houston's inner city. Now she writes full time. She's happily married and has a daughter who is most definitely a romance heroine in the making. Shana loves to hear from readers, so send her an email or see what she's up to daily on Facebook and Twitter.

  Visit her website at www.shanagalen.com.

  Excerpt from Earls Just Want to Have Fun

  Coming February 2015 from Shana Galen

  Dane stared out the window of his coach and wondered what the hell had possessed him to lend it to Brook. How was staring at a street in Cheapside more interesting than Lady Yorke’s soiree?

  Oh, very well. Just about anything was more interesting than Lady Yorke’s soiree. Watching grass grow was more interesting, and sitting in his carriage for the last hour, circling the same street, was about as interesting as watching grass grow. He sighed and massaged his temples. He might as well sit here. It wasn’t as though he had anything better to do, since Parliament did not sit tonight. He smiled, thinking of the speech he’d given at the last session. It had been a rousing denunciation of a proposed bill to allocate more funds to help the poor.

  The poor! What about the military or the farmers? What about the deuced Irish problem? Dane had argued quite successfully—as the bill had been defeated—that the poor deserved their fate. They were lazy or preferred sloth to hard work. Dirty, uneducated, and immoral, the lowest classes were barely human. Best the country look to the future—feeding its people and defending them.

  As an earl, Dane not only had the responsibilities of a landowner, a peer, and a member of Parliament, he had social duties as well. He was so utterly weary of the same balls, the same insipid debutantes, the same ridiculous conversations about the weather. He hated London during the Season. And this was only the beginning. Duty could be extremely tedious.

  He’d thought if he accepted invitations and made appearances, his mother, the Dowager Countess of Dane, would stop haranguing him about finding a wife. If anything, she was worse than she had been before. He should just pick a girl already and be done with it. They were all the same, at any rate.

  If Brook had been sitting here, he would have rolled his eyes and said Dane had it so hard, being the earl. But not everyone could be a hero like Brook. Not everyone could go about saving people. Someone had to be ordinary.

  But devil take him, if this was what Brook’s position entailed, then the man was welcome to his heroics. Dane was about to fall asleep from the sheer tedium.

  The coach began to move, and Dane frowned. He hadn’t ordered his coachman to drive. Were they being waylaid by highwaymen? At least that would make the evening a bit more interesting.

  And then he heard the scream.

  Dane shot up and opened the curtains just as his brother’s voice called out, “Open the door. Open the bloody door!”

  Dane threw open the carriage door, even though the conveyance was still moving. It slowed briefly, and Brook threw a wild animal inside the carriage. Dane jumped back, out of range of the creature’s claws, just as Brook dove inside and slammed the carriage door. “Drive!” he yelled.

  The carriage lurched forward, racing at a speed that could not be safe, even had they not been on the crowded streets of London. But he had no time to worry about the jehu’s dangerous driving. The creature lunged at him, scratching at his leg and managing to get a pretty good bite of his calf. “Ow!” he yelled, shaking it off.

  It fell back, and Brook threw a hood over its head. That confused it, and his brother took advantage of its disorientation and bound its hands.

  Hands? It was human?

  “What the devil is that?” Dane asked.

  “It’s a who, and her name is Elizabeth,” Brook told him, teeth clenched with the effort it took to secure the knot in the rope binding its—her—arms.

  “That is a woman?” A woman had just bitten him? Damnation, but his leg hurt like hell. He peered closer and noted the dirty dress she wore. His gaze traveled upward...yes, she was definitely a woman.

  “That,” Brook said, falling back into the squabs in exhaustion, “is Lady Elizabeth Grafton.”

  Dane had always thought that when the day came and his brother made a mistake—a monumental mistake, the sort Dane was exceedingly careful never to make—he would be glad. But damn if his leg did not hurt him, and he was too worried for his brother’s sanity—and truth be told, his own safety—to be able to say, I told you so.

  Dane glanced at the woman again. He didn’t know who she was, but she was not the daughter of the Marquess of Lyndon. She was some sort of street rat. The smell of her alone was enough to prove bathing was not a luxury she frequently, if ever, enjoyed. And her language. No lady knew words like those she’d spewed at Brook. Dane didn’t even know some of the curses. And the dirt. He’d have his valet clean these breeches immediately.

  “Are you feeling well?” Dane asked. “Have you hit your head recently?”

  Brook glared at him. “It’s her.”

  But before Dane could dispute him, the creature—female, if Brook insisted—must have caught her breath, because she began thrashing around again. She couldn’t see with the hood over her eyes, and her claws were restrained, but she could still kick. Dane moved from one side of the seat to the other to avoid her quick feet. She would make a fearsome pugilist if her fists were as fast as her feet.

  “I can’t take her to Lord Lyndon like this,” Brook said.

  Dane frowned. He didn’t like the implications of that statement. When Brook didn’t go on, he suggested, “You could toss her back out on the street.” He looked out the window and saw they were in Mayfair now. Perhaps they should not unleash such a creature on Mayfair. They might keep driving and leave her somewhere safer. Somewhere like Scotland. Or the Americas.

 
; “I’m not tossing her back on the street.”

  The woman quieted, as though listening for her fate.

  “We could put her on a ship. Australia might be far enough away.”

  “No!” the wench cried and began thrashing again. Dane held out a hand to protect himself.

  Brook rolled his eyes. “Dane.”

  Dane spread his hands. “You said yourself she was a thief. That’s the least of the punishments she might receive.”

  “True, but I was thinking we might reform her.”

  Dane narrowed his eyes, and the girl spoke up for the first time. “I don’t want no reforming.” Her voice was muffled beneath the hood.

  Dane pointed an accusatory finger at the woman. “You heard her. She doesn’t want no reforming.”

  “Nevertheless, we take her home—”

  “Home!”

  “And we clean her up and make her presentable before we give her to Lord and Lady Lyndon.”

  “No!” This from the creature.

  This time Dane didn’t avoid her kicks, and his knee suffered the consequences. “Damn it!” These breeches would be past saving.

  “Let me go,” she screamed, kicking again. “You bloody cockchafer! Let me out, you bastard boat-licker!” She went on, and Dane glanced at his brother incredulously. He’d never heard a woman speak thus.

  “I feel as though I should take notes,” he said over the noise. “I might impress the fellows at Gentleman Jackson’s.”

  “You might be thrown out,” Brook observed. “In any case, I’m taking her to Derring House.”

  Now Dane was out of patience. “No, you are not. Susanna is there, and mother. We cannot inflict this”—he gestured to her contemptuously—“upon them.”

  “Nonsense,” Brook said, folding his arms across his chest in a gesture Dane knew meant he had made up his mind. “Unlike you, they love a good charitable cause. And it wouldn’t kill you to smudge those lily-white hands once in a while.”

  Dane looked at his spotless gloves. It might not kill him, but it would certainly pain him.

  More from Shana Galen

  Want to read more? Pre-order the first in Shana’s new Covent Garden Cubs series, Earls Just Want to Have Fun, coming in February 2015.

  Never miss a book! Join Shana’s mailing list, and be the first to receive information on sales and new releases. Shana never spams or sells readers’ information.

  Check out Love and Let Spy, in which Blue also makes an appearance, and meet Bonde, Jane Bonde.

  Want more spies under your tree this Christmas? Check out Shana’s novella, The Spy Beneath the Mistletoe in the Christmas in the Duke’s Arms anthology, also featuring novellas from Grace Burrowes, Carolyn Jewel, and Miranda Neville.