Tempted at Christmas

by Kate Pearce

  “We’ll head straight for Dover and see what we can get from there—I don’t fancy sailing down channel in an open boat in this weather.” The worst of the storm had left its icy rime on the coast, but the sky was still an ominous bone-cold grey—packed tight with brooding clouds—and the wind blew as if it had come straight from the frozen coast of Norway.

  “Aye.” Tressa gathered the edges of her cloak tighter against the chill.

  “Come sit with me. We’ll make ourselves merry and warm.”

  She readily cuddled up tight, but she was not the sort of lass who could be idle. “Shift yourself for a moment, I want to get a glass out from under the seat.”

  She lifted the hinged counter, and rummaged around until she extracted a spyglass and another stout woolen blanket. “Wrap our legs in this.”

  But Matthew did not take her advice to wrap up, for his attention was taken up with a sleek sloop, bearing down from the west, close-hauled on the larboard tack—something about it alarmed his instinct enough to make him alter his own course so he would not cross its bow.

  But the sloop promptly changed course as well.

  “Do you see that sloop?” Tressa’s instincts seemed to be equally alarmed—he reckoned the sloop was the reason she had fetched the spyglass, which she now trained on the approaching vessel. “Matthew, I think they’re trying to—” She passed him the glass and took the tiller in his stead. “I think they’re trying to hail us.”

  Matthew found the vessel clearly in the glass, raking her bow before he moved to the figure at the rail. “God’s balls. It’s my bloody interfering sister. And her bloody tattling husband.”

  “Sally Kent?” Tressa snatched back the glass.

  “Sally Kent Colyear,” Matthew clarified, “lest you two get any ideas about wandering off to conquer the seas—not that I doubt your ability to do so.” Indeed, if Teague and his sister got together, he shuddered to think of the consequences.

  But on the other hand—they were bound to be so successful, he and Col would likely never have to work another day in their lives. They could keep the navy as a hobby.

  With that particularly idiotic, but amusing idea, winching about his brain, Matthew changed course to fall in with the sloop, and marveled at how lucky he really was. He had always admired how sympathetic Sally and Col were to each other—how their marriage was founded upon principles of respect and admiration. He had envied them.

  Envied them but never hoped to join them. He had thought his sister too unique, too odd. It was too strange to think that there could ever be another lass as ambitious and competent and clever in all the world.

  But here she was, nestled next to him in an open boat on the English Channel at the tail end of a December gale. He’d be a fool if he didn’t marry her straightaway.

  And though Matthew Kent knew himself to be many things, he was no fool.

  Chapter 20

  “You’ll like Cliff House, I hope.”

  Tressa was too busy working to calm her nerves at meeting Sally Kent to wonder what had prompted that particularly errant comment. “I’m sure it’s lovely.”

  She was only slightly less anxious about meeting Matthew’s family —after a night of sleeping rough in, and out, of her own clothes—than she had been in Falmouth. But as this meeting appeared unavoidable—and frankly welcome, for she had much rather be tucked up out of the wind on the sloop than freeze in her clammy cloak—Tressa tried to push aside the uneasy feeling swirling in the pit of her belly.

  “Sal had the run of the place for a while, and may again, though Grace certainly likes to have her own way best.”

  “Don’t we all,” Tressa murmured. She was also concerned about what Sally Kent’s husband, Captain Colyear, might make of her after his first erroneous impression.

  But Matthew was still going merrily on. “Grace has no family of her own, you see, so she rather likes having everyone there. She’ll be glad enough of Sally’s company, now that she’ll be home, but she won’t mind at all your coming to live with them.”

  “Live with them. Why should I live with them?” She sounded like a looby, echoing his words. She would go to Cliff House, of course, to convince Sally Colyear and Lady Grace Kent, and whomever else she might, to help finance a cargo, and even the ship that Tressa eventually wanted for her own.

  “All the wives have done it at one time or another.”

  Everything within her strangled to a stop—even her heart seemed to stutter still.

  “Funny how when we were young the house was so full of boys—Sally excepting, of course. And now Cliff House is entirely full of women—Grace and Owen have only girls, like your family.”

  Tressa felt like she must not have attended him properly—she could not make sense of this information. The possibility of what he was saying was too big, too important for her to have missed.

  Half cable away, the sloop hove to, lying into the wind so the smaller boat could approach them. It was now or never. “Kent. Are you by some small mischance proposing to me?”

  Matthew laughed in that merry, mischievous way of his—as if nothing could possibly be wrong. “I suppose I am, though we’ve gone a bit far out of range for a proposal. I’ve no idea how to manage it, for there’s no time for the banns to be read in the traditional manner, and I’ve neither the time nor the money to waste to either go to Doctor’s Commons and make my plea, or pay to get a bishop in my pocket. I don’t suppose you know anything about a common license, do you, being the daughter of a vicar.”

  “Kent. Shut up.”

  “Not that I’m poor—I suppose I ought to have told you that I’ve made a respectable enough fortune that we can afford to marry straightaway.”

  “Kent. For the love of God, please shut up.”

  Mercifully, he did so. But now he was staring at her. “Do you mean to refuse me?”

  “No, actually, I don’t. But I had rather you’d actually asked first.” She meant for them to hash it out properly, betwixt the two of them, and no one else, to come to a right agreement. “So instead, I’ll ask you. Matthew Aloysius Kent—”

  “How in bloody hell did you know that?”

  She tucked her chin down and gave him her most knowing smile. “My darling Captain, don’t you know? I know everything.”

  “God’s balls.” His face clouded and cleared in such rapid succession she could not prepare for what he said next. “Then you know I can’t read.”

  Tressa felt as if the wind had been knocked clean out of her—the cold air hurt to breathe. But at the same time, everything made sense—from his reliance on her knowledge of the smuggling records to his asking her to read the map.

  “You didn’t know.” He closed his eyes and tipped his face skyward as if he wished he could call the words back. But there was no going back on such a revelation. “I mean, I can read, a little. A very little. It’s devilish difficult. Bloody damn hard.”

  “How did you get on as a midshipman, or pass your lieutenancy exams?”

  “Col and Sally—they tutored and hectored me through for the lieutenancy somehow, damned if they didn’t. And the rest I simply memorized through sheer force of will. And when I’m aboard ship, I’ve a clerk and lieutenants to dictate my reports to. That’s why I left Bocka Morrow—to make my report from home. Grace wrote it all out for me from my dictation.”

  “And the incident in Norway?” She had never learned the exact details of the incident that had seen him stripped of his command—the newspapers that carried the Admiralty dispatches referred only to an unsuccessful on-shore assault.

  He shook his head, as if in doing so he might clear the whole of the bad memory from his brain. “My lieutenant was down with a fever, and I couldn’t read the damned orders—it was in a hand so crabbed and scrawled it might as well have been in Norwegian for all I could tell. So I acted without them.”

  “I see.” What she also saw was that Matthew had put the bow of the dory into the wind so they were luffing, bobbing on the wa
ves while the passengers on the sloop stood by impatiently. “Well then, we’d best get aboard.”

  His hand clenched on the tiller. “Teague—Tressa. I need your answer.”

  “No,” she said, because she wasn’t quite ready to let him off the metaphorical hook without some teasing. “It is you who haven’t given me your answer. After all, I am the one who proposed properly.”

  “Do you still want me?”

  “Do you still love me?”

  He took her hand. “I may be nearly illiterate, but I am not stupid.” He kissed her palm. “Of course I love you. With all that I am, and with all that I hope to be with you by my side.”

  “Then, my dear Captain Kent, I think that you have courage and confidence and charm enough to make me want to marry you. And you had better marry me, for I don’t know another woman who could want so badly to be your equal.”

  The look on this face—the relief and excitement and sheer, unadulterated happiness—made her own eyes swim with joy. “Devil take me, Teague, I wouldn’t have you any other way. You, Tressa Teague, are without a doubt my fortune and my treasure.”

  Tressa closed her eyes, and let go of reason and let herself feel. She felt his kiss draw her into the enchanted dreamland that existed between waking and sleep, where every thought gave way to a hundred feelings, and every feeling dissolved into a hundred more sensations of sensual satisfaction.

  A satisfaction that danced over the surface of her skin, whirling through her blood, skipping its way deep into her bones. Beneath the cover of her cloak and the confines of her clothes, her body grew restless—dissatisfied by the constraints of fabric and fashion. Her breasts grew sensitive and tender, longing for a different kind of touch.

  “You had better marry me quickly, Kent. For I shall become quite the fallen woman if you do not.”

  He laughed until tears formed in the corner of his eyes. “Devil take me, Tressa my love, if that doesn’t sound entirely promising.”

  A shout came from the sloop. “Did she say yes?”

  Matthew’s bright gaze was all for Tressa even as he shouted back, “Aye, damn your interfering eyes, she did.”

  “Huzzah!” At the rail of the sloop, Sally Kent cheered in open delight. “Then my dear friend Tressa, let me be the first to wish you happy. You shall and must be a Christmastide bride, for no one else on this blue Earth could be such a match for my merry, mischievous, darling, devilish brother.”

  Chapter 21

  The French had a word for it, of course, being the French and the damned enemy, though they were only a day’s sail away across the Channel. The coup de foudre, they called it—the stroke of lightning, the moment of force when everything changed.

  And everything changed again the glorious Christmastide day that long tall Tressa Teague strode out of the vicarage and down the holly and ivy-clad aisle of St. David’s Church, and made an honest man out of him in the presence of both her family and his. All his family, brothers and sisters and husbands and wives attended. Even Richard, who seemed a tad put out not to be asked to conduct the nuptials himself. Yet as his beloved mentor, the Reverend Teague, was conducting the service, he demurred with only the faintest hint of frustration.

  They married on Christmas Eve, at the ungodly and unseemly hour of eight o’clock in the morning, as the Reverend Teague was needed elsewhere in the town or countryside or at Castle Keyvnor to marry some other couples, who could not possibly be as happy or as well-suited as Tressa and Matthew.

  But his bride’s joy was made complete by marrying at home, in the traditional manner, after the banns had been read on three successive Sundays, with all her family there, with her dear, awkward, uncomfortable, but determinedly loyal friend Felicity standing by the altar her as bridesmaid, and her father conducting the solemn service that joined them in wedded bliss.

  There was, in fact so much wedded bliss in Bocka Morrow that Christmastide, that the tiny village’s reputation for being the best place to find true love was already beginning to spread beyond the borders of Cornwall—even Richard spoke interestingly of perhaps taking up the curacy, there—and into the wider world.

  And that was where Matthew was going—back into the wide blue world. With her by his side. Just as soon as she married him. And he got to show her off at the Yule Ball.

  And so he tugged his best dress uniform into place, and stood in nave of St. David’s Church before the altar, instead of up on the parapet of the belfry where Tressa had asked that they be married—the vicar was a liberal man, but not even he would stretch his scruples that far.

  Instead the vicar looked over the top of his spectacles and down the length of his nose, and began. “Wilt thou, Matthew Aloysius Kent—”

  “Aloysius,” she muttered beside him. “It has a ring to it. Perhaps I should start calling you—”

  “You will not,” Matthew muttered back. And then to the nonplussed vicar he said, “I will indeed, Reverend Teague, have this darling, difficult woman to my wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony. I will love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep only unto her, so long as we both shall live.”

  “Oh, well done, Aloysius,” his bride-in-progress murmured.

  “Don’t count your broadsides before they’re fired, Teague. You’re next.”

  “If you two wouldn’t mind.” The Reverend Teague looked over the top of his spectacles, and down the impressive length of his nose with decided annoyance. “Wilt thou, Tressa Trinity Teague—”

  She shot Matthew a triumphant look.

  “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony. To love him, comfort him, honor, obey, and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

  “Aye. Indeed, I will.”

  The relief that soared through his blood must have been joy—joy that at last, all was right with the world, and there was nothing he could not do with her by his side, even escort her to the bloody Yule Ball at Castle Keyvnor later that night.

  He would spend the time in the ballroom happily planning his campaign for what he would do with her later that night, and how they would celebrate long into Christmas morning.

  He had been struck by lightning, and damned if it wasn’t the pleasantest thing.

  Damned if he didn’t have the devil’s own luck.

  About Elizabeth Essex

  Elizabeth Essex is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed Reckless Brides historical romance series. When not rereading Jane Austen, mucking about in her garden or simply messing about with boats, Elizabeth can be always be found with her laptop, making up stories about heroes and heroines who live far more exciting lives than she. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award, and RWA's prestigious RITA Award, and have made Top-Ten lists from Romantic Times, The Romance Reviews and Affaire de Coeur Magazine. Her fifth book, A BREATH OF SCANDAL, was awarded Best Historical in the Reader's Crown 2013. Elizabeth lives in Texas with her husband, the indispensable Mr. Essex, and her active and exuberant family in an old house filled to the brim with books.

  You can sign up for her newsletter HERE.

  Connect with Elizabeth

  www.elizabethessex.com

  …And a Pigeon in a Pear Tree

  Kate Pearce

  Chapter 1

  “Well, I can’t say I’m glad to see you, Henrietta, but I suppose you can stay.” Mrs. Bray, the housekeeper at Castle Keyvnor, put down her cup and pursed her thin lips. “The castle is fully occupied at the moment due to all these weddings, so I could do with an extra pair of hands.” She quickly added, ”Not that I expect you’ll want to be paid for the privilege, seeing as I’m giving you free board and lodging.”

  Henrietta smiled sunnily at her maternal grandmothe
r. “I’d be happy to help, and I do appreciate you letting me stay with you over the yuletide season. My wretched baggage is still on a ship somewhere, and my funds haven’t arrived at the bank in Truro, so I am quite done up.”

  “You’ve always been disorganized.” Mrs. Bray sniffed. “There’s a bed for you in the maid’s dormitory. It’s nothing fancy.”

  “Seeing as I grew up following the drum with my father, having an actual roof over my head—as opposed to a leaking tent—is a distinct improvement.” Henrietta attempted to reassure her grandmother, even though she knew the woman thrived on feeling aggrieved. It was one of the reasons Henrietta’s mother Angharad had eloped with a soldier at the age of eighteen and never returned to Cornwall.

  Angharad had died when Henrietta was seven. When her father had the funds, Henrietta had been able to spend the summer months at the castle. She’d loved the place and had run wild making friends with the ghosts, the local children, and the gypsies. When her father remarried, his eminently practical second wife stopped the visits, and Henrietta had acquired at least the basics of civility, such as shoes, stockings, and stays.

  On this cold winter night, those summer days seemed long gone, and her grandmother even sterner, the bitterness of the winter weather etched on her face and set deep in her gaze. They were currently in the housekeeper’s sitting room that formed part of the kitchens in the lower regions of Castle Keyvnor.

  “I will not stay long, I promise you.” Henrietta reached across the table and took her grandmother’s work-roughened hand in hers. “As soon as the roads are passable, I will be off to London.”

  “And what exactly do you intend to do up there, missy?”

  “Well, the first thing I need to do is speak to my father’s solicitor. He wrote me a letter asking me to call on him. I have the address.” She wrinkled her nose. “I cannot imagine why he wants to see me, but I feel I should go.”