A Captain For Christmas

by Louise Taylor

  A Captain for Christmas

  The 12 Days of Christmas, Book One

  By

  Louise Taylor

  ©2015 by Blushing Books® and Louise Taylor

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  Taylor, Louise

  A Captain for Christmas

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-196-3

  Cover Design by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the Author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Lord and Lady Beresford's Christmas Party, London, December 1817

  "Don't look behind you!"

  If there were ever more aggravating words to be heard, Lady Serena Olston was hard pressed to think of any. As soon as anybody said, 'Don't look behind you!', the very first thing one wanted to do was swivel around and stare at whatever fascinating event was happening.

  "Why not?" she asked, desperately trying to look through the side of her eyes to the back of her head. By the look of shock and uncertainty on her friend Bessie's face, something important had just happened.

  "Oh lor'," Bessie said, clutching at Serena's arm, making her spill her glass of mulled wine down the front of her dress. "It's him, Serena!"

  "Him who?" Serena asked as she scrubbed hopelessly at the front of her forest-green gown. It was no good – the mulled wine had left a huge stain on the silk, and had probably ruined it completely. She stared at it in annoyance. This had been one of her favourite gowns, which was why she had worn it to the Christmas party in the first place. Now it was only fit for the rag bag.

  Mulled wine, it seemed, was once again her comeuppance at a Christmas party.

  "He's coming over here!" Bessie said, her voice rising to a squeak so high-pitched that she sounded more like a frightened mouse than a well-placed society matron.

  "Who is coming over here?" Serena demanded, now annoyed because she noticed that one of her white silk evening gloves had picked up the mulled wine stain through her handkerchief. "Honestly Bessie, unless it's the Prince Regent himself I cannot think of anybody worth getting so excited about that it justifies tipping a whole glass of mulled wine down me!"

  She pulled the warm, damp silk away from her skin with a frown on her face, and stared at her glove in dismay. She wanted to take it off immediately – it felt clammy and uncomfortable – but a lady was never seen without her gloves in public. Ever.

  "Lady Serena," said a deep, masculine voice from behind her. "I see that you still have problems with mulled wine. Perhaps it is wise to avoid the beverage? At least in public, at any rate."

  Serena's lips tightened into a thin line, and she stood up ramrod straight, her spine rigid. She turned around slowly, hoping that she was wrong, that she had not recognised that voice, that the man standing before her was not the same man that had done her reputation such damage ten years ago that people still whispered about her now.

  She was not wrong. It was him. Oh, he was older now, as was she; his golden hair had darkened with age, and his boyish handsomeness had been hardened by ten years of fighting into something stronger, more masculine. There were small lines at the edges of his dark blue eyes and he had grown a short, neatly trimmed beard. No more youthful, clear-skinned beauty for him; this was a man now, and a man in regimentals. He wore the dress uniform of a captain in the Life Guards well; his red jacket was trimmed with expensive gold braid, and his tight white breeches showed that ten years in the saddle on the battlefields of Europe had kept his figure trim and well-muscled.

  "Captain Luttrell," Serena said stiffly. "You are back from the war, I see."

  There was a pause in the conversation, where she would have added "What a shame all of the French were such bad shots" if she had not been surrounded by a ballroom full of people, every single one of them aware of her history with Jonathan Luttrell and every single one of them trying to eavesdrop on her conversation.

  "I am," he agreed, "although if you had been on the French side, I rather think that I would be pushing up the daisies on some battlefield somewhere! You always were a better shot than I was when we played with your brother's bow and arrows as children."

  He was teasing her! Serena was flabbergasted. After what he
had done to her heart, and her reputation, and now he had the sheer gall, the naked effrontery to sail into her life ten years after ripping it into shreds – gah! Did the man have no idea what he had done? Did he not know what she had been forced to suffer for the last decade so that she could show her face at society gatherings like this one?

  "Serena," Bessie said quietly, putting her hand gently on her arm. "Serena, darling, perhaps it's best if you stepped away."

  Serena could barely hear her over the rushing of her blood in her ears and the pounding of her heart in her chest.

  Her silence seemed to be deafening him. He ploughed on with the conversation, looking a little desperate. Serena found it very hard to care about his feelings at this moment.

  "I am glad to see you again. I asked around, and they told me that you would be here. They say that you do much for charities," he went on.

  "Do they?" Serena said icily. "How kind. For several years after your departure that was not what town gossips said about me at all."

  That made him pause, and flush. He cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed.

  "So, your brother tells me that you're still not married," the idiot Luttrell said, perhaps choosing the most suicidally dangerous topic of conversation.

  Serena's fingers flexed inside her gloves, her palms suddenly itching with the desire to wrap them around Captain Nodcock's throat and squeeze as hard as she could.

  "Serena, come away," Bessie said more firmly, pulling on Serena's arm. She seemed to have turned into stone, however; Bessie, larger and stronger than Serena usually was, suddenly could not shift her.

  "Oh!" he said suddenly, looking appalled at himself. "That is to say, I mean, I did not intend to imply…"

  "Is that mulled wine?" Serena interrupted, indicating the glass in Captain The Honourable Jonathan Muttonhead's gloved hand. Her voice sounded strange to her, quite distant and far away. She knew what she was about to do; there was no way that she could stop herself from completing the actions. It was almost as if she had temporarily stepped outside of her body and was watching herself as if she were a spectator to this horrendous meeting instead of an unwilling participant.

  "Ah, yes, it is," he said, looking a little confused at this odd turn in the conversation.

  "May I have it? I seem to have spilled mine, as you can see," Serena went on, gracefully displaying her ruined dress.

  "Oh, of course," he said hurriedly, as if he suddenly remembered his good manners. "Please, Lady Serena, take my glass. I will get another," he said, turning to motion to a footman who was moving their way with a tray full of warm, aromatic cups of mulled wine.

  It was a shame that he turned his face away, Serena reflected later, as Bessie did her duty as best friend by yanking her hurriedly from the room and shoving her into their waiting carriage. She had been aiming for his face with the warm liquid, but instead it had splattered all over his red jacket and the ribbons on his medals.

  Of course, that was not all of the damage that had been done. She had lost control of the cup, which had slipped from her gloved fingers. That had caught him square between the eyes, which had caused him to stumble backwards in shock and collide with the footman. The army officer and servant went down with a crash onto the parquet floor, warm mulled wine drenching the captain's bright white breeches. They were pink breeches now, she thought happily, and probably smelled strongly of cloves.

  That had been the point where Bessie had dragged her from the room, but the damage to her newly rebuilt reputation was inevitable. Spinster daughters of earls did not go around lobbing glasses of hot beverages at decorated war heroes, no matter the provocation.

  The carriage ride home to Serena's parents' home on Bruton Street was silent; Bessie was too horrified at her friend's behaviour to say anything, and Serena was too busy mentally cataloguing every twist and turn of the day that led up to The Incident ten years ago.

  "I do not feel comfortable leaving you alone in that house," Bessie said eventually. "It isn't right, you being there when your family is in the country. Come and stay with Thomas and me. Our guest room is very comfortable."

  "It's only until tomorrow morning," Serena said absently. "I had to attend Lady Beresford's party; she's the chair of Ladies Charitable Institution, and I wanted to make a good impression. They've only just accepted me as a member."

  That was gone for good now, she thought gloomily. The Ladies Charitable Institution was a collection of very rich, very respectable ladies of the ton who saw it as their duty to help London's less fortunate – orphans, widows and war veterans who had returned from the battlefields of France and Spain missing limbs, or their sight. Gaining admittance to this institution had been incredibly difficult. Serena had been trying for some years. They held the highest regard for personal probity and morality, and the large blot on her reputation had proved a sticking point. However, a decade of living quietly and dedicating herself to many good causes had finally proved to Lady Beresford and the rest of the ladies that she was worthy of inclusion. She was penitent for her great sin, and there is nothing that a group of good Christian women liked better than having a sinner around to forgive, she discovered. Their acceptance would have spelled a proper return to Society for Serena after ten years of exclusion.

  Now, though, her chance of attending another meeting of the Institution, or any other gathering of polite society was lost. A lady may be able to reclaim her reputation once, with enough time and subservient grovelling to the right society matrons. She would not be able to do it twice.

  The carriage pulled up, and the footmen on the back jumped down to open the door and hand Serena out onto the street. She pulled her shawl more closely around her. London was experiencing a bitter cold snap, and many predicted a heavy snowfall. Large, pewter-grey clouds had been building ominously all day, although the streets were clear.

  "Send to me later if you change your mind," Bessie begged, looking at the large, dark house where Serena planned to stay the night. "You shouldn't be alone in that big house."

  "I'll be fine," Serena said, sighing at her friend's fussing. "I have the staff, and tomorrow I'm heading to Kent."

  "You'll be going nowhere if we get that snow," Bessie said, frowning at the clouds. "If there is a heavy snowfall promise me that you won't attempt to drive there, Serena, and that you will come to stay with Thomas and me. We are only five streets away, and can come and get you in an instant."

  "It will not snow that badly," Serena assured her friend. "But I promise," she said, holding up a hand to stop her anxious friend from interrupting her, "If the roads are very bad, I will come to stay in the comfort of your new home, Mrs. Monkton!"

  Bessie, still lost in the glow of the newly married, smiled fondly when she heard her new surname. Marriage had come late for Bessie, as the war with Napoleon had separated her from the only man she had ever loved. She had stubbornly refused to consider choosing another suitor, and they had married as soon as he had returned to England. Theirs was truly a love match, and Serena wished her friend joy – Bessie had been one of a very few friends that had stayed loyal through her time of disgrace and refused to give her the cut direct, like most of her acquaintance.

  Now her friend was prepared to extend that loyalty again. Serena sighed as she took the footman's hand and stepped down from the carriage. It would not be easy for Bessie to weather this storm with her. The kindest thing to do would be to tell Bessie to give her the cut direct, although she was sure that her friend would never do such a thing.

  The front door to her father's London townhouse opened to let her in. There was only a skeleton staff left there to see to its maintenance over the winter months when the family lived in the country. Serena and her mother had come up for the Little Season, the small round of social events put on by those families of the ton who resided in London throughout the year. It was their way of reintroducing Serena into Society functions before the Season started up in earnest sometime around March. Her mother had gone back to Ken
t to prepare for the Christmas party, leaving Serena to be chaperoned by Bessie. Now that she was nearly thirty Serena was not chaperoned as she had been the last time she was there, back in her first and only Season. She could attend events alone, if she wished, although she preferred Bessie's company.

  Most of the staff had returned to Kent with her mother, but there was still one footman, a maid, the cook and a scullery maid to wait on her until she travelled back to Kent the next day. The footman took her cloak and reticule, and nodded when she asked him to send her maid up to help her change. Serena ordered that a fire be lit in the library and a tray of sandwiches made up for her, and then she gave permission for the servants to go to their rest. They would stay up late down in the kitchens and make merry with the wine cellar, she knew, but she did not mind. They worked hard, and they deserved a good Christmas, even if she was destined never to have another one herself.

  The fire in the library had already been lit, as the staff knew that Serena favoured the room. It was stoked up and a plate of refreshments had been placed there by the time she made it back downstairs in her nightgown, wrapper and several shawls. It was not the done thing to wander the house in such a way, of course, but seeing as her parents would not let her out of their sight for the rest of her life, she decided to enjoy the novelty when she could.

  She was two sandwiches down and twenty pages into her favourite Sir Walter Scott novel when there was an almighty banging on the door. She waited to hear it open, but then she remembered that the only footman was downstairs, and would not have heard the noise.

  Sliding slightly in her bedsocks, she hurried over the black and white tiles of the hallway and unlocked the door, opening it half way. What she saw there shocked her, for in the lightly falling snow, stood a very stained, very angry looking Captain Luttrell.