Table of Contents
The Earl’s Christmas Consultant
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Earl’s Christmas Consultant
Flora is happily employed as a maid. She certainly has no plans to advertise her services as a Christmas consultant. Yet when a handsome earl discovers she is not who she says she is, Flora needs a new position quickly.
Christmas has never been Lord McIntyre’s favorite season, but after his sister’s engagement is broken, the earl vows to host a magnificent ball so she can find a husband. The only problem? His lack of knowledge about the holiday. After his secretary spots an advertisement for a Christmas consultant, he hires her.
The earl is shocked when his friend’s maid appears at his manor house in Scotland. Will he let her create a Christmas to remember? Can Flora escape her past? And what happens when Flora must leave?
CHAPTER ONE
The drawing room was empty, the townhouse quiet, but Flora tiptoed over dark wooden floorboards and sumptuous Persian rugs. She did not linger at the Duke of Vernon’s collection of glistening china or at the immaculate portraits of people who would be horrified to discover her in the duke’s parlor. The ebony and ivory keys of the piano gleamed enticingly from one corner of the room, but Fiona settled instead in an armchair, conscious the velvet upholstery and gilded fluting were intended for aristocrats and not servants.
Flora removed a book she’d hidden with her sewing. Her heart thrummed a nervous rhythm, and she fought her inclination to flee. Flora favored working in the quiet of her bedroom, but that would leave her subject to discovery. Servant quarters offered little privacy. The other servants would gossip if they read the title of her book, and that was an impossibility.
The book’s scarlet binding glared at her. La Grammaire Française. Flora opened it and forced herself to study the rows of nouns and verbs.
If only she’d devoted time to French when she was younger.
If only she hadn’t convinced her father to let her pursue Italian.
If only she hadn’t needed to acquire a new identity, and if only she hadn’t chosen to pretend to be a French maid.
The only thing anyone knew about her was that she was French. How could she admit her lie?
Feigning being French had seemed clever. What better way to explain a lack of references than to declare herself a refugee? And what better way to ensure her identity remain secret than to give herself a new name and a new past?
Now Flora was no longer a maid in a vicarage in Norfolk, but a lady’s maid to a duchess in the very capital in which her father had died. Even worse, the Duchess of Vernon intended to move to Guernsey with her husband, and she’d hinted frequently at the large number of French speakers on the island.
No, only one solution existed: Flora had to learn French. She firmed her gaze. Je suis, tu es, il est...
The words blurred together. Most students didn’t commence studying after a full day of service, and Flora swallowed back a yawn. Unfortunately no subject approached music in magnificence, and no subject surpassed French in dullness. Some people lauded the language, expressing a strange enthusiasm for its nasal sounds, but some people also had supported Bonaparte. She concentrated on the words. Nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont...
Music flowed through her, as if inspired by the rhythm of the words. Flora’s fingers itched, and she resisted the urge to jot down notes to the melody. That life was over.
She had a new life, one that involved cleaning and sewing and French grammar books. Her life might be unideal, but at least she was alive. There were worse things than French verbs.
A creak sounded, and she stiffened. The softness of the armchair, expertly created by some artisan, did not lessen her sudden discomfort.
Please let no one find me.
Footsteps approached, and before Flora could decide whether she should pretend to be cleaning, even though a lady’s maid shouldn’t be in this room, a shadow fell over her. Fear prickled her spine, and she braced herself for a chiding from the butler or housekeeper.
Slowly she lifted her gaze.
No scowling upper servant stood before her.
Instead a man attired in gentlemen’s clothes arched an eyebrow.
He was tall and imposing and exuded aristocratic charm. Flora’s stomach tumbled downward.
The quality of his clothes was impeccable. Flora knew. She’d become an expert in attire. She knew all about mending and sewing and cutting patterns. She knew which fabric lasted, and which didn’t.
Flora slammed her book shut. She rose hastily, and the book clattered to the floor with a thud worthy of the most horrendous compilation of subjunctive verbs, lengthy lists of nouns, and headache-inducing grammatical explanations.
“La Grammaire Française,” the man read, and his lips curled into a smirk and amusement danced in his dark eyes. “I could have sworn the Duchess of Vernon mentioned you were French.”
Fiddle-faddle.
Out of all the people to see her reading, it had to be the Earl of McIntyre, the Duke of Vernon’s best friend.
If only he does not find my features familiar.
Flora forced her eyelashes down, resisting the urge to peer at him. He was taller than she remembered, and his figure seemed composed of muscular planes. His voice had deepened, though his particular shade of caramel colored hair and the exact shade of brown in his eyes remained the same.
He’d always been handsome, and familiar butterflies settled into her chest, even though the last time butterflies had been there, they’d been in Scotland and she’d been seven.
She stiffened, but when she dared glance at him again, he continued to survey her with mild amusement.
“You’re the first French maid I know who reads French grammar books, lassie,” the man said.
“It eez my half day,” Flora said hastily, forcing herself to use the French accent she’d adopted when she’d first arrived at the Butterworth vicarage. “I can read anything I like. I wanted to see how they teach French to ze English.”
“Ze English?” The earl’s eyes twinkled. The man’s presence was unnerving.
Confessing was impossible. She rather wished maids were given fans, and not only for their cooling purposes, even though heat seemed to surge within her, and their cooling purposes would be welcome. Having an object with which to hide one’s face at sudden notice would be magnificent. Instead, she grabbed her feather duster and angled it to obscure her face. “You are most charming, my lord.”
He lifted his eyebrows, and the earl opened the grammar book. “Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, on est, Nous...” He paused. “Tell me, what comes after?”
“Sommes,” she said hastily. “Naturellment.”
He put the book down. Thankfully he stopped smirking. “That’s correct.”
“Of course it is,” she said, and her heart sang.
“In my experience the French refrain from pronouncing the ‘s’ at the end. And the word does not contai
n two syllables.”
“Oh.” The joy that cascaded through her promptly halted, as if she were a musician who’d played the wrong note and was now subjected to a conductor’s glare.
Lord McIntyre’s glare seemed sufficiently intimidating.
Flora swallowed hard. She had to fix this. If he mentioned this to the duke... “That’s just the—er—accent of my people, monsieur. We were not part of ze high society,” she said. “That’s why you must be unfamiliar with it.” She forced herself to laugh. “I am flattered I have adjusted so well to this country zat you think me English. I am very proud. You should have seen me when I first arrived.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “You’re not French.”
The words jolted her from her carefully constructed world. She’d heard the words before, but only uttered in nightmares. Her throat dried and she felt faint, as if she were once again witnessing a knife plunging into flesh.
Flora had never considered going on stage, but she’d been pretending to be French for years. No one had ever doubted her before.
“You’re not who you say you are,” Lord McIntyre said.
“N-nonsense,” Flora stammered. She shifted her legs. The Persian carpet might be more luxurious than anything in the servant’s quarters, and it might even be more luxurious than anything in the former house in which she’d worked, but now it brought her no comfort.
“You’re pretending.” The earl fixed his eyes on her, and Flora felt at risk of being mesmerized. Fiddle-faddle. She forced her gaze away quickly, conscious her cheeks seemed to be on fire. The man must have been cavorting with Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire, himself.
Or Hades.
Perhaps the earl had not been referring solely to the god of the underworld when he’d named his gaming hell Hades’ Lair. Perhaps he’d been referring to himself.
Lord McIntyre knew.
Her heart adopted a faster rhythm.
She only had to wait until a sufficiently dull break in a conversation, someone else’s casual reference to servants, or perhaps to someone venturing onto the subject of deception, for the earl to mention that Flora was not really French and for her whole world to be shattered.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
She was not the only maid here pretending to be French. Everyone knew women paid French servants more than English ones. French maids were bestowed with all the glamor of Paris, even if they came from remote villages in Brittany.
Flora raised her chin and widened her stance, but the movements did not change the fact that perhaps her falsehood would matter, and the new duchess or her husband would dismiss her.
The earl still held the despised French grammar book in his hands.
“The Duke of Vernon has no fondness for liars.” Lord McIntyre’s mouth twisted, and Flora was reminded of rumors that Lord McIntyre’s father had been a poor guardian to the duke. For a moment the earl was a little boy again, raised beside his father’s more lauded charges.
It didn’t matter. Flora and the earl hadn’t been close as children, and they certainly wouldn’t be now. He hadn’t even recognized her.
“Is there something I can help you with?” Flora asked, retaining her French accent.
The earl flushed, perhaps remembering he had no place in the duke’s parlor either. “I’ll leave. I left an invitation to a Christmas ball on the silver platter by the door.”
“Very well, my lord.” Flora curtsied.
The earl didn’t bother to smile, and there was no kindness in his eyes. He turned and exited the room. The action should have been calming, but her heart continued to race even after the door to the parlor closed, and it continued to race even after the main door closed.
CHAPTER TWO
Wolfe scowled and left Callum’s townhome. Since when did he make a habit of entering into conversations with maids? Especially misbehaved ones? It was his own fault for entering Callum’s home. At one point he’d spent so much time there his presence in the home had been normal, but that had changed once Callum married Miss Charlotte Butterworth, when everyone knew Callum should have made Wolfe’s sister his bride.
Wolfe trudged from the duke’s townhome on Grosvenor Square toward Hades’ Lair. He shouldn’t have bothered to hand deliver the invitation to Callum. The post was able to move from one section of Mayfair to the other, and early November was not a pleasant time for a walk. The sky had remained a consistent gray this entire year, but the wind blustered with a far greater force, as if until now it had only been practicing. He clutched the brim of his beaver hat, lest it decide to investigate its capabilities for flight.
The irony of the duke’s perpetual absence was not lost on Wolfe. For years he’d urged Callum to relax, to indulge in vices, and finally, he had done so spectacularly: breaking off his betrothal with Wolfe’s sister and eloping with one of this season’s most confirmed bluestockings. Now he was gallivanting about the capital to attend music performances with his new wife, even though Callum had never shown any interest in music.
Not like Wolfe. Wolfe adored music. Music had been his salvation once, and now it was his solace.
Wolfe was conscious of approving glances from people as he strolled through Mayfair toward Hades’ Lair. His attire was impeccable—his valet did a splendid job of maintaining his clothes, despite Wolfe’s habit of wandering through London rather than taking a carriage. He sighed, as if exhaling air might also dispel his boredom.
No.
He was still bored.
Finally he ascended the steps to the grand double doors of Hades’ Lair. Gargoyles guised as devils grinned at him from their perch on the stone portico. Perhaps he might never be a research scientist like Lord Somerville or Lord Bowen, but it didn’t matter. His gaming hell brought him joy, no matter how often people said it was nothing to be proud of. After all, he employed people. He made people happy. Was it really such a dreadful occupation?
The door opened.
“Good evening, my lord.”
“Good evening, Jonas,” he said, addressing the doorman whose skill at oriental fighting methods belied his pleasant appearance.
Other gaming hells might employ burly guards whose appearance was designed to intimidate, but Wolfe had long learned that intimidating his guests was not conducive to encouraging them to relax sufficiently so that they wagered vast sums. This might be a gaming hell, but he wanted it to serve as his guests’ second home. In a world where men married women for mere practicality, second homes were important.
Perhaps Father would have behaved better if he hadn’t been living in a remote manor home with a woman to whom he was indifferent, where the only thing he could do was to elevate his status, even by abominable means.
“It’s a full crowd tonight,” Jonas said.
“Splendid,” Wolfe said.
At one point Jonas’s words would have brought him pleasure, but Hades’ Lair’s success was consistent. Wolfe had known many men would appreciate a haven of vice to visit, and Wolfe had been eager to capitalize on their instinct.
Gambling was not an occupation for the thoughtful. Thought had very little to do with gambling, no matter how much some men might pride themselves on their supposed skills at vingt-et-un or whist. The lack of contemplation had always suited Wolfe before. He’d been in the army. He’d killed for years, and contemplation was not something which brought him joy. Quiet was more likely to instill the images of death in his mind.
Hades’ Lair was a place where men came to be the worst versions of themselves, freed from the observations of their wives, daughters, and in many cases, mistresses. Not all men wanted to discuss politics in the places their parents and grandparents had frequented. Some wanted to gamble and feel the actions of a night still mattered.
“Your sister is in your office,” Jonas said.
“Devil it.” Wolfe swept through the gaming hell.
He marched past gentlemen in red armchairs drinking brandy and puffing on cigars as they played car
ds. The guests were filled with that peculiar confidence of people lauded as youths as the most beloved boys of Eton and Harrow, but who found themselves old and wizened, their silvery manes an imperfect change from the blond tousled curls they’d had when they still wore skeleton and sailor suits.
Music played, its tempo always upbeat, so as to instill exuberance in these men. Energy pulsed unceasingly through Hades’ Lair. Festivity was not something relegated to people under thirty-five, and he was happy to create a haven for his guests.
Normally Wolfe enjoyed striding through the gaming hell, but normally his sister was not here. He quickened his steps.
“It’s the earl,” Sir Seymour shouted merrily from his customary seat, and a few men raised their crystal tumblers.
He murmured a greeting and hurried past. At least the men did not mind he was gaining money from them. Naturally the promises of more wealth thrust over his guests, but since Wolfe also intended to have money, ultimately those promises would be unfulfilled for most. At least he wanted to give them good drink and music. He did that more successfully than other clubs which seemed to prize quiet as a virtue, when it was companionship people craved.
Wolfe knew. He’d grown up in an isolated area, a home filled with three other children, all slightly younger than he was, but all more gifted. The realization he could play music had transformed his life and given him the confidence to throw himself in various forms of studies. The fact he could now look over ledgers and manage a large staff were things that brought him constant joy.
Wolfe entered a corridor and then opened the door to his office.
His sister reclined in the leather chair behind his desk. Her long legs were stretched nonchalantly over it, and her immaculately coiffed hair swayed as she turned her head toward him.
“What did I tell you about visiting Hades’ Lair?” Wolfe demanded.
Isla rolled her eyes and set her legs onto the floor. “You never used to mind.”
“I was lax in my responsibilities as an older brother. No more.”
“You’re one year older than I am,” Isla said. “And I was always taller until you were fourteen.”
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