Mistletoe Wishes

by Anna Campbell

  Simpson gave a dismissive grunt and returned to shelving books. “I’ve known Bess all her life. Only a fool would mistake her forthright manner for boldness. If that fool did mistake her, she has people who will fight to protect her.”

  “Including a father,” Rory said mildly. “Who surely should be saying these things to me if anyone must.”

  “Ah, the vicar.” Simpson bent to lift another armful of books from the box at his feet.

  After a while, Rory realized Simpson intended to say no more about the Reverend John Farrar. He was suddenly curious about the man he hoped would become his father-in-law. Perhaps he might attend church on Sunday after all. “Mr. Simpson, my intentions regarding Miss Farrar are none of your business.”

  “That’s a pity,” Simpson said placidly, continuing with his work.

  “Why?”

  “Because getting Bess to yourself might go more smoothly if you had some help.”

  Rory’s eyes narrowed on the man. “You don’t know anything about me—apart from the wild talk I’ve got wind of in the last few days.”

  “You’re the most exciting thing to happen in Penton Wyck since Daisy broke loose at the Christmas play five years ago and knocked the Bishop of Durham into the mud.”

  Despite himself, Rory laughed. “Well, that puts me in my place.”

  “We tend to take people as we find them here, my lord.” Bess had said something similar. The man kept placidly arranging the shelves. “Bess would make you a fine wife.”

  “Undoubtedly. But would I make her a fine husband?”

  Simpson fixed a critical eye on him. “That’s up to you. Don’t think you’ll sway her with your title and riches. It didn’t work for your brother. It won’t work for you.”

  Rory frowned, surprised and not altogether pleased, although it made sense. Had his brother kissed her? If he had, he’d taught her deuced little. “My brother wanted to marry Bess?”

  “He did. But she wouldn’t have him.”

  Now, that was interesting. “Most women would leap at a countess’s title.”

  Simpson shook his head in disappointment. “There you go, thinking her one of your flighty misses. Our Bess will only marry where her affections lie. And don’t imagine your brother was her only chance either.”

  “There were others?” Of course there were. Rory wasn’t the only man in England with eyes in his head.

  “Sir Gavin Spiers in the next valley, for one. And Henry Browne, your brother’s lawyer, wasn’t blind to what a grand wife she’d make either. And that’s only in the last year.”

  “Yet she’s unmarried.”

  “The vicar has a respectable fortune, although you wouldn’t know it to look at the poor muddleheaded loon. And Bess’s grandmother left her a goodly portion when she passed on three years ago. Our girl can afford to be choosy.”

  Rory wasn’t sure if this was good news or not. Damn it, Ned was right. He’d always trusted to his way with the ladies. Now when it mattered, he couldn’t help wondering what he had that Bess’s other suitors lacked.

  Still, faint heart never won fair lady. If he could sail into an ice storm in the Bering Strait, surely he could woo this redoubtable lassie. “So let me get this straight. You’re willing to promote my courtship as long as I behave myself?”

  The spark in Simpson’s eyes made him look younger—and mischievous. “You only need to behave yourself up to a point. A chap who’s been a pirate must know what lines to cross.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “This is where you two are hiding,” Bess said, bustling into the library with a broom clutched in one hand.

  Rory’s heart lurched at the sight of her. A strange sensation, not altogether welcome.

  “You’re halfway there already, my lord,” Simpson muttered for Rory’s ears alone.

  Halfway there? Rory had a sinking feeling that the wind had blown him way beyond his destination and now pushed him toward the next port.

  “We were afraid you meant to give us another job,” he said, ignoring the smug old man who thought he knew everything.

  “We need to go and work on the play.” Her gray dress was creased and grubby, and a streak of dirt adorned one high cheekbone. His breath hitched at how earthy and real she was. She was so alive that she made the air rustle. He wanted to catch her up against him and never let her go.

  He managed a theatrical sigh. She didn’t need to know how fatally she undermined his defenses. Or at least not yet. “Work seems to be your favorite word, Miss Farrar.”

  “You’ll be glad it is when the house is fit for you to live in.”

  Rory hoped he went through all this chaos so the house was fit for her to live in. He glanced out the window to see a trail of villagers, many of whom he now knew by name, heading down the drive. “Are they all in the play?”

  “Some of them. But you’re not abandoned altogether—you’ve now got two footmen and four maids to look after you. And a cook. Mrs. Hallam has taken over the kitchens—for which you’ll be mightily grateful, I’m sure.”

  “That’s a devil of a horde to serve one man.”

  “You’ll also need a butler and housekeeper, but those have to come from Newcastle or London.”

  “More blasted strangers tramping around my house?” He leaned one hip on the desk and folded his arms. This was the longest conversation they’d managed all day. Even knowing that Simpson weighed every word, Rory was in no hurry to end it.

  He really was in a bad way. If anyone had told him yesterday that he’d discuss servants just for the delight of a bonnie lassie’s company, he’d have called them a blockhead.

  Rory had a nasty suspicion the biggest blockhead of all was the new Earl of Channing.

  The bonnie lassie regarded him with disapproval. “Do you really have no care for your domestic arrangements, my lord?”

  As long as they included Bess Farrar, he cared greatly for his domestic arrangements.

  “Not much.” He stood to take the broom from her and prop it against the wall. “Good afternoon, Dr. Simpson. I’ve enjoyed making your acquaintance.”

  “Goodbye, Dr. Simpson. Thank you for helping,” Bess said.

  Simpson didn’t look up from the books, but from where he stood, Rory caught the man’s smile. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, my dear.”

  Rory as a rule didn’t appreciate people sticking their oar into his affairs, but the old man had been damned informative. And if local approval of his courtship meant assistance, he’d accept a certain amount of intervention.

  When he took Bess’s arm, physical awareness crackled through him. Did she share this volatile reaction? She’d given a tiny start at the contact.

  “They like you,” Bess said softly as he escorted her toward the great hall.

  A hint of clean sweat warmed her scent. The idea of her working to achieve his comfort aroused a primitive pleasure. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  Her laugh was wry. “I wasn’t sure they would. Or not so quickly.”

  His grip tightened as he halted. “What in Hades does that mean?”

  “After all the talk.”

  He really had to address the rumors of his nefarious past, but right now he had more important things to discover. “As long as you like me, I can live with a bit of unfriendliness from the neighbors.”

  The astonishment in her eyes soothed his brief uncertainty. He didn’t lack self-confidence, but events in the last twenty-four hours left him reeling. He’d known he’d marry—an unhappy, nomadic childhood and all those years at sea convinced him of the value of a stable family. But he’d always dismissed the idea of love at first sight as romantic fantasy.

  Was Ned right? Did he love Bess Farrar? Devil if he could tell. What he did know was that he’d seen her and known in his bones that she was the one for him.

  She frowned. “You can’t imagine I go around kissing men I don’t like.”

  “Even if there’s a donkey in the balance?”

 
Her blush charmed him. “Even for Daisy.”

  He ran his hand down her arm and squeezed her fingers. To his surprise, she returned the pressure. Briefly he considered kissing her again, but the house was infested with domestics.

  What he’d give for some privacy, but right now it wasn’t to be.

  Regretfully he released her when they stepped into the hall. Two young women were polishing the newly replaced furniture, while another poked some holly into a vase on the mantel above a blazing fire.

  “Good God,” he breathed, taking in the transformation of the formerly barren space. This last month, he and Ned had camped in the house. Now he surveyed the vast room lit through mullioned—clean—windows. For the first time, he thought of Penton Abbey as a home and not just a house. “You’ve performed miracles.”

  When he advanced further into the room, the maids curtsied and left. The first step in Simpson’s matchmaking?

  “Thank you. I hoped you’d be pleased.” The sincerity in Bess’s voice warmed his heart almost as much as holding her hand had. “Your brother would be so happy to see the Abbey coming back to life.”

  The brother who had proposed to her. The brother with whom he had more in common than he’d suspected, if they’d both been in thrall to the same woman.

  Heavy oak chests and chairs and tables ranged around the walls. Some must date from the days when the house had been an actual abbey. “This is exactly right.”

  Her smile was approving as she stepped forward to run her hand over the lovely carving on the mantel. The gesture’s inherent sensuality made him long to feel her touch on his naked skin.

  “I’m sure you’ll want something cozier for the family rooms, but at least the Abbey is no longer an empty shell.”

  He could feel the difference. It was nothing to do with furniture and everything to do with Bess’s vivid presence. “Thanks to you.”

  “I hated seeing the place so rundown,” she said. “This house has always been the center of village life.”

  “The longer I stay…” The longer he talked to Bess. “…the more I feel I know George. That’s another thing I have to thank you for. At this rate, you’ll earn rights to Daisy into the next century.”

  The pink in her cheeks deepened. “I…I prefer kisses to housework.”

  Shock and pleasure vied in his mind. “Are you asking me to kiss you again?”

  Her eyes flickered down, and she suddenly looked touchingly young. “Would I be so brazen?”

  Which wasn’t, he noted with satisfaction, a no. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said mildly, wanton heat swirling through his blood in a way that wasn’t mild at all.

  “Not here,” she said quickly, subjecting him to a flash of blue eyes before looking down again. Then she straightened and became the woman who had commandeered his house. “And not now. We need to collect Daisy and head for the village. We’ll be late as it is.”

  Not here meant somewhere else. And not now surely meant later.

  Rory could hardly wait.

  ***

  Rory’s questions about the vicar found answers on the way to the rehearsal. Penton Wyck included a neat high street with several well-stocked shops, a fine market cross, and rows of attractive half-timbered houses. For a man unused to much fuss for Christmas, a lovely touch was the greenery adorning the houses.

  The snow-covered thoroughfare led straight from the gates of his estate through the village to a complex of stone buildings: a Tudor church, he guessed built after the Abbey was requisitioned from the Benedictine monks; a neat rectory dating from last century; various outbuildings; and an impressive and ancient structure with towering doors several stories high.

  “It’s a tithe barn,” Bess said. “That’s where we hold our rehearsals.”

  “Magnificent,” Rory said, meaning it. The architecture was simple, but the sheer size of the barn took his breath away. He hauled a recalcitrant Daisy forward. The donkey had been playing up all the way from the Abbey. Only a couple of choruses of “Greensleeves” had kept her moving at all. “The monks must have been rich in their day.”

  She glanced at him. “They were. That’s why those rapacious Beatons were so determined to claim Penton Abbey when the monasteries were dissolved. That must be where you came by your piratical tendencies.”

  “It’s unfair to blame a man for his ancestors,” Rory protested, as a stooped, ramshackle figure in a faded black cassock emerged between the open doors. Only when he came nearer did Rory realize that the man was above average height. The barn’s monumental scale had dwarfed him.

  “Good afternoon, my dear. Out for a stroll?” Familiar blue eyes drifted over Rory with no hint of curiosity. Rory guessed the man’s identity before Bess spoke.

  “Good afternoon, Papa,” she said. “We’re practicing for the nativity play.”

  “Very good, very good.” He smiled vaguely and lifted a thin hand to scratch Daisy behind the ears.

  “Lord Channing, may I present my father, John Farrar, vicar of St. Martin’s?”

  “What’s that you say?” the old man asked. “Lord Channing? I thought I conducted a memorial service for him last summer. The choir sang the William Byrd anthem. Most touchingly, too. Dear me, I am becoming forgetful.”

  “The new Lord Channing, Papa. I told you that the earl’s brother had inherited. He’s a seafaring man. It took them several months to locate him.”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” the vicar said, and Rory would lay money that he paid no attention.

  At least she hadn’t told her father he was a pirate.

  “You have a lovely daughter, vicar,” Rory said, sweeping off his beaver hat and bowing, a complicated process when he had to make sure Daisy didn’t get away from him.

  “Lovely, yes.” The vicar smiled with beatific approval that could mean anything. Rory only realized the vicar had heard and understood when he went on. “Just like her mamma. Her mother was the prettiest girl I ever saw. She could have married anyone. I’m frightfully glad she married me.”

  “She always said you had the purest heart in the world, Papa,” Bess said, her voice warm with affection.

  “My lord, welcome to Penton Wyck.” The vicar bowed in Rory’s general direction. “I don’t suppose you have an interest in Byzantium? If you have, I’m writing a paper on Anna Porphyrogenita and the negotiations for her marriage to Vladimir the Great. I flatter myself I’ve found a few interesting nuggets in the chronicles that haven’t been given their full due.”

  “Not my area of expertise, sir, but I’ve been to Constantinople.”

  The cloudiness faded from the vicar’s eyes, and he settled an unexpectedly acute regard on Rory. “Have you indeed? I’d love to hear what you saw. I visited as a young man before I took holy orders.”

  “I’d be pleased to tell you about my time there,” Rory said.

  The vicar gestured to the door of the vicarage, only a few feet away . “No time like the present.”

  “Papa, people are waiting for us. Perhaps his lordship could call another day.”

  At the change of focus from Byzantium to Christmas celebrations, the vicar’s vagueness returned. “Another day. Yes, certainly. Look forward to that. Nativity play and all.” He shuffled off, muttering over his shoulder, “Do what you think best, Bess. You always make the right decision. Such a blessing to have you. Such a blessing.”

  “Good day, sir,” Rory said to the retreating back, but the vicar didn’t respond.

  Bess’s expression conveyed a tolerant fondness for her father’s eccentricity. “He only hears half of what you say. There’s nothing wrong with his mind—he was one of the cleverest graduates from his year at Oxford—but he has difficulty bending his attention to practical matters. He’s lost in his books most of the time.”

  “I’d be happy to talk to him about my travels.”

  “He’d like that. When he finds a subject interesting, he’s a good conversationalist.” She paused. “There just aren’t many subjects he finds interesti
ng.”

  Rory watched Bess’s father drift across the vicarage’s threshold and out of sight. So much became clear that had puzzled him. Dr. Simpson’s strange reaction when he’d asked about the vicar. Even more, Bess’s position of authority in the village. With the late earl an invalid and the vicar wandering among the ghosts of ancient empires, no wonder she’d found herself overseeing Penton Wyck’s welfare.

  “Daisy! Daisy!”

  Bess’s urgent shouts pierced his reflections. “Oh, hell.”

  The donkey had taken advantage of Rory’s distraction to stretch out her neck and attack the pretty Christmas frippery decorating the vicarage’s porch. What had once been an elaborate arrangement of holly and red and silver ribbons was now a ragged circlet fit for the bonfire.

  Chapter 5

  For Bess, the next four days rushed by in a flurry of activity—and a disappointing absence of kisses.

  Apart from the bailiff, the butler and the housekeeper, the Abbey was now staffed inside and out. Through all the bustle, Lord Channing proved himself a man of easy manners and quick humor. He’d even turned up at church on Sunday and managed to stay awake through her father’s deadly dull sermon about some abstruse point of translation from the Greek New Testament. The villagers already referred to the pirate lord of the manor with pride instead of suspicion.

  Bess was less pleased with the way the earl had so swiftly become vitally important to her. Her day only started when he welcomed her to Penton Abbey, and the glow dimmed when they parted in the evening. Even more frightening, she then spent each night longing to bask in his presence again.

  Nobody should become so…necessary so quickly. After all, what did she know of him?

  Except the hours working together taught her quite a lot about Lord Channing. Her early attraction soon warmed to respect and admiration, and something that might ripen into friendship.

  He wasn’t at all high in the instep. He was always ready to share a friendly word with the villagers. His brother had been a good man, but he’d lacked the earl’s ability to find common ground. Already Bess could tell that the new regime at Penton Abbey would be considerably more democratic than the previous one. If Channing carried his libertarian ideals down to London when he took his seat in the House of Lords, he’d horrify those reactionary old lizards in Parliament.