A Very Matchmaker Christmas

by Christi Caldwell

  With another smile for the peddler, she scooped up her just-purchased items and skipped over to Trent.

  “At last,” he drawled.

  “As I said, we shall have plenty of time for skating.” They stepped outside the tent and a wave of winter wind yanked at the fabric of their cloaks.

  He gave silent thanks for the restored camaraderie between them. The charged awareness hung heavy between them; that now unspoken of embrace, her words of love. But now, she was the young woman he’d spoken candidly to, and a woman who’d not simpered or preened for his affections. Rather, it had always been as though he, simply Lord Trent Ballantine, was enough and because of her, he’d come to believe that and know it as truth.

  Why can’t I just accept the love she offers…?

  “Trent, first—”

  “We skate.” Because the alternative was to accept the gift she offered and friendship to her brother be damned.

  She made a sound of protest but allowed him to pull her along to the makeshift ice-skating rink set up on the frozen Thames. Other skaters glided over the smooth surface with a graceful elegance. Winnie groaned and dug her heels in. “Must we?”

  “We must.”

  “Your fascination with skating is abnormal, Trent. It is unnatural for a person to move about on those vicious metal blades.”

  A ragtag young boy with a cap covering his blond curls rushed over. He eyed them a moment. “Ye needs skates for ye and yer lady, do ye?

  They spoke in unison.

  “We do.”

  “We do not.”

  Then the lad’s words registered. “She is not my lady.” Trent looked about at the other revelers, but where the ton pried and peered with their stares through all fashionable societal functions, when presented with a momentary diversion from the rigidity of their world, they only knew joy in the inanity.

  The boy doffed his hat and scratched at his head. “Skates fer yer sister, then.”

  “She is not my sister.”

  “I am not his sister.” Winnie glowered at Trent.

  And taking mercy on the young lad who appeared one more protestation away from finding out another pair to peddle his wares to, Trent held up two fingers. “Skates for me and the lady.”

  She groaned. “You are trying to humiliate me. That is all there is to it.”

  “Indeed,” he drawled and motioned her maid forward. The young woman rescued Winnie’s reticule and recently purchased wares from her mistress. “Now, sit.”

  “I am not a dog,” she muttered and with a beleaguered sigh, went and claimed a spot on the wooden chair set out beside the makeshift tent.

  The boy rushed over with the two requested pairs. Trent shifted his weight and balanced, putting on the first skate. He shifted and then put on the other.

  “It’s hardly fair that you should be so graceful on bladed feet.”

  His lips twitched. “They are skates.”

  “Blades, skates.” She slashed the air with her hand. Trent dropped to a knee at Winnie’s feet. “You just know I cannot concentrate when I’m on the ice,” she groused. “And you don’t wish me to speak any further about the kiss.” Her whispered words were for his ears alone.

  He strapped on the first blade. Except… Her sultry contralto wrapped about that single word and conjured all manner of delicious, scandalous pleasures he longed to know other than that kiss. Trent sank back on the heel of his skates and stared, fixed on her slender ankle as the wind whipped about them. And now he was lusting after her blasted ankle.

  “Ahem, yer lordship.” The boy cleared his throat and thrust the other blade at Trent.

  “Er, right.” Giving his head a clearing shake, he returned his attention to strapping the other blade upon her serviceable boot. Trent shoved to a standing position and held out a hand. Without hesitation, she slid her palm into his and allowed him to pull her to her feet. She gasped as her legs wobbled and turned in. “Wide arcs,” he murmured.

  “I daresay if years of lessons haven’t proven fruitful, this one shan’t either.”

  “Wide arcs,” he repeated.

  She sighed and held tight to his hands, trusting with her grip and her eyes, as he guided her forward to the other skaters. “Oh, please not the center?” she pleaded.

  “The perimeter then.”

  Trent skated backward, leading her by the palms out deeper onto the ice. Her gaze trained on his cravat, Winnie bit down on her lip, not relinquishing that plump flesh. Her furrowed brow was one of concentration. She lifted her gaze a moment, and then promptly stumbled as she scraped her blades awkwardly in a bid to stay upright. He promptly caught her to him and steadied her.

  They locked gazes and her expressive eyes were a window into the longing that matched his. “Do not let me fall,” she whispered.

  “I will never let you go,” he issued the age-old pledge he’d made her since they’d first skated on her family’s iced country lake.

  Her breath caught, and then she stumbled again. “Dratted skating,” she groaned softly.

  He shifted her closer and despite the chill of the air, heat ran through him at her body’s nearness. Any other time and any other place he’d care that he held his best friend’s sister in his arms and that Society watched on. He would have cared and flayed himself with guilt for the sinful desire to make her his in ways that moved beyond the physical and included binding himself to her in every way a man could to a woman.

  With his name.

  Now, he could no sooner set her away than he could lob off his own arm. Trent brushed his chin over the top of her bonnet, damning the garment that robbed him of the feel of her curls. “You are thinking too much on it.”

  “You’d have me think on something else then,” she whispered. “What should I think of?”

  Think of me. Think of my kiss and how you’d never allow some other undeserving bounder to claim that gift you gave me yesterday.

  She slipped and he easily caught her, using it as a shameful opportunity to hold her closer. “Perhaps a song.”

  They skated past the sea of twirling couples, those lucky, equally-matched lords and ladies who didn’t have to worry about an age-old friendship and a roguish reputation quashing all hope of more.

  Then she began to softly sing.

  “Hope ye, in heaven with God at last

  To find your blessed abode

  Still, as the ground of all your hopes,

  Behold the lamb of God…”

  They skated to the edge of the makeshift rink and stopped. Their chests rose and fell in a matched rhythm. The air was filled with the harsh, guttural draw of his breath, and her slightly whispery ones as they stirred puffs of white into the air.

  For years he’d lived his life as a carefree rogue. He’d relished that indolent life in which he fulfilled every negative expectation his father had of him. He was the spare to the heir and not much more. As such, he’d thrown himself into a disreputable lifestyle where he’d taken his pleasures with some of the most inventive courtesans and scandalous widows. Not one of them had offered more than a cold, emotionless physical joining. Their faces had all blended together, because there was an absence of joy, love, and warmth. Everything he dreamed of with Winnie, but could never have.

  “I love you,” she repeated, allowing him that gift once more.

  And the joy and masculine satisfaction that spiraled through him proved he was a bastard. He managed a slight nod. “I know.”

  “You have nothing else to say?” Her eyes flashed with such hurt and annoyance, Trent slid his gaze over her shoulder, off to the pond.

  He took in the laughing couples; the air echoing with the sounds of their mirth. How could those pairs be so casual, so engrossed in their own joys, when his world spun at this dizzying speed?

  “I leave in two days,” she continued quietly.

  He dragged a hand through his hair. “Would you have me say I would not see you happy? I want to know you are happy and cared for by a man who is worthy and
honorable.” A viselike pressure squeezed at his heart. And I will torture myself with that happiness each time you attend a ton function with some blasted paragon who is not a rogue, and who’d been born to title.

  Winnie pointedly searched his face. Did she sense the lie in his words? Or did she seek the veracity of his claims? “I have found that honorable man. A man who is more worthy. A man who’d not expect me to be just like every other proper English lady.”

  He squeezed his eyes tight, aching to reach out and grasp all she held outstretched for him in offering.

  “You are worthy, Trent. A title does not measure a man’s worth. It is his strength of honor and his ability to love and be loved in return.” She held his gaze. “And for your ill-opinion of yourself, you are the most honorable gentleman I know. For with your devotion to James, your sisters,” she looked at him pointedly, “me, you are greatly deserving of that love.”

  Trent forced his eyes open. “Your brother—”

  She squeezed his fingers, silencing him. “Wants me to be happy.”

  A humorless chuckle climbed his chest and slipped from his lips. “And do you dare think for a moment, he or your mama or papa will be happy with their daughter wedding an untitled rogue whom they’ve welcomed into their home for eleven years?”

  Winnie hesitated.

  “I thought not,” he said, flatly. In the distance, he caught her maid with a hand shielded over her eyes as she skimmed the lake for her mistress. “We should return,” he said reluctantly. For soon she’d be gone and if her family proved successful, she’d be wed in short order to one of those distinguished guests.

  “Do you know the truth?” The whispery softness of her tone pulled him to the moment.

  He gave a brusque shake of his head.

  “If I live to please my family, and you live to please my brother, and we lose out on the right to forever hold each other, where is the good in that?” She lifted her eyes to his and squarely held his gaze. “A duke or a prince could offer for me, and I’d still only ever want you.”

  Real and potent need sucked at him. Warring between the desire to be honorable and the want to take what she dangled before him, he slid his gaze away from hers. “I…” From across the frozen river, a young woman’s peeling laughter rang out, drawing his attention away. Possessed of crimson curls, the lady’s cheeks glowed with her happiness. But it was the blond-haired man who spun her in dizzying circles who froze him to the spot. For as they spun, their faces blurred and melded. In the red-haired woman he saw another—a woman he’d known almost eleven years who’d never cared he’d not been born to title. His gut tightened painfully as he thought about a grinning gentleman who’d someday hold her; a man who would have the right to laugh freely with her and steal more than these clandestine meetings.

  Trent forced his gaze away, back to Winnie. The solemn set to her oval-shaped face belied all he’d come to know of the joyous, spirited minx who’d been more friend than anything. And he proved himself as dishonorable as he’d always been. “I love you,” he whispered. Out of a sense of honor and loyalty to Munthorpe, he’d fought everything he felt for Winnie. Except, something mattered far more than her family’s expectations of who she’d wed and the title that gentleman would carry—she mattered. Nay, they mattered. “And I am a bastard because you can no doubt find any more worthy gentleman than myself, but I want you anyway.”

  Her breath caught and she fluttered a hand about her chest. Then her bow-shaped lips turned up in a smile. “I love—oomph!” Winnie’s skates skidded out from under her and in a bid to keep upright, she grabbed his hand and dragged him down.

  They fell in a tangle of cloaks and limbs. Her back collided with the ice, and he braced himself hard on his elbows. Pain radiated up his arms as he made contact with the frozen surface. Winnie winced and he ran a searching gaze over her person. “Are you all right?” Concern roughened his tone.

  Winnie angled her head back and held his stare. “I have never been better.”

  At her ever widening grin, a lightness filled his chest. He but needed James’ and the earl and countess’ blessings. How very difficult could that be?

  He swallowed a sigh. Bloody hell.

  Chapter Six

  Having ensconced himself in the billiards room with Munthorpe, Trent had given more of his attention to the red velvet curtains than the actual game he now played with the other man.

  “It is your shot, Ballantine.” Munthorpe took a long swallow of his brandy and with the nearly-empty glass, gestured to the table. “And yet, you’re woolgathering.” He looked at him with amusement in his eyes. “Again.” Winnie’s eyes.

  The eyes of the woman he’d come here to state his intentions for. He yanked at his too-tight cravat, and then with jerky movements returned his attention to the table. “I’m hardly woolgathering.” Young, unmarried debutantes woolgathered. Men…well, they did not. Not and escape ribbing at a close friend’s expense, anyway.

  A laugh burst from Munthorpe’s throat as he perched his hip on the edge of the table. “I’ve never known you to be defensive, chap.” He winged an eyebrow upward. “Or a woolgatherer.”

  Trent positioned himself across from that familiar hiding place Winnie had long occupied through the years and squinting, he made a show of studying his shot. He’d sworn the red velvet shifted just then, and yet, he’d spent the better part of the hour attending that very curtain and they’d remained remarkably unmoved when all other times they swayed. He slid his cue effortlessly forward and the crack of the balls echoed through the room as his shot then sailed smoothly into the opposite pocket, reaching the set point first, and effectively ending their game.

  “I will never understand your recent preference to visit my damn billiards room instead of our clubs.”

  Trent choked on his swallow. He’d come here with a specific intention; and that intention hadn’t been a mindless game of billiards. Not this day. Nay, not even every other day. It had always been about her. Being here and near, wherever she was. “There is something I would speak with you on,” he said quietly. Sweat dampened his palms. And now the other man would know just what had brought him to this very room all these years.

  Munthorpe started for the entrance of the room. “Oh?” The viscount didn’t break his stride. Would the other man adopt such a bored tone when he discovered what brought Trent here this day? His friend paused and cast a glance back.

  Disquiet ran through him as all the old doubts, and his own failings, crept forward. Restlessly, Trent set his cue on the edge of the table alongside Munthorpe’s untouched glass.

  James doubled back around. The other man’s patent good-humored grin now gone, he asked; “What is it?”

  Trent swiped a hand through his hair. “There is…” After all, was there truly a right way to tell one’s best friend that he’d come to see his sister as a woman he wanted in his bed and in his home?

  Munthorpe prodded him with his eyes.

  “There is a woman,” he blurted, eager to be out with it.

  Silence fell, punctuated by the tick-tock of the long-case clock and the occasional crackle of the blazing fireplace hearth.

  His friend angled his head. “A woman?” Then with a grin he retrieved his brandy. “There are lots of women where you’re concerned, Ballantine.” He followed that up with a chuckle.

  Guilt stabbed at him as all the reservations that had silenced him these two years rushed to the surface. He’d spent too much time proving himself worthless to now stand before this man and present himself as anything but an indolent, shiftless rogue. Yet… He slid his gaze over to the familiar hiding spot no doubt occupied even now by Winnie. “There is a lady,” he quietly amended. The viscount paused, his glass midway to his mouth. “There is a young lady who has completely ensnared me.”

  “A young lady?” James scoffed. “Surely not. You don’t care about any woman beyond your own pleasures.” They were alike in that regard. Or they had been for so long…

 
The piercing scrutiny filled him with restlessness, and yet the other man must have seen something in his expression for he widened his eyes. “By God, you do care for a lady, then.” He spoke more to himself. “Of course. It makes sense. Your absence at the clubs, your lack of mistress.” Then as though he found Trent’s revelation one of extreme hilarity, he tossed back his head. The room echoed with his laughter. “Oh, this is r-rich,” he managed to squeeze out between his mirth.

  That amusement grated on Trent’s every last nerve.

  “The most notorious rogue has fallen.”

  The curtains rustled and Trent cursed. Balling his hands tight to keep from walloping the other man and silencing his bloody loose tongue, he gritted out. “I am hardly the most notorious rogue.”

  Munthorpe regained control of his amusement and his laughter dissolved into a low chuckle. “You were, though. They say everyone eventually falls.” The other man shuddered. “I do not envy you, my friend.” He had no idea. His friend grimaced and then gave him a pitying look. “Yours will not be an easy task bringing the lady’s family around to your suit.” He inclined his head. “Not due to your lack of title, of course,” he said on a rush. “But rather your reputation.”

  It never mattered to me…Trent marched to the window, and then he silently cursed his inadvertent placement beside Winnie’s hiding place. Clasping his hands at his back, he strolled to the hearth. He stared into the dancing crimson flames, that deep hue putting him in mind of the very woman he sought to make his. Tell him the rest, man. Tell him…

  “Come, then. We shall celebrate your newfound love.” James’ lip peeled back in a mocking grin, indicating just what the other man thought of that sentiment. “Over drinks at White’s.”

  Tell him… tell him… He mustered a smile. “Go without me. I am afraid I have plans to see the lady.” Which was, in actuality, the truth.

  “You’re certain?” Munthorpe hesitated at the door.