Holly and Hopeful Hearts

by Caroline Warfield

  The Bluestocking and the Barbarian

  by Jude Knight

  James must marry to please his grandfather, the duke, and to win social acceptance for himself and his father’s other foreign-born children. But only Lady Sophia Belvoir makes his heart sing, and to win her, he must invite himself to spend Christmas at the home of his father’s greatest enemy. Sophia keeps secret her tendre for James, Lord Elfingham. After all, the whole of Society knows he is pursuing the younger Belvoir sister, not the older one left on the shelf after two failed betrothals.

  Chapter 1

  A country road in Oxfordshire

  April 1812

  They heard the two curricles before they saw them, the galloping hooves, the cacophony of harness and bounding wheels, the drivers shouting encouragement to their teams and insults to one another.

  The Earl of Sutton turned his own horse to the shoulder of the road and the rest of the party followed his lead. As first one racing carriage and then the other careened by, James Winderfield murmured soothingly to his horse. “Stand, Seistan. Stand still, my prince.”

  Seistan obeyed, only a stamp of the hind foot and muscles so tense he quivered displaying his eagerness to pursue the presumptuous British steeds and feed them his dust.

  From their position at the top of what these English laughably called a hill, James could see the long curve of the road switching back at the junction with the road north and descending further until it passed through the village directly below them.

  One of the fool drivers was trying to pass, standing at the reins—legs broadly astride. James hoped no hapless farmer tried to exit a gate in their path.

  Seistan clearly decided that the idiots were beneath his contempt, for he relaxed as James continued to murmur to him. “You magnificent fellow. You have left us some foals, have you not, my beauty? You and Xander, there?”

  The earl heard his horse’s name and flashed his son a grin. “A good crop of foals, if their handlers are right. And honors evenly divided between Seistan and Xander. Except for the stolen mares.” He laughed, then, and James laughed with him.

  Once the herd recovered from the long sea voyage, many of the mares had come into season. Not satisfied with his allotment, Seistan had leapt several of the fences on the land they had rented near Portsmouth, and covered two mares belonging to other gentlemen. And most indignant their owners had been.

  “They did not fully understand the honor Seistan had done them, Father,” James said. Which was putting it mildly. When James arrived, they had been demanding that the owner of the boarding stable shoot the stallion for his trespass.

  The earl laughed again. “I wish I had been there to hear you explain it, my son.”

  A thirty-minute demonstration of Seistan’s skills as a hunter, a racer, and a war horse had been more convincing than any words of James’s, and a reminder of the famous oriental stallions who founded the lines of English thoroughbreds did the rest. In the end, he almost thought they would pay him the stud fee he had offered to magnanimously cut by half.

  But he waived any fee at all, and they parted friends. Now two noblemen looked forward to the birth of their half-Turkmene foals, while James had delivered the herd to his father’s property in Oxfordshire and was now riding back to London to be put to stud himself.

  “Nothing can be done about his mother, Sutton,” his grandfather, the Duke of Winshire, had grumbled, “but marry him to a girl from a good English family, and people will forget he is part cloth-head.”

  The dust had settled. The earl gave the signal to move on, and his mount Xander took the lead back onto the road. James lingered a moment more, brooding on the coming Season, when he would be put through his paces before the maidens of the ton and their guardians. One viscount. Young, healthy, and well-travelled. Rich and titled. Available to any bride prepared to overlook foreign blood for the chance of one day being Duchess of Winshire.

  Where was the love the traveling musicians spoke of? At least his cousins had adamantly turned him down. Not that he had anything against the twin daughters of the uncle whose inconvenient death had made his father heir and him next in line. But they did not make his heart sing.

  The racing curricles had negotiated the bend without disaster and were now hurtling toward the village. Long habit had James studying the path, looking to make sure the villagers were safely out of the way, and an instant later, he put Seistan at the slope.

  It was steep, but nothing to the mountains they had lived in all their lives, he and his horse, and Seistan was as sure-footed as any goat. Straight down by the shortest route they hurtled, for in the path of the thoughtless and their carriages was a child—a boy, by the trousers—who had just escaped through a gate from the village’s one large house, tripped as he crossed the road, and now lay still.

  It would be close. As he cleared one stone fence and then another, he could see the child beginning to sit up, shaking his head. Just winded then, and easier to reach than lying flat, thank all the angels and saints.

  Out of sight for a moment as he rounded a cottage, he could hear the carriages drawing closer. Had the child recovered enough to run? No. He was still sitting in the road, mouth open, white-faced, looking as his doom approached. What kind of selfish madmen raced breast to breast, wheel to wheel, into a village?

  With hand, body and voice, James set Seistan at the child and dropped off the saddle, trusting to the horse to sweep past in the right place for James to hoist the child out of harm’s way.

  One mighty heave, and they were back in the saddle. James’ shoulders would feel the weight of the boy for days, but Seistan had continued across the road, so close to the racers that James could feel the wind of their passing.

  They didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow. In moments, they were gone.

  The boy shaking in his arms, James turned Seistan with his knees, and walked the horse back to the gates of the big house. A crowd of women waited for them, but only one came forward as he dismounted.

  “How can we ever thank you enough, sir?” She took the child from him, and handed him off to be scolded and hugged and wept over by a bevy of other females.

  The woman lingered, and James too. He could hear his father and the others riding toward them, but he couldn’t take his eyes off hers. He was drowning in a pool of blue-gray. Did she feel it too? The Greeks said that true lovers had one soul, split at birth and placed in two bodies. He had thought it a nice conceit… until now.

  “James.” His father’s voice broke him out of his trance. “James, your grandfather expects us in London.” The earl lifted his top hat with courtly grace to the woman, and rode on, certain that James would follow. Not the woman; the lady, as her voice and clothes proclaimed, though James had not noticed until now.

  A lady, and by the rules of this Society, one to whom he had not been introduced. He took off his telpek, the large shaggy sheepskin hat.

  “My lady, I am Elfingham. May I have the honor of knowing whom I have served this day?”

  She seemed as dazed as he, which soothed him a little, and she stuttered slightly as she gave him her name. “L-L-Lady Sophia. Belvoir.” Unmarried, he hoped. For most married ladies were known by their husband’s name or title. And a lady. He beamed at her as he remounted. He had a name. He would be able to find her.

  “Thank you, sir. Lord Elfingham.”

  “My lady,” James told her, “I am yours to command.”

  Chapter 2

  Hollystone Hall, Buckinghamshire

  24th December 1812

  Sophia Belvoir woke, heart pounding, from the same dream that had haunted her for months.

  Nightmare, rather, except for how it ended. She was sitting frozen in the middle of a dusty village street, with her death bearing down on her.

  But before she was trampled under eight sets of hooves and two sets of carriage wheels, a golden horse came racing from behind a cottage, and suddenly, she was safe in the arms of a barbarian prince. He was splendid in a r
ichly embroidered red robe over white trousers and shirt, with a towering hat of black sheepskin that made him seem enormous. And the dream ended when he kissed her.

  She shook her head to dislodge him. “Stay out of my dreams,” she told him.

  At least he would not follow her here in person. The house belonged to the Duke of Haverford, and no Winderfield would cross its threshold.

  Follow her! Her short laugh at her own expense held no humor. Follow Felicity, rather. When she met him in that village eight months ago, when she encountered him again a week later in a London ballroom, she had hoped he felt the same connection as she did.

  But, of course, that was before he met Felicity.

  Her younger sister was everything Sophia was not. Felicity’s hair was fair; Sophia’s was brown. Felicity had blue eyes; Sophia’s were a dull gray. Felicity had a classic peaches and cream complexion; Sophia’s was… well, all right, not beige, exactly. But certainly not as pretty than Felicity’s.

  Added to that, Felicity was dainty; Sophia was tall. Felicity was fashionably slim where Sophia was altogether rounder, and had to insist on her bodices being cut a little higher than the current mode lest her partners spend an entire dance staring at her breasts.

  Of course Lord Elfingham was interested in Felicity, though he made no more of Felicity than of Sophia, nor of any other single lady. As was entirely proper, of course. Lord Elfingham behaved in every way like an English gentleman, even after the Duke of Haverford sponsored a claim in the House of Lords that, if proven, would declare Lord Sutton’s marriage invalid and Lord Elfingham not a viscount and in a direct line to inherit a dukedom, but merely the base-born son of Sutton’s Persian mistress.

  The success or failure of the challenge remained to be seen. Meanwhile, the Winderfields behaved as if it, and the Haverfords, did not exist.

  It took Sophia a while to notice that Lord Elfingham appeared at the same entertainments as the Belvoir sisters. Not just occasionally, but all the time, until she fell into the habit of looking for him wherever they went.

  If there were dancing, he always solicited two dances from each of them. He sat near them at musical entertainments, fetched them supper at soirees, walked his beautiful horse next to their carriage in the park, and contrived to stroll with them at picnics.

  And then some busybody pointed it out to her brother, the Earl of Hythe, who made a fuss. “I will not have that baseborn mustee hanging after Felicity!” Hythe declared. “You must put a stop to it, Sophia.”

  Quite what Sophia was to put a stop to, when Elfingham’s behavior had been beyond reproach, Hythe did not say, but Sophia was confident the young viscount’s pursuit would end with the Season.

  Far from it. Viscount Elfingham had been at Bath where she and Felicity had spent eight weeks with an aunt, and also in London later in the autumn when they went up for a bit of shopping.

  But not here in Hollystone Hall. Here, at least, she could go about her day without seeing that dark slender face, all sharp lines, and those piercing eyes. Rather like a hawk, sailing in an updraft over the arid mountains he described to her one afternoon at a garden party, his melodious voice painting images in her mind of the wild rugged land and its colorful people. No. She would not see him here, except in her dreams.

  Experience told her there was no use expecting to sleep again, though it was still so early that the maid had not yet made up the fire.

  But she could stay snug in her bed and still make some notes about the day’s activities. Today, she and her two friends and co-workers would be leading the decorating of the house for Christmastide. The kissing boughs were made, and the swags. The Yule log had been selected. It remained only to enlist the rest of the guests in the fun.

  They worked well together, Sophia Belvoir, Grace, Lady de Courtenay, and Cedrica Grenford. Perhaps they should set up a service for hostesses, like Aunt Eleanor, who wanted a magnificent event and someone else to organize it.

  Sophia smiled at the conceit. Hythe would be outraged. She might suggest it to him just to see his reaction.

  She lit a candle, picked up the slate and chalk from her bedside table, and commanded her mind to stop thinking about Lord Elfingham. Which was, as she knew it would be, a complete waste of time.

  Chapter 3

  “Limp,” James said to Seistan. “Limp, my lovely, my treasure, my Jewel of the Mountains.”

  The horse obeyed his master’s hand signals and limped heavily as they turned through the gates of the manor, beginning the long trek along the dyke that led between extensive water gardens to where Lady Sophia Belvoir was attending a house party.

  In his mind, James was measuring his reasons for being here against his reasons for staying away.

  His father had commanded him to marry before his grandfather the duke died of the disease that consumed him, and Lady Sophia was the other half of his soul. Every meeting since the first had merely confirmed the connection in his mind. Was it only his desire that had him believing she felt it, too?

  On the other hand, Lady Sophia’s brother, Lord Hythe, had threatened to have him beaten like a dog if he approached either of the Belvoir ladies. His father’s greatest enemy owned the house he approached. The party would be full of aristocrats and their hangers on, ignoring him until they found out whether he was a future duke or merely the half-breed by-blow of one.

  And Lady Sophia had told him that neither she nor her sister Felicity wished for his company.

  Her eyes spoke a different message, though, finding him as soon as he entered a room and following him until he left, blue-gray eyes that veiled themselves, when he caught them watching, in the longest soft brown lashes he had ever seen. She was not, as these English measured things, a beauty: her arched nose and firm chin too definite for their pale standards, her frame too long and too robust. They preferred dolls, like her sister, and Sophia was no doll.

  The family needed him to marry a strong woman, one with family ties to half the peerage of this land to which they somehow belonged, though he had first seen it only eight months ago. His foreign blood and upbringing meant he needed a wife who was English beyond question and English nobility to her fingertips.

  James needed to marry Sophia, had needed to since he first saw her in a village street. And then he found she had all the connections his family could desire. Surely their love was fated?

  The house came into view—a great brick edifice rising four stories above the gardens and glittering with windows. Nothing could be less like the mountain eerie in which he had been raised, but he squared his shoulders and kept walking, soothing Seistan who reacted to his master’s nerves with a nervous sideways shuffle.

  “Hush, my Wind from the North. We belong here, now. What can they do, after all?”

  Beat him and cast him out, but from what he’d heard of the Duchess of Haverford, that was unlikely to happen.

  “It is, after all,” he reminded his horse with a brief laugh, “the season of goodwill.”

  The stables were off to one side, on a separate island to the main house. At the fork in the carriageway, James hesitated, tempted to take Seistan and see him cared for before chancing his luck at the house. If they invited him in, he would need to hand his horse over to grooms who were strangers while he consolidated his position.

  But if they turned him away, he might need to remove himself at speed, Seistan’s convenient limp disappearing as fast as it appeared. Besides, in the mountains between Turkmenistan and Persia, as in England, one did not treat a private home as a caravanserai. He must be sure of his welcome before he took advantage of their stables.

  The carriageway crossed the moat surrounding the house and ended in a generous forecourt. James left Seistan at the foot of the long flight of steps leading up to the front door, giving him the command to stay. Seistan stood, weight on three legs and ears pricked with interest as he watched his master climb the steps. Nothing short of outright panic would move the horse from his silent watch before James gave th
e counter command.

  James lifted the heavy knocker, but before he could drop it, the door opened outward, and he had to step back smartly to avoid being hit. The pair of young ladies who were about to follow the door paused on the threshold.

  “Lord Elfingham! You startled me.” The pretty child with the large blue eyes and blonde hair was the younger of the two Belvoir ladies.

  James bowed, and meekly accepted the blame. “Please accept my apologies, Lady Felicity.”

  Felicity turned to her companion, a slender girl who had not waited for an introduction to begin batting her eyelashes. “Miss Ellison, have you met Viscount Elfingham?” She lowered her voice. “One of those Winderfields, you know.”

  “Felicity!” A shocked hiss.

  Ah. Here was his goddess, approaching across a generous entrance hall that appeared at first glance to be full of people, though in truth he counted eight, not including the pair blocking his way inside.

  “Felicity, you put me to the blush.” She turned from her sister to address the girl with her sister. “Allow me to present Lord Elfingham, Miss Ellison.” Then she regarded him with wary eyes. “Have you come for the house party, Lord Elfingham?”

  James gathered the wits that had scattered at Lady Sophia’s approach and told his tale of a lame horse and the need for shelter until he could diagnose and fix the problem. The other ladies and gentlemen stopped their work of hanging ribbons, garlands, and wreaths from every available vantage point, and gathered around to be introduced to the scandalous barbarian suddenly in their midst.

  James smiled, nodded, and exchanged pleasantries, moving farther into the hall, his back prickling as he found himself surrounded by these polite strangers.