The Captain's Christmas Bride

by Annie Burrows

  She lowered her head for an instant, as though discomfited by his brutal reminder of her spectacular fall from grace.

  ‘Then, what,’ she finally said in a small, almost penitent voice, ‘do you plan to say?’

  ‘You leave that to me,’ he growled. ‘And just remember, your father isn’t going to be the first hurdle we have to leap tonight. We’re going to have to walk back into that house and start searching for him. With everyone staring at us, and wondering what on earth we’re doing together when so far this week we haven’t been able to say two civil words to each other.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I’m sure we can go in a side entrance...’

  ‘If you think we’re going to be able to carry this off with either one of our reputations intact, by skulking about as though we’ve done something to be ashamed of, then you’re even sillier than you look.’

  ‘Oh! What a nasty thing to say.’

  ‘But true.’

  She opened her mouth to argue. Looked as though she’d been struck by the truth of what he’d said. Shut it with a snap.

  ‘Very well,’ she conceded. ‘We’ll walk in together, stroll around until we find my father, and then—’

  ‘And then I will insist on speaking with him in private,’ he broke in, before she could come up with yet another hare-brained scheme.

  She glared at him.

  ‘Fine,’ she snapped, after a brief struggle with herself. ‘Have it your way.’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ he said smoothly, as she laid her arm on his sleeve and squared her shoulders. ‘From now on, you’re going to find that there are some people you cannot twist round your little finger. No matter how you simper, and smile, and cajole.’

  ‘And you will find out,’ she snapped back, as they mounted the steps, ‘that there are some women who would rather die than simper and smile and cajole a man. Particularly not a man like you!’

  ‘Then it appears our married life is going to be a stormy one,’ he replied grimly. ‘We will both be as glad as each other when my business ashore is done, and I can go back to sea.’

  She smiled up at him sweetly. Because they’d reached the terrace, where anyone might see them if they happened to glance out of the windows.

  ‘Oh, I think,’ she said in a caressing tone, ‘that I shall be far more pleased to see the back of you, than you will of me.’

  They strolled across the terrace and in through the same door they’d used such a short time before in silence. It was a good job he wasn’t the kind of man who minded having the last word. But then he just couldn’t see the point of engaging in pointless debate with her. Not when they were, basically, in agreement. Neither of them, given the choice, would have chosen the other for a life partner. Hell, he hadn’t planned to marry for years, if at all. His estates were mortgaged. His ancestral home let out to tenants. His sister living with friends she’d met at the exclusive boarding school that had swallowed up practically every penny he’d ever earned. He had nothing to offer a wife. No home, no money that wasn’t spoken for, and few prospects now that Wellington had finally defeated Bonaparte on land, which meant that the war against the French was over.

  * * *

  ‘You could try smiling, too,’ she hissed up at him through a smile so forced it was hurting her teeth. ‘To look at your face, anyone would think some great disaster had just befallen you.’

  ‘It’s my natural expression,’ he replied. ‘Better get used to it.’

  ‘I thought we were trying to persuade everyone we hadn’t done something to be ashamed of.’

  ‘Aye. But that doesn’t mean I need to go about with a fatuous grin on my face.’

  ‘There’s a world of difference between a fatuous grin and the murderous look you’ve got on your face.’ Though her own smile faltered as she said it. Because she’d seen Papa. ‘And my father has seen us,’ she said, pointing towards the fireplace. ‘Over there.’

  He was standing beside one of the ornate marble fireplaces that were a feature of Ness Hall, eyeing them with one of his bushy grey eyebrows raised in reproof. Hardly surprising. Julia’s scandalously low-cut gown was crumpled and stained now, her exposed bosom streaked black with what remained of her attempt to make it look as though she had a mole, her mask gone, her hair straggling round her face. In short, she looked as though she’d just been thoroughly ravished.

  Once Papa learned she had just been thoroughly ravished, all hell was going to break loose. If he’d been so adamant he wouldn’t have her throwing herself away on a perfectly respectable man she’d known all her life, he was going to be furious to learn she’d flung herself at a total stranger.

  Nevertheless, they made straight for him. Because she had to face him sooner or later. Better to get it over with.

  ‘I should like to speak to you in private, if I may, sir,’ said Captain Dunbar.

  ‘I should think,’ said Papa, raking her from head to toe, ‘you do.’ He drained the glass of wine he’d been holding and set it down on the mantelpiece with a snap. ‘My study. Now.’

  * * *

  Lord Mountnessing turned and made his way out of the reception room. They followed close behind, leaving a trail of avid eyes and speculative whispering in their wake.

  Alec scanned the inquisitive faces as people made way for them, searching for one of her particular friends. It would be better if he could palm her off on one of them. This was not an interview Lady Julia needed to attend. Both men were going to have to speak bluntly, and it wasn’t going to be pleasant. No gently born lady should have to go through that kind of scene.

  No matter what she’d done.

  ‘You should make yourself scarce now,’ he murmured into Lady Julia’s ear, when he failed to spot anyone to take care of her. ‘This isn’t going to be pleasant.’

  ‘You think I’m going to run away and hide while you and my father decide my whole future,’ she hissed back at him. ‘I think not!’

  ‘But you agreed to let me handle this.” He couldn’t believe she’d changed her mind so quickly.” I’m only trying to spare you unpleasantness. Your father is going to lose his temper when he finds out what we’ve done. He may say things he later regrets. Better for you to face him once he’s had time to cool down, and can speak to you rationally.’

  She shot him a suspicious look through narrowed eyes.

  ‘I can handle my own father. But if you think I’m going to trust you, or meekly do as you say, at a time like this, then you have another think coming!’

  ‘I might have known,’ he muttered, as the earl opened a door to their left, and went into a book-lined room. ‘He is the one who has spoiled you, isn’t he? The one who has made you think you can have whatever, or whomever, you want for the crooking of your finger?’

  ‘He has done no such thing,’ she just had time to spit back at him, before the earl reached yet another fabulously intricate fireplace, turned, and took up the very same position he’d adopted in the ballroom. Legs apart, with his back to the writhing Greek demi-gods.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I have to beg your pardon, sir,’ replied Alec stiffly, ‘but also to inform you that your daughter and I will be getting married.’

  ‘Indeed? And what makes you think that I will grant my permission?’

  ‘We have been indiscreet. And the indiscretion was witnessed.’

  The earl’s shrewd eyes flicked over the state of Lady Julia. His lips compressed into a hard line for a second. Then he looked at Alec again.

  ‘By whom was this indiscretion witnessed?’

  Alec couldn’t believe the old man was taking this all so calmly. He’d expected an explosion of wrath. But it seemed that the earl was the type to weigh everything up, and take his vengeance cold. He stood a little straighter.

  ‘Lady Julia’s companion. I forget her name.’
/>
  ‘Marianne,’ put in Lady Julia in a woeful, almost penitent voice.

  ‘And the leading lady,’ he continued, not sure whether to be annoyed by her interruption, or glad she was doing what she could to soften the old man’s heart.

  ‘I believe she goes under the name of the Nightingale,’ he said, squeezing Lady Julia’s hand hard in the hopes she’d understand he’d rather she didn’t interrupt again.

  ‘And a young man, by name David.’

  Something flared in the old man’s eyes at that.

  ‘David Kettley?’

  Lady Julia nodded her head. Then hung it. She looked the very picture of repentance. If he was her father, he might almost have been taken in by it.

  But the old man didn’t look the least bit compassionate.

  ‘And you, sir, what have you to say for yourself? What do you mean by it, eh?’

  ‘Oh, please, don’t be cross with him, Papa,’ blurted Lady Julia, before he’d managed to utter a single word of the excuse he’d planned to make. ‘It was all my fault.’

  What? She was admitting it? For some reason, though he’d said the very same thing not five minutes ago, hearing her try to take the blame didn’t sit right with him.

  ‘We are both—’ he put in swiftly before floundering to a halt. He may not have come up with a story to satisfy the heart of a doting father, but he knew the truth wasn’t going to suffice. ‘That is, neither of us—that is—the truth is, sir, that...’

  Actually, there could probably be only one excuse he could give that might, eventually, mollify an outraged father.

  ‘Our feelings for each other overwhelmed us.’

  That eyebrow went up again. ‘Your feelings?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We got carried away.’ Well, that was certainly true. He couldn’t remember ever being so completely entranced by a woman. There had been nothing in his head but her. After all the months of oak and muscle and sinew, the sweetly scented softness of her body had been too alluring to resist. He hadn’t stopped to think. He’d just wanted to drown in the haven she offered. The heaven.

  ‘And when Lady Julia says it was her fault, she can only mean, of course, in permitting me to take her to a secluded spot when she knew it was not at all the thing. The blame for what happened afterward was entirely mine. As a man, an experienced man, I should not have let things go so far.’

  ‘And how far, exactly,’ said the old man in that cold, forbidding tone, ‘did things go?’

  He felt Lady Julia flinch. He squeezed her hand again.

  ‘I regret to have to inform you, sir, that your daughter could be with child.’

  The earl went very still. Not a single flicker of emotion appeared on his face. But in a voice that could have frozen the Thames, he said, ‘You have, in effect, left me with no choice.’

  Chapter Three

  With child? Heavens, that possibility hadn’t even crossed Julia’s mind.

  But of course, doing what they’d just done was obviously what started babies.

  And just as obviously, she would have to marry the man who might have started one growing inside her. She simply couldn’t have a baby out of wedlock. She couldn’t do that to a child.

  And no matter what she felt for the father, she would love her own child. She knew only too well how much a child could suffer because of what the parents felt about each other. She’d always known that the main reason her father hadn’t been able to warm to his first two sons was because they resembled their mother in looks.

  The thought sent a fresh chill down her spine. Captain Dunbar was very, very angry with her. What if that anger never went away? What if the resentment he felt about having to marry her spilled over to their child?

  ‘It appears,’ her father continued, jerking her back to her present difficulties, ‘that my daughter has escaped the wiles of one fortune hunter only to fall into the clutches of another.’

  * * *

  Alec’s stomach turned over, as her father brought that aspect of the case to his attention. Not only was he going to be saddled with a wife, he was also going to be accused of marrying her for her money. Like father, like son, they’d say. When he’d worked so hard, for so long, to prove he wasn’t that kind of man at all. Damn the chit!

  ‘No, Papa!’ Lady Julia took a step forward, as though attempting to defend him from the invisible darts her father was shooting his way. ‘I told you it was my fault. Entirely my fault. He didn’t even know it was me in the orangery. Just look at the way I’m dressed.’

  ‘Eh?’ The earl stopped trying to send Alec to the coldest reaches of hell by sheer force of will, and turned to look at his daughter.

  ‘He thought I was the Neapolitan Nightingale. I... I deliberately deceived him and lured him out there...’

  ‘You did what? Why?’

  ‘Well...’ She swallowed and then started gazing frantically along the rows of books on the shelves, as though she might find inspiration amongst the stiff leather spines.

  Yes, what excuse could she possibly come up with to explain this evening’s fantastic sequence of events? Without, that is, confessing the whole truth, which would land her friends in the very trouble she’d already declared she wanted to spare them.

  Or laying the entire blame upon his shoulders, which it looked as though she was equally reluctant to do. Which came as quite a surprise. He would have thought she’d have been only too willing to throw him to the lions. Instead, she’d drawn the earl’s fire down on herself. Although from the look on her face now, she hadn’t really thought it through. She’d acted on impulse. And backed herself into a corner.

  Alec supposed he had to give her credit for speaking up in his defence. He hadn’t expected her to demonstrate the slightest shred of honour over this affair, not given the way it had come about.

  ‘Don’t say another word,’ he advised her. He’d come in here seething with resentment at the way she’d trapped him. But she’d drawn the line at letting her father think he was a fortune hunter as well as a despoiler of innocence. It would cost him nothing to return the favour.

  Besides, he could see she was floundering in a welter of equally unpalatable choices. Whatever lie she might choose to tell her father next was only likely to plunge them both into even deeper water. And he was used to thinking on his feet. Alec knew, only too well, that no matter how meticulously you planned an assault, something always cropped up that you couldn’t possibly have foreseen. The success or failure of many a mission had depended on his ability to adapt to such new challenges.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, turning to her father, ‘I am sure your daughter did not know what she was doing. She is so naïve—’

  ‘No, I won’t have you taking the blame, and everyone saying you are a fortune hunter when it is no such thing,’ she cut in, hotly. ‘I may not have planned for things to go so far, but—’ She broke off, blushing. ‘Papa—you...you saw how he was with all the ladies. So curt. So dismissive. How he refused to take any notice of me at all.’

  The old earl’s wintry gaze turned on her. He regarded her coldly for some moments. ‘I have spoiled you,’ he said. ‘You saw a man who wouldn’t pay court to you, and decided you must have him, by hook or by crook.’

  It hadn’t been like that. It hadn’t been the least like that. She had detested him.

  So why was she implying that it was? Why was she willing to shoulder the blame herself? She could easily have painted him as the very sort of opportunistic fortune hunter her father had taken him for. Instead, she was clearing his name.

  And he couldn’t even contradict her story, not without exposing what she’d really been up to out there... Ah! So that was it. A matter of saving face. She’d rather her father think he was the man she’d wanted to seduce all along, than for him to know how very far her true plans had gone awry. />
  He gave a sort of mental shrug. If that was the way she wanted to play it—fine.

  ‘Well,’ said the earl with weary resignation. ‘At least this one is an improvement on the last fellow you fancied yourself in love with. At least nobody will blink at the connection. Only the manner by which it came about.’

  ‘Yes, Papa. He is the Earl of Auchentay, as well as being a naval captain, is he not? And you always did say I should marry within my own class.’

  ‘The title is hollow, sir,’ he felt duty bound to point out. ‘My lands are mortgaged—’

  ‘But still in your possession?’

  ‘Aye, but not likely to bring in any revenue, beyond what I get for renting the house and land. Which isn’t very good land, either.’

  ‘You won’t be needing the rent so very much now you are marrying into my family. Julia’s dowry will enable you to buy half-a-dozen Scottish properties, I dare say, if you had a hankering for them.’

  ‘I’ll not be squandering your daughter’s money on foolishness of that sort,’ he said testily. A man should take care of his womenfolk, not marry them for their dowry then fritter it away. Making free with his wife’s money would smack too much of what his father had done—marrying an heiress then gambling away her entire fortune. Something he’d sworn he’d never do.

  Not that lifting the mortgages would be a bad thing, if he could do it.

  And he would like to improve conditions for his tenants, too. But...

  ‘I had no thought of that when we—that is when I—’

  The earl held up his hand in a peremptory gesture. ‘Spare me the details of what you were, or were not, thinking when she took you out to the orangery.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ For the first time that night, he felt his cheeks heat in a flare of embarrassment. He’d been too long at sea, too long without a woman to have been thinking of anything but the glorious release the siren in the blue-silk gown had appeared to be offering. He just wasn’t used to being surrounded by so many females, all revealing so much flesh. There’d been nothing but delicate arms, and slender necks, and tantalising bosoms wherever he’d looked, ever since he’d arrived. And all of them belonging to gently reared girls who were out of bounds. He’d been so frustrated, what with one thing and another, that by the time a mature, available woman—or so he’d believed—had offered him the opportunity to do something about it, he hadn’t stopped to think.