Betrothed by Christmas: A Holiday Duet

by Jess Michaels

  “Yes, well,” she hedged. “A bit closer, I should think. More like a waltz where one might not be interested in keeping one's proper distance.”

  “Right ho. Closer then.” He gathered her into a more satisfactorily intimate embrace, sliding his arms across her upper arms and around her back, settling her snugly against his chest.

  She stiffened and held her breath, clearly trying not to shy away, but as clearly not comfortable with the contact, and that rusty conscience of his inched its way out of its scabbard, forcing him to reconsider.

  He loosened his embrace. “We’ll just stay like this then, until we hear the door?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She nodded, trying to give every appearance of confidence, but her voice was thin and unsure, all breath and bravado. “Then perhaps I’ll engage you more closely when she does come, if I may?”

  “Right ho.” Yes, poor Miss Tamsin Lesley had no idea what she was doing—behind her calm veneer, she was shaking like the veriest greenhorn at the sound of the charge.

  Simon damned his rusty, creaking conscience, and abandoned his plans to amuse himself, setting himself instead to amuse her. “Your first time, then, being ruined?”

  He was rewarded for his efforts by her lovely little huff of laughter. “Yes. Indeed.” She nodded and took a steadier breath, and looked to the side so her pert chin brushed against his chest, and he found it suddenly strangely hard to breathe. “You?”

  “Well, let me think on that.” He winced up his eyes like a proper dunce so he might ponder that question. And so he wouldn’t look down at her mouth, so close to his chest. “I don’t suppose it is, really. Though this is my first formal ruining—never tried to get caught before.”

  “No.” Another small, secretly sweet smile curved her lips, just down there, so deliriously close. “I don’t imagine you would have done.”

  “No. And never before as a civilian, what?” He prattled on to keep from thinking about lips and closeness and the febrile heat from her small, perfectly lush body. “So that’s new.”

  Another small infinity passed, during which he grew more and more aware of the shallow pattern of their breathing, chest against chest. Breast against—

  Simon was racking his brain for another nonsensical idiocy when she asked, “How long have you been out of the army?”

  Her question surprised him into honesty. “A while now, it’s been,” he reckoned. “Since the autumn. Glad to be back, what? When so many other, better fellows didn’t make it.”

  Her level gaze met his for a long, serious moment. “I am very sorry for your losses, Colonel Cathcart. You must have lost a good many friends.”

  “Simon, please.” He found himself clearing his throat and affecting an easy tone to cover the unexpected knot of emotion her kindness tangled up in his chest. “Lost a lot of men that weren’t friends, too—not that that makes it any easier. See their faces at night sometimes.” He couldn’t seem to stop himself from rambling on. “It used to frighten me at first, but now I’ve come to rather like seeing old friends.”

  Damn him for a sentimental fool. Simon would have given himself a good shake if his hands hadn’t been otherwise engaged.

  “How difficult.” There was something in her voice—something kind and not pitying—that had him blustering on, as if he might reassure her.

  “Don’t think it is, really,” he rattled on. “Loads of chaps in my boots, so to speak, tell me the same. Not the coming to like it, of course.” He truly was an idiot. “Not every one can come to grips.” A talkative idiot. “Some of them tell me I’m mad.”

  This was why he hid out in libraries and pretended to sleep—so he wouldn’t make a mad ass of himself.

  But in the face of his madness, Miss Tamsin Lesley tucked her chin and considered her answer for only a moment. “I don’t think you’re mad. I think you’re rather nice.”

  If he could have stopped up his ears against the kindness in her voice, he would have. “That’s big of you, Miss T.” Because his resistance to her bespectacled, governess-y charms was falling alarmingly low—any moment now he was going to have to bury his face against that soft slide of skin down the side of her neck and inhale the delicate warmth of her fragrance, and then where would they be?

  Ruined, deliriously happy, and unhappily married. In that order.

  Simon forced air into his lungs, and affected patience. “How much longer, do you think, your mama might be? Don’t want to keep you overlong, if there’s deserving fellows you ought to be dancing with.”

  She let out another lovely little self-deprecating huff of laughter before she shook her head. “Not a one. And not long—any moment now, I should think. It’s been ten minutes since I told her I’d be gone for five.” She glanced at the mantelpiece clock. “I can’t think what might keeping her.”

  It really didn’t matter what was keeping her, only that whatever it was went on keeping her. Because the moment the woman came and they were found out was the end of this lovely little charade. And, Simon realized with a sharp pang, he didn’t want his interlude with the lovely Miss Lesley to end.

  So he took the last shreds of his courage in hand, and spoke the truth. “I must say, Miss T, this has been rather delightful. Don’t know when I’ve been so diverted. Rather hate to see the fun end, what?”

  “Thank you, Colonel Cathcart.”

  “Simon, please.”

  “Simon, then. Under the circumstances,” she murmured as she tipped her face up toward his, and he was already leaning down, nearing those soft, bitten lips, knowing that he shouldn’t and doing it anyway.

  “Sweet T,” he heard himself murmur. “Are you sure—”

  “Yes?” she breathed, before he could finish.

  But before he could act upon the impulse and kiss her properly and assuage the strange ache within him, her face turned abruptly toward the door.

  “Oh, bloody drat! She’s here!”

  Chapter 6

  “Tamsin Lesley,” Mama hissed the moment she was through the door and had it securely locked behind her. “What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  Tamsin kept herself from stating the obvious. “Oh, Mama! It’s not what you think—” She clung to Colonel Cathcart for a moment longer than was strictly necessary before pushing apart, as if she were trying not to be caught. Though his arms had at first tightened around her, much to her disappointment, Cathcart let her go.

  Granted, Mama was advancing upon them like a force of nature—all frost and frowns as hard as hailstones. “Come away from that man! And take those hideous spectacles off.” She interposed herself between them and glared at Colonel Cathcart. “Who,” Mama asked in her most thunderous tones, “are you?”

  Tamsin answered before Colonel Cathcart might say something nonsensical about her engaging him for the business. “Pray do not blame him, Mama. I—”

  “Oh, never fear, I’ve blame enough to go around, my girl. What on earth were you thinking?”

  Tamsin cast what she hoped was a longing look at Colonel Cathcart. “I can’t help it, Mama. He quite took my breath away.”

  “Well, fetch it back this instant.” Her mama kept her forceful sense of logic even in a crisis. “Now, tell me, who is he?”

  “I fear you will not approve.” Tamsin attempted to look suitably apoplectic. “He is a handsome face who has won my heart and turned my fancy—”

  “You just turn that fancy back around, my girl.” Her mother was not buying a Drury Lane farthing’s worth of her show. “Get out of his arms this minute, before anyone sees.” Mama turned her ire on Colonel Cathcart. “Speak up, sir. Who are you?”

  Colonel Cathcart smiled and bowed to Mama, as if they were at the side of the dance floor and not caught in an illicit embrace. “Simon Cathcart, at your service, Mrs. Lesley.”

  So much for keeping the man’s name out of it.

  Mama was nonplussed. “I rather think you were already at my daughter’s service, sir. But Cathcart, was it?” Tam
sin could all but see her mother leafing through the pages of the peerage stored in the attic library of her mind. “The Scottish Cathcarts?”

  Simon was all enthusiasm. “Why, yes, ma’am! My family are from Renfrewshire.”

  Mama’s ambitions lit her face like a chandelier—it took only a short leap for her imagination to travel from Castle Cathcart in Renfrewshire to St. George’s Church in Hanover Square. “The Honorable Simon Cathcart?”

  “That is my father!” Colonel Cathcart crowed. “Do you know him?”

  Mama’s hopes instantly dimmed into disappointment. “I have not that pleasure. I but know the name.”

  The colonel was entirely undaunted by her waning enthusiasm. “Makes sense, what, as Pater rarely leaves Renfrewshire. Prefers the country, you see.”

  “So you’re the—”

  “Second son of a second son, Mama.” Tamsin decided to speed things along. “I know it’s a scandal, but I love him anyway.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Mama too, wanted to get the heart of the business. “Mr. Cathcart, have you any money?”

  “Afraid not.” He patted his pockets as if they might miraculously have filled with gold while he was sleeping, and was astonished to find a sovereign, which he offered to her mama. “Need it for the cards, do you? Happy to contribute.”

  “I most emphatically do not need money for cards!” Mama had seen and heard more than enough—she shackled Tamsin’s wrist in an implacable grip. “Come along!”

  “But what about the scandal?”

  “There will be no scandal,” Mama vowed. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” She turned a cool eye on Colonel Cathcart. “You, sir, would do well to keep this unfortunate interview entirely to yourself. Do you understand me?”

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” Colonel Cathcart gave her mother a smart salute. “Happy to oblige.”

  “I imagine you are,” her mama concluded.

  Tamsin was not yet ready to give up. She broke from her mother’s grasp and pushed toward Colonel Cathcart, who had enough presence of mind to put his arm around her, gathering her comfortably in the shelter of his broad chest. “But Mama, I cannot lie, though it shames me. I know I am ruined and—”

  “Hush.” Mama held up her hand in absolute command. “Do not say such a thing. Not another word!”

  “But you saw us—I fear we were in the most embarrassingly compromising position,” Tamsin insisted. “The scandal—”

  “Don’t be silly!” Mama was once again emphatic. “You’re not ruined because of one little kiss or cuddle.” She busied herself slapping the creases out of Tamsin’s skirts. “You’re very lucky it was me who found you and not some tattletale.” She reached again for her daughter’s hand. “Come along, Thomasina. And for the last time, take off those wretched spectacles.”

  Tamsin turned to poor Simple Simon who, true to his name, stood as placidly and unbowed as a tall tree in a storm. He gave her that amiable, hail-fellow-well-met smile, as if the whole affair had gone swimmingly and was not an utter disaster.

  “I’m so sorry, Colonel Cathcart.” Tamsin didn’t know what else to say.

  But Colonel Cathcart did. “Simon, please. And not at all,” the big fellow rejoined. “Can’t remember the last time I had such jolly good fun.” He tossed her a remarkably happy but at the same time nearly naughty wink. “Let’s do it again sometime, shall we?”

  Though the evening had turned out to be a complete disaster, the next morning brought a flower shop’s worth of posies and stems. Enough blooms to put roses in her mama’s cheeks, as well as on every flat surface of the reception rooms in their cavernous, rented Mayfair townhouse.

  Most were the usual hothouse posies—roses, scented carnations and forget-me-nots sent by men whose names she had already forgotten. But someone had set a dozen stems of ravishingly beautiful lavender tulips. And though the accompanying card was unsigned, it contained two lines written in a bold but carelessly slanted hand.

  Great fun, what? Hope I served honorably.

  Just the sort of happy, kind and somehow appropriate thing she was pleased to find characteristic of Colonel Simon Cathcart.

  “What an unusual bouquet,” Mama noted.

  “Mmm, yes.” Tamsin palmed the card and attempted to sound uninterested.

  Her mama was not fooled. “Who sent them?”

  In for a penny, in for several hundred pounds. Tamsin schooled back her smile and attempted to look pensive, while letting the card slide into a convenient splash of water that had beaded on the tabletop. “That handsome chap, what’s his name, that you introduced me to…?”

  “Lord James Beauclerc? The Duke of Albany’s heir? Tall fellow, sandy blond hair?”

  Tamsin pictured a different tall, handsome, sandy-haired man. But she conjured Lord James Beauclerc’s image into her mind’s eye, and described someone else. “Blue Bath superfine coat? Buff trousers?

  “Good Lord, no. No, Lord James was in an impeccable black merino coat with a cream satin waistcoat, breeches and evening slippers, just as he ought.” Her mama liked the old fashioned ways of dress best. Nothing of the modern era had any appeal for her.

  “Oh, yes. Now I recall.” Tamsin glanced down to make sure the ink on the card had sufficiently run. “At least I think it is from him, but it’s so badly writ, I’m not sure. I can’t make it out—at least, not without my spectacles. See if you can make anything out of this, Mama.”

  Her mama gladly took the proffered card. “Why, it’s hopelessly damp—the ink’s all run out.”

  “Must have been jostled and wetted by the Beauclerc footman on his way here, though I didn’t see who brought it. Perhaps we could find who brought them to the door, to confirm they came from the Duke of Albany’s house?”

  “No, no,” Mama objected. “No need to involve the servants in your business—that would be hopelessly gauche.” Her mother’s mind was made up. “And there are posies enough to ensure your reputation as a diamond of the first water.”

  Reputation was all—currency and capital—in her mama’s way of looking at the world.

  Tamsin would definitely ensure her reputation—if not exactly in the way her mama intended. But she would have to reapply to Colonel Simon Cathcart for his ready assistance.

  Let’s do it again sometime.

  Sometime was now.

  If she could conjure up enough nerve for another try. If she could make it more convincing next time.

  And what did she have to lose, aside from obnoxious Cousin Edward?

  “Mama, I’ll be in my room, writing letters.”

  Arranging her next faux tryst.

  Chapter 7

  His utterly transparent ploy worked—an elegantly brief missive from Miss Lesley was delivered to him in the Cathcart House library by the afternoon post via Mahoney, his resourceful batman.

  I will not allow my mother’s interference to be anything other than an obstacle to my ends. I would make another attempt if you are game. If so, I will look for you in the library of Worcester House—for we go there this evening.

  —T

  Simon found that he was indeed game, though he had no idea if he was to be at Worcester House that evening—normally, he simply presented himself, appropriately dressed at the appropriate hour, and went where his aunt’s carriage took him. He accompanied her to dinners where he found food for his weary body, wine for his addled brain, and gossip as fodder for his fertile imagination without taxing himself. After the dinners, when the gentlemen retreated to cigars and cognac and self-serving lies about sacrifice and patriotism, Simon took his leave and headed for the peace and tranquility of the libraries, where he could rest his head and dream amusing dreams.

  But for Miss Lesley, he would inquire. He would arrange.

  Even if it meant exposing his flank.

  “Mahoney, where am I to be found this evening amongst the Beau Monde?”

  If Mahoney was at all surprised to find his former superior officer inquiring after some
thing in which Simon had never before expressed any interest, like any good solider, he kept it to himself. “The countess requires escort for dinner with the Wallingford’s on Mount Street, and then will attend either the Basingstoke or the Worcester Ball.”

  “Need it to be the Worcester ball, Mahoney. Can that be arranged?”

  The clever Irishman tipped his head, and revealed some of the resourcefulness that had seen them through years of arduous campaigns. “A hint, sir, can be placed with her ladyship’s dresser. I understand the arrangements at the Worcester affair will be vastly superior to the Basingstoke decorations.”

  “Excellent. I am all appreciation for a superior arrangement. Good man.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. Any other particulars I might arrange for you, sir?”

  “No, nothing else, I thank you.”

  And if Simon took extra care with his appearance that evening, his batman was canny enough to say nothing. Neither did his aunt, the Countess Cathcart, when Simon arrived with her at the Worcester Ball and did not immediately seek the sanctuary of the library, as was his wont.

  Instead, he took the opportunity to escort his aunt to a seat of honor in the ballroom, from whence she might regard the whole of the room. And he might reconnoiter his Miss T across the lines, as it were. Purely for observations purposes—know your allies as well as you know your enemies was as good a practice in love as it was in war.

  Not that this was love. Or war. It was simple fun.

  An interesting way to pass a tedious evening.

  His interest had nothing to do with the thrill of anticipation, the intoxicating rush of blood through his veins at the thought of having the delightful Miss Tamsin Lesley in his arms again. Nothing to do with her personally, really. Nothing to do with her irresistibly governess-y air.

  Nothing at all.

  But finding her in the crowded ballroom was difficult. Firstly, she was attired in the same sort of flowing skirts of white as all the other young ladies, like so many identical columns in a Grecian temple. Secondly, she was so small in stature that it took only two taller gentlemen—and damn their heads—to block his view. But mostly because she was not wearing her lovely spectacles.