A Kiss for Christmas

by Caroline Linden

  There was no doubt whom Merry meant. It was the last member of the group, a stranger she didn’t recognize. He was tall, about Mr. Mortimer’s height, with dark hair and broad shoulders. His clothing was every bit as fine as Mr. Mortimer’s, and he stood with easy grace, as if he were the equal of every man present

  The trouble, though, was that since he was already looking at her, he noticed her spying immediately. And as soon as her gaze met his, the scoundrel grinned.

  Clara gave him a reproving little frown and turned her back. “Impertinent fellow,” she whispered to Merry.

  Her cousin’s eyebrows went up. “How could you tell?”

  “He was staring at me and then he grinned.”

  Merry heaved a sigh. “Oh, the agonies you suffer, Clara. I don’t know how you endure.”

  “It was an impertinent grin,” she added.

  Merry darted a glance over her shoulder, toward the gentleman in question. “Too bad,” she murmured. “He’s rather handsome.”

  “Not as handsome as John Mortimer.” Clara wasn’t about to be distracted by a stranger.

  “True, but we can’t all marry Sir Eliot’s son,” Merry pointed out philosophically. “I wonder who the other fellow is.”

  “I’ve no idea. Perhaps Lydia knows.”

  Lydia Pitt, two years older and married, was already coming to join them. “I’m so glad you both came tonight,” she said warmly. “I’ve been reduced to sitting with the dowagers, for want of someone to talk to!”

  “Dowagers!” Clara smiled. “If you sit with them, it’s only because they know the best gossip.”

  “They do,” said Lydia without a blink. “But I’d rather dance most nights.”

  “Speaking of gossip,” said Merry, “do you know who the tall fellow with the auburn hair is?” She motioned discreetly with her fan again. “The one staring at Clara.”

  “Merry!” said Clara in censure, but Lydia boldly looked.

  “Oh, yes. His name is Weston. He’s an attorney, in practice with his father in Kent. I’ve seen him in town for the last few days. I think he’s employed by Sir Eliot Mortimer.”

  That caused an uncomfortable flurry in Clara’s breast. How awkward it would be if he was at Mortimer Lodge when she and Mama called. Her mother had agreed with her that it was time to make a bold strike, and they had planned to visit Lady Mortimer.

  Hopefully that man was a little tipsy tonight and would remember his manners in the morning, or better yet, forget entirely that she’d caught him staring at her.

  “An attorney!” Merry was disappointed. “He looks too elegant to be an attorney.”

  “Well.” Lydia lowered her voice. “Rumor is he’s a well-off attorney. Mrs. Smythe took the effort to find out all she could—she has three daughters, one can hardly blame her for noticing a handsome gentleman new to town—and she decided his fortune was plump enough to overshadow his profession.”

  Merry and Clara exchanged a glance, Merry’s speculative and Clara’s surprised. That must be a very plump fortune, if Mrs. Smythe was blinded by it. She was a viscount’s granddaughter and had lofty ambitions for her three girls.

  “What sort of fellow is he?”

  “Merry,” Clara said in shock.

  Her cousin widened her eyes. “What? I didn’t ask for an introduction, only gossip.”

  Lydia laughed. “Gossip is all I have! I’ve never met the man. But David has, and he said Mr. Weston is ambitious and canny. Intelligent,” she added. “Rather a clever lawyer, too.”

  “Handsome, clever, and rich.” Merry looked pleased. “Perhaps an introduction wouldn’t be unpleasant.”

  “Did you say he was staring at Clara?” Lydia glanced toward him again.

  “Yes, but only because she was standing in front of me, I believe.”

  Clara had to laugh at Merry’s outrageous statement, and she was laughing still when a voice spoke behind her. “I beg your pardon, miss, but did you drop this handkerchief?”

  2

  Thomas Weston was a betting man. And tonight he was about to make a bet he had every hope of losing.

  It took some effort. His tendency to win had made people leery of accepting his bets. That was unfortunate, as Thomas liked a good wager. Even more he liked to win, but John Mortimer had already declared he wouldn’t stake a penny against anything Thomas wanted.

  “The devil’s own luck,” Mortimer called it, with a laugh that wasn’t entirely good-natured, and all his friends rushed to follow suit.

  Thomas knew it wasn’t entirely luck. He never placed a wager without doing a fair bit of calculation, research, and outright snooping, in some cases. The greater the amount at stake, the more careful he was to weigh how much he wanted it, how likely he was to get it, and how he could shift the odds in his favor before he put his money at risk. If none of the other gentlemen put in the effort, they had only themselves to blame when they lost.

  Tonight a prize had caught his eye, though, that he knew hit all the wrong marks. His desire had struck him like a thunderbolt, sudden and intense, blowing away any thought of calculation, let alone the opportunity for research. While he wanted it very much, he was quite certain his chances were virtually nil at the moment. Therefore that meant he had to do something drastic to better his odds.

  Snooping and conniving were his only options.

  “I say, Mortimer,” he said to the young gentleman beside him. “You were having me on all this time.”

  “Eh?” Mortimer was surreptitiously sipping brandy from a flask he kept sliding out of his tail pocket. “About what?”

  Thomas gave him a severe look. “This assembly! You told me Wells was the most pitiable backwater, without a thing of interest about it and no society, either. But there are some uncommonly pretty girls here tonight.”

  Mortimer’s face went blank for a moment, then relaxed into his usual exaggerated ennui. “Well, you may think so! There are some pretty enough, I suppose, to someone of your background.”

  Mortimer fancied himself a gentleman of the ton, after his summer in London. Thomas, who had been going to London regularly for years now, kept quiet about it.

  “Yes,” he said aloud. “To someone of my background—and eyesight—there are some lovely creatures here.”

  Jenkins, one of Mortimer’s mates, snickered. “Handsome they may be, but none of ‘em are eligible enough for Mortimer.” The man himself tilted his head slightly, tacitly agreeing with this nonsense.

  “Eligible!” Thomas laughed. “Any one of you lot would be fortunate to get a dance with one of those ladies over there.” He nodded across the room.

  Jenkins scoffed. “Dance! We could get a dance—especially Morty. Every single woman in this room is wasting away for a smile from him.”

  “Who wants to dance with a girl who’s got no money, though?” put in Hodge. “Morty’s got the right idea.”

  “That the only thing to commend a lady is her fortune?” Thomas glanced with interest at Mortimer, whose neck was red above his collar. “Is that it, Mortimer?”

  “Shut it, Hodge. You’ll give Weston the wrong idea.” Mortimer looked surly as he drank from his flask.

  “You see, Weston,” drawled Jenkins patronizingly, “in the better circles, it doesn’t do to encourage a poor girl to get the wrong idea. If Morty danced with any of them, they’d start planning a wedding, when he means no such thing.”

  “Huh.” Thomas sipped his wine, weak and watered though it was. “Not even that one?”

  Hodge swung around to see who his deliberately vague comment could refer to.

  “Only one is worthwhile,” said Jenkins with a snicker.

  Almost there. “The one in green?”

  “No, the one—“ Mortimer motioned with one hand, forgetting he held his flask and sloshing brandy over his cuff. “The one in purple.”

  Now Thomas could look at her, and he did so, striving hard to keep his expression placid. It was harder than it should have been. She was the loveliest female
he had ever set eyes on. Her dark gold hair was piled up in fashionable curls, and her mulberry gown showed off a trim waist and very handsome bosom. Her dress was fashionable but relatively unadorned, and the only jewelry she wore was a simple locket around her neck. A gentleman’s daughter but no heiress, he guessed, a girl with aspirations based more on her pretty face than her family and fortune.

  Thomas could afford to overlook the lack of dowry. In fact, he would have overlooked a towering debt, at least for tonight. Hers was a very pretty face.

  As he was watching, she peeked over her shoulder at him. A gentleman would have looked away immediately, affecting that he hadn’t been staring her way. Thomas grinned instead. He couldn’t help it. Her dark eyes—grey? Perhaps blue?—widened, and a charming frown pinched her brow before she pointedly turned her back to him.

  “Miss Clara Hampton,” supplied Jenkins. “Fetching little thing, ain’t she? Never said we didn’t have any pretty girls here in Wells.”

  “But she’s only got eyes for Morty,” added Hodge.

  Thomas turned to his scowling host in pretend astonishment. “Has she! Mortimer, you fortunate fellow. She’s lovely.”

  “I suppose she is,” agreed Mortimer reluctantly, after a pause.

  “Regrettably she’s got no dowry,” put in Jenkins.

  “That’s why she’s sighing after Morty,” said Hodge with a smirk. “Biggest estate in the parish, and all that.” He glanced at Thomas. “Thought you’d have twigged to that, as his attorney.”

  Thomas just smiled. What he knew was that the Mortimer family was in a spot of financial trouble they were very keen to keep quiet. That was why they had hired him, a stranger to the county, instead of their usual solicitor. Mortimer was keeping his head down because he was the party at fault; it was his gambling that had entangled his family with unpleasant people, and it was his father who had put Thomas in charge of his affairs until, as the elder Mortimer acidly put it, “this nightmare is behind us.”

  Hence Thomas’s invitation to this gathering. Part of his duties included keeping Mortimer from the card tables, which neither of them were enjoying. Still, Thomas hadn’t appreciated until now that it might come with some benefits.

  “That isn’t why,” snapped Mortimer, glaring at his half-drunk friend.

  “Well, it’s part of it,” protested Hodge. “Ain’t that why all the girls stare and sigh when you walk by? They’d all like to be a baronetess.”

  Mortimer’s frown deepened peevishly. “Be quiet, Hodge. It’s not a matter of wealth, or beauty. I shan’t marry that young lady because she’s… Well, she’s too provincial for me, you know.”

  Thomas raised his brows as the other men hooted and laughed. Mortimer smiled, smug again, and drank more of his brandy, his swagger restored.

  Thomas was not surprised. Mortimer thought himself far, far above this small town now, with his six months of town bronze and rakish behavior, even if he was forced to keep the latter quiet.

  “No one now will do for our Mr. Mortimer but the finest lady in London,” cried Hodge, sweeping an unsteady bow. “None of these country girls for him!”

  “Suit yourself.” Thomas shrugged.

  “Weston thinks you’re mad, Morty,” teased Jenkins. “Overlooking little Miss Hampton for a London lady with ten thousand pounds!”

  Thomas smiled, knowing there was no London lady with ten thousand pounds waiting to accept Mortimer’s proposal. “Not all of us can be so confident.”

  “You should dance with her, Weston,” slurred Hodge. “She needs a rich husband, now that Mortimer’s decided against her.”

  Mortimer scowled, jerking upright at this suggestion that Thomas might step into his place with a woman, even a woman he had just declared himself wholly disinterested in.

  “Ten pounds she’d laugh in my face,” said Thomas swiftly. “Such a young lady, dance with me, especially when she’d set her heart on someone like Mortimer? I’ve got no estate at all, and she just gave me a ferocious frown.”

  Hodge guffawed, and Jenkins grinned, an evil light in his eye.

  “No bet,” muttered Mortimer.

  “Twenty pounds says she will!” declared Hodge, listing off balance as he poked Thomas in the shoulder. He either hadn’t heard Mortimer or was too drunk to care. “The Hamptons have nothing, I daresay you’d be good enough for them.”

  Thomas hesitated a heartbeat, just long to make it look good, then nodded. “Done.”

  “No bet,” snarled Mortimer suddenly.

  A hush descended. His friends, while not knowing the true depths of Mortimer’s embarrassment, were aware that he was in his father’s black books over some wagers gone bad.

  On the one hand, Mortimer had been belligerently claiming all evening that he wasn’t about to get caught and leg-shackled by any of the hopeful misses here tonight. On the other, he was well accustomed to being the focus of every female eye in the room, and even if he denied it, Mortimer liked being wanted, even by those he disdained.

  “Eh? What’s that? Thought you didn’t want her, Morty,” said Hodge—helpfully, to Thomas’s cause.

  “Thank you, Mortimer. How touching to know you think she’d gladly take my hand,” said Thomas with a mock bow.

  He only provoked the man because he knew Sir Eliot Mortimer was actively searching for a bride with a healthy dowry for his son, and Hodge had already said Miss Hampton didn’t have one. He only risked it because he knew Sir Eliot had declared Mortimer would not wed at all without his permission, if he wanted to maintain his inheritance and allowance. He only dared because he knew who Mortimer really fancied, and it wasn’t anybody in this room.

  And blessedly, Mortimer obliged him. “Never said that,” he snapped. “She hasn’t got a farthing, so I suppose if you want to dance with her, the joke’s on you. I just think even she has higher standards than an attorney.”

  His mates cackled with laughter as Mortimer looked smug.

  Thomas lifted one shoulder, trying to hide his bubbling elation. “We’ll find out.” And he strolled off to lose twenty pounds.

  3

  If there were anything worse than not being asked to dance by the man on one’s desire, it must be a request for a dance from the wrong man. And even worse, he did so with a purely transparent ploy.

  Clara gave the bold stranger a cool glance when he interrupted their group. Did he think her simple-minded? Pretending she’d dropped her handkerchief, as a pretext to solicit an introduction! “No, sir, I did not.”

  “Er…” said Merry quietly. “I think you did, Clara. It’s got your monogram.”

  Clara blinked, and looked at the handkerchief in the man’s hand for the first time. Her face grew warm as she realized her cousin was correct; there was a small C embroidered in the corner of the handkerchief. “Oh—that is—yes, actually, perhaps I did. Thank you, sir.”

  He smiled very easily. “It is a lovely handkerchief, I would not wish it to be lost.” He bowed. “Thomas Weston, at your service, ladies.”

  All three of them curtsied, and Lydia bravely introduced herself and the rest of them. Merry was studying him with open interest and Lydia, as usual, was not deterred by having no acquaintance to speak of.

  “How do you do, sir?” she asked warmly. “I think you may be acquainted with my husband, Mr. David Pitt.”

  “I am indeed!” His eyes lit up and he made another tiny bow to Lydia. “A marvelous fellow he is. I am delighted to make your acquaintance as well, Mrs. Pitt.”

  Lydia blushed and preened. “You are new to town, are you not, sir?”

  “I am.” He shot a rueful look at Merry. “So new I have not been introduced to any ladies who might like to dance.”

  Merry laughed. “Now you have been! Clara, weren’t you expressing a desire to dance?”

  Clara glared at her cousin, who knew perfectly well that she had been scheming to dance with Mr. Mortimer, and calculating how she would engineer it.

  Mr. Weston turned to her, his expression
hopeful. “Miss Hampton, perhaps you would honor me with a set?”

  John Mortimer remained stubbornly at the far side of the room, barricaded behind his idle friends, but he was watching her. Perhaps if he saw her dancing with someone else, he would be spurred to action. A little jealousy might inspire the man, Mama had suggested just the other night.

  And she had been wrong about the handkerchief.

  So she smiled at Mr. Weston and offered her hand. “The pleasure would be mine, Mr. Weston.” And she walked out with him for the quadrille.

  Now, of course, she had to talk to him. “You’re not from Somerset,” she said as they formed the set with three other couples.

  “No, from Kent.” He gave her a funny little smile, somehow enticing and self-deprecating at once. “Far from home, alone in a strange land…”

  Clara choked on a giggle. “Not so strange, sir.”

  She dared a glance toward Mr. Mortimer. He was watching her, his head angled as if puzzled. Perhaps Mama was right about jealousy—not that Clara meant to flirt with Mr. Weston. She felt she and Mr. Mortimer had had an understanding, and she was loyal and true. Still, she gave Mr. Weston a warm smile.

  “I feel like a stranger,” he confessed. “What are the sights to see in Wells? Perhaps I will feel more at home if I make myself familiar with the country.”

  “There is the cathedral, of course, and the Bishop’s Palace.” Then Clara stopped, because there was precious little else to excite anyone’s interest in Wells.

  “I have been to both, and enjoyed them immensely, if not entirely devoutly,” he said as they joined hands. “What else?”

  “I suggest a trip to Bath,” she said. “If you wish to see anything else of note.”

  He looked at her a moment too long, his blue eyes openly admiring. “I have already seen more beauty in Wells than I ever saw in Bath.”