Have Yourself a Merry Little Secret : a Christmas collection of historical romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 2)

by Collette Cameron

  “Oh, not until Christmas, my lady.”

  “Saving it, are you?” Xenobia teased.

  “Something like that.” Sullivan held open a night rail, and Xenobia pulled it on followed by her dressing gown. “Given the late hour, I expect I shall wish to sleep late on the morrow,” she said. “Why don’t you do the same, and I’ll ring when I’m ready to dress?”

  Sullivan looked uncertain for a moment but finally dipped a curtsy. “Very well, my lady.”

  Xenobia watched the servant take her leave, counted to twenty, stuffed the ring box into a pocket in her dressing gown, and then sneaked out of her bedchamber. She hurried to the end of the hall and paused before pushing down the door handle of the bedchamber she and Randolph had shared. Just the memory of what they had done had her excited. Had her hoping they might do it again.

  She grinned in delight when she discovered Randolph already in the room and untying his cravat. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she whispered as she rushed to him.

  Randolph captured her in his arms and kissed her. When he finally loosened his hold on her, he regarded her with a grin. “Careful, my lady, or I will expect a similar greeting from you every night,” he warned in a teasing voice.

  “I would be happy to comply.” Her smile faltered as she lost some of her resolve, remembering just then the shopkeeper’s last words. “Do tell me about your night. Did it go well?”

  Randolph’s expression changed as he nodded. “Very well, actually. As it happens, most of the bank notes I turned over to the investigators last week were indeed counterfeit. The culprits have been arrested, though, which means I have a few days before I gain a new assignment.”

  Xenobia’s eyes widened. “That’s good news, is it not?”

  He pulled her into a hug. “It is,” he agreed. “There’s a small matter of about five-hundred pounds that still needs to be resolved, but it’s nothing urgent,” he added when he remembered the bank’s representatives requesting that her buried treasure be exchanged for newer bank notes.

  “What is it?” she asked, her curiosity piqued at the mention of five-hundred pounds.

  “Nothing that can’t wait until morning,” he murmured as he held her. “Did you have a good evening?”

  “I did, although it’s been very strange. In a good way.” Although his query was the perfect prompt for Xenobia to put voice to a marriage proposal, she hesitated. “Please don’t think me any more wanton than you probably already do, but I’d like for you to know that you are welcome here at Bradley House. Any night—any day—should you wish,” she said as she waved a hand to indicate the bedchamber. “This can be yours if you’d like.”

  Randolph regarded her with a quizzical expression before he once again pulled her into a hug. “Whether or not I accept your offer will depend on whether or not you’re here.”

  Her eyes darted sideways as a grin slowly appeared. “I wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else,” she whispered, rather enjoying how his hands slid across her back and down and over the curves of her bottom.

  When his hand smoothed over the slick fabric of her satin dressing gown to her hip, it brushed over the ring box she had stuffed into her pocket. Xenobia felt the box bump against her thigh, and she inhaled softly.

  “What do you have there?” he asked as his hand molded over the cubical shape.

  “Your Christmas gift,” she blurted.

  Randolph blinked. “This is unexpected. When did you—?”

  “Tonight. I went to Rundell and Bridge with Sullivan.” She pulled it from her pocket and held it up. “You can open it now, if you’d like.”

  His gaze settled on the black velvet box. “You’re sure you do not wish for me to wait until Christmas morn?”

  “Oh, open it now, please. I’ll be terribly vexed if you don’t.”

  Randolph allowed a chuckle at seeing her anxious expression. “All right.”

  Before he had the lid opened, though, Xenobia said, “Since this is a Leap Year, I wish to exercise my right to ask for a man’s hand in marriage. Your hand,” she said. “I think we suit rather well. And not just because...” Her attention turned to the bed and then back to him. “Well, you are an excellent lover.”

  His eyes darting between the gold ring and her wide eyes, Randolph was left speechless.

  “Well, do you... do you like it?” she asked, her moment of courage quickly passing.

  Randolph blinked. “I do. Very much,” he replied.

  When he didn’t remove the ring from the box, Xenobia said, “If you’re concerned about a dowry—”

  “I am not.”

  “—I come with a house and a small fortune that seems to grow if I merely open drawers and boxes.”

  Randolph blinked. “The gaming table?”

  She blinked. “You knew?”

  Randolph furrowed a brow. “I was going to tell you tonight. I discovered it quite by accident while I was admiring the table this afternoon,” he admitted.

  Xenobia’s attention went to a jewel box on the tall bureau. She hurried over and opened it. “See what I mean?” she asked as she pulled a wad of bank notes from the box. “It seems there is buried treasure all around. I just never bothered to look.”

  “1817?” Randolph guessed as he moved to examine the notes she held.

  Her attention went to the top bank note. “How did you know?”

  “According to the men from the bank, these have been removed from circulation, which is why the seven one-pound notes one of your footmen lost at The Jack of Spades last month were flagged as possibly counterfeit.”

  “That would have been Smith,” Xenobia remarked. “While you were making your way out the back door tonight, I spotted him lifting thirty pounds from the table.”

  Randolph made a sound of disgust. “Yet you didn’t fire the cur,” he accused.

  “How did you know?”

  “I eavesdropped on a conversation he was having with the other footman. When they were about to go in The Jack of Spades. You were terribly generous.”

  “Even so, I think they both know they’re on report,” she replied. “Anyway, I’ll allow you to deal with them however you wish once you’re master of the house,” she said as she reached over and plucked the ring from it’s bed of velvet. “Which can only happen if you agree to marry me.”

  Randolph had to suppress a chuckle. “What’s become of the timid filly I met only one day ago?”

  Xenobia inhaled softly. “Did you prefer her?”

  He shook his head. “I pitied her,” he remarked.

  “And now?”

  “I don’t. In fact, I’m rather charmed by what she’s become. I cannot imagine it’s only because she’s discovered a small fortune, though.”

  “All that fresh air and a couple of tumbles might have helped,” she whispered, her cheeks blooming with color.

  “Ah, I shall keep that in mind,” he teased before he turned his attention to the ring.

  Xenobia set aside the bank notes and then took his free hand in hers. Once she had the band slid onto his fourth finger as far as it would go, she frowned at how snug it fit. “Oh, dear,” she whispered, her hands gripping his. “I insisted it had to be large—”

  “It’s fine, Xenobia,” Randolph murmured in awe. “And very elegant.”

  “You haven’t given me an answer.”

  Randolph dropped the ring box onto the chair next to where he stood and used that hand to search in a waistcoat pocket for the ring his father had given him the night before. “I had a plan for this evening, my Lady X, and it had nothing to do wth Christmas,” he said as he held up the garnet and diamond ring. “But it seems you have beaten me to it.”

  Xenobia stared at the ring. “For me? Rand!”

  “Will you marry me?”

  She nodded as she squeezed the hand she still held. “Yes. Yes, of course,” she replied as she very nearly bounced on the balls of her feet. Offering her right hand, she watched as he slid the gold ring onto her fourth finger. �
��A garnet,” she breathed. “And are those diamonds? Oh this is the most perfect Christmas gift.”

  Randolph chuckled. “I’d like to think it’s our hearts joined as one,” he murmured, remembering he had thought the symbolism entirely different when his father had handed the ring to him last night. Then he had been reminded of the flowers in Xenobia’s parlor, imagining it a rose with leaves on either side

  Xenobia inhaled. “And the diamonds are us?”

  “And everyone with whom we are close.”

  “Your side might require more diamonds,” Xenobia teased.

  He regarded her for a moment, his expression unreadable. “Speaking of my side, there’s someone you must meet before we—”

  “Your son, I hope. I’ve only ever held him the one time, and that was when he was just a tiny babe.”

  “You’ve held my son?” Randolph asked in surprise.

  Xenobia nodded. “I was invited to Lady Reading’s parlor for tea last year, just before Dunsworth died. When she spoke of Charles, I asked if she might show me the nursery.”

  “Which she was glad to do, I suppose.”

  “Her second son had just started walking, and the oldest had just been breeched.”

  “He’s already being tutored,” Randolph murmured as he slid the flat of a hand down Xenobia’s front. “Although I admit to fright at what might happen should we have a babe—”

  “I want as many as I can have.”

  “You wont mind if they’re all boys?”

  Xenobia giggled in delight. “You’re forgetting you have a sister,” she chided.

  “Well then, shall we see to a sibling for Charlie?”

  “Are you sure you’re not too tired?” She doffed her dressing gown and moved to undo the buttons of his waistcoat.

  Randolph’s expression darkened. “I find I’m wide awake.”

  Xenobia grinned, remembering how he had fallen asleep after they made love earlier that evening. Three times. “Not for long,” she teased as she pushed the waistcoat from his shoulders and started undoing the buttons on his fly.

  “Minx.”

  To his credit, Randolph was awake for at least half an hour.

  Epilogue

  A month later

  Squealing in delight, Xenobia stepped down from a Reading town coach, her arms filled with a white-gowned Charlie. She rushed to where Rachel Roderick stood in front of a townhouse in Westminster. “You look so elegant,” she said as she hugged her friend and now sister-by-marriage.

  “And you look far too happy to be married to one of my brothers,” Rachel chided. Her attention was on Charlie, though, as she poked a finger into his dimple.

  “I heard that,” Randolph said as he stepped down from the coach, grinning when he heard Charlie’s squeal of delight.

  Rachel was quick to join him, giving him a brief hug. “I do love being an aunt, so thank you for bringing him.”

  Randolph gave her a quelling glance. “As if my wife would have left him behind.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have, either,” Rachel replied. “Remember, I didn’t have any siblings growing up.”

  He and Rachel had only just met on Christmas Day, and the two were still hesitant around one another. Xenobia hoped today’s visit would help the two grow closer.

  “I do hope the house is working for you,” Randolph said as he offered his arms to both women.

  They made their way up the front step and into the townhouse he had called home for several years. Now that he was master of Bradley House, he had insisted Rachel take up residence in the Westminster townhouse.

  “I do like having my own home,” Rachel said as she led them to the parlor. “I don’t have a need for many servants, but I do have a chaperone, of course.”

  “Has a modiste started a wardrobe for you?” Xenobia asked.

  Rachel nodded. “Mother insisted, and Father is paying the bill, so some poor seamstresses are stitching up a storm this very moment. Have you ordered anything for the Season?”

  Xenobia shook her head. “I wore widow’s weeds for a year, so I have an entire wardrobe I’ve barely begun to wear.”

  “But is it still fashionable?”

  “It will be fine,” Xenobia insisted, waving off the idea of employing a modiste. “I expect you’ll be married before the end of the Season,” she added, changing the subject. “There are only two months before the first ball.”

  “Possibly,” Rachel hedged. Despite having a marquess for a father, having a madam for a mother meant an advantageous match would be harder to come by. “But if I do not, I shall only be more determined to return to the Continent. I dearly love to travel.” She gave Xenobia a cup of tea.

  “We may join you,” Xenobia said. “My treasury continues to grow.”

  “Where from now?” Rachel asked as she served tea to her brother.

  “I found the latest bank notes under a marble bust, and only because Charlie nearly toppled the caryatid on which it was sitting. He’s learned to walk.”

  Randolph cleared his throat. “Then I discovered a stash in a false bottom of a drawer in the desk in the study,” he said as he helped himself to a biscuit. “The bank was sure all the notes from eighteen-seventeen were accounted for, but we just keep finding more.”

  “I take it you’re not spending it all in one place?”

  Xenobia shook her head. “Except for a few items for Charlie, we haven’t yet spent any of it.”

  Rachel looked to her brother for confirmation of Xenobia’s claim. He gave a shrug. “I’ve married a cheap woman,” Randolph said in his most deadpan manner.

  Rachel burst out laughing at the same moment Xenobia leaned over and said, “Don’t you dare tell him!”

  “Tell me what?” Randolph asked, his eyes darting between the two women.

  Despite Xenobia’s insistence that she not say anything, Rachel whispered, “She’s a spendthrift, Rand. A cheapskate. A penny pincher.”

  “Rachel,” Xenobia whined in protest.

  “And now you know her little secret.”

  Randolph held out the hand which sported his sapphire and diamond wedding band. He considered what he had learned about it when he had shopped for a Christmas gift for Xenobia, and merely raised a brow.

  She certainly wasn’t a spendthrift when it came to him.

  About Linda Rae Sande

  A former technical writer and author of twenty-six historical romances, Linda Rae Sande enjoys researching the Regency era and ancient Greece.

  A fan of action-adventure movies, she can frequently be found at the local cinema. Although she no longer has any tropical fish, she follows the San Jose Sharks and makes her home in Cody, Wyoming.

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  The Marquess is Mine

  by Tamara Gill

  Prologue

  St. Albans Abbey, Kent

  1815, Summer

  "Get off her, you tyrant!"

  Young women of a particular age were wont to become romantic. It was no different for Lady Sarah Farley, youngest child of the late Duke of St. Albans, at the impressionable age of fourteen. With those words uttered to her eldest brother, Henry, by her younger brother's best friend, it was the exact moment that she fell in love with the boy.

  Lord Giles Longe, Marquess Gordan. Her hero.

  Henry stepped back from trying to take Sarah's self-portrait she was finishing. A sketch her father had started and one of the last things he had done with her before he passed the previous year. "This is my house, Gordan, and I can do whatever I want. I'm the duke. You're nothing but a child who should know when to speak to his betters."

  Her hero scoffed, pulling Sarah to stand behind him. "I'll try to remember my manners the next time I'm before one."

  Sarah looked between Lord Gordan and Henry
and didn't miss the hatred they felt. It was so palatable that she could almost taste it. Lord Gordan, Giles to his friends, was two years younger than her elder brother, the duke, and already at nose level. Her brother's eyes were narrow and unkind, Giles was the opposite, wide and clear and filled with a compassionate light.

  Her favorite brother, Hugh, had invited Giles to spend the summer with them, and he had arrived only yesterday. Sarah could not remember having been more excited about having house guests. With her father's passing, they had been in mourning a year, but this summer, her mama had allowed Hugh to invite his school friend. The moment she had spied the devilishly handsome gentleman alighting from his carriage from the attic window, her heart had moved.

  For a boy of eighteen years, the same as Hugh, he moved with grace and ability. He was tall but did not look awkward in his frame. Oh no, already his shoulders were wide, strong, and gave a hint to a rakehell in the making.

  Every gentleman Sarah thought handsome was destined to turn into a rake. She sighed, glancing down at his hand that remained on her wrist, holding her away from Henry. Such lovely, strong hands too. Perfectly shaped for holding one against one's heart.

  In only a few short years, she would be off to London, to have her first Season, and then men like Lord Gordan would court her, flirt, and wish to marry her. As a duke's daughter, she would have ample to choose from. Not that she needed to accept any who bowed before her, for her heart had been moved by Giles and would forever belong to him.

  "Are you unharmed?" he asked, leaning down to be closer to her shorter height. Henry told her a duke’s daughter did not need a self-portrait. That as duke’s daughter, they could hire a painter for such menial work. No sister to a duke should be sketching so.

  Henry was a fool.

  Sarah was well aware of what was expected of her in society when her time came to enter it. Until then, she would not allow him to take the things that meant more to her than life itself. The drawing her father started being one. Her father would never have allowed Henry to treat her with such disrespect, and neither would Hugh, who stood behind her, glaring at their elder sibling.