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

by Collette Cameron

  Westerham tried to think logically, because logic was all Thornton understood. “I can see that Lady Mary is rather more excitable than her sister. That’s what attracts me to her.” He didn’t know if he was lying or not. All he knew was that he definitely wanted her. “I think she may see the same in me. Although I will mourn the death of my brother for the rest of my life, I have stopped trying to punish myself for not being able to be at his side. I may have more in common with your younger sister than you think.”

  Thornton stared at him for a long moment, tapping his fingers on the table, his eyebrows drawn together. Finally his sunny smile appeared. “You have my permission to speak to her. But don’t be surprised if she hands you your head in a basket.”

  Westerham half-smiled, knowing he had to look unsure of himself. “I’ll speak to her when we get back to Thornton Manor. If she says ‘no,’ I will be most surprised.” Naturally. She had already agreed to his modified proposal.

  “Arrogant bastard.” Thornton rose to his feet and pulled Westerham to his by shaking his hand vigorously. “Good luck.”

  As he rode back to the house, visions of Lady Mary’s slender shapeliness and pearly white skin filled his thoughts

  Chapter 5

  Mary brushed out her hair one more time and tried a looser knot. She took her time scrutinizing every detail. Perhaps Westerham was right and she could make more of her looks if she tried. However, she doubted that changing only her hairstyle would make a difference. Naturally, she cared how she looked, but whatever she did, she always resembled herself.

  Sometimes she wore a gown that she thought suited her, and other times that same gown made her look dreary. She rarely heard a compliment, unlike Lucy who asked people how she looked, which meant she only ever heard gratuitous compliments. Lucy gave people no chance other than to compliment her. Mary had fallen into the same trap, and often told Lucy she looked pretty in something, when the gown had made no impact on her, whatsoever. Only Lucy’s face and sweetness made the impact. Logic said no gown would make a difference. Hairdos, in Mary’s opinion, were the same. They depended on the beauty of the wearer.

  She stared at her new looser style for some time before ringing the maid’s bell. When Nan, the upstairs maid arrived, Mary rose to her feet. “I want a maid to help me with styling my hair,” she said to the youngest of all the maids. “Do you think you could?”

  “No, miss. You want Alice.”

  “Alice? Isn’t she the new downstairs maid?”

  “Yes, Miss, but she used to help her former mistress dress, and she braided my hair for me yesterday in half the time that I could. Shall I ask her for you?”

  Mary nodded, and within five minutes the maid with the scarred face and neck knocked on her door and entered.

  Mary glanced away from her reflection in the mirror, trying not to concentrate on the maid’s blemish, a red mass that ranged from the lobe of her right ear to her shoulder. “I was told you have done hair before.”

  Alice nodded, her brow creased. “Would the mistress mind if I helped you?”

  “If you do a good job...” Mary thought about her next words. As the youngest daughter, she didn’t have any autonomy in the household. “I will ask Mama if you can be my personal maid.”

  Alice moistened her pretty lips. “Sit by the mirror and I will see if I can please you.”

  Three hairdos later, Mary still had no idea which one suited her. Alice swore the first did. She took Mary’s hair back to the severe style again, with a twisted knot on top and a hint of soft curls around Mary’s face. Mary finally nodded, trying to see why that particular style should look better than the one before. She finally concluded that each of the styles had merit, but this one somehow made her eyes look larger. “Now, choose which gown would make me look soft and pretty, if you will.”

  In the bottom of Mary’s dressing trunk, Alice found an old gown that Della had purchased for her at least three years ago. “This one would suit you with a few changes.”

  “What would you change?”

  “I would remove the shoulder frills. Not because there’s aught wrong with ‘em, Miss, but because frills is more suitable for someone in the schoolroom.”

  “Do you have time?”

  Alice demonstrated how much time she had by pulling a stitch here and there until the gown sat frill-free. Mary stepped into the new creation and took the shawl that Alice handed to her, the blue and green one she had worn yesterday with the green gown. The shawl draped loosely over one shoulder, making the blue gown suddenly appear very fashionable.

  She couldn’t have been more surprised. As far as she was concerned, being attractive depended on how all a person’s features were put together—the size of the eyes, the length of the eyelashes, the position of the cheekbones, the sharp angle of a jaw-line, and curving of the lips. Attractiveness might be attributed to a combination of the right features, but putting all the right garments together helped almost as much to make a person stylish.

  For the first time in her life, she almost had confidence in her appearance. Trying to swallow her doubts, she walked downstairs to the drawing room, hoping she hadn’t been foolish to believe Westerham when he’d said he would ask Eden for her hand.

  Even if he had been installing dreams into her head, her last hour hadn’t been completely wasted. She had learned that she could look better if she accepted advice. Advice had no relation to listening to sweet words and false promises. For the rest of her life, she didn’t want to hear another false promise. Although Westerham said her would marry her, she had heard those words before: those words that had no meaning whatsoever to her. She had decided not to believe a single word that issued from Westerham’s lips unless she stood in front of the altar with him, the likelihood of which remained quite remote.

  The waiting footman opened the drawing room doors for her. She passed through with a regal tilt to her head that she had never used before. Mama’s face turned to her, her eyes wide, and her mouth beginning to curve with pleasure. “What a pretty gown, Mary? When did you buy that?”

  “Three years ago. I had a few trimmings removed by the downstairs maid, Alice. She also did my hair. Apparently, she was a dresser for her former employer.” Mary waited with a hopeful tilt of her eyebrows.

  Mama scratched her head with her crochet hook. “A dresser? Why was she working as a maid?”

  “Perhaps someone forgot to tell you about her former experience. The other maids knew, and I wish I could have her for my maid,” Mary said in a rush, although she knew the scarring on Alice’s face kept her downstairs. Only the prettiest females could be ladies’ maids. Mary raised her eyebrows while maintaining her sweetest smile. Mama would never be maneuvered from a position of being in the wrong, which made her difficult to handle by a daughter with so little tact that she rarely had her own way. She had tried and failed many times to copy her sister’s way of manipulating people.

  “The other maids know?” Mama latched quickly onto most the vital part of Mary’s sentence. If others knew and she didn’t, she had no way out of giving Alice her rightful place in the house. However, the ‘right’ place might not be with Mary but with Lucy, whose maid was no more than competent, and could be passed on to her younger sister, instead.

  Mary nodded solemnly. “I think she may be the right maid for me. She isn’t as experienced as Lucy’s maid, unfortunately, but I can give her a few challenges that should help her to grow.” She loved her sentences, which combined all the words Lucy and Mama loved to throw at each other, but mainly about her.

  “Take her, take her.” Mama threw her gestures all around the room as if she was tossing the maid at Mary.

  “Thank you, Mama. She will save us money because she is quite good at refurbishing old gowns.” Satisfied that she had earned her own maid by learning how to get her own way and not being at all embarrassed about taking what she wanted for the first time in her life, Mary sat on the plump couch newly bought for the room by Della, who was gr
adually ridding the house of all the last Earl’s oldest furniture.

  Mary had barely picked up her tangled embroidery silks when doors opened again. “My lord would like to see Lady Mary in his study,” the footman announced portentously.

  “Why on earth does he want to see you, Mary? What have you done now?”

  Mary rose to her feet. “I’ll find out,” she said, her heart beating in her throat. She wouldn’t be asked to see Eden for any reason other than that Lord Westerham had spoken to him.

  She drew an enormous breath that expanded her chest into an air balloon, and floated behind the footman along the hallway to her brother’s private sanctuary. A flourish of the door let her into a room lined with bookshelves. Eden’s paper-covered desk faced the doorway. The light from the set of windows behind him threw shadows onto his face. She saw him as a black silhouette. Two tall-backed upholstered armchairs sat in front of his desk, one occupied by Westerham. He stood, turned toward her, and bowed formally. Her smile wavered.

  “Sit,” her brother said with a casual wave of his hand.

  Westerham waited for her to sit and then he took his former position in the other chair, his elegant fingers meshed together. He smiled reassuringly at her. Even though a moment of panic filled her, she noted his self-possession. As usual, he had dressed impeccably, wearing a black jacket with tan trousers, both of which fitted as well as everything else he wore. His linen shirt had been impeccably starched. She estimated that he squandered a small fortune on his wardrobe.

  Her brother eyed them both as if he had never seen either of them before. “Lord Westerham has asked for your hand in marriage.”

  She swallowed. “Hmm,” she said clearly.

  “What do you think of his proposal?” Eden continued with his usual patience.

  “Oh.” She stared at Westerham, whose eyes gleamed with silent laughter. “Well. I’ll marry him if—”

  Westerham held up a hand to stop her speaking. “Yes, or no, Lady Mary. You already told me you wanted to marry me.”

  “You spoke to her first?” Eden frowned and rubbed the back of his neck.

  Westerham nodded. “I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed by a refusal.”

  Eden turned to Mary. “Do you want to marry a man almost ten years your senior, who has far more life experience than you do?” For a moment, he looked entirely serious, an expression she rarely saw on his darling face.

  “Of course, he’s had more life experience than I. He has lived longer. And yes, I do want to marry him. Please.”

  Eden used his pondering face. “I think I should give you time to think about your answer.”

  She stared straight at Westerham. “I have thought about his proposal since yesterday, when we first discussed the matter. I am quite sure that if I don’t say yes right now, he will find someone else. I would prefer to be his first and last choice.”

  Westerham offered her a surprised glance. Unlike others, he seemed to hear her words as she meant them. Other people appeared to translate what she said into utter nonsense. “I plan to take her back to London with me to live with my mother until the wedding,” he said in a mild voice. “She has no daughters of her own, and would be delighted to take Lady Mary under her wing for the rest of the season.”

  Mary almost pitied the poor countess, who had no idea that her son planned to marry a woman he barely knew. However, she had stipulated that she must have a partial season in London before she married, and Westerham had suggested a stay with his mother, a purported social butterfly.

  “I see you two have discussed the entire matter.” Eden, rarely surprised by anything, let out a long sigh.

  “Of course.” Westerham stood, inclined his head, and held out his hand for Mary to take. “We shall tell your mother now.”

  “I’ll come with you so that you have someone to catch her when she faints,” Eden said obligingly. “I think she still sees Mary as a sixteen year-old.”

  Mama had the expected misgivings, managed a quick recovery, ignored Lucy’s stiff posture, and managed to get her head around her second daughter leaving the next day to meet her new in-laws.

  “You’ll want Alice with you,” she told Mary in her panicking tone. “How fortunate that we found her before we knew the news. If you are leaving tomorrow—oh dear, this is so sudden.” Her crochet hook came out again and scratched her head with vigor. “Will we have the time to pack? We won’t have time to buy your ...”

  Since Mary thought her mother might mention undergarments, she interrupted. “I’ll be in London. I’ll be able to buy anything I need. And in a few days, Della and Eden will be in London too.”

  Then Mama started her version of organizing the trip, which consisted of throwing orders helter-skelter at the servants as well as Mary and Lucy. Lucy tried her best to appear overjoyed, but she had suddenly been supplanted as the marriageable daughter, and needed time to recover. She went to her bedroom to collect something or other, and as expected, didn’t emerge.

  Having had time to think last night, Mary knew where to find the trunk she needed. The list in her head now being aired, she found Alice to be more than helpful, especially when she discovered she was also going to London.

  That night, Mary’s last in this household, as she entered the hallway on her way to dinner, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned. Westerham caught up with her. “You did well,” he said in a low voice that stirred the hair around her ear. “One would suspect that you want me.”

  Behind the irony, she recognized his tone of doubt, but the hidden meaning surprised her. ‘Do you want me?’ he seemed to be asking. Three months ago, she wouldn’t have understood his meaning. Wanting a person hadn’t occurred to her. During that time, she had discovered that someone ‘wanted’ her, and she had been taught what ‘want’ meant. The word turned out to be a physical need, which certainly hadn’t been reciprocated by her.

  Now, the tables had turned and she did want something. Him: and in a physical way. She had, ever since their face-to-face meeting yesterday. Unfortunately, she had over-reacted, knowing that, ten years ago, his charm and kindness brought her out of her own watchful world and into one where people trusted others with their thoughts and aspirations. His direct manner had impressed her. Even now, he didn’t bother with polite, inconsequential words. He said exactly what he meant, but underneath, she could hear the wry humor of his thoughts. He would never have considered hurting the feelings of the lesser beings in the world. She had been ten years his junior, but he had treated her opinions with respect, no matter what she had said. Even now, he implied that the least important of the Thornton sisters deserved to be noticed.

  Now, as a grown woman, the sight of him caused her breath to shorten. Being Eden’s sister, she was used to seeing physical perfection in a man, but Westerham had a little more—an air of hidden sensuality. Her whole body reacted to him with an ache of yearning.

  Even when she turned her gaze away from him, her mind barely wandered away from thoughts of his smooth and hard body. Her imagination settled her hands on his wide shoulders, and slid her palms down his chest to his narrow hips. His masculine hands, shapely and graceful, would reciprocate by gently drawing her up against his body, while he smiled at her and lowered his lips to hers. She breathed out her longing, and glanced away.

  Without another word, she preceded him into the dining room.

  Chapter 6

  Westerham hadn’t expected to be obsessed by Lady Mary. As a virginal young lady, she should have shocked by his words, had she understood the meaning, but the sultry expression her face said she didn’t mistake what he meant by ‘want.’ And yes, she had lived in most of his thoughts for the past two days.

  Since he had every intention of marrying her, he would find out how much she wanted him. To be physically attracted to his promised bride seemed more than convenient in these days of arranged marriages. He didn’t doubt she was no more than a short term fancy and that his heart was in no danger. Her habit of saying exact
ly what she thought would soon cool his ardor. Fortunately, she needed to do no more than produce the required children and then she could go her own way.

  He wondered about his need to think ahead, when his needs were immediate, but this sort of immediacy was new to him. He wanted her with an ache that had burrowed into his chest and surged around his body with every beat of his heart. The meal that night dragged on and on while he had to listen to all the arrangements her family wanted put in place before he left.

  He had no doubt Lady Mary would handle the apparently endless list of details her mother seemed to think were important. Lady Mary’s efficiency with her words hinted that she had the same efficiency of mind. This afternoon, she had handled her brother with ease and plain speaking. She hadn’t wavered from the plan.

  Perhaps he didn’t quite have her measure but she appeared to be as desirous of him as he was of her. Her desire didn’t surprise him, for desire came to everyone sometime in life. More than a physical attraction would be unlikely, since she hadn’t yet been exposed to society, where she would meet many interesting gentlemen. If she wanted to take a lover after she had produced his heir, as long as she bore no children other than his, she would be a satisfactory holder of the title of the Countess of Westerham. Although he ought to choose her less passionate sister, he couldn’t see past Lady Mary, whose entire person appealed to him far too much.

  “And as soon as you arrive, send us a note, Mary.” Her mother had a habit of rambling on, not omitting even the smallest detail. “We want to be sure you are safe.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Lady Mary said for the umpteenth time during the long meal.

  Westerham’s gaze met Thornton’s. Both sighed at the same time. Fortunately, no meal lasted forever.