Wicked Christmas (Blackhaven Brides Book 10)

by Mary Lancaster

  By the time Jones got outside, the couple were walking together up the street. In Jones’s opinion, it was far too cold an evening for a stroll, however warm one’s clothing. As the man turned his head toward the woman, the lamplight shone briefly on the doctor’s face. Which made him doubt the truth of his earlier identification of the woman.

  The hotel doorman had already proved a close-mouthed, self-righteous individual, but as another gent emerged from the hotel, Jones felt sanguine enough to approach him. Moreover, the newcomer stood on the step, scowling up the street as though interested in the same couple.

  Jones tipped his hat. “Forgive me, but I’m far too cold to want to go out of my way unnecessarily! Would that by any chance be the Princess of Rheinwald?”

  The gentleman curled his lip. “Oh yes, that is the princess. Though her taste in escorts is somewhat common.”

  Jones smiled peaceably. “The doctor? Perhaps she has a headache. Good night, sir. Merry Christmas.”

  *

  After the third kiss, there had never been any possibility that she would return calmly to her rooms. Instead, when they left the ballroom, she sent one of the hotel servants to fetch her cloak from Lise and to tell the maid she was going to church with Dr. Lampton.

  Of course, it was still much too early for the service, but she did not need to explain herself to the maid. Or to herself, apparently. She just felt as though they had been dancing around each other since they had first met, advancing, retreating, circling like some old saraband. And now finally, they could walk together. Or at least talk together in honesty.

  But when he took her cloak from the servant and placed it around her shoulders, her skin tingled at even that lightest of touches. There was danger in going anywhere with him, more danger than any presented by Cairney, by the Tsar, or even her late husband. Because her heart was involved. Even then, she knew that.

  The evening was freezing cold and yet some warmth she barely understood settled around her heart and spread. Her heartbeat quickened with pleasure in the moment and in the vague belief that her life was about to change.

  The doctor walked beside her. Without even touching her, his presence overwhelmed her.

  “So,” she said with a shade of desperation, “you have decided you would rather kiss me than tend my wound?”

  “I would like to do both, but I do not have that right. Your wound will heal now, providing you do nothing silly.”

  “Like making assignations with Sir Anthony Cairney?” she challenged.

  His eyebrows flew up. “Did you?”

  “I wondered if the thought had entered your head.”

  “It did,” he admitted. “But very briefly. I thought you went there from boredom and he pursued you.”

  “Through his own boredom, I expect. Perhaps, in his cups, a princess seems a desirable trophy.”

  He cast her a quick glance and it struck her that in his heart, he still believed she was a governess. However, he let it go. “Drunk or sober, Cairney is an imbecile.”

  “He never had the impudence to kiss me,” she pointed out.

  “That wasn’t impudence on my part. It was necessity.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you imagine of my past or my future. But you should know that Andreas is my first care in this world. I do not indulge in liaisons.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. Neither do I.” As though he sensed her skeptical glance, he gave a twisted smile. “I sewed my wild oats a long time ago. Before Mary.”

  Her stomach tightened. “Your wife… You loved her.”

  He nodded. “We grew up near the same village, childhood friends. She was always there, through the games and fights, through my university years and my wild oats. Like a background to my life. And then one day she walked into the foreground.” He shrugged impatiently. She suspected he rarely talked of Mary and was forcing himself to do so now. “She put up with my moods, with my long hours of work, and my home studies. She helped me, laughed at me, loved me for some reason. And then… I could not save her. Or the child. It was too small.”

  Because she couldn’t help it, she laid her hand on his arm. It jerked once, as though he would throw her off, an instinctive, habitual rejection of sympathy. But then it stilled, and his other hand briefly covered hers.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you carry a guilt that is not yours. For whatever design, God took them.”

  “God,” he said impatiently. “If I believed in such a being I would call him wicked and unjust.”

  A shocked laugh tried to escape her. Although she swallowed it down, he must have felt its tremor, for a sardonic smile curved his lips. “I offend you.”

  “It’s a shocking sentiment to express on Christmas Eve,” she admitted. “Especially when I have committed you to escorting me to church.”

  “I don’t burst into flames when I enter it,” he said dryly.

  “Then you have been to Mr. Grant’s services before?” she asked in fresh surprise.

  “I like Grant’s sermons. They are about compassion and understanding and living a better life.”

  “Through God, surely.”

  His lips twitched. “It’s a matter of interpretation. I’m sure Grant would agree with yours. I reserve the right to keep my own.” He glanced at her ruefully. “I’m not really selling myself to you, am I?”

  And there was the point. She held his gaze. “What exactly is it you want me to buy?”

  Flames seemed to ignite in the smoky depths of his eyes, catching at her breath. “I want to court you and win you if I can.”

  Her heart delved thrilling to his words, and yet even as she yearned and rejoiced, she recognized the impossibility of any future with him.

  She dragged her gaze free and realized with some surprise, that they were at the harbor. She hadn’t been paying attention to where they walked. She paused by the harbor wall, staring beyond it to the dark, troubled sea. He leaned one elbow on the wall, watching her.

  “Is there no hope for me?” he asked.

  “Nicholas,” she whispered helplessly, turning into him. “I am more than my heart. I have duties to—” The rest was lost in his mouth as he kissed her with such tenderness that she wanted to weep. Her hand, flung up to forbid him, clung to his cold, rough cheek instead, and she kissed him back with every feeling she had. For if this was to be their last kiss, she wanted them both to remember it.

  His thumb caressed the corner of her mouth. “I am not much of a catch,” he whispered against her lips. “But I am faithful by nature.”

  There was another kiss, sweet and heady, until she caught his face between her hands. “It isn’t about you, Nicholas,” she blurted. “You are everything, you could be everything I dreamed… But I cannot dream any more, I am—”

  At some point—possibly at the word dreamed—she had lost him. His eyes and then his head lifted. She broke off, frowning. Only then did the hairs on the back of her neck tingle with alarm.

  Nicholas lunged, and she spun around in terror to see him knocked brutally to the ground. One man faced her. By the harbor lights, she saw that he was well-dressed and gentlemanly, and wondered if it were Cairney come to continue the quarrel. Until she saw his face and his cold, curiously dead eyes. His hand twitched and the lamplight glinted on the long, slender knife between his fingers.

  *

  Lampton had seen the glint of steel almost as soon as he’d registered the man’s looming presence. He leapt at him from pure instinct, to get between him and Elizabeth. But the attacker was prepared. A fist crashed into his jaw, blasted him to the ground, where he lay, stunned. The figures facing each other before him were blurry. But with perfect clarity, he understood that the attacker had come to kill her.

  A heap of other understandings piled up behind, but they were for later. Right now, he had only an instant to save her. He blinked rapidly, clearing the mist from his vision. She stood backed against the harbor wall, with no escape. But even as Lampton hauled
himself to his knees, his gaze rivetted to the lethal stiletto, her knee shot up, straight and hard into the man’s groin. The man doubled up with an involuntary groan of agony, which gave Lampton all the time he needed. He launched himself on top of the attacker, his fingers closing as surely around the assassin’s wrist as they had around Cairney’s less than an hour ago. But he squeezed a lot more viciously, and as the stiletto clattered to the ground, he twisted the man’s arm up behind his back and forced him to his knees.

  Shouts came from the direction of the tavern and from the row of fishermen’s cottages along the seafront. Footsteps pounded toward them.

  “Oh no,” Elizabeth gasped. “There are more of them!”

  “Nonsense,” Lampton said. “These are your protectors from this afternoon. And a few friends. Pick up the weapon, would you? You,” he added, slapping the man’s head. “Who are you?”

  “Jones,” he gasped.

  Lampton frowned. “You’re English. What do you have against… Were you paid to do this?”

  “’Course I was,” Jones sneered.

  “By whom?” Lampton demanded.

  “Mind your own damned business,” Jones advised, watching with some clear unease the approach of the sailors and other extremely rough patrons of the tavern. He jerked his body violently backward, trying to knock Lampton over.

  Lampton merely twisted his arm more viciously. The thought of what he might have done to Elizabeth terrified him.

  “Hold still, you weasel,” he commanded. “The question to concern you is really how I require these gentlemen to deliver you to the authorities. In how many pieces. Who is paying you?”

  “I don’t know!” Jones exclaimed desperately. “Foreign gent in Liverpool gave me the job, but he’s only a go-between, too. He’s got the money, though.”

  Lampton glanced at Elizabeth.

  “Someone of Alfred’s I expect.” She had picked up the stiletto and was examining it rather grimly. She looked up from it to the panting, still-wriggling captive. “You killed Miss Hale.”

  That understanding that had hit Lampton along with Mr. Jones’s fist, forced its way closer to the surface. Somewhere, he felt his new hope crumbling and falling into the sea, but he grasped it, held it together by a thread.

  “She was an innocent woman,” Elizabeth said intensely.

  “She told everyone she was the Princess of Rheinwald,” Jones said. “I don’t know or care which of you is, but to be sure of my money, I need you both gone.”

  “Sadly, for you,” Lampton said grimly, giving his arm a last brutal little twist as the army of sailors came to a halt around them. “It’s you who will be gone. Are you working alone?”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Andreas!” With a gasp, she dropped the stiletto at the feet of the sailor known universally as Smuggler Jack, and ran.

  “Wait,” Lampton cried in alarm, but of course she didn’t. He swore under his breath. Since Jack was bending to pick up the stiletto, Lampton thrust his captive at the two men nearest him. “Here. Hold him and hand him over to the Watch. I suspect he’s a slippery bastard, so be warned. He’s wanted for murder and the attempted murder of the lady we’re all trying to protect.”

  With that, he tore down the road after Elizabeth, fearful that she would tear her wound again, hurt herself unnecessarily in her need to save her son from any accomplice of Jones’s.

  He caught up with her outside the tavern, which was probably as well, considering the types which often hung around outside it.

  “Elizabeth, stop,” he begged, grasping her arm. He knew she would struggle to keep moving, so he merely strode on with her, trying to slow her from a run to a brisk walk, by tucking her hand in his arm. “He’s in no danger. He’s with Gretchen and Lise.”

  “And the hotel is full of strangers. I should never have left him, never.”

  There was nothing he could say that would weigh with her until she had seen for herself that her son was safe. And so, he walked with her in silence. It was all he could do to keep her from straining herself and her wound.

  The doorman let them into the hotel with a bow that she was too agitated to acknowledge. He kept her hand in his arm when she would have withdrawn it, just to prevent her rushing. Her lips were white, moving constantly as though in prayer. He recognized guilt when he saw it and there was no greater enemy. To her confused thinking, at this moment, she was responsible for endangering her child whom she loved more than life.

  It wasn’t true, of course. And neither, he acknowledged, was the guilt he had carried all those months for Mary and the baby. She had seen other, more highly respected doctors than he. They all said the same thing, and neither they nor he could have saved either of them.

  At the end of the passage, Lampton opened the door for Elizabeth—and at once saw the strangers in the room. For an instant his throat dried in horror that he had made a huge mistake. But the strangers were very unlikely assassins. A man and a woman, dressed warmly and respectably, if not wealthily. They were approaching middle years. The man wore a rather superior expression. He might have been a teacher or a clergyman or a country solicitor. The lady Lampton took to be his wife, had a pinched mouth but gleaming, acquisitive eyes.

  They had been seated on the sofa, though both sprang to their feet when Lampton and the princess walked in.

  “Oh, madame, thank God,” Lise exclaimed in French as she bolted toward them. “Mr. and Mrs. Hale have called on you. Mr. Hale is Miss Hale’s brother.”

  This at least had the benefit of stopping Elizabeth in her tracks. Lampton knew how she felt. The last of his hopes and doubts vanished as the Hales and the princess faced each other as obvious strangers.

  Elizabeth was no governess. That had always been his own wishful, fanciful thinking. She was the Princess of Rheinwald and impossibly above him. His dreams were over before they had begun.

  For an instant, she looked so confused that Lampton threw his pain aside and opened his mouth to speak for her. But it seemed she was up to the task after all. She went forward with her hand held out. “Mrs. Hale, Mr. Hale, you have my deepest condolences. I am so glad you have called.” She offered each of them her hand very quickly. “Forgive me for one moment while I see to my son. Lise, have you rung for tea?”

  “Yes, Madame,” Lise said with relief, although it was doubtful Elizabeth actually heard, so focused was she on reaching Andreas’s chamber.

  From her open doorway, Gretchen whispered loudly, “He’s sound asleep.”

  Of course, Elizabeth went into her son’s room anyway.

  Civilly, Lampton introduced himself to the Hales and offered his condolences, which they barely acknowledged. Since they were so patently waiting for Elizabeth—they gazed fixedly at Andreas’s door—Lampton lapsed into silence and studied them instead.

  Despite their somber faces, they bore no obvious signs of grief or distress. He didn’t hold that against them—grief took many forms and family relationships could be complicated.

  Elizabeth emerged from the bedchamber and walked toward them, outwardly as self-possessed as ever. But Lampton saw that she trembled with reaction, and her eyes sought his, silently communicating the depth of her relief and a desperate plea for his support. And so, although his preferred reaction was to flee and lick his wounds in private, he could not desert her.

  “Please, sit,” she invited her guests. “I am surprised to see you so soon.”

  “Your messenger found us at my other sister’s house,” Mr. Hale explained, waiting politely for the princess to sit before he did. “She lives only fifteen miles from here. I believe your man fell into conversation with locals and discovered our presence.”

  “Well, I am glad no time was wasted, although it is terrible news to be obliged to send. I am so sorry.”

  Mr. Hale inclined his head. “We came at once, of course, to identify the body as the magistrate, Mr. Winslow, wished. And to call upon your highness with our profoun
dest thanks.”

  “Thanks?” Elizabeth looked startled. “For what? To be frank, sir, I believe I am responsible for her death. I believe she was killed in mistake for me.”

  “I cannot believe that is true,” Mrs. Hale said in firm tones. “Harriet spoke of you in such glowing terms. She loved her place with you and your little boy, of course.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said warmly. “She did love Andreas. He will miss her sadly, as will I.”

  “You are most kind, most gracious.”

  Tea arrived at this point. Elizabeth poured, and Lampton passed the cups to the Hales. As he did so, he inquired, “Have you identified your sister for Mr. Winslow?”

  “Of course,” Hale said impatiently. “And we return to my other sister’s house tonight. But we could not go without paying our respects to her highness, and expressing our profound gratitude.”

  Mrs. Hale sat forward, her cup and saucer almost buried between her lap and her bosom as she leaned toward Elizabeth. “We are taking poor Harriet home with us, of course. And we wish to invite you to join us in a few days…”

  Lampton was a cynical man who had long ago grasped the depths to which humanity could sink. He understood at once what Mrs. Hale meant and why they had come. He thought Elizabeth realized it, too, for after that she got rid of them very speedily, if civilly.

  “Awful people,” she said in a shaking voice as the door closed behind them. “And to think, poor Miss Hale was so eager to see them. They do not care that she is dead, only what social triumph they can squeeze out of it.”

  Lampton paced restlessly toward the window. “I suspect that is why Miss Hale took your gown and cloak—to impress her family with her new wealth and status. And on her way back to you, she probably thought she could enjoy a couple of nights being pampered by inn staff, just by using your name. She must have carried it quite well to fool our friend, Mr. Jones.”

  “Poor, silly Miss Hale,” Elizabeth whispered. “It seems she has no one but us to mourn her.”

  “She does not care,” Lampton said gently, pausing in front of her. “She is dead.”