Charmed at Christmas (Christmas at Castle Keyvnor Book 1)

by Claire Delacroix

  Felicity coughed pointedly, bringing him back to the present.

  “And did it pass, your beloved bill?” Given how arch she looked, she already knew the answer.

  “No.” It had, in fact, failed so spectacularly that one of the most prominent lords had actually lit the bill on fire in front of him, while ranting about government-run police forces being the very devil.

  So much for being important.

  So much for changing the world.

  His stomach sloshed, remembering the sickening descriptions of the murders in the penny press. Two families, gone. A young apprentice with so much to live for. A mother, her skull bashed in with a maul. An infant, dead in his cradle.

  Senseless, gruesome violence perpetuated upon society’s most vulnerable.

  And he’d wanted so badly to stop it from ever happening again.

  Felicity let out an undignified snort of derision. That was the proverbial last feather to break the horse’s back, for he felt his frustration spill over, until he no longer cared if he angered her further. He was trying to help her, devil take it, and she’d done nothing but point out his shortcomings with a truly frightening exactness.

  “Look, I’m here now.” He threw up his hands, already starting to regret coming back to Bocka Morrow. “And whether you approve or not, Tetbery Estate belongs to me. So you can stay out here in the bitter cold as long as you want, but I’m going back inside to my library, where I shall have my butler serve me a hot cup of tea.”

  She opened her mouth to retort, but he didn’t give her a chance to finish. He turned on his heel and stalked off. She called his name, but he didn’t stop.

  Felicity Fields might be the smartest person alive, but he’d be damned before he let her have the last word.

  Chapter 3

  How dare he!

  For a minute, Felicity stood there, glaring daggers at Nicholas’s retreating back. How dare he, she thought again, and again, as she had so many times before when dealing with him. He made her want to shake her fist, stomp her foot, and spit on him. Perhaps she’d do all three, with him here now.

  Which no one had told her to anticipate.

  If she’d had time to prepare, she could have had a strategy. Now she was caught at a disadvantage. Why hadn’t anyone informed her? After so many years living at Tetbery, the servants knew she didn’t cope well with the unexpected.

  And now, she had too much at stake—if Nicholas learned about the true nature of her experiments, he’d stop her from bringing back Margaret.

  Gathering her skirts in one hand, Felicity broke into a jog. The wind smacked against her cheeks, the harshness somehow fitting. The morning had started out sunny, but despite the clearness of the sky, the sun simply wasn’t strong enough to abate the chill.

  All the sun did was make Nicholas look like golden god.

  Fitting, too, that even the weather was against her.

  “Curb her wild ways,” he’d said, as if he was the one to do that.

  When they’d been children, she’d always been the one to point out possible dangers. He’d never listened. Not when she’d given him directions in her laboratory, and not when he’d sprained his ankle jumping off the manor’s second story balcony to get away from her lecture on the pollination processes of honey bees.

  Served him right, really. Honey bees were fascinating creatures, and he should have been thanking her for enlightening him, not running away.

  She sighed. If only he’d find a balcony to jump off now, and leave her alone.

  No one ever did as she wished them to.

  Stepping off the beach, she opened the gate to the back garden of the estate. Once inside, she cut through the gap in the hedge like she always did, then took another shortcut through the roses. This brought her to the door just as Nicholas was entering the atrium.

  She followed, closing the door behind her. Hackles raised but forcing a smile upon her lips, she slid in front of him, arms crossed over her chest to keep herself from smacking him. Margaret had always said she could catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Felicity’s tests had proved this was categorically false, but the saying might have merit on a metaphorical level.

  Metaphors, again. It always came back to metaphors she did not understand. She bit back a groan.

  “No one told me you were coming.” She was proud of how even her voice sounded, without any of the frustration she felt. “I don’t understand why Tolsworth or Mrs. Mitchell didn’t inform me, but that is a discussion for another time. If I’d known—”

  Nicholas’s brows shot sky high as his lips curled into another one of those incorrigible smirks.

  She would not let him know how much that smirk managed to irritate, and intrigue, her. “If I’d known, I would have made sure the estate was better prepared for your visit.”

  That blasted smirk grew wider. “You mean you would have hidden frogs in my bed. Again.”

  “That was one time,” she insisted. “I wished to test how long a frog could remain within the confines of fabric before it began to squirm its way out. Two minutes, in case you wondered. Far longer than I thought.”

  “So I should forgive you, in the name of scientific progress?” He took a seat on the settee positioned in the center of the room, looking out at the garden.

  Devil take him. That’d always been her favorite seat. Now she was forced to sit in the only other chair, cater-corner to him, with her back to the door. Exposed. Again caught unaware.

  Unless she sat next to him.

  Yes, that would do. He’d never expect that.

  “Of course you should.” She dropped down beside him, the settee so cramped that the folds of her black walking dress draped over his breeches. “Science must be of the utmost importance.”

  “I prefer to affect progress through legislation.” Nicholas angled his body to face her—the slightest alteration, for the settee left them little room to move, but it was enough to overwhelm her senses in ways she was not prepared for. “And while I dare not decry science and its impact, I think you are quizzing me. There was no need to place the frog in my bed.”

  He was right—she’d picked his bed because he’d interfered with her experiment the day before, dropping the wrong substance into a vial and causing the mixture to boil too soon. She’d lost count of the number of casualties he’d caused in her laboratory.

  She ought to tell him that. Only, the words wouldn’t form. His closeness was, frankly, unnerving. She could not concentrate, even on her favorite subject: defending science and its contributions to philistines.

  He smelled too good, sandalwood and leather and horse. Probably he had ridden here from the Mermaid’s Kiss tavern in town. On anyone else, she was certain such a combination wouldn’t have worked—but on him, she found herself leaning in, wanting to take a big sniff.

  Which she did, before she could stop herself.

  “What are you doing?” He pulled away from her, eying her with that familiar mix of confusion and surprise.

  She did not mind that. She was used to people looking at her as though she’d sprouted a second head. They usually departed quickly, and she’d be allowed to think in peace. Except Nicholas always had a habit of staying when he wasn’t wanted. “Do you know how long you’ll be staying, Your Grace?”

  He pulled back even further from her, to the very edge of the settee, and his eyes were narrowed with suspicion. “You’ve never called me ‘Your Grace’ before. What’s going on in that mechanical mind of yours, Felicity?”

  She blinked, her fixed smile wavering. She hated when he called her mechanical, as though she were not a living, breathing woman.

  She twisted the mourning ring back and forth around her finger, the repetition soothing her. “I only wanted to know so that I can make sure all the preparations have been made correctly. With Margaret gone, I’m the…” She stopped her before she said “lady of the house.”

  She wasn’t, not really. His future wife would be.

  “I’
m the longest resident,” she settled on, finally, because Nicholas looked at her expectantly. “Er, not counting the servants.”

  He leaned back against the settee, scooting back into her space, his big body taking up entirely too much room. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your staying at Tetbery. I suppose now is as good as time as any.”

  Her heart beat faster within her chest, a pitter-patter-pitter she couldn’t slow. This was it, then. When he’d tell her she had to leave, that there was no place for her here. What about her work for Margaret? They’d never be reunited.

  Margaret would just be…dead, forever.

  She refused to accept that.

  “Hmm?” was all she managed to reply.

  “I’m your guardian now, which means the responsibility of chaperoning you next Season falls to me.” He carded a hand through those soft, sun-speckled brown locks of his, making her hate both how handsome he looked, and the way every movement of his seemed effortless when she had to struggle so hard just to appear normal.

  She didn’t want to go to London, and she certainly didn’t want to spend several months with him. “I’m twenty-one. I do not need a guardian. Nor do I wish to leave Tetbery. I have work to be done.”

  “What work?”

  “You know, normal things. Domestic things. Details would bore you.” She prayed her voice gave no hint of her lie—because according to Tressa, trying to resurrect one’s beloved guardian was definitely not normal.

  He was not so easily daunted. “Try me. What kind of things, precisely?”

  This was why she hated speaking with him: not only was she a terrible liar, but he asked too many questions. At best, his interrogations led to awkwardness; at worst, she made a complete arse of herself. “I have to keep the estate afloat. Make sure everything is tended to.”

  “A steward could do that. You never had a proper coming out.” Another fact delivered as though it should be news to her—as if he was discussing someone else’s life, not her own. “Aunt Margaret should have introduced you.”

  “I didn’t want to be introduced. I still don’t.” Felicity pressed her lips together to keep herself from saying in no uncertain terms exactly how much she didn’t want to be presented, and judged, by the Upper Ten Thousand. “The countess was respecting my wishes.”

  Like you should.

  “I understand that,” he said, which under less dire circumstances would have made her laugh, since it was so clear he didn’t understand at all. “But certain things are expected of the daughter of a baron, Lissie.”

  “Don’t call me that.” She’d lost her tenuous grip on pretense. Her voice was the only weapon she had against him. “And don’t talk to me about ‘expectations.’ Society doesn’t care a lick about the orphaned daughter of a lower baron. I doubt they even know I exist, considering my parents didn’t travel in the finer circles, and Margaret long ago exiled herself. Why should I rearrange my life for people who aren’t important to me?”

  Especially when it meant losing the people she did care about, for good.

  She couldn’t even take joy in his frustration, for he said through gritted teeth, “You shall do it because they are important to me.”

  Finally, the truth. She felt the hard, stinging slap of it, as though he had backhanded her across her cheek. It didn’t matter what she wanted. It never would again.

  Because Margaret was the only one who had ever understood how much society terrified Felicity. Even Tressa, with all her rebellious ways, could navigate social gatherings without second guessing herself.

  Without Margaret, Felicity was alone.

  “I see.” She gripped the arm of the settee; nails digging into the fabric, wishing it were his skin she tore into instead, causing him as much pain as he did her. “Because I am female, and have no fortune other than the small sum Margaret willed me, you think I must do as you say.”

  “It’s not like that, Felicity.” He sounded tired already.

  That gave her a mote of encouragement. If she could just outlast him—argue until he admitted defeat as he always had before, not necessarily because she was right but because he was exhausted from dealing with her—she might have a chance at retaining the life she loved.

  “Then tell me what it is like.”

  His next words came out as more of an exasperated growl. “It is my duty. I’m trying to do right by you, you fool woman, and you’re acting as though I am sending you to the slaughter.”

  “I am doing no such thing,” she objected. “My reaction would be entirely different if you were going to slaughter me. Provided it was already clear you could not be bargained with, I would instruct you to choose the tenderest parts of my anatomy for consumption, because they would garner you the most profit. It would be a shame for my death to not have some benefit and I’d assume—”

  “Devil take it, Felicity!” His exclamation made her pause. “It was a metaphor.”

  She harrumphed. No wonder she did not understand metaphors. “A bad one, then. And I am not a fool. I am a woman, yes, but I am not a ‘fool woman.’ Not now, not ever.”

  His eyes widened, and his face began to redden. She’d almost won. She had to aggravate him a little more, and he’d cave. Luckily, she had plenty of practice annoying Nicholas.

  “If you struggle so to manage me here, while we are alone, how do you expect to control me at social events?” She summoned her most fearsome I am a bear to deal with sneer. “Perhaps I shall tell all your friends you screamed pathetically at the frogs in your bed.”

  “I don’t expect to manage you.”

  She blinked. “Pardon?”

  “At least, not without help.” There was that damned smirk again. “I’m enlisting my sister, the Marchioness of Marlburg.”

  Felicity gulped. Nicholas, she could handle—Georgina Middleton, née Harding, terrified her.

  “So you remember her.” Nicholas grinned. “Most people look like that when thinking about her.”

  This did not surprise Felicity. The Marchioness of Marlburg was a garish, bone-thin woman who had a habit of peering down her nose, effectively making her feel like she was two feet tall. The summer she’d accompanied Nicholas to Tetbery had been the worst months of Felicity’s adolescence. Georgina had teased her mercilessly, even pushing her into the ocean.

  Tressa had punched Georgina in the nose for that. She remembered the way the blood had streamed down from Georgina’s nose in a seemingly endless supply—though Felicity now knew it had been a standard nosebleed and nothing special, scientifically.

  The smile that had started to form on her lips at the memory froze. That had been ten years ago, when such unladylike behavior could be easily overlooked.

  Just as Margaret could no longer defend her, Tressa would not be able to fight her battles now.

  “Georgina is so excited to have the opportunity to—how did she put it? Oh yes, to ‘groom you.’” Nicholas was now looking like the cat that ate the canary, one of the few metaphors that actually made sense to Felicity because it had factual basis. That did not make his grin more appealing, though. “After the wedding is over, you will be returning with me to Wycliffe. There, Georgina will teach you how to act in society.”

  That meant she had a week left at Tetbery. The world began to close in around her.

  No, she wanted to scream. Please, no. Just give me a little more time.

  But she couldn’t speak. She kept opening and shutting her mouth like a dying guppy, thrust from the water. She ought to be resolute in the face of adversity—she’d survive, she was a practical woman—but her mind sputtered. Her heart clenched terribly, as her knuckles went white, her fingernails digging into the arm of the settee.

  And she couldn’t seem to breathe.

  There she went again, trying to suck in air with nothing coming in. The vice-grip around her heart twisted, making her chest feel too tight beneath her stays. Quickly, even as black spots appeared before her eyes, her mind compiled a list of her symptoms and
arrived at a startling conclusion.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, she was going to faint. Of all the times to develop feminine feebleness.

  “Lissie?” Nicholas’s voice drifted to her, yet he sounded distant. And then as the black danced across her vision, she heard footsteps, like he’d left the room.

  Excellent. Let him go far away.

  The iron grip on her heart released somewhat, though she still couldn’t draw a clean breath. And it was becoming harder and harder to stay upright…

  Until a frigid burst of water splashed across her face, drawing her from her panic. As droplets dripped down her face and onto her dress, she finally, finally sucked in a long breath of air.

  For a minute or two, she simply breathed in and spluttered, getting her heart rate back under control. The dots receded, and she could see again.

  Nicholas stood in front of her, holding an empty glass.

  “You dumped water on me,” she accused. “Even I know that is not polite behavior.”

  “Because you weren’t breathing.” There was none of the usual humor in his voice. “What the devil just happened, Felicity? One moment you were sitting there perfectly fine, and the next…you scared the hell out of me.”

  She observed the worry lines etched into his forehead, and the hard set of his jaw. Concern practically drenched his deep baritone voice, like the water that dripped down her face.

  This did not match with his earlier behavior. Which one was the real Nicholas? Could both reactions be authentic? Perhaps he wished to control her, but he did not wish for her to stop breathing.

  Her brows furrowed. In her experience, emotions ran on several different levels: a broken toe did not quantify the same as a hangnail, for the pain was much less. Being five minutes late to an appointment did not provoke the same annoyance as forgetting entirely.

  She would have to examine his reaction later, when he wasn’t gaping at her. First things first. She took the handkerchief he handed her, dabbing at her face.