A Little Winter Scandal: A Regency Christmas Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  Chapter 2

  Because of both her mother’s friendship with Lady Williams’s and her desire to attend one of the most revered social events of the winter, Alexandra had convinced her they should continue with their plans of attending Lady Williams’s ball. Alexandra couldn’t quite stifle a sense of guilt. Her intentions for the evening were not honorable. She did not, however, feel guilty enough to alter her intention.

  Ignoring the stream of shocked gasps and gaping stares she left in her wake, Alexandra moved at a near run through Lord and Lady Williams’s ballroom. Ten hours. It had been ten interminable hours since she’d learned she had never meant anything to Nathan. Six hundred minutes since she’d discovered he’d merely been toying with her. Thirty-six hundred seconds since she’d found her father had been right all along.

  Focusing on those distracting numbers, she skirted the dance partners twirling close to the edge of the dance floor, all the while moving with deliberate steps towards the gaming room.

  Not pausing to consider the next scandalous steps she would take, she hurried into the card room and did a quick survey of the gentlemen seated around the gaming tables. And her gaze collided with his—the one gentleman not gaping or gasping. The sight of him, so aloofly collected, made her quiver with a combination of fury and agony.

  Damn him.

  Seated behind a faro table, Nathan eyed her with a moment of pain. It was gone so quickly she thought she’d imagined seeing anything in his unreadable expression, which only infuriated her all the more. How could he be so casual? How, when her entire world had been destroyed, did he manage to appear so indifferent?

  That indifference made her chest hitch painfully. Her movements had been too fast. His table was closer than she’d anticipated, and she stumbled awkwardly against it, sending chips and cards flying. The gentlemen seated there let out exclamations of displeasure that Alexandra ignored.

  Alexandra’s hand clenched and unclenched at her side.

  Nathan waited calmly, almost expectantly.

  And it was that casualness that propelled her hand forwards.

  There were further gasps as Alexandra flung a fistful of notes in his face. They fluttered uselessly like winter snowflakes back down to the table.

  Her theatrics brought her no solace. Instead, she somehow felt worse…and then, of course, was the dawning realization of the scandal her actions that night had caused.

  Her breath hitched painfully. Say something to me. Beg my forgiveness. Spare me this humiliation.

  He sat there as cool as ever.

  “You bastard,” she whispered.

  “Come away, my dear,” her mother said quietly.

  She staggered back a step, as her mother’s hand grasped her at the waist and guided her backwards. Alexandra shook her head, and suddenly reality penetrated the fog of pain.

  She refused to release Nathan from her accusing stare until her steps had carried her away from the sight of him, and the choice was no longer hers.

  Her theatrics had brought the evening’s entertainment to a screaming halt. The eerie hum of silence enveloped her.

  “Just keep walking.”

  Were those her words? Had she spoken? No, that had been her mother.

  “Mother, heavens, forgive me,” Alexandra said achingly. Humiliation and despair tugged her closer to the precipice and threatened to pull her over.

  Her mother gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “Not here.”

  There was no reproach in that order, which only made Alexandra feel…reproached.

  Alexandra made the mistake of looking around the room, and bile rose to her throat. She was going to be ill. The wide-eyed, eager stares directed at her, coupled with the fans raised to conceal the gossip, hammered home the implications of her actions that evening.

  To focus on something, anything other than the gleeful eyes of the ton, Alexandra counted steps. One…two…three…

  All in all, it was the longest two hundred fifty steps she had ever taken.

  Lord and Lady Williams’s Italian marble floor stretched before her and seemed endless. She estimated they had another fifty steps before they reached the door that would carry them down the stairs to the carriage, and then…Oh Heavens, I am never going to be free of this hell.

  Silence filled the foyer and settled eerily around her. The orchestra plucked the beginning strains of a waltz, the sound echoing off the recess of her mind, blinding her with a headache.

  Alexandra folded her arms across her chest and rubbed, although the friction provided little warmth. Even when a servant rushed forwards and dropped her green taffeta cloak over her shoulders, the chill refused to leave. It’s because it is your heart, you ninny. Your heart is frozen, and is freezing you inside-out.

  At long last they were led outside, down the steps, and assisted up into the carriage. She’d been wrong. There had been an additional sixty-five steps to the sanctuary of the carriage.

  She burrowed into the far corner of the coach and pulled back the curtains to stare out into the street. Except the panel was frosted. Swiping a hand in slow circles until the heat of her skin warmed the glass, she traced a distracted pattern along the frosted window.

  “Alexandra,” her mother began slowly.

  Alexandra’s finger paused. A discussion with her mother following the scandal she’d caused had been inevitable. Yet she’d desperately hoped that perhaps she’d dreamed the evening’s events and no discussion would be forthcoming.

  “Mother.” The words came out as a hoarse whisper.

  “Oh, my dear, whatever possessed you?” Her mother’s tone did not sound scolding, however. She sounded maternal, and it crushed Alexandra. Had her mother been the same woman concerned with the opinion of the ton, it would have been easier to bear than this warm, compassionate person before her now.

  It was too much. A silent tear streaked a path down Alexandra’s cheek, then two, then three, and then she was blinded by a torrent of tears. They were the noisy, desperate kind.

  Her mother opened her arms, and Alexandra launched herself across the carriage the same way she had when she’d been a small girl of five years and her father had given her puppy away because he was, as he’d said, ‘allergic to the things’. Oh why couldn’t it be as simple as crying over a puppy? Not this, not a broken heart.

  The carriage ride home was remarkably short. Alexandra was grateful when they jerked to an abrupt halt. The driver lowered the steps, and her mother guided her to the double-doors, which immediately opened and she was swept inside.

  Her mother tugged her gloves off. “I will join you upstairs shortly, Alexandra.”

  It was a vague dismissal that told Alexandra next to nothing about what her mother was thinking or feeling. Accepting it as a reprieve of sorts, she hurried up the stairs, down the hall, and into her own chambers.

  Leaning against the closed door, she closed her eyes, welcoming the solitude.

  “Oh heavens, that is a dire expression.”

  Alexandra’s eyes flew open to find her younger sister sprawled on her bed. Oh, Olivia. Dear, beautiful, vibrant Olivia. With her cheery confidence, she couldn’t be a starker contrast to Alexandra’s own plump, gloomy self.

  Olivia’s cornflower blue eyes widened with concern. “You are positively ashen, Alex.” Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she rushed across the room. “Why are you home so—?”

  Alexandra couldn’t help the sudden onset of a new wave of tears.

  “He was there wasn’t he?” Olivia hissed, ushering Alexandra to the edge of the bed. “That cad. After the deplorable way he’s treated you, must he accost you at Lady Williams’s soiree? I told mother it was madness, just madness for you to go that blasted ball. I can’t countenance father even allowed it.”

  Alexandra gasped. “Olivia, your language.”

  “To the devil with my language. What did he say to upset you so?”

  Alexandra swiped a hand angrily across her eyes. She hated tears. Sin
ce Nathan’s betrayal, they seemed to be all she was capable of.

  Olivia sank down in the spot beside Alexandra. The mattress dipped slightly under the additional weight.

  “Oh, sister, what did he do to you?” She took Alexandra’s cold hands between hers and tried rubbing warmth into them.

  “O-oh, Olivia, it was awful. I confronted him.”

  Olivia gasped.

  “Y-y-yes…I confronted him before a sea of people. I threw a stack of notes in his face.”

  Olivia’s hand flew to her mouth to conceal a sound that was part groan, part laugh. “You didn’t!”

  “I did.”

  Olivia paused before speaking. “Did it make you feel any better?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then I’m sorry for that.”

  Olivia clambered to her feet, and Alexandra realized what her stiff formality meant.

  Her mother, still gowned in her magnificent diamond-trimmed sapphire dress, stood inside the doorway. “I’d like a word with your sister, Olivia.” It was a command.

  Of course, Olivia had never been easily cowed by anyone, certainly not mother or father. She did not leave Alexandra’s side. “I warned you attending Lady Williams’s ball was a horrible idea.” At just sixteen years, she delivered that pert rebuke with a wealth of knowledge packed into her tone.

  Their mother’s lips tightened. “That will be all, Olivia.”

  Olivia looked to her sister who gave a curt nod. Giving Alexandra’s hand a reassuring squeeze, she slowly took to her feet and sailed over to the door. She paused in front of her mother. “I’ll see to father,” she muttered and then closed the door in her wake.

  Their mother moved deeper into the room and claimed the spot Olivia had vacated.

  “Oh, my dear, whatever were you thinking?”

  At last, there it was. An aching disappointment kicked Alexandra in the gut. She was all cried out, however. “I loved him,” she said on an aching whisper.

  Her mother reached up and stroked a hand across her daughter’s curls. “I knew following that hideous wager we should have sent around our regrets this evening. This is my fault.”

  Alexandra shook her head. “Please don’t, Mother. I have caused this scandal, and when the duke finds out…” Her words trailed off and her eyes slid closed.

  Her mother made a dismissive sound. “Don’t give Danby another thought.” Alexandra heard the worry in those words.

  Alexandra managed her first real smile of the evening. Since she’d been a girl, Mother had always referred to her father as Danby—not Father, not Papa—just Danby. Which was probably why Alexandra had always been so terrified of the duke. She’d never seen him as a grandfather or a Papa, but as a duke. And now he was going to find out that his granddaughter had set London on its ear with a scandal, and worse…that she’d fallen hopelessly in love with a man who’d been undeserving of her love.

  “How could he do this, Mother?” She dropped her head into her hands and reminded herself to take a deep breath before her nausea consumed her.

  “He’s a cad, my dear. Your father warned you about Pembroke’s family.”

  Of course her father would have to be right. When Alexandra had returned from a ball with stars in her eyes, captivated by Nathan, her father had tried to squash all that joy. He’d insisted that the late Earl of Pembroke had been a scoundrel and his son was the same.

  Alexandra had staunchly defended the man who’d begun to court to her, who’d remained into the winter even when all the other fashionable lords and ladies retreated to their countryseats, to stay with her.

  “I believed he loved me, Mother.”

  Mother sighed. “You will find a man deserving of you, Alexandra.”

  Not after this. Alexandra would never find a gentleman, nor for that matter did she want to.

  “Does Father know?”

  “I mentioned there was an incident and told him I would speak on it when I return below stairs.”

  “He is going to be livid,” Alexandra whispered, her eyes sliding closed. She didn’t even want to think about facing her father’s wrath come morning.

  A sardonic smile tipped the corners of her mother’s lips. “I trust he should be rather easy to speak with once your sister has a word with him.”

  Alexandra managed a smile. “By the time you meet with Father, I’m sure Olivia will have already convinced him that he is somehow to blame.”

  It wasn’t Father who worried her, though. It was her grandfather, the great Duke of Danby. At least she had time until she had to deal with the Duke of Danby’s displeasure. For now, all she wanted was to climb under the sheets and forget that she’d ever been so foolish as to give her heart to Nathan.

  Chapter 3

  Long after Alexandra fled, Nathan remained for an infernal amount of time in his same seat in Lord and Lady Williams’s card room, pointedly ignoring the bevy of curious looks and hushed whispers.

  Taking care to keep his facial expression flat, he finally tossed down his hand of cards and shoved his seat back. “I know when to cut my losses. I bid you good evening, gentlemen.”

  He didn’t wait to hear the murmured responses as he collected his winnings, his hand hovering over the notes Alexandra had thrown in his face not even two hours ago. His gut tightened painfully, nearly doubling him over with the intensity of it, but he collected those notes, keeping them separate from the rest. Alexandra had left her heart in Lord Williams’s godforsaken home. He’d be damned if he left any other part of her here.

  With a glower and stride meant to deter company, he moved through the ballroom, up the wide staircase, and to the foyer. His lined black evening coat materialized almost instantly. All but wrenching it from the servant’s hands, he drew it on and stormed out the front doors.

  A gust of frigid wind slammed into his face but he welcomed the stinging bite of winter pain. Any pain was preferable to the hellish torment he’d inflicted this evening—both on her and himself. He waved his carriage off, instead opting to walk the distance to his townhouse in the midnight cold. It was a meager attempt at penance for the sins he’d committed, a kind of absolution that would not come.

  Not that he deserved absolution.

  “You’re a bastard,” he muttered to himself.

  The one solace of being stuck in London in the dead of winter was that the streets were blessedly empty in the evening hours. So the mask he’d adopted for all of Lord and Lady Williams’s ball could finally slip without the ton’s eyes to witness.

  Then, the implications of his actions finally registered, and he staggered to a halt in the middle of the pavement. He stared out into the dark night sky and, shaking his head, dragged a weary hand across his eyes.

  She was gone.

  The one glimmer of purity and happiness he’d known in his miserable thirty years of existence had gone out as easily as the fragile flame of a candle. What was worse, it had been he who’d extinguished that sweet joy—hers and his own.

  A grimace of pain twisted his lips and he paused beside the street lamp, laying his head along the icy black length. He softly banged his forehead over and over, but it was of little use; the agony did not lessen.

  What had he done?

  It meant nothing that the decision to scratch his bloody wager in the book at White’s had been out of love for her. Now he wished he’d been the self-serving bastard everyone always took him for, because then he would still have her.

  Until the day he drew his last breath, the haunted expression in her cornflower blue eyes would be with him, reproachful yet pleading. There’d always been a momentary hesitation of hope, an uncertainty in the reality he’d allowed her to believe.

  That moment, not even two ticks on a clock, had filled him with hope that she must know his love for her was so great that the wager had been nothing more than a calculated lie. He’d held on to that two-second gleam of hope.

  However, he’d been far too convincing in his deception, for the trusting swee
tness and innocence that had first drawn Nathan to her had died a very public death at his feet.

  Each day he’d been fortunate to have her in his life had been greater than the next. For four months, he’d dared to believe that he, the son of a filthy, gambling, lecherous bastard, could be happy. For four months, he’d lived with laughter. Nathan had waited with bated breath for a thief to rob him of the joy Alexandra brought to his life.

  A mirthless laugh escaped him as a puff of white air. It had turned out her father, the Marquess of Tewekesbury, was the thief who’d absconded with his happiness.

  His fists balled tightly at his side. Even thinking about the fat, condescending man made him grit his teeth in agitated fury. Except he couldn’t simply lay blame at her father’s feet. Nathan had complied with the marquess’s duplicity.

  And what was worse was knowing. For all the pain his wager had cost him, Nathan would probably do it again, because her happiness meant more to him than even his own.

  So maybe he wasn’t such a selfish bastard after all. No, he was just a miserable one.

  “Ahem.”

  Lost in the agony of his own doing, Nathan’s body stiffened at the unexpected interruption in the dead of night.

  He lifted his head from the pole and he spun around to face a tall stranger, smartly dressed, with a wide-brimmed black hat.

  “I said ah—”

  “I heard you,” Nathan snapped. “What do you want?”

  If the man had come to speak to him about what had transpired at Lord Williams’s, by God, he would draw his cork.

  The man reached into the front of his cloak, and Nathan immediately went into a defensive crouch in preparation for an attack.

  Instead of brandishing a knife, however, the man withdrew a thick ivory velum envelope with Nathan’s name scrawled across the front.

  “Lord Pembroke.” The man extended his hand.

  Nathan stared from the stranger to the unfamiliar scrawl, his heart picking up its rhythm. Alexandra!

  Without stopping to consider the stranger in front of him, Nathan ripped into the envelope, his heart plummeting with disappointment. It wasn’t from Alexandra. Really, what was there for her to say, anyhow?