A Little Winter Scandal: A Regency Christmas Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  “We’ll remain in London,” he politely declined.

  His sister frowned. “Very well, then.” Alas, his reprieve was short-lived. “Do not try and change the subject. Your children need a mother, Weston. They’re growing more and more incorrigible every time I see them.”

  He said nothing. In large part because his sister was loquacious enough to carry on this whole discussion by herself. In larger part because she was right. Charlotte and Daniel were becoming more and more truculent each day.

  “You overindulge them. And they—”

  “Do you know a Lady Patrina Tidemore?”

  Silence met his question. His sister sat at the edge of the leathered sofa, unblinking. “Lady Patrina Tidemore? Lady Patrina Tidemore?” The slight emphasis she placed on that last Patrina suggested there was certainly more here.

  He said nothing, knowing Amanda enough to know she’d fill enough of the silence for the both of them, and with answers to the questions he’d had about Patrina since they’d first met.

  “Quite the scandal. Quite the scandal, indeed,” she said with a flounce of her blonde curls. He thought of Patrina’s earlier admission and usually one who loathed gossip; he hung onto his sister’s words. “Rumors were circulated by…by…” She wrinkled her brow and seemed to search her mind for the name of the circulator of those rumors. “Some servant or another,” she said with a flick of her hand. “A maid or a footman or—”

  “Amanda,” he said impatiently.

  “Er, right. Well, this servant, whoever it may have been, claimed Lady Patrina had run off to elope, but beyond that, the details escape me. All rather scandalous.”

  Weston considered Patrina as she’d been at their first meeting. Somber, alone, staring out at that frozen lake. Her brown eyes, a kind of window into her private thoughts had alluded to heartache. You speak with such absolute certainty, Weston. You speak as though you know how I live and of my experiences based on nothing more than my age and your perception of what a young lady is. She’d been hurt more than any young lady ever should. Weston tightened his fingers around his glass, filled with the sudden desire to bury his fist into the face of that nameless bounder who’d ruined her and the faithless servant who’d sullied her name.

  What had Patrina been like before the bastard had ruined her good name? He imagined a smiling, teasing, effervescent young woman. Not this guarded creature who only smiled with any real sincerity at his children.

  “Why do you ask about Lady Patrina?” Suspicion underlined his sister’s question.

  “Charlotte became separated from the nursemaid.” Wandered off, but that detail didn’t need pointing out considering all his sister’s talk of a mother for his children. “Lady Patrina returned her home.” He chose to leave out all the other fascinating pieces of their three exchanges thus far. His proper sister would look at snowball tossing as a grave offense equal to elopement.

  “That was kind of her,” Amanda said with obvious reluctance. “Though in truth, I feel rather sorry for the young woman.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “No young woman deserves to have her affections played with and her reputation in tatters as Lady Patrina.”

  No, indeed.

  “She’s not fit company for anyone, Weston, certainly not for your children.”

  From across the room, he detected the faintest rustle of the curtains. Charlotte poked her head around the brocade fabric, a frown on her lips. He gave his head a slight shake. She disappeared once more. The splash of color on her plump cheeks indicated outrage at Amanda’s charges against Patrina. He flexed his jaw. An outrage he shared.

  “That isn’t to say she isn’t a pleasant woman,” his sister went on. “If I remember correctly, she is no great beauty but possessed a warm smile.”

  Amanda’s casual dismissal of Patrina gnawed at him. He found he far preferred the gentle, sincere beauty of Patrina’s heart-shaped face to the more obvious beauty of his late wife. His curtains were clearly of like opinion for they growled in response to Amanda’s unforgiving words about Patrina.

  He cleared his throat to cover Charlotte’s clear annoyance from over at her hiding place.

  “It has been three years, Weston. Time enough for you to mourn Cordelia’s passing, and find a mother for Charlotte and Daniel.” His sister, just as all of polite Society noted his withdrawal and attributed it to some foolish broken heart. They’d seen the dashing Marquess of Beaufort’s whirlwind courtship of the Incomparable Beauty and only seen a love match amidst the cold, emotionless entanglements of the ton.

  They didn’t know, or mayhap care, about Cordelia’s devotion to her lover, her plans to abandon Daniel and Charlotte, and ultimately the fleeing couple’s subsequent death as they’d made off to some far-flung corner of England. Odd, the haute ton knew so much and yet so little of a person’s affairs.

  He raised his glass to his lips for another sip.

  After a long stretch of silence, his sister seemed to register that he intended to say nothing further on the matter, for she stood and crossed over to him. “I want you to be happy, Weston.”

  “And you imagine a wife will make me happy?” he drawled with a sardonic twist to his question. In his experience, a wife represented nothing but a headache and heartbreak.

  Amanda leaned up on tip-toe and kissed his cheek. “I believe a wife will make your children happy.”

  Again, Patrina’s face flitted to mind. He shoved the thought aside.

  “And by your silence, brother, you know I speak the truth.”

  The curtains rustled yet again, and Amanda angled her head. “What was that?”

  Weston schooled his features. “What was what?” After all, if his sister discovered Charlotte and Daniel’s tendency to eavesdrop, he’d not be spared her scathing diatribe on all the ways in which he was failing as a father.

  “Nothing.” Amanda gave her head a slight shake. “I’d imagined I heard…nothing. And remember we would dearly love for you to join us for the holiday.”

  He sketched a short bow, and waited several moments after his sister had taken her leave. “You can come out now.”

  Daniel and Charlotte spilled out from behind the curtain. Daniel nudged his elbow into his sister’s side. “You were stepping on my toes.”

  “It was an accident,” she cried. “It was an accident, Papa.”

  Weston’s lips twitched. “I imagine if you were both abovestairs where you’re supposed to be and not hiding in my office then neither of you would have suffered wounded toes or an injured side.”

  Charlotte settled her hands on her hips. “But then we’d not have heard all those horrible things Aunt Amanda had to say about Lady Patrina. I think she’s pretty. Don’t you, Daniel?”

  Daniel snorted. “Girls aren’t pretty.”

  “Yes, but Lady Patrina isn’t a girl. She’s a lady. Isn’t that right, Papa?”

  “She certainly is, Char.” And by his sister’s accounts, she was a young lady with a wounded heart. Having himself known the same wounding, empathy tugged at him.

  Perhaps that had been what had first drawn him to the woman who’d dared to hurl snowballs at his children. He’d recognized something inherently sad about her, largely because he recognized it in himself.

  Charlotte skipped over to his desk and scrambled onto his leather seat. Seated in her stark white skirts, with her tousled golden ringlets, she had more the look of a small doll than an actual child. She swung her legs back and forth. “I think Aunt Amanda is correct.” She wrinkled her nose. “Not about those mean things she said about Lady Patrina.”

  Weston raised his glass to his mouth. “Oh?” He took a long swallow.

  Daniel slapped a hand across his eyes and shook his head back and forth. “Bloody awful idea,” he mumbled.

  His daughter’s lips turned up in a wide smile sans two front teeth. “We need a mother. Especially that one,” she pointed in her brother’s direction.

  Weston choked on the mouthful of brandy.


  “My reaction exactly,” Daniel said with a firm nod.

  Charlotte glared in his direction. “Don’t be a ninny. Lady Patrina would make a perfectly fine mother. And I think she’s lovely. And she throws snowballs. And she bought me a ribbon. And—”

  “All the most essential characteristics of a good mother,” Daniel groused with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

  Her lower lip trembled. “And she’s nice,” she shot back.

  Pain blossomed in Weston’s chest. His son might make light of Charlotte’s simple list, but those details ticked off on his daughter’s tiny fingers mattered very much to the girl. She’d never known a mother’s love, but neither had she known what it was to have the gentle influence of a mother. His mind raced with his sister’s revelation about Patrina, and the young lady’s interaction with his children.

  “What is it, Papa?”

  He’d sworn to never wed again. His heart had died long ago. Long before Cordelia’s death. He ventured it had been somewhere between the moment she’d hurled words of loathing at him and confessed she’d been carrying on with her lover and the time she’d slapped little Daniel across the cheek.

  “Papa?” Charlotte pressed.

  However, what if he approached marriage with a logical, clear focus? Love, emotions, and affection removed from the whole alliance. What if he wed for the benefit of his children?

  Daniel groaned. “You aren’t listening to her, Papa, are you?”

  He downed the contents of his brandy. “Do you know, Daniel, I just might be.”

  Chapter 10

  Patrina pounded away at the keys of the pianoforte. Her discordant version of “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” filled the room. Sweet Poppy, ever faithful, her sister struggled to keep pace with Patrina’s playing and belted out the lyrics in her flat voice.

  “Fear not said he…” Patrina glanced up from the keys.

  “For mighty dread had seized their mind.”

  “Their troubled mind,” Penelope called from her spot over on the windowseat that overlooked the grounds below. “Their troubled mind.”

  Poppy stopped singing. “That is what I said.”

  “No,” Prudence pointed out. “You said their mind, not their troubled mind.”

  “I believe I’m the only one with a troubled mind just now,” Jonathan muttered.

  Juliet, shot him a reproachful glance. Her hands fell to her waist, and Patrina’s gaze traveled down to the swollen belly that carried their first child. Where most families of the haute ton retreated to their country estates for the Christmastide season, Jonathan had insisted on remaining in London close to the best doctors for Juliet’s period of confinement.

  Patrina’s fingers stumbled over the keys, and she returned her attention to playing. Better to focus on the chords, and the keys, and the clumsy playing instead of the bitter envy twisting in her heart for all she’d never have. “Glad tidings of great joy I bring,” she sang softly. Her throat seized. There was no great joy. The beauty of the Christmastide season, the absolute peace was nothing more than a grand illusion that acted as temporary veneer of goodness in an otherwise ugly world.

  She jumped up so quickly, her knees knocked the edge of the bench. The delicate mahogany seat scraped the hard wood floor. Patrina’s breath came hard and fast, and she rocked forward on the balls of her feet, filled with a desperate desire to flee.

  “Patrina?” Poppy whispered into the absolute stillness of the room.

  All at once, Patrina registered the five sets of eyes trained on her. She forced her gaze up, and then wished she hadn’t. Ah, yes. Of course. The looks. These were the pitying kind. She detested the pitying kind above all others.

  A knock sounded at the door and a sigh escaped her at the blessed intervention. Smith cleared his throat. “There is a visitor for Lady Patrina.”

  A roomful of suspicious gazes swung to Patrina.

  She cocked her head, imagining she appeared as bemused as the gape-mouthed Tidemore siblings scattered throughout the room. A towering, golden god of a man entered the room. Her heart thumped a funny rhythm, and she reached a hand up to slow the rapidly beating organ, but then remembered herself. She let her fingers fall back to her side. “W…My lord…”

  “The Marquess of Beaufort to see Lady Patrina.” Smith scratched his shock of white hair. “I believe I asked the gentleman to wait in the foyer until I ascertained whether the young lady was receiving visitors,” the deaf butler thundered.

  Jonathan surged to his feet. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “That will be all, Smith.”

  “I am ever so sorry for your fall, my lord,” Smith shouted back. “Is there anything you—?”

  Her brother scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “I didn’t fall. I, oh never mind,” Jonathan said more to himself and waved off the servant.

  Through the whole absurd exchange Patrina remained rooted to her spot alongside the pianoforte, her gaze trained on the perfect lines of Weston’s inscrutable face. He was more beautiful than any man had a right to be. And she’d never been a lady to pay any attention to a beautiful face. Then, she’d not had the sense to pay attention to the lack of a heart in a certain gentleman, either. “My lord,” Patrina repeated, detesting the fairly breathless quality of her words.

  Jonathan’s eyebrows dipped. A frown darkened his face.

  And because he could command the King’s Army with his aura of power, the marquess advanced deeper into the room as comfortable as if he himself were the owner of the Ivory Parlor.

  Juliet rose unsteadily to her feet. Even with the cumbersome weight of her belly, she managed to drop an elegant curtsy. “My lord,” she greeted. She looked to the Tidemore sisters, who shook their heads as if clearing away their earlier shock, and they all dropped curtsies as well.

  Weston issued another bow. Through it all, he never looked away from Patrina. He somehow possessed an unholy ability of making a lady feel like she was the only woman in the world. “My lady,” the greeting was issued to Juliet, yet by the heated intensity in his eyes, she knew he spoke to her.

  Juliet motioned the wide-eyed Tidemore sisters over to the door. “We’ll leave you to your visit.” She glowered at Jonathan. “Won’t we?”

  Her brother hesitated, a frown on his lips, issued a short bow for the marquess, and then walked toward the door. He paused at the entrance to the room and by the concern in his hard stare, she knew he feared leaving her alone with Weston.

  When they were alone, Weston clasped his hands behind his back and strolled over to her. “Patrina.”

  She’d thought never to see him again. Had imagined after she revealed her scandalous past, he’d give her the cut-direct just like the rest of the haute ton. Her mouth went dry, and because she never had known what to say in the presence of a gentleman, she said, “My lord.”

  Mild amusement lit his eyes. “I thought you’d agreed to call me Weston.”

  She had. Foolishly. Imprudently. “Weston, then,” she said, as foolish and imprudent as she’d ever been.

  “I…”

  “You…” Her cheeks warmed as their words tumbled over one another’s. “Forgive me. You were saying?”

  He closed the distance between them. “I’ve thought of you often since you took your leave yesterday.”

  She dug the toes of her slippers into the floor to keep from retreating. “Have you?” Gentlemen didn’t think of her. Or, they hadn’t in the two Seasons she’d had. Now whatever thoughts they might have of her were surely not the proper kind.

  He brushed his knuckles along her jaw. “Did you expect I should avoid you after you shared your past?”

  Her breath caught at the delicious shivers that radiated out from the point of his touch. Her past. A past in which she’d been fool enough to elope and give up all hope of a proper match. She turned her palms up. “I rather expected you might, my lord. Avoid me, that is.”

  “Because you have a low opinion of Society?”

  She mana
ged a tight nod. “Because I have a low opinion of Society.” The ton had given her little reason to trust the sincerity, concern, or regard of any of its noble members.

  “Who was he?” he commanded.

  She took a step away from him and wandered back over to her pianoforte. She thought she should feel some level of outrage at his bold inquiry. She didn’t speak of Albert. Not to her sisters. Her mother. Certainly not Jonathan. Not even to Albert’s own sister, Juliet. It was as though her family expected if she buried thoughts and memories of Albert it could somehow miraculously undo everything that had been done. “His name was… is Albert. Sir Albert Marshville,” she amended.

  Stop talking, Patrina Tidemore. Stop talking. Except the words tumbled freely from her lips. “After two full Seasons, I’d not…” She warmed. “I’d not garnered many,” any, “suitors.” She shrugged. “He filled my ears with empty praise.” Fool that she was, she’d believed him. Patrina depressed an ivory key. “He asked me to go off with him.” Patrina cringed, even now unable to believe the height of her idiocy. She took a breath and forced herself to look at Weston. “He was so repulsed by me, he’d not even kiss me.” Her lips twisted with wry embarrassment. “I convinced myself his actions…” Or lack of actions. “Were born of a gentlemanly sense of honor.” A little, humorless laugh escaped her. “How very ironic, no? I should be ruined, considered sullied when he never did anything more than touch my hand at polite ton events.” Patrina expected the sting of shame in confessing just how undesirable Albert had found her. Instead, there was something oddly freeing in sharing with Weston the truth unknown by Society—a truth they’d never believe nor accept.

  Weston walked over and stopped beside her. He caught a black curl and tucked it behind her ear. “He was a bloody fool, Patrina.” Hot desire sparked in his eyes. “If you were mine, nothing and no one could ever stop me from taking you in my arms.”

  Her heart fluttered. It really was rather impossible drumming up memories of Albert with Weston near, with his fleeting touch upon her cheek.