As she entered, all three scattered, squawking in surprise. She let out a cry of her own and opened her mouth to speak, but in that instant the library door opened and slammed shut, and her face heated profusely.
“Well,” she said low, eyeing all three suspiciously, but she could say nothing more. How could she reprimand them for eavesdropping when she was as guilty of the same?
“We din’t do it, Aunt Em,” Jonathon said, his eyes wide with fright. Lettie elbowed him at once and he looked at her guiltily. “Oh,” he said softly.
“What sort thing did you not do?” Emma asked, straightening the folds of her skirts as she entered the drawing room. She cast a nervous backward glance at the door.
“Oh... just nothing,” Jon answered in a small little voice, looking guiltier every instant. He peered down at his feet suddenly. His socks were muddy.
Emma inspected his sisters as well. Their shoes were muddy too, and with a fresh dusting of snow on the ground, there was only one place they would have acquired such a bit of muck: in the stables.
“We were merely admiring the new crèche, Aunt Em,” Samantha offered sweetly, giving her little brother a nudge.
Emma’s brow lifted. “From the door?” she asked dubiously.
Samantha considered that an instant and then admitted with a shrug, “Well, we did hear the duke shouting,” she said matter-of-factly.
Emma’s face burned a little hotter. “Yes, well... so did I,” she confessed. “It seems someone has robbed him of his means of escap—er departure,” she explained, watching them and noting all three fidgeted at the news.
“Did you see the crèche, Aunt Em?” Lettie asked suddenly, conveniently changing the topic.
Samantha perked up. “Oh, yes—isn’t it grand?” she added quickly, giving her sister a well-done nod.
“And it’s already half full!” Jonathon blurted excitedly.
Both his sisters elbowed him this time, one from each direction.
Emma ventured closer to examine the small wooden crib that now sat before the hearth. It was crudely constructed, but still a charming sight. Given the scarcity of time before Christmas, she imagined Andrew had troubled to build it himself, for it very much looked as though he had. “I see that it is,” she said a little warily and couldn’t help but wonder how they’d managed such a great start so early this morning.
Jonathon shifted excitedly from foot to foot. “Just like you said, Aunt Em! There’s one straw for each of us for every whee—”
With a horrified gasp, Samantha slapped a hand over her brother’s impetuous mouth. “Weeeed,” she squealed in his stead. “One for each weed.”
Emma’s brows drew together. “One for each... weed?”
Samantha nodded. “Oh, yes, Aunt Em! One blade of straw for each and every weed we pulled from mother’s herb garden. Wasn’t that a good deed?”
“Really?” Emma asked. She didn’t have the heart to remind them that they were in the midst of winter. There was no garden to speak of. And she was beginning to understand with sudden clarity the strange conversation she’d overheard outside the library door. Taking in Jonathon’s guilty expression, and the girls’ much too innocent smiles, she had a sudden insight as to what dreadful mishap had befallen the duke’s carriage wheels. Nevertheless, she also knew the children could never have accomplished such a monumental feat alone, nor were they devious enough to carry it through without help. And she knew precisely who to hold accountable. Their father, the trickster. “One for each weed, is it?” she muttered, cursing her dear brother to Jericho and back.
“Oh, yes, Aunt Em!” Samantha and Lettie replied at once, both grinning with what could be nothing more than relief. Jonathon, with Samantha’s hand still muzzling his mouth, merely glanced up at his sisters, his brows drawing together in confusion.
“Is it alright if we each put straws in if we all three helped?”
Emma tilted them a knowing look. “It took all three of you to pull a single weed?”
All three children nodded soberly.
“Well, now, don’t you think that’s a mite excessive? Besides, pulling weeds in the middle of winter may not precisely qualify as a good deed, at all,” she informed them lamentably.
“Oh, but they were very special weeds,” Lettie returned hopefully.
“And we pulled them all for a very good cause, Aunt Em,” Samantha declared.
“Is that so?” Emma relented. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe they had actually vandalized the duke’s carriage on her behalf. The thought of it was too humiliating by half. Nevertheless, the image of them stealing carriage wheels—along with the duke’s reaction this morn—struck a humorous chord. She stifled a smile. For shame that her brother would stoop to such ends to prevent the duke from leaving Newgale. Not to mention that he should involve his precious children in such terrible misconduct. For certain, she was going to blister his ears at the first opportunity. In the meantime, it was all she could do to keep from bursting into hilarities at their guilty expressions.
“Aunt Em,” Lettie said plaintively, looking a little dismayed, “you did say one wisp of straw for each good deed, did you not? We only did what you said,” she reassured.
Emma pursed her lips together, trying in vain to frown at them. “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?”
The little fiends.
Backed by their father, she knew they would never confess, and so she didn’t bother trying to make them do so. Lord, but she did love them immensely, though she had half a mind to go and tell the duke precisely what had befallen his blessed wheels so that he could take his carriage and be gone. And yet the thought of him knowing mortified her. No, she simply couldn’t bear it. Nor could she bear to stand before the children an instant longer without bursting into peals of laughter.
“Aunt Em,” Jonathon ventured. “Do you think the duke will stay for Christmas now that his—” Lettie stomped on his dirty black shoe none too gently. “Ow!” he screamed and turned to give his sister a most wounded look. “I wasn’t gonna say it!” he shrieked in indignation. “I wasn’t going to!”
Emma gave them her most disapproving glower. “I really don’t know,” she told them. “But I, for one, wish he would not.”
The very last thing she intended to do was to play into their mischievous little hands.
“Oh, my!” she exclaimed suddenly, dramatically, placing a hand to her temple. “I believe I am having a sudden attack of the vapors.” It wasn’t completely feigned, she acknowledged, for the very thought of the duke’s continued presence at Newgale left her flustered and ill at ease.
“You are?” Samantha asked, her little brows crashing.
“Oh, yes,” she assured them.
“Oh, but Aunt Em, you never get the vapors!”
She gave them all a hearty scowl. “Nevertheless, it seems I am getting them now,” she apprised.
She had no notion what they were up to, nor what her foolish brother could possibly be thinking, but she planned to spend the rest of the day within her room, reading. If they so desperately wished the duke to remain at Newgale, then they could entertain the demon without her. Surely, she thought, once they realized that she was not about to participate in this madness, they would return his carriage wheels, and he would be away before noon.
She moaned pitifully and said, “Oh, dear... won’t you tell your Papa, please, in case he should like to know, that I shall be indisposed…”
“Until when?” Samantha asked, sounding panicked.
“Until the duke departs,” Emma said, and shot them another reproachful glare, turning with a swirl of her skirts and hurrying toward the door.
“Oh, but Aunt Em!” Samantha protested. “Wait!”
All three rushed after her, halting abruptly as she collided with the duke, who suddenly appeared in the doorway.
“Oh!” Emma exclaimed, stumbling backward at the unexpected meeting. Really, she’d not even heard his approach and wondered irately how long he
’d been standing there watching, listening. She eyed him a little anxiously, wondering precisely how much he had overheard.
He reached out to steady her, and the touch of his hands upon her arms was almost more than Emma could bear. His fingers were much too strong, his hands too warm and steady, and if he didn’t remove them from her person at once, she thought she might actually swoon.
Without thinking, Lucien drew Emma nearer and found he couldn’t quite bring himself to release her.
His arms seemed the most natural place for her to be. His heartbeat quickened, for if yesterday she’d looked cheerless and drab, today she was anything but—and her face, stained with a healthy blush, was anything but gray. Her eyes sparkled and only dimmed at the sight of him. That realization pricked at him somewhere deep within, though he didn’t pause to analyze why.
Dressed in the same pale yellow she’d worn the day she’d told him so naively that she’d loved him, she looked fresh and lovely. Too lovely for his own good. And then he happened to look down and had to remind himself to exhale. His heart skipped a nervous beat, for there was one thing about her dress today that was wholly dissimilar from the one she’d worn three years past: the neckline. It was far lower than he would have preferred, at least for her. It made him feel instantly possessive, wanting no man to see those lovely creamy breasts from this vantage. As he stared, he had to remind himself that he had no right to concern himself with her décolletage—or anything else about Emma Peters for that matter. Not any more.
He wanted to draw her up into his arms and kiss her—right then and there—damn if he didn’t. Instinct compelled him closer still, until he could feel the warmth radiating from her lips.
Warmth to drive away the chill.
God, it would be so easy…
His heart hammered like a fresh-faced youth’s.
Where now his honorable intentions?
Swallowing, he stood arrested for an interminable moment. He shuddered and forcibly reminded himself to let her go. He couldn’t afford to feel the warmth—couldn’t afford to forget what he must do. He was more than cold, he was rotten to the bone, and anything he touched would turn the same.
She might perceive him as a villain but their broken betrothal was the kindest act he had ever performed.
With some effort, Lucien managed to clear his throat, but for the second time in his life, he couldn’t find his voice to speak.
“I... I’m quite fine, thank you,” she told him a little unsteadily, squirming out of his embrace.
It took Lucien a befuddled instant to realize he hadn’t asked. Nor did he so willingly release her. Following her lead, he stepped away at last, once again clearing his throat, though still he could not avert his eyes from her décolletage. “I-I’m pleased to hear it,” he said, his voice sounding strained even to his own ears.
It was only now that she seemed to note the direction of his gaze, for she let out a startled gasp, and as he watched, the blush from her face stole to her breasts, and all he could think, insanely, was that he longed to place his lips there and kiss the warmth.
“Must you always lurk in corridors?” she accused him.
God’s teeth, it took Lucien another full instant to govern himself and to tear his gaze away from the delicious morsel she was tempting him with so sorely. Though even with his eyes averted, his body didn’t forget.
Bloody hell, he was hard as stone. Why had he supposed she couldn’t rouse him?
Clenching his fist and then releasing it, he couldn’t help but wonder if she would have embraced him as a lover as passionately as she had craved to be his wife. A shudder coursed through him at the merest thought, and he glanced down again to find his answer; even through her layers of clothing, her breasts were peaked against the cloth, perfect little pebbles that he would have joyfully suckled within his mouth.
His body hardened more fully.
He stifled a groan.
“It seems so, Miss Peters,” he confessed without regret. He met her soft brown eyes with hungry blue ones. In fact, eavesdropping was a far lesser sin than the one he would like to commit right now. “As you have already discovered...” His eyes slivered, burning with blue heat. “... it seems as though someone has robbed me of my means to go home. What better way to discover just who that might be than to eavesdrop?”
Her chin lifted at his insinuation. “Well, then, Your Grace,” she said, “please do carry on. I, for one, have nothing to hide—nor have I any wish to keep you here. Now good day to you, sirrah!”
He halted her flight by seizing her hand. It was softer than he remembered and he found himself hoping that she lied—that she did want him to stay. “Haven’t you?”
She looked at him quite appalled, the blush in her cheeks deepening, and her ripe, full mouth pinched in outrage. She shook her hand free of his. “Of course not!” Once again, he had the sudden urge to bend and kiss those delectable lips. “I can assure you that we will all be better off once you are gone—most especially me!”
Lucien nodded, though why her response should disappoint him, he didn’t know. He could have expected nothing less.
“Now have a bloody good day, Your Grace!” she said, cursing. His brow rose at the epithet.
This time she didn’t wait for him to give her leave, but pressed her way past him in the doorway, her dress whispering by, her sweet scent accosting him.
Hunger slithered through Lucien’s veins like a snake.
He stood a moment, watching her go, feeling more than a little confounded... until her lemon yellow skirts disappeared completely around the corridor, and then he turned to face the wan-faced children who were all three staring wide-eyed at him as though he would devour them one by one like the villain of their worst nightmares. He’d completely forgotten they were there, but they had a right to fear him, for he had heard enough of their discourse with their aunt to confirm his suspicions.
Glancing behind them, he caught sight of the crèche, quaintly adorned with satin ribbon and lace and partially filled with straw. Remembering how much of an intruder he’d felt the previous evening, he scowled, and all three children retreated a step.
Lucien fully intended to interrogate them without mercy. He had that about him, he knew, the ability to unnerve grown men; the children before him stood nary a chance.
“Perhaps one of you knows where I might find four carriage wheels?” he asked, lifting a brow in his most discerning fashion.
For a moment, none of them spoke, only peered at each other questioningly, and he found himself strangely regretting their answer to come.
But he regretted for naught, because to his incredulity all three merely turned and said as guilelessly as though they were truly innocent, “No, sir, Your Grace.”
The middle child actually lifted her chin and smiled at him—smiled, for Chrissakes—and for an instant, Lucien merely stood, dumfounded, scarcely believing the little heathens had managed to lie to his face so effortlessly. Nor did he relish the immediate and unreasonable sense of relief that washed over him in the same instant. And then, despite that he knew the children were lying, he further astonished himself by giving them an out, “I didn’t think so,” he said. And then he turned and walked away, which was perhaps his most shocking response of all.
As the duke departed, all three children rushed to peek around the doorway.
“Now what do we do?” Lettie asked as they watched him go. When he had at last vanished from the corridor, all three children retreated from the doorway, their expressions disheartened as they seated themselves about the crèche to discuss the next course of action. They stared down at the half-filled crèche in dismay.
“Do you think he believed us?” Jon asked.
Both Lettie and Samantha shrugged, looking downhearted despite that it seemed he had.
Samantha sighed. “I fear it won’t work if Aunt Em plans to stay in her room all day long,” she lamented.
“How terribly sad,” Lettie offered, her eyes mistin
g.
“I do believe he loves her,” Samantha contended. “Did you see the way he looked at her?”
“I thought he might eat her all up!” Jon declared. “Like the wolf on his carriage!”
Samantha rolled her eyes. “Silly boy. That’s his family’s crest. You’ll understand everything better when you’re all grown up,” she said.
“Why don’t we have a wolf crest?” he asked.
“Because we are not peers,” Samantha explained. “That’s why.”
“Well, I’d rather be an admiral in the Navy,” Jon declared.
“Aunt Em could cheer him,” Lettie stated with conviction, and then tilted her sister a curious look. “How does he look at her, Sam?”
Samantha patted her consolingly upon the shoulder. “Never mind,” she said and shook her head in quite a matronly fashion. “You’re much, much too young to understand.”
“If they get married, I wonder if Aunt Em will be a princess,” Lettie pondered aloud.
Samantha shook her head. “No, she would be a duchess, though it’s still a wonderful fairy tale.”
“Papa says they’re both too stubborn for their own goods,” Jon informed them both, impressing them with his garnered knowledge.
Lettie’s brows collided. “Did he really?” She cocked her head at Samantha. “Sam... do you think Aunt Em loves the duke?”
“Oh, but how could she not!” Samantha replied with certainty. “He’s so terribly, terribly handsome!”
Jonathon scrunched his nose. “Handsome is as handsome does,” he proclaimed, parroting something their parents had often said to him.
None of them really knew what it meant.
Samantha sighed dramatically, “What, oh what do we do now?”
“Well... when I am sick in my room,” Jonathon interjected, speaking to no one in particular, “Aunt Em comes and reads to me.”
Mischief & Mistletoe (A Christmas Novella) Page 5
