Christmas with the Duchess

by Tamara Lejeune

  “Oh, you poor little lamb,” said Colin. “Emma, you can’t send him back! He’s in the fire now. He doesn’t want to go back to the frying pan. And, you know, you did say he looks very nice in his blue coat. She did say that.”

  Nicholas lifted his eyes to her. “If you want me to go…”

  Emma threw up her hands. “Of course I don’t want you to go,” she said impatiently. “I just thought you should be with your family. Oh, all right! You can stay. But your uncle won’t like it.”

  Nicholas smiled. “I do not answer to my uncle, ma’am,” he said, “but I will gladly answer to you.”

  “In that case,” said Emma, beginning to smile, “you must wear a tinsel hat. Otto will give you his.”

  “I won’t,” said Otto, as Monty opened one of the bottles of Champagne.

  Colin ran to get glasses. “Typical, Monty!” he scolded. “Will you never learn to fetch the glasses before you pop the cork?”

  “Not as long as I have you to fetch them for me,” Monty said lightly.

  “You’re getting Champagne everywhere,” said Otto, taking charge of the bottle.

  Champagne in hand, Cecily sat at the pianoforte with her brother-in-law. Laughing, Monty explained to them how he had escaped from the drawing room by pretending to be in agony from an old wound.

  “Don’t you like music?” Cecily asked him.

  “Aye, ma’am! And that is why I was so eager to escape the concert!”

  Colin began to play, Monty began to sing. Cecily joined in. Otto drank his champagne. In short, everyone made a point of ignoring anything that might be taking place on the other side of the room.

  Nicholas remained standing just inside the doorway. “Are you sure you want me to stay?” he asked Emma. “After all, I’m just an ordinary fellow who fell backward into an earldom. Actually, that’s quite true,” he admitted.

  Emma knelt down to gather up her drawings. “I know I shall be sorry for this in the morning,” she muttered under her breath. “Stay. I want you to.”

  Instantly, he was beside her, down on one knee, saying, “Let me help you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, wishing he did not look so handsome in his uniform. “I am sorry if I was uncivil,” she mumbled. Of all the things in the world, she hated apologies the most.

  With a quick glance at the others, he lowered his voice. “Is that why you left the drawing room before I returned?” he asked. “Because you thought I was going to marry one of my cousins?” He seemed pleased with the idea that she might be jealous.

  Emma’s response was studied. “I assumed that you probably would.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “How could you think so?”

  She shrugged.

  Nicholas frowned. “Surely, you do not think it is my duty to marry one of them?”

  Emma seated herself on the sofa, taking her plans onto her lap. “Do you not think it is your duty?” she countered. “You have inherited a great estate. Is it not fair that one of your cousins should share it with you? After all, any of them might have inherited, had she not had the misfortune to be born a female.”

  Nicholas was taken aback; he had never considered the matter in this light. “Naturally, if any of my cousins is in need, I will always come to her assistance. But marriage?” He shook his head. “I could never marry a girl I did not love,” he said simply. “That would be a falsehood.”

  Emma blinked at him in surprise. “Falsehood?”

  “Oh, I do not fault those who marry for other reasons,” he said quickly. “But, for me…I could never wed with an empty heart.”

  Emma could not help but smile at such touching naivete. “Are you real, Lord Camford? You’re like something from a fairy tale, you are. People wed with empty hearts every day.”

  “And I think it very sad,” he said solemnly.

  “My marriage was arranged,” she said. “Do you pity me?”

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t know.”

  “The day I met my future husband for the first time, I was summoned from the schoolroom into the rarified atmosphere of my father’s study. I was but fifteen. ‘Here is your husband, girl,’ my father said. Somehow, I found the courage to raise my eyes, and there he stood: the Duke of Warwick! He was horribly old, at least a hundred, or so I thought. He looked like moths had been eating him. I thought I would faint!”

  “Good God,” Nicholas murmured.

  “He stretched out his cold, bony hand to me, and said, ‘I’d like you to meet my son, Henry.’” Emma laughed, as much at Nicholas’s expression as the memory of that first meeting. “And there he was! Thank God! A reasonably good-looking seventeen-year-old boy. I was so relieved, I believe I gave him my heart on the spot. And, I think, he was not too disappointed in me. We were wed three months later.”

  “A happy ending, then.”

  Emma laughed ruefully. “By no means. But we did have a happy beginning. That is more than some people get.”

  Otto’s voice intruded upon their tête-à-tête. “Perhaps Camford can convince my sister that her mad scheme will never work,” he drawled, reaching over the back of the sofa to hand them glasses of Champagne. “I have done my best to reason with her.”

  All at once, Nicholas realized that he was in a ridiculous position, kneeling at Emma’s feet. He stood up to accept the glass of champagne. After a moment of indecision, he sat down next to Emma on the sofa. “Are you scheming, ma’am?” he asked her.

  “Always,” said Emma. “But my brother refers to nothing more sinister than my Christmas plans.”

  Nicholas looked at her drawings admiringly. “I do not think battles are so carefully planned,” he said. “You did not tell me that you were an artist, ma’am.”

  “But I have not had time to tell you everything, sir!” she answered. “Here is my vision for the Great Hall,” she went on, showing Nicholas her sketch. She sat looking at him as he studied it. “When the guests arrive for the ball on Christmas Eve, this is what they will see. What do you think?”

  “It is what you wish for them to see, Emma,” Otto corrected her. “You will never realize it,” he declared, leaning on the back of the sofa. “My sister has never heard of gravity or Sir Isaac Newton. As you can plainly see, the tree is much too tall.”

  “Is that a tree?” Nicholas asked, squinting at the sketch in Emma’s lap.

  Emma gasped indignantly. “Yes, of course it’s a tree. A remarkably well-drawn tree! A fir tree, to be exact.”

  “You will never get that thing through the doors,” Otto predicted. “And, even if, by some miracle, you get that—that ridiculously enormous tree through the doors, into the house, how do you propose to make it stand up? Hmm?”

  “That will be the servants’ lookout,” Emma said crossly. “I pay them handsomely enough to do my bidding.”

  “You do realize that trees only stand up outside because they’ve got roots stretching deep into the earth?” said her brother. “When a tree is cut away from its roots, it invariably falls over. It makes a bit of a crash, if that matters to you.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a damper, Otto!” she snapped.

  “I don’t mean to discourage you, Emma,” said Otto. “I’m simply pointing out that your plan will never work. You can’t have a tree that reaches all the way up to the ceiling—the ceiling in the Great Hall is twenty feet high! A tree of that height would fall over and kill someone—if you could even get it through the doors, which you can’t.”

  “Oh, but you don’t mean to discourage me!”

  “This may be a silly question,” Nicholas said, “but why do you want to put a tree, of all things, in the middle of your hall?”

  “Of course it makes no sense to you; you’re English,” Emma laughed. “But my mother was German. She brought her customs with her when she married my father. We always had a Christmas tree at Chilton. Der Weihnachtsbaum, we called it. It’s usually a fir tree—die Tannenbaum. We always had such fun decorating it.”
r />   “We had a small Tannenbaum at Chilton,” Otto said. “In the nursery.”

  Emma ignored him. “When I married into the Fitzroy family, they all thought I was mad, but my boys had a Tannenbaum in the nursery every year,” Emma told Nicholas. “We always used to decorate it together. My boys didn’t have much of a Christmas last year,” she went on more seriously, “with their father dying so suddenly, you understand. Oh, it was dreadful. I want this year to be extra special for them, to make up for it.”

  “I think I can help you,” Nicholas said slowly. “It can’t be any more difficult than raising the mast on a ship, and I’ve done that a few times in my day. Not by myself, of course.”

  “You will have servants to assist you, of course,” Emma assured him. “Anything you need. There, you see, Otto!” she said triumphantly. “It can be done!”

  “I still think it very strange that you would want to cut down a perfectly good tree and drag it into your house,” said Nicholas. “But, yes, I think it can be done.”

  Monty came around with the bottle to make sure their glasses were full. “A toast. To peace!”

  Emma and Nicholas scrambled to their feet. “To peace!”

  “La guerre est mort!” Colin announced in execrable French, lifting his glass in a toast no one could resist joining. “Vive le paix!”

  Soon they were all drunk.

  The party began to break up a little after midnight when Otto took his thoroughly inebriated wife to bed. Cecily, who never drank more than a glass or two with her dinner, was really suffering. Leaning heavily on her husband’s arm, she left the room, white faced with nausea, yet still mumbling bravely about going to the nursery to check on the children.

  Monty and Colin stood up at the same time. “I have to get up very early,” said Monty, kissing Emma’s hand. “I’m going out shooting with Bellamy’s men. If my wound isn’t troubling me, that is,” he added, grinning.

  Colin yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “Well, I’m off to bed, too,” he said.

  “No,” Emma said plaintively. “Don’t go! Stay! We’ll get more Champagne from the cellar. We’ll sing Christmas carols.”

  Nicholas also climbed to his feet. He was not so drunk that he didn’t realize he was about to be left alone with the duchess. “I’d better go as well,” he said. “Perhaps one of you gentlemen could show me the way?”

  “I’m afraid we’re in no condition to lead anyone anywhere,” Colin apologized. “Emma will take you, won’t you, Emma?”

  Champagne had made Emma reckless. “I certainly will,” she said. “It would be a pleasure.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if I went on my own,” Nicholas said seriously to Emma when they were alone. “If someone should see us together…I would not want to make you the subject of ugly gossip,” he added, remembering Lady Susan’s ugly talk about Emma.

  Emma climbed to her feet unsteadily. “I know this house like the back of my hand,” she boasted, conveniently forgetting that earlier in the day she had needed guidance from Carstairs. “I think I can bring you safely back to your room without getting caught. And, besides, they will gossip about me no matter what I do. So I might as well live a little, nicht wahr? Or, as the French say, ne c’est pas?”

  “I don’t speak French.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  Swaying a little, she took his arm and led him to a door set to one side of the pianoforte, half hidden by a blue velvet curtain. The room beyond was dark, lit only by the fire in the fireplace, but, as his eyes adjusted, he could see that it was a bedroom. Emma slipped inside, while Nicholas hesitated on the threshold.

  Almost to the bed, Emma turned back for him, seizing his hand. “What’s the matter?” she asked, puzzled by his reluctance. Anyone would think he’d never had a casual drunken romp before.

  “There must be some mistake, ma’am,” he stammered. “This is not my room.”

  “There is no mistake, my darling,” Emma replied, her voice silky. “This is my room. And that is my bed,” she added unnecessarily. He was perfectly aware of the bed.

  “I think perhaps we have had too much to drink,” he said, wide-eyed.

  “I am not drunk,” she said indignantly. “If I were drunk, do you think my brothers would have left me alone with you?”

  “You were supposed to take me to my room,” he reminded her gently.

  “And so I shall,” she said prettily. “Afterward.”

  “Afterward!” he exclaimed, his voice breaking a little. “A-after what?”

  “After you have made me happy, of course,” she laughed. “Don’t keep me waiting, Nicholas. I’m not at all a patient creature.”

  “I—I don’t understand,” he stammered.

  She sighed impatiently. “I’m sorry,” she said tartly. “Am I being too subtle? But I forget you are only twenty.” Blowing out her breath again, she went to the bed and sat down on it. Holding out her arms to him, she said, clearly, “Come here, boy. I want you. Quicker,” she added as he seemed rooted in the spot.

  “You should not tease me like this,” he said sharply. “It’s very naughty.”

  “I am not teasing you,” she said, surprised. “If anything, you’re teasing me. Now get over here this instant or I’ll just have to start without you. Or is that what you want?” she purred.

  “Madam!” he protested weakly. “Talk like that will go straight to a man’s head!”

  “To his head? I think not,” Emma chuckled. “It usually goes straight to his—”

  “Emma!” he said, quite shocked.

  She blinked at him. “What? I know you want me, Nicholas. Why are you fighting it?” She scowled at him suddenly. “You are not very gallant, sir, to leave me in hideous doubt of your desire for me! If anything, a gentleman should always show more passion than he feels, not less. In such cases as these, self-restraint of any kind is an insult!”

  “This is a prime example of why women should not drink,” he said. “It has altered you, madam, so that I hardly recognize you. I’m afraid it has robbed you of your womanly dignity.”

  The humiliation of rejection shocked Emma into unwelcome sobriety. “You’ve said quite enough, sir,” she snapped angrily. “Now I shall have my say. You are a hypocrite! I know when a man wants me, and you, my lord, definitely fall into that category! I am not wrong about this. I am never wrong about this.”

  “Well, of course I want you,” he said, almost angrily.

  “That’s what I said! You’re just being cruel,” she accused him.

  “I—I don’t mean to be cruel, Emma!” He was on his knees in front of her.

  Emma had already decided to forgive him, but she folded her arms and turned her head away. “Yes, you do. You are punishing me. Why do you punish me?”

  “I do not mean to punish you! I love you, and I want you to be happy!” he protested.

  Emma’s head swung back. “You love me?” she said. “Don’t be an ass!”

  “From the moment I first saw you, I have loved you,” he said with absolute humility. In the near darkness, he fumbled for her hands. “Is it possible for such a thing to happen so quickly? I swear I did not believe it until today.”

  “No, nor did I,” she said sarcastically. “But, then, Champagne has robbed me of wits as well as my womanly dignity, whatever that may be.”

  He pulled in a long breath. “Champagne has made me bold,” he declared.

  “Really? How bold?”

  “Bold enough to tell you that I love you!”

  “Talk is always bold,” she sneered.

  “I can’t believe I have found the courage to confess,” he marveled. “I did not dare hope that you could feel anything for me. Dear Emma! You are so far above me.” Bending his head, he covered her hands with passionate, clumsy kisses.

  Emma lifted his face. “Do you find me so very cold and forbidding?”

  “You are wonderful! Perfect! You are an angel!”

  “Is that why you do not kiss me?” she
asked.

  “You are a duchess,” he said helplessly.

  “I think you’ll find,” she said, tilting her face to his, “that kissing a duchess is a lot like kissing a woman.”

  She waited.

  Nothing happened. The young man was either too inexperienced or too shy to take the lead. With a slight sigh of impatience, Emma took matters into her own hands. Holding his face firmly, she kissed him full on the mouth. “What a sweet little lamb you are,” she murmured, nibbling his bottom lip. “When do you become a lion, I wonder?”

  “I’ll be your lamb,” he agreed, whispering. “I’ll be your lion. I’ll be anything you want. I would do anything to please you. I believe I would die to please you, Emma.”

  She kissed him again, pulling at his shoulders. He did not take the hint. “What’s the matter?” she whispered. “Come to bed, darling. Show me just how bold you are.”

  He obeyed, all but leaping onto her as she moved back to make room for him. He did nothing as she unbuttoned his coat and pushed it off of his shoulders, but his breathing was becoming ragged. “Help me,” she instructed, and at once he began loosening his neckcloth. He removed his waistcoat, then stopped, awaiting further instructions.

  “And the shirt!” she said smartly, resting against the pillows. “Hurry up.”

  He tugged it over his head, getting tangled in the process. She had to help him.

  His skin was hot and slightly damp. She ran her hands lightly over his naked torso, pleased to find that, although he was rather thin, his muscles were firm. Gently, she tried to push him over onto his back. Instead, he collapsed on top of her, burying his face in the side of her neck.

  He was pretty hopeless at taking a hint, she realized. “On your back, please,” she said softly, chuckling in the back of her throat. He complied immediately, and seemed grateful for the instruction. Sitting up, Emma lifted her skirts, put one leg over him, and sat down. His affair, as she liked to call it, was of a flattering size and hardness. She could feel it through his breeches.