Regency Christmas (Holiday Collection)

by Jillian Eaton

  Eric frowned. “The devil I have.”

  Lifting her right hand, she began to tick off her fingers. “First you complained about my hair, the width of my waist, and the fit of my dress.”

  “Those were not complaints, they were observations.”

  “Secondly, you said my gloves were worn–”

  “Which is true.”

  “–and lastly, you said my entire wardrobe was out of style.” Her hand curled into a fist and struck the table with a light thump. “And that was just from this morning!” A little voice in the back of her mind warned her to stop then and there, but like a boulder that was rolling downhill she only kept picking up momentum. “Do you know you’ve not said one kind word to me since we’ve been married? Wait. That is incorrect. You did tell me that Buttercup likes me. But I believe that is more of a testament to her good nature than it is to yours! You are more than boorish. You are rude, and ill-tempered, and – and just plain mean!”

  “Are you quite finished?” he said in a very soft, very dangerous tone of voice.

  Oh dear, Caroline thought as all of the color drained from her face. She’d just shouted. At a duke. And not just any duke, but her own husband! If he was surly when she was on her best behavior, there was not telling how he would react now.

  “Yes,” she squeaked as she dropped her hands into her lap and her gaze to her plate. So much for wanting to be a cat! At least a mouse could hide under the table. “I – I believe I am.”

  “Good.” Setting down his utensils with surgical precision, Eric stared at her until she was forced to lift her head. When she did he smiled thinly, but there was no humor in the depths of his frigid blue eyes. “You seem to be under the misguided impression that I owe you something. I do not. I am your husband and you are my wife. It is my duty, as your husband, to provide you with all of the material comforts you could ever possibly wish for. It is your duty, as my wife, to provide me with an heir. That is all I expect of you, and that is all you will expect of me. Do you understand?”

  She bit her lip. “But what – what about love?”

  “Love?” he jeered. “Love is a myth. Love is a fallacy. Love is a make believe dream spun by those who would like to believe the world and the people in it are better than they really are. You’re a duchess now, Madam. And duchesses do not believe in love.”

  Something crumpled inside of Caroline. Something small and vulnerable and easily broken. On a breathless sob she threw her napkin to the ground and pushed back from the table.

  “Where are you going?” Eric demanded sharply when she stood up. “You have not finished your lamb.”

  Unable to speak for the tight knot of misery in the middle of her throat, she could only stare at him in wretched silence, her soft gray eyes awash with tears she refused to let fall. Then, for the second time that day, she fled.

  Well that hadn’t gone the way he had wanted it to.

  Slumping back in his chair, Eric raked a hand through his hair and stared down broodingly into his plate of buttered lamb and roasted asparagus. He’d meant to seduce his wife. Not send her running from the room. But when she’d begun to point out his faults he had automatically gone on the defensive, much like a burly bear poked with a stick. And like a bear, he hadn’t been satisfied until he’d drawn blood.

  Goddamnit, but he was a bastard. The pain in her eyes when she’d looked at him…it had made his chest ache. Especially since he knew he was the one who had put it here.

  His appetite gone, he stood up and left the dining room, intending to find Caroline and make amends before she went to bed. But she wasn’t in the drawing room. Or the parlor. Or the library. Or her bedchamber, for that matter. Going back downstairs, he entered his private study and rang for Newgate. Within minutes, the butler appeared.

  “Yes, Your Grace?” he said, snapping to attention in the middle of the doorway.

  “Have you seen my wife?”

  Newgate consulted the gold watch he always carried with him in the front pocket of his waistcoat. Eric had given it to him last winter to commemorate his service, and it was one of his most prized possessions. “It is half past six, Your Grace. I believe your wife takes her dinner at this time.”

  Eric waved his arm. “I was just with her in the dining room. She left and now I can’t find her.”

  The butler concealed his surprise with a well-timed blink. “You were…dining together?”

  “Trying to, at least.” Crossing to his liquor cabinet, he poured himself some brandy. “Until she yelled at me,” he muttered into his glass before taking a long swallow.

  Newgate blinked again. “That doesn’t sound like something Her Grace would do. Might I ask what provoked such unusual behavior?”

  It was a rather personal question, but then Newgate and Eric had a rather personal relationship. While the late Duke of Readington had been chasing after his wife and drinking himself into a stupor, Newgate had been teaching the future duke everything he needed to know from how to properly tie a cravat to what lure to use when fishing for trout.

  Nannies and governesses had come and gone but Newgate had always remained, and over the years he’d become a reliable source of support and wisdom. Much more so than Eric’s own father, and certainly more so than his harlot of a mother.

  “She said I am cruel and insensitive.” Finishing his first glass of brandy, he poured himself another and offered to pour one for Newgate, but the butler shook his head.

  “You are cruel and insensitive,” he said candidly.

  Eric scowled. “I am aware, Newgate, thank you. She claims I never give her compliments. Only insults.”

  “Do you?”

  “I suppose. But it’s not my fault she’s so bloody sensitive!”

  “You seem quite irritated, Your Grace,” Newgate observed.

  “I am irritated.” Stalking to the fireplace, he braced an arm against the wooden mantle and glared down into the flames. “She irritates me, Newgate. Like no other woman I’ve ever known.”

  “That is readily apparent.”

  “Well what the devil am I supposed to do about it?”

  The butler was quiet for a moment. “I think a better question to ask would be why she makes you feel this way. Once you’re able to answer that, I believe you’ll know what to do.”

  “Is this another one of your cryptic words of wisdom?”

  “I would never presume to give you advice, Your Grace.”

  “Oh come off it, Newgate. You’ve been giving me advice for years.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about,” the butler said stiffly.

  Leaving his brandy on the mantle, Eric turned around. “Be honest with me, Newgate.”

  “Always, Your Grace.”

  “What do you think about her?”

  “Your wife?”

  “No, the bloody Queen.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course I mean my wife.”

  “I think she is nothing like your mother. And the sooner you realize that, the happier both of you will be.” He cleared his throat. “Is there anything else I can help you with, Your Grace?”

  Just the mere mention of his mother was enough to make Eric’s skin crawl and his shoulders stiffen. Reaching blindly behind him, he picked up his glass of brandy and tipped it all the way back. “If you see the duchess, tell her that I am looking for her.”

  “I will make sure to do that. Goodnight, Your Grace.”

  “Goodnight, Newgate.” Waiting until the butler had closed the door behind him, Eric sank down into a leather chair and kicked his legs out towards the hearth. Within the brick fireplace the fire crackled and popped, sending little golden sparks flying out through the iron grate. They were too small to cause any harm, most of them burning away into cinders before they ever touched the ground.

  Not unlike his marriage.

  His mood mellowed by the brandy, Eric was forced to wonder if he wasn’t cutting off his nose to spite his face. Newgate was right. Caroline wasn’t his moth
er. Lady Eleanor had been selfish and manipulative and shrewd. Caroline was…well, come to think of it he didn’t know enough about to her to know what she was.

  Certainly not selfish, he mused. At least not in a way that was obvious. And if she was trying to manipulate him she wasn’t doing a very good job at it. Shrewdness was a bit harder to detect, but he’d yet to see any evidence of that either. Maybe – just maybe – Caroline was precisely what she appeared to be: a shy, awkward wallflower who liked horses and was frightened of her own shadow.

  Her little outburst tonight at the table was the first flash of temper he’d seen. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t been aroused by it, which was yet another reason why he’d reacted so vehemently. He’d wanted to halt his desire in its tracks before it had time to fester and grow into something he couldn’t control. Unfortunately, in his determination to keep his heart closed he may have gone just a bit too far in the opposite direction. Maybe what he needed – what they needed – was a course correction.

  Not a completely new destination. He’d meant what he said in the dining room. Love was a myth and a fallacy. Love made men weak. Love wasn’t meant for dukes…or their duchesses. But there was a difference between love and civility, and surely he could manage to be civil. If only for as long as it took to put a son in her belly. After that there would be no reason to see her at all except for the occasional social outing.

  He did want to be a good father, but the boy wouldn’t need him right away. And he could always have him brought to Readington Crossing for the summers. Caroline could come as well, he supposed. As long as she remained in her wing and he in his.

  And she didn’t complain about his mistress.

  It could work, he decided. It would work.

  But first he needed to find his wife…and then he needed to bed her.

  Chapter Eight

  Caroline managed to avoid her husband for the better part of two days. It made her feel cowardly, but what else could she do? The man was as unpredictable as a winter storm.

  And she was tired of being left out in the cold.

  It was clear they’d entered their marriage with two very different sets of expectations. She’d wanted to find love and he…well, she really hadn’t any idea what he had been hoping to find. So she had been avoiding him all together. A short term solution to a long term problem, but it was the only thing she could think to do after everything else she’d tried had failed.

  Miserably.

  Sinking lower into her bath, she closed her eyes and released a long, heavy sigh. Warm water lapped at her shoulders, covering her pink skin in frothy white bubbles that smelled of lavender and rosemary, an herbal combination that Anne had assured her would ease the tension in her muscles and help her sleep better.

  “Come in,” she said when she heard a soft knock on the door. “I’m almost finished. Could you lay out my nightdress and wrapper? The ivory with the lace, if you please. Do you think I should leave my hair up or take it down?”

  “Take it down,” replied a deep, gravelly voice that most certainly did not belong to her maid.

  “Oh!” Caroline gasped as her eyes flew open. Eric stood at the foot of the tub with his muscular thighs braced apart and his arms folded across his chest. “You – you shouldn’t be in here. I – I am not dressed,” she hissed, beyond mortified to have been caught in such a helpless position.

  “Really?” he drawled. “I hadn’t noticed.” There was a wicked gleam in his eye that she’d never seen before. It sharpened when his gaze raked across the top of the water. “Care for me to join you? The tub looks big enough for two.”

  Where in heaven’s name was Anne? Not that the maid would ever dare come into the bedchamber now that the duke was present. Whether Caroline liked it or not (and she definitely did not), she was completely on her own. Just her, her husband, and a handful of rapidly dissipating bubbles.

  “No – no,” she managed to sputter when he began to untie his cravat. “I – I do not care for that at all. You – you have to leave! This is completely inappropriate!”

  One dark eyebrow shot up. “Of course it’s appropriate. I’m your husband.”

  “But I – I don’t know you at all!” she said shrilly.

  His hands paused. “You’re right,” he said in a voice that was oddly gentle. “You don’t know me and I don’t know you. But I thought it was time we remedied that.”

  “By b-bursting into my bedchamber unannounced?”

  His second brow rose to join the first. “I did knock.”

  “I thought you were the maid!”

  “An honest mistake, I suppose. Towel?” he asked, holding one up.

  “I am not getting out of the tub while you’re standing there staring at me,” she said incredulously. Just the sheer thought of having Eric see every inch of her naked body was enough to bring a furious blush to her cheeks. When her mother had told her about marital relations she’d said they were done late at night in the dark under the covers. The wife laid very still beneath her husband and closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and it was all over in a matter of minutes. But she’d never mentioned anything about bathtubs!

  “Well you can’t stay in there forever,” the duke said reasonably. “You’ll catch a cold.”

  “What do you care if I catch a cold?” she muttered, drawing her knees up to her chest and glaring up at him through damp lashes.

  He frowned. “I know I haven’t been very…welcoming to you, Caroline.”

  That was the understatement of the century.

  “But I can assure you from this point forward I shall endeavor to act more kindly towards you.” He hesitated. “There are…things about my past that you don’t know. Things that have…well, to put it bluntly, have affected how I view marriage. Because of that I’ve treated you unfairly, and I would like to strive towards fostering a better relationship between the two of us.”

  “That’s – that’s very considerate of you,” she said, sheer panic raising her voice an octave when she noted that nearly half of the bubbles were gone. “Let’s start tomorrow, shall we?”

  “I thought we might start tonight,” he said softly, cool blue eyes drinking in the sight of her wet, glossy skin as she did her best to keep herself covered. “Have you ever been kissed, Caroline?”

  “K-k-kissed?” she sputtered.

  “Yes. Kissed.” He took one step towards her, then two, and before she quite knew what was happening he’d sat down on the edge of the tub and had his hand in the water, fingers trailing through the bubbles in an absent circle that was creeping dangerously close to her thigh.

  “I – I don’t know.” Is the water getting hotter, she thought frantically, or is it just my imagination? Suddenly she felt less like a lady enjoying a calm, relaxing bath and more like a boiled lobster. One about to be devoured by a very hungry duke.

  “You don’t know?” he said, amused. “I should hope you would remember. Perhaps it wasn’t done properly.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said faintly.

  “I’ve always found the prelude to a kiss to be the most important part. You need to not only make your intentions known, but to set the mood.” His eyes, as dark as a stormy sky, slowly traveled over every inch of her wet, quivering body before they settled on her flushed countenance. His mouth curved. “Don’t you agree?”

  “What – what are you doing?” she demanded when he rested his forearm on the curved edge of the tub and leaned in close enough for her to smell the muskiness of his cologne, a combination of leather and brandy.

  “Setting the mood,” he murmured. His hand dipped below the bubbles and she trembled when she felt his fingers brush against her ankle. He began to caress her calf in long, soothing strokes that made her want to stretch like a cat, but she kept her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. “Your skin is soft as rose petals. Tilt your head back, love.”

  “What? Why?” Her eyes had begun to drift closed, but they snapped open with newfound awareness when he
lightly touched her shoulder, the rough pad of his thumb pressing into the delicate hollow of her collarbone.

  “Your head. Tilt it back, if you please. I’d like to kiss you now.” Equal amounts of humor and raw, naked desire flashed across his face. “If that’s all right, of course.”

  Her belly clenched tight. “I – I suppose,” she said nervously. “What should I do?”

  “Just tilt your head back,” he whispered huskily as his hand slid from her shoulder to the nape of her neck, fingers settling along the rigid lines of her corded muscles, “close your eyes, and enjoy.”

  As Caroline squeezed her eyes shut, she became increasingly sensitive to the smallest sounds. The water lapping against her thighs. The rustle of Eric’s clothing. The soft catch of her own breath. Then his mouth was pressing gently against her mouth and she was being kissed. Not the quick, birdish peck Lord Dunmoore had given her once behind a velvet curtain at his sister’s piano recital, but a real, warm, lingering kiss she felt all the way down to the tips of her toes.

  It lasted the length of ten thunderous heartbeats before her husband slowly lifted his head and sat back on his haunches. She tried to guess what he was thinking but his expression was guarded, his roguish smile gone.

  “Here.” Standing abruptly, he picked up the towel he’d left draped over the foot of the tub and held it out to her. “You’re going to need this.” Then he turned and faced the door, allowing Caroline to emerge from the lukewarm water and quickly dry herself before donning a soft muslin wrapper that clung to the curves of her damp body.

  “All right,” she said, self-consciously tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear. The rest of it was pinned to the top of her head in a heavy bundle, leaving the nape of her neck exposed. Candlelight brushed up against her side, revealing the dusky rose of one nipple and the long, elegant silhouette of her thigh. “You can turn around now.”

  Eric turned slowly. Almost reluctantly. His face was cast in shadow, making it impossible for her to decipher what he was thinking. What he was feeling. Then his chin lifted, and his eyes met hers, and the heat in his gaze was so staggering that she felt the blaze of it all the way across the room.