A Midnight Clear

by Kristi Astor

  “Roxy and I made all the snowflakes.”

  Roxana mentally nudged her frozen limbs toward one of the fireplaces, lifting her wreath to place over the mantel.

  “She’s very good with scissors,” said Julia. “She taught me how to cut the patterns just so. Every one is different.”

  “Indeed,” answered Max.

  Her heart thumped erratically as she strained to catch the wreath on the hook.

  He moved behind her. “Allow me, Miss Winston.”

  “I have it,” she said mulishly and bounced on her toes and missed the nail again.

  He reached around her and guided it to the wall. Since she hadn’t relinquished the task to him and stepped aside, the brush of his body against hers was inevitable. Heat flashed and spiraled into her stomach. With every ounce of willpower she possessed she restrained the urge to lean back, to feel that broad strength with the length of her body, and she did not want to think of the antics Mrs. Porter encouraged in a ballroom.

  The holly wreath in place, he stepped back and leaned a hand against the carved mantelpiece. “All is well with you?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll go get the last wreath,” said Julia, and like that, they were alone.

  The ballroom was vast. She could put yards between them by just walking to another place in the room. Her feet refused to move.

  He looked down at her, mesmerizing her. Looking upon his countenance was so much more pleasant than looking at Mr. Breedon. Roxana gave herself a mental shaking. Pleasant looks weren’t everything.

  He reached out and touched a stray tendril of hair that had escaped her topknot. “You look beautiful this morning.”

  His voice reverberated down her spine, leaving trails of soothing warmth. How did he do that? She brushed her bare hands over the apron she had donned to protect her dress. She was thoroughly coated in dust and pieces of holly. “I look a mess.”

  “You do not like compliments, Miss Winston?” he asked as he rubbed the strand of hair between his fingers.

  “Why, of course I—” She gave up the pretense. Why was Max comfortable enough to treat her with an intimate gesture, but she had not managed to make Mr. Breedon so much as touch her hand? “No, I do not like insincere flattery, but thank you just the same.”

  Max smiled, and she could hardly tear her eyes away from his mouth. The change from a stoic expression was slow and measured, not a lightning flash of teeth such as Scully treated her with. But it tugged at her just the same, as if her insides were turning to mush. Everything would be so much easier if she wanted to be married.

  He pulled his hand back, and she felt bereft.

  “I have a letter for you,” he said.

  “A letter?” she echoed stupidly. What had her father done now? Heaviness pulled at her heart.

  Max reached into his breast pocket and drew out the sealed missive.

  She took it, feeling the warmth of Max’s body on the paper. She clutched it at her breast, fearing that whatever it contained, the news would not be good.

  Max’s smile disappeared. He gestured toward one of the chairs that lined the walls of the ballroom. “Would you read it now?”

  “Yes. No. I shall read it in my room.” Dread tightened her spine.

  “Roxy, if you fear it contains bad tidings read it here. I will assist you in whatever way I can.”

  “I . . . no . . . I just am surprised to get a letter. I did not expect one so soon.” She tried to laugh, but the sound that left her mouth was more of a nervous titter.

  What was she doing with Max? She needed to be with Mr. Breedon. She needed to spend her time pursuing her goal. She had to encourage Breedon to behave recklessly. How could she persuade him to her room if he had shown little interest in seducing her?

  She had long ago accepted that she would not take her place in the world as part of the privileged and pampered upper ten thousand, but that she would slip into the working world of the middle class. But she was unsure she could pull off the first part of her plan.

  If she could not get money to start her business. . . her future as well as her sisters’ and brother’s future yawned before her as a dark black hole, their grasp on dignity pried loose by the wicked hands of a fate they did not deserve.

  She could feel Max watching her, waiting for her to speak. Max held out his hand. Roxana put her hand in his, aware of the pounding of her heart.

  His hold steadied her. “Roxy, read me the letter.”

  She could not. Her mother would write of the urgency of their situation. She would plead for Roxana to save the family by marriage to a man of means. Or there may be worse. Anxiety clawed at her insides.

  She pulled her hand back and walked away, concerned Max would penetrate her fragile hold on her emotions. She did not want him to notice her trembling.

  She wanted to confess to him, to tell him the only reason she was here was because she needed money to start her business. Her sisters and her brothers were living no better than crofters. She had to save them, but she had never accepted her mother’s plan to marry as the only course. Marriage certainly hadn’t saved her mother. Marriage had broken her mother.

  Max lived in opulence and comfort. He would never understand the horror of not knowing if food would be on the table, or if the knock on the door was the sheriff to escort them to the workhouse. Or that the idea of turning over her trust to a man who should protect her struck terror in her heart.

  Max’s hand closed around her upper arm. Memories of her father jerking her around doused her in panic. She wrenched free and spun away from his grip.

  “Roxana?” He folded his arms in front of him. “Tell me your situation so I might help you.”

  She wanted to confide in him. She wanted to believe he could help her, but everyone she had confided in had scoffed at her plans.

  She had tried to get a loan through the local bankers, through applications to a group of investors and finally from Mrs. Porter, who knew how well Roxana made clothes, but all had refused. She was a young woman who should get married and have babies, not become a mantuamaker. Besides that, she was underage and could not be held to a loan without a guarantor. Everyone had thought her scheme bacon-brained. But she knew she could make it work. She had to.

  “Unless you wish to loan me money, I do not see how you could offer more help.”

  “There you are, love,” said Devlin Scullin. He’d seen Fanny head down the stairs for the great hall and followed her. “Where have you been hiding this morning?”

  “I was preparing the ballroom for the festivities a week hence, but guests are arriving,” said Fanny.

  She sidestepped away from him and cast herself into the mid-morning sun shining through the window. Her hair caught the light and reflected off the honey-colored curls peeping out under the edges of her lacy cap. Devlin leaned back against the newel post of the great staircase and crossed one booted foot over the other. “Do you intend to avoid me the whole time I’m here?”

  She twisted her hands together in front of her. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  She knew what he meant.

  “Is all hope lost for me, then? Do you trample my hopes and crush my dreams?” he asked with an exaggerated clutching at his breast.

  “Do not,” she whispered.

  He eased out of his relaxed pose, catching her around the waist. “You look like an angel with the sunlight dancing in your hair.”

  She twisted away from him, out of his grasp. “Do not trifle with me, Scully. You are kinder than that.”

  She reached to tuck stray curls under her cap. Years ago, when her hair had streamed across her pillow, it had been lighter, more the color of bright sunshine. Perhaps he’d said something like that. Yes, he had made a remark about her hair resembling sunshine then. But then he had remarked on everything from her dainty toes to her Cupid’s bow mouth.

  “You have no husband who could be wounded now,” he said.

  Fanny turned h
er startled blue eyes in his direction, eyes he had seen fill with tears of remorse. The happiest night of his life, and she had regretted it, wished it away, wished him away.

  “Do not think I shall be easy pickings because I am alone now.” Her chin lifted, but he could see her hand shake. “Other women are available for you to amuse yourself. I want no part of your . . .” She looked about as if she would find the words she wanted stuffed in a corner. Perhaps she would discover them in the gilt around the mirror, or the bowl holding wax fruit, or the Chippendale chair in the corner.

  “My what?” Devlin crossed the marble floor, narrowing the gap between them. Why wouldn’t she look at him?

  “Your stable of discarded loves.”

  “You are hardly discarded, my pretty Fanny. You sent me away, remember?”

  “Do you like Miss Winston?” asked Fanny.

  “Well enough. She is an interesting girl.”

  “You might amuse yourself with Lady Angela DuMass or Miss Lambert. The Misses Ferris are joining us too.”

  Devlin studied Fanny. Since she was no longer married, did she want him attached to preserve her distance? Had that night meant anything to her? Or was it just a moment’s indiscretion, a bad choice instantly regretted? “But I am already pledged to dance attendance on Miss Winston. Max said that would best please you.”

  “Yes, that pleases me.” Fanny’s blue eyes narrowed in such a way as to make him think she did not like his escorting Miss Winston around. “Do not break her heart.”

  “I do not believe Miss Winston’s heart is at stake, Fanny.”

  “No, well, you break many hearts, Dev,” Fanny paced away from him again. “I have seen you collect them like so many pearls to a string.”

  He had made sure she had seen him and his conquests. What a foolish notion that had been. “Fanny, none of them ever meant anything to me.”

  “Yes, I know, Dev,” she said in a soft tone riddled with weariness.

  He clenched his fist. “You are the—”

  “If I hold a special allure merely by virtue of refusing you, do give over. It is nonsense that shall pass.”

  The butler crossed the hallway and opened the front door and the Ferris family entered, two unmarried misses and their parents. Footmen followed with baggage and the hall transformed into a hive of activity with servants pouring out of the woodwork to take outer coats, hats and muffs.

  Fanny stepped forward and greeted her newest guests with smiles and hugs. She had not given him so generous a welcome when he had ridden overnight to reach her at the first possible moment.

  Had he waited too long? Should he have pushed his advantage when she fell into his arms but begged him to leave? He had waited years, and now she no longer wanted him? Anguish clawed at his throat as he stepped forward and greeted the two Misses Ferris with his usual bland flattery and teasing about his fluttering heart. Only it was not all teasing. Fanny did make his heart skip and race . . . and bleed.

  Chapter Six

  Max stared at Roxana’s door, his mind on her plight. Her face had gone pale when he handed her the letter. Her request for a loan had left him flat-footed. When he did not answer her right away, she had fled the room.

  He wanted to help her. It was his duty. How to assist her was the question. The last thing he expected her to ask for was a loan. He was cash starved himself. He could not take on more debt. Besides, what means would she ever have of repaying a loan?

  He wanted to be sure she was all right when she emerged from her room. He’d escort her to the drawing room and see if he could not persuade her to divulge the contents of her letter. Besides, it was his turn to play chaperone since Fanny and Scully were otherwise occupied.

  Lady Malmsbury strolled toward him. Too late he turned to walk away. Had she realized he was loitering about waiting for Roxana to exit her room?

  “Max, darling, you are neglecting me dreadfully. Won’t you show me about your home?” Lady Malmsbury threaded her arm through his.

  Her cloying scent flooded his nostrils, and his instinct was to recoil, but the right thing to do was to be unfailingly polite. “Of course, my lady.”

  She tugged him toward his bedroom as if she hoped for a midday tryst. Instead, he aimed her toward the next flight of stairs and the ballroom. As they strolled down the gallery, he made the required comments about the portraits.

  Lady Malmsbury cooed and claimed she saw resemblances to his ancestors.

  “Would you like to see the ballroom, my lady? It is decorated for the winter solstice ball.”

  Lady Malmsbury leaned close, pressing her breast against the back of his arm. “You are so formal, Max. Come, we know each other better than this. I have missed you so. Surely you have missed me a little.”

  Max felt unease slide down his spine. Malmsy acted as if she planned on cavorting on the ballroom floor. “I have been busy.”

  Malmsy stuck her lower lip out. But then she spied the kissing bower and headed straight for it, dragging him along with her.

  Repugnance skittered down Max’s spine. The last thing he wanted to do was taint his memory of kissing Roxana under the mistletoe, by being forced to go through the same motion with Eliza.

  Roxana was shaking like a leaf by the time she sat down near the window of her room. She had seen from Max’s stiffening that he was offended by her mention of a loan. He would not help her in the way she wanted. He had told her he would not marry, and that of course would be the only way he would see as a way to help her. She knew from Thomas’s complaints earlier that Max was quite serious about keeping his half brother as his heir.

  She popped the seal on the letter, dreading what she would find. Her mother’s tiny script crisscrossed the page.

  Dread snaked down her spine as she leaned so the natural light would shine on the paper.

  Her mother’s letter started with the news that all the girls were well. With a hacking cough from the cold, Jonathon had hunted unsuccessfully for deer three days. He had finally returned with a rabbit just in time to feed their father.

  Roxana hated the idea that the slender amount of meat would be wasted on Lord Winston. Remembering the chill of the cottage in winter, Roxana drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

  As near as Roxana could figure through her mother’s disjointed comments, their tenants’ risqué party had angered the baron, and he’d evicted them. Roxana suppressed a sigh of impatience. What did he expect when he rented their home to a semiretired abbess and her girls?

  She tossed the letter onto the writing desk and sat on her trunk that contained many of the scraps of dresses and peignoirs that she had sewn for the women renting the main house. She had used their leftover cuttings to trim her own dresses. The ladies’ fondness for lace had been a blessing in disguise, giving Roxana the expensive touches to her gowns without costing her a penny.

  Roxana castigated herself for being distracted by Max’s attentions.

  She needed to be more active in pursuing her plan; time was running out. The only thing she knew to do to calm her overset nerves was to create. She crept out the side door of her room, the door that led to the narrow servant passageway and the back stairs. Across from her room was Mr. Breedon’s bedchamber. He was so close, yet so far away.

  Stealing up the back stair, she headed for the attic storeroom to see if she could use the discarded bedcovers. The habit she had from Fanny was pretty, but its cut and color were better suited to an older matron. Roxana fretted as she moved stealthily. She thought she could use one of the Duchess of Trent’s lists. Flirt with the richest gentleman present—Mr. Breedon. Seduce him, but let him think it his idea.

  With that income from the rent gone, what would her family do? The estate had been so neglected and crops so poor in recent years that little income could be had from the land. Her mother had gone on to say that her father had consulted a solicitor about breaking the entail and selling the estate. Cold hard doom stabbed at Roxana’s spine.

  She could not al
low the other guests at the house party to guess her circumstances. Only Max knew a bit of her troubles and she had probably erred in sharing hints of her family’s plight with him.

  With the Porters no longer paying their lease and suing, the family’s main source of income was gone. Their creditors were hounding them, the green grocer refused to deliver any more food without payment . . . and then there was the mortgage her father had taken on the property. If her father succeeded in breaking the entail and selling the heavily mortgaged estate, it would just be a matter of time before nothing was left.

  A sense of fatalism bore down upon Roxana’s shoulders. Even if she wanted to go home, her main source of income—sewing clothes for Mrs. Porter and her “daughters”—was gone. Her mother had closed with pleas for a successful conclusion to her daughter’s mission. She must urge a man of means to marriage, by any available method, before her family was thrown into the workhouse.

  A teardrop obscured the writing near the bottom of the page. For a minute Roxana was not sure it had not come from her. She had touched her fingertip to the stain on the letter and found it dry.

  She opened a door to the long gallery that ran outside the ballroom. Relieved to find the room empty, she ran toward the storeroom. She found the bedspread and gathered it up.

  A large scorch mark on the satin lining showed the damage. Roxana shook out the material and sneezed as a cloud of dust rose in the air. The dust surprised her, because the army of servants kept the household so neat. Still, there was plenty of material if she cut judiciously. If she started on it this afternoon and worked through the night, she might be able to finish it in time for the hunt. Perhaps that would help impress Mr. Breedon. Or should she concentrate on the Duke of Trent?

  Her heart stumbled to a trot. No, her involuntary response to the duke made keeping her head unlikely, even if he did mean to offer more than a flirtation.