Dashing All the Way : A Christmas Anthology

by Eva Devon

  “I don’t like tea,” she said. It seemed like a safe enough place to begin, even if she was admitting to something no good Englishwoman ever should. “Never have.”

  Andrew feigned shock, then smiled as he realized, “You actually answered my question.”

  She took another sip of her brandy, relishing the burning bite on her tongue, and said nothing.

  His grin faded, the look of concern reclaiming its place.

  “Clarence, you may remember,” she went on, “loved the stuff.”

  “I do remember,” he answered, the careful tone creeping back into his voice. “Loaded it with more sugar and milk than tea and called it the nectar of the gods. Drank it night and day. The gents ribbed him mercilessly for it.”

  She huffed. “Yes, apparently his penchant was well-known. I swear, I had to pretend to drink more cups of tea at Abchurch than I could count, whilst finding a discrete place to dump the swill,” she complained, pursing her lips in distaste.

  Then she took a third swig from her snifter and set it down on the table with a decided clink of glass on wood.

  “Did you know Clarence had given up brandy?” she asked.

  Andrew’s brows shot up in surprise. “What?”

  “I didn’t know, either.”

  His eyebrows settled into a V above his nose. “But he enjoyed a nip nearly as much as he did his tea. We drank barrels of it in our day.”

  “Yes, well, apparently he came to…struggle with his need for it.” She’d never noticed. Never had an idea that her brother suffered so. Her heart squeezed. She wished he would have told her.

  But then, he hadn’t told her many things, it seemed.

  Andrew’s eyes turned down with sadness, or possibly regret. “I had no idea.”

  A bit of the fury she’d sealed inside her heart slipped out. Just what exactly did he regret? That he’d been gone from Clarence’s life these past six years? Or that—

  Claire tamped down her anger. She wasn’t ready to talk about that part of what she’d learned tonight yet. Nor was she even certain who she was more angry with. Clarence? Andrew? Herself? Until she could figure that out, she had to stick to what pertained to Abchurch business.

  “Well, that’s one way Rosalie—”

  Andrew’s eyes narrowed at the unfamiliar name.

  “Clarence’s contact at the Devil’s Den,” Claire explained. “That’s one of the ways she knew I wasn’t Clarence. Clarence, she said, would have nursed that initial brandy most of the night and then set it down nearly full and gone after a cuppa.”

  “Wait. Are you saying she knew you weren’t Clarence before you accompanied her to the private room?”

  Claire nodded. “When she pulled me to her, she demanded right then to know who I was.” She remembered the bolt of fear that had pierced her in that moment. “I nearly shoved her away and ran. But then I decided that if I was already caught, I had nothing to lose.

  “So I whispered that I was Clarence’s sister and that I needed to speak with her privately. She agreed, and I steered her to the private rooms the only way I could think of with so many people around watching and listening.”

  Her cheeks burned as she recalled her risqué words, and flamed higher as she thought of what else she’d done.

  Dear Lord, what must Andrew have thought of her?

  What was he thinking of her now? She peeked over at him.

  His lips were pressed together, and he looked to be struggling to contain…laughter?

  “Christ, Claire. When you reached down and—” He lost the battle, and a rich chuckle rumbled out of his chest.

  Her face was afire now. She must be as pink as the lip salve that likely still graced her cheek. She swiped at it, and indeed, her thumb came away rosy.

  Lovely.

  Andrew’s face, however, glowed with mirth. It made him look younger, somehow, and the sight took her back to when she’d lived to make him happy. “And then,” he chortled, “when you told me to shove off?”

  Despite the fact that her feelings were gnarled and muddled and terribly conflicted at the moment, she couldn’t help a reluctant laugh of her own.

  “You should have seen your face,” she said, recalling his widened eyes and the look of shock that had nearly made her break character and dissolve into fits.

  Despite everything, it felt good to laugh with Andrew again. Impossibly, it made her feel as though all was right with the world once more. Which made everything she’d learned tonight a bit sadder, really.

  “You said ‘one of the ways’ she knew you weren’t Clarence…” Andrew prompted when she didn’t speak.

  “Ah, yes. She also said Clarence would never wear so pedestrian a knot as a Waterfall.”

  Another sharp laugh burst from his lips. “She’s probably right,” Andrew said. “He always had a bit of a dandy in him.”

  “That he did,” she agreed.

  After a moment, Andrew ventured, “It seems this Rosalie knew Clarence well, then?”

  His voice was tenuous and tactful—for her benefit, she suspected. Tiptoeing around the indelicate to spare Claire. Deciding what was best for Claire. Trying to protect Claire, no matter what she wanted for herself.

  She was tired of being protected by the males in her life.

  “They were lovers,” she answered bluntly. “That’s the true reason she knew I wasn’t Clarence. She insisted he would never have gone so long without coming to her unless something terrible had befallen him.”

  Unlike some men, who could walk away without a word.

  And with that thought, all of the emotions she’d been holding back since her tête-à-tête with her brother’s lover threatened to burst through the dam she’d built around her heart and drown her.

  “Apparently, they were quite close,” Claire said, hearing her voice rise with the tide of her feelings, but unable to care. “She claims he even asked her to marry him. Several times.”

  “Marriage?” Andrew exclaimed. “To his mistress?” Incredulity rang in his voice. Then he shook his head. “Do you believe her?”

  “I do,” she replied softly. Rosalie had known too much about her brother, things Claire had never fathomed. That was one of the many hurts afflicted tonight. She’d thought she understood Clarence better than anyone, being his twin, but how wrong she’d been. “She says she turned him down each time, but he persisted.”

  She watched Andrew closely to see how he took the next statement.

  “He told her that life was too precarious to live it without the person you loved by your side, everything and everyone else be damned.”

  Andrew’s face went unnaturally still, as if he were suppressing something he didn’t wish her to see. But he couldn’t hide the flash of anger that darkened the green of his eyes.

  “That…doesn’t sound like Clarence,” he said carefully.

  Too carefully.

  God. It was true, wasn’t it?

  She should just come out and ask him.

  But now that the opportunity was upon her, she found herself afraid of the answer. No matter what he said, it would taint forever the way she saw him, or her brother…or herself.

  Claire strode back over to the sideboard and swiped her brandy glass, finishing off the last bit with one large gulp. Then she turned back to him before she lost her nerve.

  “Why did you desert me at the Danburys’ Christmas Eve ball?” She swallowed the lump that was threatening in her throat.

  Rather than answer her, Andrew closed his eyes.

  Oh, no. She wasn’t going to let him dodge her question. She walked the few steps to him and grasped both of his hands—and by God, she meant to hold him there until he answered her.

  His lids flew open and his eyes locked with hers.

  “Why did you never come back into my life?” she demanded with a squeeze. “As if I’d meant nothing to you, when you knew how much you meant to me?” Her voice broke on that.

  The flat expression he’d been trying to maintain m
elted, every feature drooping into one of pain. “Claire…” he said, his voice raw.

  She waited, but he said no more.

  She licked her lips, which had gone dry.

  “It was because of Clarence, wasn’t it?”

  Chapter 10

  “Wasn’t it?” Claire repeated, unwilling to let this night pass without knowing the truth.

  Andrew flinched and tried to pull away from her. “Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You will not answer my questions with a question.”

  And still, Andrew remained mute. Who was he protecting? Himself? Clarence? Her feelings? She had to know which it was. All of these years, she’d thought he hadn’t wanted her. If that weren’t the case…

  She thrust his hands away. “Fine. If you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you. Clarence saw us together earlier that night, in the garden.”

  It had been uncommonly foggy that Christmas in London. Wet, but not overly cold. It had seemed so wonderfully exciting to slip out into the night, knowing the walks around the Danburys’ London mansion offered many cozy niches amidst the shrubbery and trees, made even more secluded by the blankets of fog. She’d felt so deliciously wicked.

  Of course, being in the heart of London, the gardens weren’t overly large, so they couldn’t go far. Or be too wicked.

  “After we slipped back into the ballroom” —separately, of course— “Clarence found you. As I was dancing my obligatory sets to make certain I was seen behaving as an innocent young miss should, he confronted you in Lord Danbury’s study about what lay between us. He knocked you flat with a punch, and when you refused to fight him, he challenged you to a duel.”

  “How do you know this?” he rasped, and a flush of triumph washed over her. Finally, she’d know why she’d lost Andrew. “Surely Clarence didn’t—”

  “Rosalie told me,” she interjected, and the momentary rush she’d felt deserted her at the reminder that her brother had trusted a stranger with the truth of what he’d done, but had never seen fit to tell her.

  Tears pricked the backs of her eyes—tears of betrayal, yes, and of loss. But also from the fear of learning what she didn’t yet know. She straightened her back and looked him directly in the eye.

  “Did you truly ask him for my hand?”

  Andrew’s entire body seemed to relax into resignation. He tilted his head, his eyes closing briefly. When he opened them, there was relief and a tenderness in their depths that squeezed her heart.

  “Yes.”

  Her heartbeat trilled in her chest, then settled into a quickened rhythm as she asked the question she really wanted to know. Had he wanted to marry her? Or…

  “Because you felt honor-bound to?”

  “Yes.”

  She winced. Who knew one tiny word could sting so?

  Andrew blew out a breath and raked a hand through his hair. “And no. Of course I felt honor-bound, Claire, but…”

  He shook his head, then stalked over to the sideboard, picked up the decanter of brandy and a fresh glass, and poured himself a healthy portion. He held the bottle out in question, and she nodded. After he refilled her snifter, he brought both glasses back to where she stood before the fire and handed her one.

  “Let us sit.” He nodded to the brocade settee nearest the hearth.

  Feeling as though another Claire moved the few feet to the settee, she nonetheless found herself perched upon it, Andrew sitting tantalizingly close. His heat warmed her right side, and in addition to the sharpness of the brandy, she smelled his all-too-familiar-after-all-this-time scent. Bergamot and bay rum. She’d never forgotten.

  “What you were told is true,” Andrew began, his voice rough and quiet in the flickering firelight. “Clarence did strike me, and I would not fight back. Nor would I accept his challenge. He was fiercely angry, but I knew he didn’t truly wish for us to take up arms against one another. Luckily for us both, no one bore witness to his words, so it cost him little to back down from them.”

  Claire tried to imagine the scene in that long-ago study. Clarence had loved Andrew like a brother, and vice versa. That she had come between them…

  “My eye was swelling badly from one of the punches he landed, however. I couldn’t return to the ball, not without starting the gossip mill churning. Nor could we expect privacy to hash it out in Danbury’s study that night. So we agreed to meet at our club the next morning, where we could discuss the matter civilly in one of the private rooms there.”

  The morning she’d spent fretting over why he hadn’t met her beneath the mistletoe as planned, Claire realized. Her mother had still been alive then, and had insisted she help with the many Christmas preparations, so she hadn’t had time to dwell. But even now, she remembered the sick foreboding she’d felt all day.

  “I wasn’t certain how Clarence would be when I arrived. Still angry, I imagined. Or perhaps, I’d hoped, he’d had time to get over the shock of knowing his best friend was in love with his sister.”

  Claire’s heart jolted, and she nearly sloshed her drink over the rim of the snifter in her surprise. Had Andrew just said he’d loved her?

  “But I never expected the absolute coldness he showed that day.” Andrew paused for a swallow of his brandy, his chest rising with a deep breath.

  She held her own breath as he collected himself, only letting it out when he started speaking again.

  “He scoffed at my request for your hand. Told me that a fourth son who was destined to be nothing but a bloody spot on a battlefield had nothing to offer you.”

  Clair gasped at her brother’s cruelty.

  The corner of Andrew’s mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Don’t think too harshly of him,” he said. “I can see now that he was more than just angry. I’d betrayed his trust by sullying you.”

  “You never sullied me,” she protested, then added with a bit of a grumble, “no matter how much I begged.”

  He smiled at that, a welcome sight amidst all the tension. “Oh, I sullied you plenty,” he said, and the look he gave her nearly scorched the breath out of her. Flashes of memory of his hands and mouth upon her heated her skin.

  “But I assured your brother that I had not ruined you,” he went on, snapping her attention back to their conversation.

  Claire’s cheeks pinked that her virginity, or possible lack thereof, had been spoken about between her brother and Andrew, even though the conversation had taken place years ago.

  “He was relieved, of course, but still furious. In his mind, I was the worst sort of bastard. He’d not thought he had to protect you from me, you see, and blamed himself for letting a fox into the henhouse.”

  Claire scoffed. As if she’d had no part in the matter. “Men,” she muttered.

  Andrew winged a brow, but continued. “I won’t go into everything that was said between us, but suffice it to say that I left that interview certain of two things: that I would never be allowed to see you again, and that my friendship with Clarence was over.”

  Pain etched Andrew’s voice, and Claire swallowed against the answering ache scratching at her throat. All three of them had suffered such terrible loss, of friendship and of love. Over what?

  She barely noticed as Andrew slipped her glass from her limp grasp and took her hands in his.

  “Of the two, Claire,” he said, his gaze intense upon her, “no longer being with you was what gutted me the most.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes at the realization of what her brother had taken from her.

  Andrew had wanted to marry her.

  And she…

  She understood better now what happened that night, but he had still left her with no explanation.

  “If you’d already lost Clarence’s friendship regardless, why did you not come for me?” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I’d have gone with you.”

  Andrew dropped his head, but after a deep breath, he looked her in the eyes again.

  “Because your brother was right. You had other suitors,
better prospects who could give you much more than I ever could.”

  “I didn’t care about that!”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “But it wasn’t just about what I couldn’t give you if we’d eloped…it’s what I would have taken from you.”

  A sharp ache pierced her heart as true understanding came. “Clarence.”

  “Yes. I never could have come between you. Your home,” Andrew continued, “was like an oasis of love and laughter for me—so much different from the cold halls of Sedgewick House.”

  Claire nodded. She’d asked Andrew once why he came down with Clarence every single school holiday, rather than going to his own home. After all, his father was a wealthy marquess. Her family lived modestly by comparison. Andrew had made some jest about Sedgewick House having a horrid cook, but she’d seen how he’d watched her family’s interactions with longing.

  “I couldn’t be responsible for ruining that for you,” he said. “Or for turning you against your brother, whom I loved also.”

  Andrew brought one of her hands up and pressed her knuckles against his lips for a long moment in a chaste kiss that nonetheless sent heat straight down to her toes.

  “So, as I hadn’t yet ruined you, I just…I thought it best to let you forget about me and move on to another. Someone your brother approved of. That way you could be happy not only in your marriage, but in your life.”

  Claire blew out a tight breath.

  A noble sentiment, she supposed. And in the end, could she truly have been happy with a man who would have been willing to destroy her family, even for love?

  She didn’t know.

  But Andrew was wrong. He had ruined her. Oh, not in the literal sense, but after loving him, no one else had compared. Not a single suitor who came after him had been able to make her laugh as he had, or encouraged her intelligence and wit, or inspired her to dream of a future together.

  She’d not been able to bring herself to accept any offers those first two seasons. Then her mother had died, and after she’d sat out her third season in mourning, Claire had refused to run through the marriage-mart gauntlet again.