Avoiding, Gregory’s eyes, Carol folded her hands tightly before her and moved out from behind her seat.
Salvation came, as it invariably did, in the form of a loyal friend. Theo cleared her throat. “That is correct,” she said with an effusive, if false, and greatly appreciated cheer. “Carol was so gracious as to offer to gather the pine branches for the holiday bough.”
As if Mother Nature mocked that subtle lie, a gust of wind whipped outside and sent icy snowflakes pinging against the crystal windowpane.
The viscountess’ smile dipped. “Indeed?” Mother, however, was never one who’d deny a duchess anything. Even allowing her daughter to enter a raging snowstorm. “My Carol has always been a good girl…”
And with her proud mama singing her blasted praises before a table of guests, Carol stiffly took her leave.
Yes, she’d far prefer to take her chances out in a winter squall than suffer through her mother’s less-than-subtle, humiliating matchmaking attempts with Gregory.
Chapter 5
Prior to last evening, Gregory would have sneered and scoffed at Lady Fennimore’s pathetic efforts to throw him together with Carol. He would have seen mother and daughter as an equally scheming pair who’d settle on a third son, all to connect themselves to one of the oldest titles in the realm.
That cynicism hadn’t come because the worst things in life had happened to him but rather, the opposite. While a boy at Eton and then a student at Oxford, his instructors had spoken to him with a reverence better reserved for kings. And it had always left him confounded. He was not a duke. He was not even second in line. None of that, however, had mattered. Society had marked the Renshaw name as one of value and through it, Gregory and his siblings had qualified for an automatic respect that no person should be granted.
As a man who’d established a thriving business venture, he appreciated that truth even more.
While his sister-in-law and the viscountess spoke about the events planned for the fortnight and Mr. Rayne sat silent, drinking his coffee, Gregory stared after Carol. With her squared shoulders and quiet dignity, the lady was prouder than a warrior princess. The glimmer of shame seeping from her expressive eyes before she’d fled knifed at him.
He set the empty plate down atop the stack of porcelain dishes. Swiftly abandoning the sideboard, he quit the breakfast room. As he stepped in the hall, Gregory looked about the empty corridor, just as a flash of green fluttered from around the corner. With a frown, he quickened his steps. The lady moved with an impressive speed. However, with his greater height, he easily overcame the distance.
She set her foot on the bottom step leading to her guest suite.
“Carol,” he called, his voice echoing off the stone entry.
The lady shrieked and spun around. Her chest moved frantically as she slapped a hand to her heart. Unbidden, his eyes wandered to that cream white swell.
“Have you come to make fun?” That wary question brought his attention up.
An inexplicable disappointment gripped him. It was foolish. Unfounded. They hardly knew one another at all and, yet, her ill-opinion chafed. Gregory rested a hand on the stair rail. “Despite your opinion of me, I’ve never been one of the bullying sorts.”
She nibbled at her lower lip. Had he revealed to the lady just how much that doubt grated? Disquieted by this unspoken connection between them, he flashed another grin. “Alas, my sister-in-law sent me to assist you in your efforts, Miss Cresswall.” That lie came out easily. Too easily. Ignoring the growing unease with just why it had and why he did, in fact, want to accompany the spirited lady he’d avoided for four years, he forced his features into an unaffected mask.
Surprise sparked in her eyes. How revealing those endless brown depths were. She conveyed more with the gold flecks there than most did with countless words. “Indeed?”
And not wishing to add another lie, he simply waited.
Some of the tension slipped from her slender frame. “Very well. I must gather my things.” She started up the stairs and, as a footman came forward with his cloak and thick leather gloves, Gregory contemplated the lady who’d been hiding in his brother’s library last evening. Most ladies would never dare set foot outside on a chilled day, let alone in the midst of a heavy winter snow.
He pulled on his gloves. Carol, however, would do so without blinking. The young woman rose in his estimation, replacing the unfavorable opinion he’d drawn years earlier. An opinion that had seen her as nothing more than a dutiful, biddable miss who’d make whatever match her mother asked of her.
Just like I am now considering Lady Minerva…
That ugly, unwelcome reminder slithered around his mind and dulled his earlier lightness. Shrugging into his cloak, he fastened it at the neck and then froze.
Carol appeared at the top of the stone stairway. His heart thudded a slow beat and then picked up a frantic rhythm. The chandelier cast a soft glow off the lady’s golden curls. With those strands drawn back in a coronet about her head, she had the look of a medieval princess who’d called this keep home. “I thought you might have changed your mind,” she said with a sardonic edge as she came down to meet him. Her maid trailed along at a modest, more sedate pace.
As Carol stopped before him, Gregory dipped his lips close to her ear. “Given our recent truce, it is far safer braving a snowstorm at your side than remaining behind and dealing with my own mother’s machinations.”
It was a lie. Lady Minerva and her family weren’t scheduled to arrive until later this afternoon. And by the gratitude that lit the lady’s eyes, she well knew his came as an offer of commiseration.
A young footman strode over with a green velvet cloak draped over his arms, recalling Carol’s attention. And Gregory proved himself to be a miserable blighter for resenting the smile she bestowed on that younger man.
With a murmur of thanks, Carol accepted help with the green velvet garment.
Had his mother ever thanked a servant? The powerful peeress had simply accepted those acts performed as part of her due. Was Lady Minerva of that like mindset? Or was she free in her thanks as this woman before him?
Parker shuffled over to the doorway and drew it open. A blast of cold and snow filled the foyer, leaving a dusting of white along the stone floor. Gregory braced for the lady to abandon the task apparently charged her that morning by Theo. Instead, she marched past him, out the front door, leaving her maid and the accompanying footman at her heels.
Another grin tugged at his lips as he trailed behind. Wind continued to roll through the countryside, battering their cloaks. Yet a peaceful quiet stretched across the grounds, leaving an unnatural still. Gregory fell into step beside Carol while the footman and her maid trudged along at a much slower pace. “I’ve come to know my sister-in-law well in these past two years,” he said and Carol looked up at him. “And I’ve come to learn that, despite the legacy of hatred that existed between our families, Theo has the purest, warmest heart there is.”
“She does,” Carol agreed. Her breath stirring little puffs of white air.
“I also know she’d never dare send you, me, or an enemy of the Crown out into this godforsaken weather.”
Her lips twitched. “You’ve found me out, Lord…Gregory,” she amended at his pointed look. A sharp breeze snagged her cloak and, fighting that gust of wind, she hurriedly pulled her hood into place. “She r-required branches for her boughs. I offered to go for her.”
Gregory beat his hands together in a futile bid to bring warmth into his freezing digits. “Y-You prefer death by freezing to your mother’s matchmaking attempts?”
The lady was silent several moments. “Th-that is a sad way to look at the world around you,” she said, her teeth chattering. She hugged her arms close, huddling deeper into her cloak.
At the faintly pitying thread to her words, he bristled. “Sad? It’s bloody freezing. Ice is stinging my cheeks.” What other way was there to look at the world just then other than cold?
Carol
stopped abruptly, forcing him to a halt beside her. The footman bearing the ax and the maid were well behind them, treading slowly through the snow. Gregory welcomed the stolen privacy with a lady who was surely born with a challenge on her lips.
Their cloaks whipped and snapped noisily about them. “It is hardly your fault,” she said. His annoyance deepened that she’d both found fault with him and pitied him for it. “We’re discouraged from feeling anything, though, aren’t we? That goes to the matches we make, ones our families encourage.” Lady Minerva’s regal face floated through his thoughts. A lady of fine, noble standing, who’d make him a fine hostess and yet never had he thought of all he’d forsake if he wed her. “And the world around us,” Carol added, bringing him back to the moment. She continued walking.
“What of it?” he called out.
She lifted her arms to the thick gray-white horizon and the steady flurry of snow falling at their feet and coating their garments. “Our Society doesn’t stop to appreciate this beauty. Being indoors, where Francois paintings and Renaissance murals are revered for the value ascribed to them, is more in Society’s style.” Carol let her arms fall to her sides, and shrugged. “But how much colder that beauty is even than…” She waved her hands over the snow-covered landscape. “This,” she settled for.
Gregory followed her gesturing and took in the evergreen trees in the distance. Their branches were heavy with snow, bent from the weight of that burden. It was a landscape better suited to a portrait and, even so, it could never do justice to the peaceful quiet. He dimly registered the crunch of snow as Carol resumed her trek down the end of the drive, pressing onward to the copse. The hem of her cloak and skirts dragged with every deliberate step. Her boots sank ankle deep into the blanket of white.
He followed her as she walked. How very free she was with both her words and her movements. His mother would sooner betray the king than suffer through the biting cold. Doubling back to the pair of servants who trailed behind, Gregory reached for the axe. “We will return shortly,” he said into the wind, his breath leaving puffs of white air.
Shoving back her hood, Carol looked over her shoulder and found him.
Leaving the pair of servants, Gregory returned to Carol’s side. She stood, hands propped on her hips, assessing a towering evergreen. The wind whipped through his damp garments. Feeling her gaze on him, he looked down.
“I expect five b-branches will do.”
Branches?
Her lips twitched. “For the holiday boughs. Wh-what did you believe we were traipsing the grounds for?”
He’d more mark their movements as plodding. Then, in talking to her these two days, he’d come to appreciate that she was not one of those ladies who complained about anything and everything. She moved deeper into the copse and stopped beside a snow-covered tree. Dusting her gloved palm over a heavy branch, she sent snow falling to the ground. The greenery dipped and then sprang back into place. “This one,” she urged, motioning him over.
Gregory came over and began chopping the greenery. “Do you know in the whole of my life, not one Christmastide featured a bough?”
Teeth chattering, Carol hugged her arms closed to her. “Surely not?”
“Oh, I assure you,” he said, pausing mid-chop. He resumed his efforts. “Christmastide is for the commoners.”
A frown marred her red lips.
The branch snapped as he severed its connection to the tree and then sailed to the ground. Gregory retrieved it and then turned it over to her trembling fingers. “Or, that is what my mother always insisted,” he explained. He motioned to the tree and she hastily selected another branch for him to cut.
“What of Christmas hymns?” she persisted as he set to work chopping another piece of greenery.
The late duke and dowager duchess had expected the four Renshaw sons to be skilled in every suit expected of an English boy. Fencing. Mastery of foreign languages. Skilled in numbers. “Never to sing and only to listen.” Each year, they’d attend a Christmastide musicale with Lady Minerva performing.
“A Yule log?”
“Never.” He removed another branch.
“Snowball fights?” There was a faint thread of desperation to her questioning.
He grinned. “Only an errant missile when there were no stern tutors and proper parents about.” Which, as children of a powerful ducal family that dated back centuries, was nearly never. “What of you?” Given her spirited nature, no governess or mama would have been able to quell her spirit.
Her eyes twinkled and she sidled closer. “Oh, there were always snowball fights,” she whispered, the words carrying to his ears in the quiet.
Unlike his own rather cheerless childhood. With the snow falling around them, adding height and depth to the drifts, he frowned, thinking back to when he’d been a boy.
…Young boys do not sing, Gregory. They ride and shoot…
His father’s pragmatic teachings whispered in the winter quiet, as fresh now as when he’d uttered them fifteen years ago. “No,” he said, more to himself. “Merriment and mirth are as frowned on as a man dabbling in trade.” Dabbling, as his mother had first and last referred to it. A word that hinted at senseless pursuits and unserious ventures.
Carol’s teeth chattered as her breath stirred puffs of white in the cold. “Th-those aren’t your words,” her quiet and too-astute observation cut across his memories.
How could she know that after but a handful of meetings? He grunted. “No. My mother’s.” And all of Society’s.
At her questioning look, he explained. “After I’d graduated from Oxford, I wasn’t the dutiful son to don the cloth or purchase a commission into the military.” His mother’s pleadings echoed around the stillness. He’d a mother who would have rather seen him off, risking life and limb, to preserve the family’s honor. “And I entered into a business partnership with a friend. Coal mining.” He stole a sideways glance at her. What would Carol say to that less than gentlemanly pursuit?
“C-coal?” She resumed rubbing her gloved fingers together.
He braced for that stinging rejection.
“Th-there’s far more honor in a man who makes a fortune with his hands than one who’d live off the wealth afforded him by his name, alone.”
He inhaled. Surely it was the stinging blast of the winter wind. And yet…her profession, laced in admiration and devoid of condemnation, left him incapable of words.
Carol dropped to a knee and, dropping the axe and bough in his hands, he reached out to steady her.
Disregarding his offering, she shoved to a stand and took several faltering steps away. Flashing him a mischievous smile, she brought her arm back and hurled a ball of snow at his chest. It landed with a spray of wet and cold in his face. Mouth falling agape, Gregory took in the wet mark left on his black cloak. By God, no one had hurled a snowball at him since he’d been—his mind raced—a boy of thirteen or fourteen and Charles had launched one at him. Which had resulted in him returning the favor. Efforts which had earned Gregory a knuckle rapping from their bastard of a tutor at the time.
Carol’s laughter, clear like bells echoing in the countryside, cut across the distant memory. Her cheeks flushed red from the stinging cold and the force of her amusement held him momentarily transfixed. With the wind whipping the hem of her green velvet cloak, there was a majestic beauty to her. How had he failed to appreciate her graceful beauty before now? He—
“Oomph.” He grunted as a snowball hit his cheek.
Her frame shook with the force of her mirth. “Y-your tutor’s neglect shows, Gregory.” He narrowed his gaze on the lady and her amusement faded. Her eyes formed circles and then with the agility a wood sprite would envy, she darted off.
Gregory bent and quickly assembled a snowball. He let it fly, catching the lady on the shoulder. Her laughter echoed in the countryside, contagious, and he quickly made another. In the whole of his life, he had prided himself on being responsible. First, as a boy in his studies who’d hoped
to earn a sliver of his father’s affections. And then, as a young man who’d established one of the most prosperous mining companies in all of England. As such, he should be filled with a proper horror at the servants watching him from a distance with open-mouthed shock.
When had he ever taken part in a lighthearted activity just for the sake of his own joy? Laughing, a lightness filled his chest.
Carol paused to steal a glance over her shoulder. The move proved costly. His next missile hit its mark, catching her squarely in the chest. The lady gasped and stumbled, landing on her back.
Bloody fool. You don’t go throwing blasted snowballs at ladies. Quickening his strides, he hurried over. “Carol?” he called gruffly. “Are—?” A snowball collided with his nose, biting and sharp. He grunted. “With your precision and aim, you’d serve Wellington well, madam,” he mumbled. With his damp glove, he brushed the residual water from his eyes.
The lady’s teeth chattered. “A-another truce?” she offered, holding her palm out, the gesture harkening to that accord they’d struck last evening.
And God help him, on a whim that was surely foolishness, he wanted to know her hand in his, again. Gregory placed his damp glove in her smaller gloved palm, and—
The lady wrapped her other hand about him and tugged him down hard.
The air left him on an exhale and he swiftly rolled onto his back. The snow-covered earth softened his fall and promptly soaked his garments. “B-bloody hell,” he hissed. “Th-that is freezing, madam.” And yet, she lay beside him and but for her noisily clattering teeth, she may as well have been in any respectable parlor.
“There have been n-no snow a-angels, either, I gather?”
’Twas the Night Before Scandal Page 4
