Table of Contents
Title Page
Quote
Copyright
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Other Collette Cameron Books
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
WEDDING HER CHRISTMAS DUKE
Seductive Scoundrels, Book Ten
By
COLLETTE CAMERON
Blue Rose Romance®
Portland, Oregon
Sweet-to-Spicy Timeless Romance®
“I canna just let ye go.”
Baxter pressed his mouth to the crown of her head.
“I dinna ken what this is between us,
but I’ve never felt anythin’ like it, Justina.”
WEDDING HER CHRISTMAS DUKE
Seductive Scoundrels
Copyright © 2020 Collette Cameron®
Cover Art: Kim Killion
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Daughters of Desire (Scandalous Ladies)
A Lady, A Kiss, A Christmas Wish
Coming soon in the series!
No Lady for the Lord
Love Lessons for a Lady
His One and Only Lady
The Honorable Rogues®
A Kiss for a Rogue
A Bride for a Rogue
A Rogue’s Scandalous Wish
To Capture a Rogue’s Heart
The Rogue and the Wallflower
A Rose for a Rogue
Castle Brides
The Viscount’s Vow
Highlander’s Hope
The Earl’s Enticement
Heart of a Highlander (prequel to Highlander’s Hope)
The Blue Rose Regency Romances: The Culpepper Misses
The Earl and the Spinster
The Marquis and the Vixen
The Lord and the Wallflower
The Buccaneer and the Bluestocking
The Lieutenant and the Lady
Highland Heather Romancing a Scot
Triumph and Treasure
Virtue and Valor
Heartbreak and Honor
Scandal’s Splendor
Passion and Plunder
Seductive Surrender
A Yuletide Highlander
Seductive Scoundrels
A Diamond for a Duke
Only a Duke Would Dare
A December with a Duke
What Would a Duke Do?
Wooed by a Wicked Duke
Duchess of His Heart
Never Dance with a Duke
Earl of Wainthorpe
Earl of Scarborough
Wedding her Christmas Duke
The Debutante and the Duke
Earl of Keyworth
Coming soon in the series!
How to Win A Duke’s Heart
Loved by a Dangerous Duke
When a Duke Loves a Lass
Boxed Sets
Lords in Love
The Honorable Rogues® Books 1-3
The Honorable Rogues® Books 4-6
Seductive Scoundrels Series Books 1-3
Seductive Scoundrels Series Books 4-6
The Blue Rose Regency Romances- The Culpepper Misses Series 1-2
Hoping your Christmas is magical and romantic.
Many blessings this holiday season
and throughout the year.
Chapter One
Bathhurst Hotel and Spa
Bath, Somerset, England
November 15, 1810
Justina Farthington laughed as she and her widowed aunt, Emily Grenville, tried in vain to dodge the large, soggy snowflakes sifting from the pewter gray sky with the rambunctious abandon of a litter of kittens playing in a sack of spilled flour. The pathway to the hotel wasn’t long, but the snow made walking difficult.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t plan on reaching home today,” Justina said, tilting her head to better study the ominous sky. A plump snowflake plopped onto her chin, and she laughed again. Grateful for her warm leather gloves, she swiped the moisture away. “We’d never have made it to Bristol in this weather.”
“In all of my years, I have never known it to snow this heavily in Somerset in November,” Aunt Emily declared, clutching Justina’s hand for balance.
A good five inches of snow had already accumulated. Though it was scarcely an hour past one in the afternoon, steel gray blanketed the town so popular with the upper ten thousand, giving the appearance of early twilight. The pouting sky showed no signs of relenting in its unrepentant white onslaught upon the earth either.
Surely snow in Somerset wasn’t so scarce.
“Yes, all thirty of them,” Justina remarked dryly while concentrating on keeping snow from sneaking into her half-boots. “And because you’re so well-traveled.”
“Hush, Justina Madalene Honoria Farthington. Really. Reminding me of my advanced age and that I’m on the shelf is beyond the pale,” Emily huffed good-naturedly, even as a frown puckered her brow.
Oh, my heavens. Auntie used my full name. She is in a fine fettle, then.
“Lest you forget, I am widowed and a decade your senior. And, I’ll remind you, dear niece, that I have seen much more of this often-unforgiving world than you.”
“Of course,” Justina murmured demurely.
Aunt Emily wasn’t done, however.
“You know full well I accompanied my brother on his diplomatic jaunts for several years. It simply does not snow several inches before Christmastide in our part of the world.”
A touch of genuine concern had leeched into her usually tranquil tones.
Was her aunt worried they’d be stranded here?
What did it matter?
Their finances, though not abundant, were sufficient to accommodate an extended stay. No one except two doddering servants, well past their prime, awaited them at home in Bristol. And the Sutcliffes’ Christmastide house party didn’t begin until the twenty-second of December—a full month away.
In point of fact, Justina and her aunt were invited to come a few days prior. Nonetheless, they could while away for a fortnight in Bath, and no one would be the wiser, much less worried or concerned.
A grin played around the edges of Justina’s mouth.
Oh, how she looked forward to the Sutcliffes’ house party.
Her dearest friends—young women she’d met at the finishing school her widowed aunt had insisted she attend—were also invited. Genuine excitement that today’s gloomy weather and the disruption to their travel plans couldn’t diminish bubbled along her veins.
Clutching Justina’s hand tighter, Aunt Emily clicked her tongue, reminding Justina very much of their elderly neighbor, Gertrude Howerton.
Nearly blind and well on her way to becoming deaf as well, Gertrude was forever fussing over something, tsking, clucking, and murmuring, “Mercy,” or “God save me,” while forcefully pounding her cane on whatever unfortunate surface she happened to be upon, or prodding the legs of whoever happened to be in proximity of the flailing stick.
She was precisely the type of eccentric old bird Justina hoped she’d be in her dotage.
Though still a beautiful woman, Aunt Emily dressed and acted like a seventy-year-old spinster. If a man so much as gave her a second glance, with her lips pursed, she turned her frostiest green-eyed star upon him. Usually, that was sufficient to send any would-be swains trotting hastily in the other direction.
She never—truly never—spoke of her marriage or dead husband, an officer in His Majesty’s Navy.
Once that first year together, struggling to find the right words in her stilted English,
Justina had dared ask Emily about her husband. Distress had ravaged her aunt’s pretty features before she’d managed, “It is not something I ever speak of.
Justina had never poked her nose into Aunt Emily’s personal business again. Somehow, she sensed it wasn’t just grief that tied her aunt’s tongue and caused the haunted shadows in her pretty eyes.
“It is most unfortunate that the Royal Arms Hotel suffered fire damage, and we are obliged to find lodgings elsewhere.” Aunt Emily signaled the drivers to wait. “Richard always insisted we stay at the Royal Arms.”
In truth, this was the third establishment the women had stopped at, seeking rooms for the night. Who would’ve guessed so many dratted people were traveling in November despite the awful roads?
With a wan smile, Aunt Emily allowed, “My brother was rather rigid and unyielding in his ways. A deeply devout man, Richard never stepped over the mark or outside Society’s strictures.”
Justina kept her response to herself. Whenever Aunt Emily mentioned Richard Farthington, Justina couldn’t prevent her heart from cramping. Not over his death, for she hadn't known the man, but for all that had come afterward.
Could he really have been gone nearly a decade?
How well she remembered that day less than a month before her tenth birthday. The day after her beloved mother had died in their humble Viennese hovel and her cantankerous Austrian grandfather had presented Justina at Richard Farthington’s doorstep, proclaiming she was his illegitimate daughter.
“I’ve no use for a uneheliches Kind” —bastard child— “under my feet,” grandfather had pronounced coldly in his German spattered, halting English. “Farthington impregnated my daughter, and he can deal with das Mädchen now that my Elsa is gone, ja?”
He hadn’t even looked back but had left Justina standing bereft and teary-eyed with an equally confused and grief-stricken Emily Grenville. She’d buried her brother, Richard, a mere two days prior after he’d succumbed to lung fever.
Except for each other, Justina and Aunt Emily were indeed two women alone in the world.
As always, when reminiscing about her previous life, melancholy infused Justina.
She cut a sideways glance at the woman who’d become mother, sister, and friend to her in the ensuing years. The woman who’d accepted a child she neither knew nor could vouch for her paternity and brought that same frightened and sad little girl to England to be raised as a gentle-woman. The only person, save Wenzel Trattner, Justina’s grandfather, who knew the secret of her birth and guarded it like the most precious of gems.
Aunt Emily had, however, changed Justina’s given name from Friederike, giving her a feminine version of Richard Farthington’s middle name, Justin. For that, Justina was grateful. Simply put, Friederike was a mouthful, and she would have had to continually explain her name’s origin had she kept it. Although, in retrospect, she might’ve enjoyed being called Freddie.
The great-granddaughter of a viscount, Emily Grenville, had taken a grief-stricken child beneath her wing that awful afternoon when the charcoal grey Vienna sky had also been cloaked with grumpy clouds.
A few years later, Justina had learned that Emily’s branch of the family had long ago spurned contact with the distant relations they had peppered about England and beyond. No reason was given for the estrangement.
Shorter than Justina, at just two inches above five feet, and older than her by ten years, Emily was the opposite of Justina in almost every way, except for the green eyes they shared.
Justina’s were a pale green while Emily’s were darker jade. The eye color did not signify paternity, as they both well knew. But it did aid in strengthening the fabricated tale Aunt Emily had concocted that long-ago day. Thus far, no one had questioned the story. It contained just enough scandal to titillate and a thread of truth that could neither be proven nor disproven.
To the world, Justina was Richard Farthington’s daughter. His Viennese wife, Justina’s mother, had died in childbirth.
End of story.
Only it wasn’t.
For one thing, Justina and Aunt Emily, save for their eyes, looked nothing alike.
Aunt Emily was golden-haired, possessed of a keen wit, and pragmatic to the point of causing Justina to grind her teeth on occasion. She possessed an oval face, winged eyebrows, and though not precisely beautiful in the traditional sense, she attracted men like plump blossoms did bees in the summertime. She’d received a half dozen marriage proposals since putting aside her mourning weeds.
All of which she’d declined with the alacrity of a starving urchin stealing a sweetmeat from a baker.
Emily Grenville was determined to never—ever—marry again. Something that Justina was just as determined to thwart. For, truth be told, if anyone deserved love, companionship, and children, it was her unselfish aunt.
Justina, on the other hand, possessed straight light brown hair, a diamond-shaped face with a chin she thought much too pointed, and eyebrows that refused to arch no matter how studiously she plucked the dashed things. Her curves, especially her breasts, were abundant compared to Emily’s gentle swells.
Although Aunt Emily argued otherwise, Justina felt certain her aunt had rejected those marriage offers because she refused to sequester Justina at a country house and go on with her life.
When she’d taken on the responsibility of Justina’s care, she’d scarcely been twenty years old herself. Fourteen years younger than Richard Farthington, after their parents had died, Emily had acted as her brother’s hostess for five of those years.
Well, except for the two months she’d been married.
Two months—then tragically widowed.
What had scarred Aunt Emily so that she avoided any mention of her marriage or her husband, Lieutenant Clement Grenville?
Someday, Justina would know the truth.
In any event, Aunt Emily had been her
brother’s sole heir. Prudently managed—and Emily was nothing if not prudent—his bequeathment had proven sufficient to support the two women in relative comfort as long as they practiced economies. Theirs was not a luxurious lifestyle by any means, but they needn’t be ashamed of their social standing either.
Farther down the lane, children squealed and ran about pelting each other with snowballs or pulling one another along on sleds. A wonder they even owned sleds, so infrequent was snow here.
A black dog yapped, its tail wagging furiously as it chased after the snowballs. Three industrious boys were intent on building a snowman while two little girls lay upon their backs making snow angels.
There’d be many cold noses, fingers, and toes, and no doubt hot chocolate or perhaps mulled wine to chase away the chill this afternoon. In truth, at the moment, a hot toddy sounded utterly divine.
An unwelcome memory pushed to the forefront of Justina’s mind: a petite girl in a pale blue cloak laying on her back and making a snow angel.
As quickly as the recollection had intruded, it vanished.
She’d been that little girl. But as with the other memories of her former life, that vision swirled around the edges of her memory before floating away. Try as she might, she could no longer summon the image of her mother’s face but remembered her kind blue eyes and her pretty voice as she sang to Justina.
She and her aunt tramped up the four steps to Bathhurst Hotel and Spa and stomped their snow-caked half-boots upon the colorful braided rug outside the door.
Somewhere within, a dog woofed a canine greeting.
A small frown forming two lines on her forehead, Emily squinted at the newly painted sign and then slowly took in the welcoming porch.
“I think the hotel has recently been painted and refurbished.” She pointed at the sign. “And renamed, as well. It was simply The Bath House the last time I was in Bath.”
Wedding Her Christmas Duke: A Regency Romance Page 1
