by Carla Kelly
Mr Cooper continued the narrative. ‘Lord Kelso had me prepare the contract, but he sent word this afternoon that he was too ill to do business until the first of the year.’
Serious nods all around. Ben felt his spirits begin to rise.
‘I reminded him that the deal was to be closed today and he just laughed. Said no one wanted it,’ Mr Cooper said.
‘Insulted me, he did!’ Mr Pickering declared.
‘I propose this, Master Muir,’ Mr Cooper said. ‘If you will make Andrew Pickering a better offer, the row will be yours to do with as you see fit.’
Amanda returned to Ben’s side, her face rosy with embarrassment for him, because she knew nothing about his finances. ‘Mr Cooper, you needn’t put Ben on the spot. I don’t think...’ She stopped.
Ben looked at the woman who might actually share his pillow soon. He gave his attention to Mr Pickering. ‘Three hundred pounds, did you say?’
‘Aye. You offer will have to be higher, to flummox Lord Kelso.’
‘You’re a shrewd gentleman,’ Ben said, which appeared to delight Mr Pickering. ‘How about four hundred pounds?’
Amanda gasped and grabbed his hand, towing him to a corner of the room. ‘Ben! Is that your life savings? You can’t!’
He pulled her close, amused to look over his shoulder and see everyone leaning towards them. Amanda moved even closer to him, which brought some heat to one of his appendages.
‘I guess that means you’re not marrying me for my money,’ he teased, stepping back a bit because they were the attention of mixed company.
‘Do be serious, Ben.’
He whispered in her ear about Brustein and Carter, and prize money. ‘We all get a percentage, not just the captain and admiral of the fleet,’ he concluded. With unholy glee, he saw that her eyes had begun to glaze over when his lips tickled her ear. ‘I can afford any number of Mandy’s Roses.’
Amanda took a deep breath and another, looking around as if aware for the first time that they were the centre of attention. ‘You would to that for Aunt Sal and me?’
‘That and more.’ He whispered in her ear again, since results were so positive. ‘I love you.’ He turned to Aunt Sal. ‘Everything I ever said about not inflicting myself on a good woman in time of war was poppycock and base cowardice. Do excuse it, Miss Mathison.’
‘I am inclined to,’ Aunt Sal told him, ‘particularly since Mandy seems to want to hang about your neck.’
Ben returned his attention to the pretty girl whose eyes were little chips of blue, because she was smiling so big. ‘Please marry me as soon as possible.’
She nodded and gave him a fierce hug, which caused a curious phenomenon: the room suddenly seemed empty of observers. No one was there except the two of them and a fierce hug deserved an equally fierce kiss.
They stood together, locked in a tight embrace, as their audience applauded, then returned to their own Christmas food and cheer. The vicar shook his hand, tears in his eyes, and his father just looked on in amusement and what looked like pride. Aunt Sal’s lips trembled and her smile made Ben shaky. He was marrying Sal’s treasure. The responsibility settled on his shoulders, right next to duty to his king and country. It was more of a caress than a heavy weight.
‘I’ll buy the building block and you won’t lose Mandy’s Rose,’ he told Aunt Sal.
He thought she would agree, so her headshake surprised him. ‘I can afford it, dear lady. Please let me.’
‘I think not,’ she said, with a smile at the vicar, who had just been joined by his wife. ‘I rather like cooking in the vicarage and I know Mandy would rather be in Plymouth, for those times when the Albemarle comes to port.’
‘Would you?’ he asked his dear woman.
‘Venable would be too far away,’ she said, her voice so shy.
‘It’s only ten miles,’ he reminded her.
‘Too far.’
Ben nodded; she was right. He could already see her standing dockside in Devonport, waiting for him. In a few years, if the war ground on, she would probably wait for him there with a child, maybe two, if this wedding happened soon and he came into port occasionally.
‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘But there will be this condition, Reverend Winslow: I will pay Sal Mathison’s salary. Consider it my contribution to the health and well-being of the Winslows and my tithe to the Church of England. No argument.’
No one argued. He saw the relief in Mrs Winslow’s eyes. He glanced at her hands, knotted with arthritis, and understood. He turned to Mr Pickering. ‘Alas, I think you must wait for Lord Kelso to recover from his choler and accept his offer, after all.’
‘I don’t mind. It’s still a good offer and I’m getting old,’ Mr Pickering said. ‘Eighty-five next week. I need a holiday.’
Everyone laughed, including Amanda, then she gave Ben a searching look. ‘His choler? How would you know what is really wrong with Lord Kelso?’
‘It’s only a suspicion,’ Ben said. ‘When I stopped in Devonport and talked to the harbour master, he told me about a visit to my captain from Thomas Walthan.’
‘Thomas?’
‘Aye. He surrendered his midshipman’s berth. I cannot begin to express my relief, but I doubt his father sees it that way.’ He chuckled. ‘Let’s draw a curtain over life at Walthan Manor right now.’
He turned to the vicar. ‘I need a special licence. My ship is my parish, but I’d rather not wait three weeks to have my captain cry the banns there.’ Ben laughed. ‘Besides, after all my declarations on never marrying, he would find this vastly amusing. Do you suppose the bishop is in Plymouth?’
‘Alas, he is not,’ Reverend Winslow said.
‘We will elope,’ Ben said, biting off each word, as his darling Mandy blushed.
‘No need,’ the vicar said. ‘I saw the bishop only yesterday at Lord Baleigh’s seat just a little south of here, celebrating with wassail.’ He leaned forward. ‘He is a patriotic man, Mr Muir. Go in all your finery and describe a lonely night on the blockade. Get Mandy to squeeze out a tear or two and he will grant a special licence, even if he is on holiday. Shall we say December the twenty-sixth?’
‘What say ye, Amanda?’ Ben asked, his eyes on his love, who struggled to keep back tears. She nodded.
‘Lad, it might be hard to find a nice place to stay, inns being what they are at Christmas,’ Maxwell Muir said.
‘Hardly.’ Mr Cooper reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. ‘Mandy’s Rose is available. No one is taking possession until Lord Kelso gets around to signing the contract.’ He bowed to Mr Pickering. ‘No objections, sir?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘I don’t have a dress,’ Amanda said, but it sounded to Ben like a feeble protest.
‘Good God, woman, then what are you wearing?’ he teased. It’ll come off soon enough, he thought.
* * *
The dress lasted through a wedding, a quick reception in the vicarage on leftover Christmas refreshments, and a walk to Mandy’s Rose. They sat for a moment on the bench by the road, where he promised to find her a wedding ring as soon as they got to Plymouth and the Drake.
She took off the dress—that nice green wool—as he watched, her face a deep blush. He did duty on the buttons to her camisole, which afforded him a most pleasant view of what he had already imagined was a lovely bosom. There was even a wonderful mole between her breasts, which he kissed. That led to her hands on his trouser buttons. She was good with buttons.
When his trousers and shirt were off, and his small clothes halfway gone, she made him turn around so she could see the blue gunpowder dots on his back. He would have laughed at her cheerful scrutiny, except that she started kissing each dot, which moved matters along handsomely.
She didn’t even fumble with the cord holding up her petticoat and sh
e hadn’t bothered with drawers. She was a sailor’s dream come true.
* * * * *
The Viscount’s
Christmas Kiss
Georgie Lee
To my family.
Thanks for making every Christmas memorable.
Dear Reader,
I think it was Shakespeare who once said, “the course of Christmas never did run smooth,” or something like that. As with anything, life can step in to mess with the best-laid plans for the holidays. Sometimes it happens in sad and poignant ways, like the year my family carried our good cheer, along with our presents, to the hospital to celebrate what would be my grandfather’s last Christmas. Sometimes the interruption is exciting and happy, like the year we journeyed to the same hospital on Christmas morning to welcome a new baby into the family. All our plans for that joyous Christmas Day changed as we moved back dinner and asked guests to arrive later so we could visit the little bundle of joy who’d arrived early. I even braved the mall the day before to buy a Baby’s First Christmas ornament.
No matter what surprises or sorrows Christmas brings me, family will always be at the heart of my celebrations. The Viscount’s Christmas Kiss is my attempt to capture the craziness and the love that fills a family and a house at Christmas. It’s also about the unexpected surprises life sometimes throws into the celebration mix, and how they can change us and our lives and strengthen our bonds with those we love. I hope you enjoy sharing Christmas with Lily and her family, and the unexpected surprise that changes all of Lily’s expectations and plans.
Georgie Lee
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter One
Yorkshire, England—1818
‘What do you mean, he’s coming here?’ Lily paused over her canvas and a large drop of red paint dripped from the tip of her paintbrush.
‘Laurus is bringing him,’ her younger sister Daisy announced as she strolled across the wide sitting room, waving the letter with the shocking news. ‘He’s to stay with us for Christmas.’
‘Here?’ Lily squeaked as she wiped the red spot off her easel with the corner of her old smock. ‘To Helkirk Place?’
‘Of course. What other here might I be referring to?’ Daisy flounced to a nearby chair and dropped into it, tossing their older brother’s letter on the table beside her to pick through the other envelopes she carried. At ten, Daisy enjoyed a more vigorous correspondence than Lily did at twenty.
Lily shoved the paintbrush in its holder and rushed across the room, disturbing the pack of small terriers sleeping on the hearthrug before the fireplace. They jumped to their stubby feet and began loudly protesting. Aunt Alice continued to snore in her chair by the fire, immune to the indignity of her precious darlings.
Lily snatched up her brother’s letter and read through it, the words nearly lost in the jumble of yapping canines.
‘Quiet down, all of you,’ she commanded, but it did nothing to silence the tiny pack or calm the panic racing through her. ‘He’s coming tonight, on Christmas Eve?’
‘I imagine so if he’s to be here for Christmas.’ Daisy shrugged, the red ribbon in her brown hair as askew as those around the terriers’ necks.
Lily crushed the letter to her chest as she took in the sorry state of the sitting room. With the exception of her corner where the easel sat neatly over the oil cloth protecting the floor, nothing else was as it should be. The house was already filled to near bursting with family. Besides Aunt Alice, their eldest sister Rose had descended on them yesterday with her husband, Edgar, and their five-year-old twins, James and John. The boys’ shoes littered the stone hearth where they’d been discarded when they’d torn by after coming in from playing in the snow. Their mittens fared no better, one having been tossed over the back of a wooden chair, the other flung across the seat to wet the sturdy fabric. The rest were strewn about the room, except for the one being chewed on by Pygmalion, the smallest terrier with the longest name. Her other sister Petunia had arrived this morning with her husband and daughter, increasing the chaos. This wasn’t the festive atmosphere in which to bring someone unaccustomed to the confusion of the Rutherford family, especially one as arrogant as Lord Marbrook.
‘Did you tell Mother about Laurus’s plan?’ With any luck she’d object, what with the staff already overwhelmed and, if the butler was any judge of things this afternoon, sampling the wassail brewing in the kitchen. Lily also hoped, for once, the family might side with her against a man such as Lord Marbrook, though she wasn’t sure why, since they never had before. Because he was Laurus’s oldest school friend, they’d been all too willing to overlook his slight of her. The indignity of it still stung.
‘Mother thinks him being here is a wonderful idea. You know her, the more the merrier.’ Daisy kicked her legs over the arm of the chair to recline across them and read.
Lily grabbed Daisy’s ankle and tossed it off the embroidered arm. ‘Why? Did she feel we didn’t expose our family to enough ridicule the last time Gregor St James was in our midst?’
They hadn’t seen Gregor St James, Viscount Marbrook, since Petunia’s wedding to Charles Winford, fifth Baron Winford, four years ago. St James had only been a second son then. Now, with a title hanging in front of his name, he was sure to be even more arrogant than before and all too eager to sneer down his sharp nose at her and her family again.
‘You were the only one who made a fool of herself, tripping while dancing with him during the Scotch reel,’ Daisy pointed out.
Aunt Alice snorted in her sleep as if agreeing with Daisy, the slurp of the dog chewing the mitten punctuating it.
‘Thank you very much for reminding me.’ Though she’d never forgotten it, or the callous way Lord Marbrook and his family had treated her afterwards. Their very public disdain had encouraged the most vicious in society to follow their lead, making her the focus of wicked ridicule and turning every subsequent ball and soirée into a drudge. She’d left London less than a month later and hadn’t returned since.
‘I have no desire to attend our Christmas ball and face the entire countryside, most of whom were at Petunia’s wedding. It’s bad enough I have to endure Sir Walter’s cracks about my graceful dancing every year, but to have Lord Marbrook there when he does is more than anyone should have to bear.’
‘I don’t know why you care about what wrinkled old Sir Walter says. No one else does.’ Daisy turned over a page of her letter. ‘Beside, Lord Marbrook is sure to have forgotten your tumble by now. Mother said he was with Wellington at Waterloo, before his elder brother died and he inherited.’
Lily didn’t share her sister’s confidence in Lord Marbrook having been changed by his time in France. Nor could she imagine a Marbrook sullying his hands on a battlefield or taking orders from anyone of lesser rank, not with the way the whole family revelled in their lineage more than the Prince Regent.
‘He probably wasn’t anywhere near the fighting but the aide-de-camp to some fat general with a higher title than his father’s,’ Lily retorted as she stomped back to the canvas and snatched up her palette. She mashed together yellow and blue with her knife, the memory of Lord Marbrook standing arrogantly over her while the other dancers had laughed, not bothering to acknowledge her or even help her rise from where she’d fallen, still made her cheeks burn. Yet it wasn’t so much the haughty man’s condescension which enraged her as how little she’d deserved it, especially after all she’d done for him in the hallway outside the ballroom before the dance.
She set down the knife and took up her brush, but fumbled the smooth wood. It dropped to the canvas covering the floor. She reached for it, but it disappeared in a flash of brown fur as Pygmalion snatched it up.
‘
No, Pygmalion, bad dog.’ Lily chased after the animal, wincing as it scurried beneath a table with its prize, painting the bottom of one oak leg as he moved backwards. Lily knelt down in front of the table and reached for the brush. ‘Give that back.’
The toll of the front bell echoed through the house, sending the dogs scurrying from the hearthrug in a hail of yapping and toenails scraping across the wood floor. Pygmalion, still gripping his treasure, darted past Lily to join the pack, leaving a streak of red on the white door moulding as he passed.
‘It must be Laurus and his guest.’ Daisy tossed aside her letter and, like one of the dogs, hurried off down the hall. Aunt Alice continued to snore in her chair, oblivious to the excitement of her darlings.
Lily sat back on her heels, ready to run in the opposite direction, but she could hardly hide from the family at Christmas. Nor could she leave Pygmalion to mark up the house, not with such an esteemed visitor about to grace it with his presence.
She hurried after the pack, jumping over the twins’ discarded lead soldiers and tin horns, wrinkling her nose at the red bits of paint blobbed on the floor and streaked along the low bottoms of the walls. She hurried down the hall, eager to catch the dog before it did more damage and made the house, which was already in sixes and sevens, even worse. Her family wasn’t slovenly, but there was a messiness to Helkirk Place, as if it wasn’t just lived in, but well-worn. Her mother was too lenient with the staff, allowing them to shirk their cleaning duties, as Lily often reminded her. However, attending to such matters would involve her parents looking up from their precious plants long enough to give more care to what the servants were doing.
Passing the long tapestries and dark panelling of the Tudor-era house, Lily inhaled the woodsy scent of the pine boughs covering the sideboards and mixing with the savoury spices from the roasting pig’s head wafting up from the kitchen. In the smell was every Christmas they’d ever spent here, except for the year they’d ventured to London for Petunia’s wedding, the one Yuletide Lily did her best not to recall.
