His Christmas Nymph

by Mathews, Marly

  “He cannot have her,” Benjamin said vehemently.

  “Who are you to say that my Teddy can’t have what he wants?”

  “I am Caroline’s father. I will not let her marry this man. Your son is a scoundrel, Madam.”

  “Are you a scoundrel, Teddy, darling?” she demanded, her eyes twinkling merrily.

  “I suppose I am,” he admitted ruefully.

  She tittered out laughter. “So, drool. I am so very entertained. I worried I would be bored in the Country, Teddy, but Town wasn’t the same without you there, and I couldn’t bear the thought of spending Christmas without you! You might like to know that Lady Myrtle missed you desperately.”

  “I am not acquainted with this Lady Myrtle, Madam, but she is welcome to this cad—this blackguard! Come now, Caroline, we are leaving!” Benjamin announced.

  Her father started to make his way to the library doors, with her in tow, and they found themselves quite blocked by his mother. She made a better wall than a door. Her dazzling eyes hardened.

  “I found you calling my son a scoundrel amusing, Mr. Griffiths, as my son needs to be a bit wild every now and then. Why he doesn’t have half as much fun as I think he should have. However, when you called him a cad and then a blackguard, I was not amused, you shall apologize this instant!”

  “I stand by what I said, Madam.”

  “Then, Mr. Griffiths, you may leave Whitney Park, and never return. If I see you I shall have you forcefully removed. Go now with your pretty little daughter. Good day to you, Miss Griffiths. I am sorry you had to witness such a sorry scene.” The Duchess nodded solemnly at Caroline, scowled red hot daggers at Benjamin and then gestured to the Library doors. “Leave at once!”

  Her father obeyed and she walked stiltedly behind him. As they left the Library, she glanced once behind her and met Edward’s gaze. He looked as miserable as she felt.

  They quickly left the grand house. She climbed into the carriage in a daze and stumbled as she reached the inside. She settled back on the seat and closed her eyes against the dull pain radiating at her temples. Her energy had completely left her. She was fagged to death. And now she had a fit of the blue-devils. All she wanted to do was go home and curl up in her bed. She would sleep her troubles away.

  Her father’s insistence that they leave Banbury House vexed her greatly. The thought of leaving the house she’d grown up in and spent so many happy hours in made her want to cry. The fact that they would leave that house to go to her miserly uncle’s Estate made her want to ball her eyes out. She couldn’t go there. She had done everything else that her father had commanded of her—but she would put her foot down at going to her uncle’s place.

  Her father sat opposite her. They regarded each other in stony silence. She resented her father for keeping so much from her all of these years and he, in turn, probably resented her for allowing him to walk into what he viewed as a trap.

  “You should have confided in me, Caroline.” His voice was soft and completely lacked the anger she believed he felt toward her.

  “I don’t have much chance to talk to you the way your wife hovers around you so much, and quite frankly, I didn’t think you would find offense at a duke asking for my hand. I believed you thought me worthy of such a match.”

  “Of course I do. You are worthy of a prince’s hand…nay a king’s hand, but you are not worthy of that man’s hand. Or to be more to the point, he is not worthy of you. You are far above him in the world, my dear. You are an unblemished jewel.”

  “I don’t want to go to Uncle Harold’s place. He won’t be pleased to see us, he never is. He likes to rule over that little Estate of his like an autocratic monarch. His tenants live in abysmal conditions and that poor wife of his looks absolutely done in every time we go to visit. No, he makes Gertrude look like a saint!”

  “He might not like seeing us, but he will give us shelter until I can figure out our next course of action. He is, after all, my brother. I will have to give notice to those who live in my house in Wales. Nonetheless, Gertrude will not be pleased. She will not like living in Wales. It might as well be on the other side of the world according to her.”

  “He might be your brother but he’s never treated you like a brother. Alas, we have few options at our disposal, but I’d rather board a ship bound for the Colonies then be forced to languish in that depressing place he calls a home, even if it is for a short amount of time! I don’t even think I can bear to live with Gertrude in Wales. She will wail so much, Papa. She will never let you live it down!”

  “I know, Caroline,” he said softly.

  “We might have had other options, had you not married someone who draws the bustle too freely. We were purse-pinched before you married her. After you married that woman we have been brought very low. We have been brought to a point of non plus, Papa. We are in an absolute hobble! We have absolutely no other options except for one. I could have unburdened you. I could have given you your freedom from being my parent.”

  “Is that what you think I want?” He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “I have lost your mother, I lost your brothers. Do you honestly believe I want to free myself of you? Why do you think I frown on you going to be with your aunt in Boston? I can’t bear to have you so far away and I can’t bear to have you away from my protection. I won’t outlive you, Caroline. You are the only precious thing I have left in my life!”

  “You have Gertrude,” she pointed out sullenly, looking away from him to stare through the carriage window at the scenery that rushed past them.

  “Fiend seize it! Gertrude be damned straight to hell! That infernal woman is a bloody shrew. I never should have married her. There I’ve said it. I had a moment of weakness, and she exploited it. I should have married a better woman, but she is a shark, and she had her sights set on me. I am not used to navigating such dangerous waters, Caroline—I had your mother. She didn’t think like most women. In fact, she thought like you. Honest and true to the very core. The duke is a rake like his father! I won’t let you marry someone who won’t stay faithful to you. I won’t have you go through that heartbreak.”

  “How do you know that the duke is like his father? You barely know him.”

  “I could say the same thing about how well you know him. You don’t know him as well as you should. You met him yesterday, he has not courted you the way that most young men court the women they set their caps on.”

  “We might not have enjoyed a long courtship, but we have a connection. It sizzles between us and we can’t deny it. I confess, Papa, I can’t explain it to you, there are just no words to convey what I felt when I first was in his company. I just know that we share something impossible to define.”

  He looked away from her. “We shall not speak of this again. You will obey me, Caroline. You are my daughter. I’ve never asked anything else from you. You owe me this much.”

  She wanted to say that she owed him nothing and yet, she couldn’t. He had been a loving father. He’d never raised his hand to her in anger, or been hard with her in any way. Loathe as she was to admit it, she did owe him, and she would stay with him until she could convince him to let her go. She wouldn’t take another man, not after seeing the way Edward had looked when he thought he was losing her.

  The myriad of emotions storming across his face had affected her deeply. She could still see the look of anguish in his beautiful blue eyes. She closed her eyes against the pain, and hated herself when hot tears started to trickle down her face.

  They hit a bump in the road, and she grimaced as she bounced on the seat.

  “What in the world?” Her father sounded astonished. She couldn’t understand what could give him such a shock, after all, hadn’t they been through enough today? It had to be pretty impressive if it was affecting him so.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s someone I thought I wouldn’t see this Christmas,” he grumbled.

  “Who is it, Father?”

  “Geo
rgia. It’s your Aunt Georgia.”

  * * * * *

  “Cheer up, Teddy. It could be worse, you might have had that awful man as your father-in-law, perish the thought!”

  They sat eating their luncheon. Edward looked at the crystal on the table and resisted the urge to start smashing it all.

  She must have seen the look of high dudgeon on his face. “Pray, do not abuse the crystal, Teddy. If you must, vent your frustration and go and shoot something. It’s just what your father would have done. You can take the hunting dogs and go and have fun. Or you could go for a ride—you do so love horseback riding.”

  “I don’t want to shoot anything, Mama, and I don’t want to go for a ride. I only want to explain myself to Caroline. She believes me to be a loathsome liar.”

  “From what I saw on her face, she does not hate you, Teddy. You must not think so much of her. She is a passing fancy, you will move on…maybe with Lady Myrtle…”

  He slammed his hand done on the table, causing everything to rattle, and his mother to jump in her seat.

  “Blast and damn, Mama, I will not marry that harridan. I will not! You may depend upon it! She is a simpering idiot, and a fortune hunter of the worst degree. Her reputation is not unblemished as well you know. I wouldn’t marry her if she were the last woman in all of England!”

  “Well, there. You finally said it. You finally told me what you thought. I am proud of you, Teddy. That’s all I ever wanted. And while we’re on the subject, why is it that Caroline reminds me so keenly of someone? I can’t seem to place her, it is most vexing.”

  “She reminds you of Lady Margaret Pudney. She was her mother.”

  “She is that Griffith? That irritating prig was married to Lady Margaret? I thought she did better than your father…I guess I assumed incorrectly. That poor woman. How she must have suffered!”

  “He isn’t that bad of a sort.”

  “He insulted you. He’s as bad as they come in my estimation. I shall make sure he’s not welcomed in any of our social circles.”

  “Pray don’t, Mama. I don’t want you blackening their name. This family has put them through enough.”

  “No, your father put Lady Margaret through her paces. We didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

  “You played a major role, Mama.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “All in the past, it is all behind us.”

  “Not anymore. It’s right in front of me now, and I want a way to remove it. I won’t give her up, Mama.”

  “What did you do to earn such disdain from her father?”

  “I told her that Lady Margaret wanted us to wed. I told her that she came to Papa and asked him to set the match up should anything happen to her.”

  “You spoke the truth, this I know. There was absolutely no reason for them to doubt you.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mama?”

  She looked down at her champagne while colour crept up her neck to her cheeks. His mother was truly French. She guzzled champagne like it was water. Fortunately, they could afford to keep her in her worst vice.

  “How do you know I spoke the truth?” he persisted.

  His mother was unsettled. He could see it the way that colour touched her cheeks. His mother never had that kind of reaction unless she was clearly affected.

  Genevieve was a true actress, she always hid behind a carefully erected mask, but with him that shell sometimes cracked and it was shattering now.

  She seemed unable to answer him. For one briefly blissful moment, his mother was tongue-tied.

  “Mama,” he prodded, knowing he had to continue urging her to break and confess all.

  “I overheard them. She came into my house. Of course, I followed and wanted to see what they were conspiring about. I wanted to eavesdrop, so I did.”

  “Well of course you did. You are Genevieve Rochester, Duchess of Whitney.”

  “Yes, I am! Lady Margaret wasn’t. Your father never loved me—but I cared greatly for him—God help me, I loved that man. He saved me from a life I hated. He gave me what I always wanted, what I had always dreamt about during my darkest hours.”

  “A title,” he supplied.

  “It helped a lot,” she admitted. “But as much as you don’t want to believe it, I did want a family. Alas, we were only blessed with you—not for lack of trying for more on my part. I am sorry I lacked in so many ways as a mother, Teddy. I didn’t know how to be one, my own mother was worse than I.”

  “What did you hear, Mama?”

  “I heard it all. The poor woman sounded awfully frail. Once I heard how poorly she sounded I was no longer jealous. How could I envy such a pathetic creature? She looked utterly defeated and I, well, I had you. You had survived the dreadful wars against that awful little Corsican. Your father agreed to do all that he could to put the two of you into each other’s orbit. He even agreed to will Banbury House to Caroline upon Lady Margaret’s death.

  Lady Margaret wanted to make sure that Caroline had something to offer in the way of a dowry just in case she didn’t want to marry you. She was quite effusive on the fact that she wanted it to be a love match. She was a woman desperate to obtain her daughter’s happiness from beyond the grave. She’d lost two children and she told your Papa that she could not leave Caroline to the mercies of her feckless Papa. Now, after meeting the man I know why she was so worried. However, she enforced the fact that Caroline had to love the man she was going to marry with all of her heart. She didn’t want her daughter living in hell.”

  “I saw no mention of her getting Banbury House in his will.”

  “That’s because your father didn’t have the time to have it changed, poor dear. Death claimed him before he could take action. I am sorry, son. I never wanted you to be hurt. I shall go and tell Caroline that you are not to blame. I shall take full responsibility for this sorry state of affairs, and I shall tell her that Banbury House is by full rights hers to call her own.”

  “I don’t want my Mama rushing to my rescue.”

  “Even if you don’t want it, I will go. You know me. I am hard headed, but not hard hearted. I know I make a grand fuss sometimes, and I have embarrassed you on more than one occasion but I shan’t fail you this time around, darling boy. If you don’t want to marry Lady Myrtle, then fine, I just want you to find happiness. I want you to carry on this family line. I would like some grandchildren to dote on, for I see other women my age enjoying the blessing of grandchildren and I want what they have. But most of all and above anything else, I want you to love. And Caroline doesn’t look like a bad sort. I am sure we will find a way to get along. As soon as we finish luncheon I will go. I do so love a carriage ride in the afternoon.”

  “Mama,” he said, pausing, as he took a sip of his champagne.

  “Yes, Teddy?”

  “Thank you.”

  “De rien.” She smiled at him lovingly. “After all, I am your loving mama. I do think it’s high time I start acting like it.”

  Chapter Six

  “Why do you look so pale, Caroline? Why does she look so pale, Benjamin?” Georgia demanded, as they alighted from the carriage. “I’ve been waiting here for fifteen minutes. Your maid let me in, thank goodness, or I would have had to wait in my carriage.”

  “Aunt Georgia, I wasn’t aware you had crossed the Pond,” Caroline said, completely flustered. She had to admit, seeing her Aunt Georgia’s warm twinkling blue eyes so much like her dear mama’s made her feel as if everything was going to be alright.

  “Oh, dear, I made the ocean voyage two months ago—I did send a letter ahead to tell you I was coming and bringing the brood with me, I suppose it got lost. Robert wanted to visit his family in Scotland first, but I insisted we spend Christmastide with you. We even bought an Estate, Cleeve Hall—not far from here. It’s simply charming. The best part? I’ve had my eye on it since I was a young girl. The last Baron went bankrupt and had to sell it lock stock and barrel. My beloved Robbie bought it for me as an anniversary gift.

/>   He’s such a sentimental fool. Oh how I adore him. I made the right decision when I married him against my Papa’s wishes, he couldn’t abide the thought of having a brash Yankee in the family,” Georgia grinned widely. “So, I’ve come to fetch you all! You’re going to spend Christmas with us! We have plenty of rooms and we’ll have such a gay time! I want a Christmas the way it used to be when I was girl! I also want to see your face light up on Christmas morning, Caroline. I’ve been robbed of ever seeing you receive a gift on Christmas. I should like to see it this year. I’ve spoiled all of my children once again this year. Robbie says I bought way too much. I disagree, my lads are such good boys, and they deserve a happy Christmas morning to remember for the rest of their lives.”

  “I don’t know how joyous I’ll be this Christmas, Aunt. I’m feeling quite shattered at the moment.”

  “I see you how white you look. I don’t like seeing it. I had hoped you were born with my constitution. In fact, my sister told me you were a lot like me as you blossomed into a woman. I see you favour our side of the family, looks wise. It’s fortunate you do. Have you seen the women in Benjamin’s family?” she said, laughing.

  “I am overjoyed to see you, Aunt Georgia.” She moved to embrace her aunt and felt the steely strength in her aunt. She was right, her aunt was a strong woman, and someone not to be trifled with!

  “I should go inside and get some rest,” she said moving toward Banbury House.

  “No. I was serious when I said we were leaving tomorrow morning, Caroline. I want you to start packing your things.”

  “What’s this? I obviously have a lot of catch up to do. What is your father talking about Caroline?” Georgia demanded.

  “We are leaving Banbury House and going to live with my brother, until we can move to Wales,” her father declared.

  “You are honestly thinking about taking Caroline to live with that old miser? He was a persnickety personality even when he was a young man. You shall not put Caroline in that hostile environment. If you must leave Banbury House than you shall come to live with us, at Cleeve Hall. At some point, Robbie will want to return to his beloved America and while we are not in residence, I am certain he will have no problem if you remain in residence, and he shall happily cover the cost of doing so.” Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “When we return to the city of Boston in the spring you shall come with us, Caroline! Ah, there are so many wealthy young men that would be chomping at the bit to have a chance to court you. You are so pretty. Lovelier than I ever was in my youth.”