A Secret Christmas

by Lauren Royal

  From her older sisters’ accounts and her own daydreams, she just knew that kissing would feel glorious. And kissing Joseph would be the best Christmas present imaginable. She could already feel his long arms enfolding her, smell his mouthwatering fresh scent, taste his…well, as it happened, taste was one area where her imagination failed her. She wondered how Joseph would taste—besides delicious, of course. Lips as full and soft-looking as his couldn’t be anything less than delicious. She couldn’t wait to taste them.

  Just like when she was small, she wanted to open her Christmas present now.

  Where would it happen? Since she did feel a little cold, she decided to imagine him kissing her for the first time before a roaring fire, perhaps in the great room. Heat from the flames warmed her skin, while heat from the kiss warmed—

  “You’re awfully confident for your first day as a matchmaker,” Arabel grumbled even though she never grumbled.

  Indignant at being yanked from her lovely Christmas daydream, Chrystabel raised her chin. “I ought to be confident. I’m good at this, Arabel. You’ll see.” She glanced back as they crossed the field, pleased to note that the young couple appeared to have vanished into the woods. Her plan of dressing the fugitive all in brown had worked. Creath wouldn’t be at risk.

  Everything was going perfectly.

  “I don’t like it.” Apparently Arabel didn’t think everything was going perfectly. “It feels wrong to desert them when we said we would return.”

  “But you said nothing of the sort.” The snow crunched beneath their shoes. “I will take the blame. You’ve no reason to fret, Arabel.”

  Arabel continued to fret anyway. “Matthew will be furious. They might be out there for hours, waiting for us, worrying that something might have happened to us. We have to go back!”

  Instead of turning around, Chrystabel walked even faster. “I’m not going back, and I’m not letting you go back, either. There’s far too much to do. We need to finish decorating before we can make perfume for the ladies. I need you to add garlands to the grand staircase while I hang wreaths in the dining room and library.”

  And she’d also take a wreath to Joseph’s conservatory, she added silently. Not that his indoor garden needed decorating, but now that she knew where it was, she was eager to pay a visit. And who could fault her for mistakenly wandering into the wrong part of the castle in the midst of her wreath-hanging fervor?

  Nobody. It would look like a perfectly innocent blunder.

  Would he kiss her in his conservatory?

  “Chrystabel, are you even listening?” When they reached the inner courtyard, once more Arabel rudely interrupted her thoughts. “You cannot leave Matthew and Creath out there alone!”

  “You think not?”

  “Let me guess,” Arabel groaned. “You want me to watch you.”

  THIRTEEN

  JOSEPH WAS PLANTING flowers when Chrystabel walked into his conservatory.

  In the diffused light from his parchment-covered windows, wearing her government unapproved red gown, her cheeks flushed with holiday excitement, she suddenly looked different.

  She suddenly stole his breath away.

  Holy Hades, had his mother been right?

  No. She’d put ideas into his head, that was all. Ideas he needed to reject.

  Chrystabel was carrying a Christmas wreath. Determined not to betray his thoughts, Joseph restricted his reaction to a single raised brow. “Surely you don’t need to decorate in here.”

  “No, no.” Her smile was entirely too charming. “I arrived in here mistakenly.”

  And he was the Royal Gardener. “You wandered into this half-built wing thinking it was part of our living quarters?”

  “Yes,” she said, a brazen lie that he found inexplicably charming as well.

  He needed air, and he needed to come to his senses. Even though he’d gathered enough pots for his seeds already, he crossed to the wall where he kept stacks of them and fetched an empty one back to his bench, using the time to draw several deep, steadying breaths.

  His head felt clearer when he returned. She was still standing there smiling. She’d set her wreath on the floor. “You have an enormous space here.”

  “Indeed.” Entire wings tended to be enormous. “Shall I show you back to the main house?”

  She glanced about, her wide-set chocolate-brown eyes bright with curiosity. “Would you mind if I have a look around first?”

  He wanted to say, Hell yes, I’d mind, but that would be impolite. So instead he said, “By all means.”

  Through gritted teeth.

  In an effort to take his mind off her, he went to one of the fireplaces and chucked another log inside. She’d said she wanted to look around, but she wasn’t looking around. She was looking at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel her gaze on his back.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Building up the fire to keep my plants warm.”

  “I meant, what were you doing before that? When I came in.”

  “Oh.” With a sigh, he turned to face her. “I was planting chrysanthemums.”

  “Chrys—what?”

  “Chrysanthemums. My favorite flower.” She wasn’t letting him take his mind off her, damn it. And he didn’t have the fortitude to rebuff a girl who might be interested in his flowers. “Come, I have mature chrysanthemums over here.”

  She followed him to the other end of his conservatory, where dozens of them were growing in wooden boxes. “Oh, they’re beautiful!”

  “Thank you,” he said, her obvious delight making him smile. He was very proud of his chrysanthemums. He had pinks and whites and greens and reds and purples and oranges. A few were two-toned; those were his favorites.

  “I’ve never seen anything like them,” she breathed, circling the boxes to examine each color.

  “They’re very uncommon here—in fact, I may be the only one growing them. They just recently arrived on the Continent from China.”

  “How did you get them?”

  She looked truly interested, which made him eager to tell her. “My uncle left England years ago, when King Charles first went into exile. Even as a small child I loved growing things, and he never had a son of his own, so he indulges me, sending me plants I cannot find here. I’m very fortunate.”

  Finished with her circuit, she knelt beside him to inhale the flowers’ fragrance, her elegant red gown pooling around her. “Oh, their scent is strong, quite earthy and herby. Perfect to temper the sweeter flowers.”

  He swallowed hard. His position above her treated him to a view down the front of her close-fitting bodice. The sight of two half-moon swells of smooth, ivory skin was almost more than he could bear. On her slender frame, those breasts looked soft and devastatingly feminine.

  He wished he could see more of them. His heart was pounding, and he was beginning to feel hot. For a moment he felt nearly as out of breath as he had dancing the volta last night. Remembering the huge, dowdy Puritan collar he’d wanted to rip off her, he longed for its return.

  Because now he found himself wanting to rip off her entire gown.

  Bloody hell, what was happening to him?

  When she sighed, her bosom rose and fell in the tight bodice. His whole body clenched. “I wish I were going to be here long enough to make some of these into essential oil,” she said wistfully.

  He backed away a step, struggling to refocus on the conversation. “Make chrysanthemums into oil? Why would you do that?”

  “So I can use the oil to make perfume.” She looked adorable looking up at him. “I’m a perfumer.”

  “That’s right, you mentioned it at supper. I’d never thought about someone creating all those fragrances people wear.”

  He wasn’t thinking about that now. In fact, he was having a hard time thinking about anything but her enticing décolletage, and how it would feel to—

  No. He was not having these thoughts. He was marrying Creath in two days, for heaven’s sake. H
e could not allow himself to be consumed by lust for another woman.

  Unable to stand the tempting sight a moment longer, he found her hand and pulled her to her feet. A little frisson of excitement bolted through him at the contact, but he determinedly ignored it. “Did your mother teach you how to make perfume?”

  “My mother taught me very little.” She frowned momentarily but quickly brightened. “My father’s sister lived with us when I was a girl. Aunt Idonea taught me how to distill oils from flowers and mix them to make perfumes.”

  The discussion involved flowers, so even though he desperately wanted her to leave, he couldn’t help but continue it. “Which flowers do you use?”

  “Every type I can find—all of those that are scented, I mean. Plus some plants that have scent but don’t flower. My favorite scent is rose, though.” She glanced around. “I don’t see any roses. I guess you can only grow roses outdoors?”

  “I think I could probably grow them indoors in winter, but we haven’t any roses here at Tremayne.” Happily, he felt more in control with her standing. She was tall enough that he couldn’t see down her bodice. “We do have roses at Trentingham. Or at least we did—I have no idea what Trentingham’s beautiful gardens look like now.”

  An adorable frown appeared on her brow. “Surely your caretakers are sustaining your roses for you.”

  “We have no caretakers at Trentingham anymore. Once we left, Cromwell commandeered it to use during the war.”

  “Blackguard,” she muttered in a decidedly unladylike way.

  She was refreshingly outspoken. And he was intrigued to find she not only loved flowers as much as he did, she actually used them for her pastime. Her enthusiasm for perfuming seemed to be as strong as his for growing things.

  All at once, he wished he were growing flowers for her.

  And even worse, he wished he weren’t marrying Creath.

  He wondered if he might be falling in love.

  But that was absurd. He barely knew Chrystabel—a relevant fact in itself—but he knew enough to know they were wrong for each other. Here was yet another i word: incompatible. How could a fellow as cautious as he fall for a girl as reckless as Chrystabel?

  And in any case, a man couldn’t fall in love in one day. He wasn’t falling; he was reacting to the sight of luscious breasts—and to the ideas Mother had put in his head. All her talk of delightful this and refreshing that had shaken him.

  No matter what his mother said, Chrystabel wasn’t irresistible.

  He was just finding her hard to resist.

  But resist he must, because an innocent young woman was counting on him. He couldn’t think of anything that would be more dishonorable than abandoning his best friend.

  While he’d mused about love and honor and cleavage, Chrystabel had been wandering his conservatory, examining the plants here and there. “Strawberries!” she exclaimed now. “I’ve been wanting to see where you grew them.” She paused in the middle of reaching for one. “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  She plucked it and popped it into her mouth. Strawberry red fruit between her strawberry red lips—the vision was shockingly sensual. “Mmm,” she murmured appreciatively. “I cannot wait for strawberry tart tonight.”

  He couldn’t wait to watch her eat more strawberries.

  And now he wanted to kiss the strawberry juice off those tempting strawberry red lips.

  He was pathetic.

  She wandered over to his next planter box and bent to sniff the small flowers there, treating him to another view. He quickly averted his eyes.

  “Oh! I’ve never smelled this scent before. It’s lovely.” With obvious delight, she ran her fingers over the delicate white petals. “What kind of flower is this?”

  “Those are potato plants,” he told her, still trying to get the image of kissing her out of his mind. “The fact that they’re flowering means the potatoes are ready to be harvested.”

  “Harvested?” She straightened—to his great relief—and cocked her pretty head to one side. “You don’t grow these for the flowers, then? What’s a potato?”

  “It’s a tuber—a much-thickened underground part of the stem. It bears buds from which new plants grow, and it also serves as food for the plant. And it’s a good food for us.” He knelt down and dug around one, then pulled it out and rose with it. “You can eat it.”

  It was brown, lumpy, and covered in dirt. She grimaced.

  He found that grimace charming.

  Which was not the same as delightful.

  “It’s ugly,” she said.

  “It’s delicious.”

  “I’ve never heard of a potato before.”

  “They aren’t common in England. They’re from the New World. My uncle sent me my first few plants, and they’re easy to grow, so now I have many. A whole field of them in growing season—it’s one of our crops. I planted these in here so we wouldn’t run out over the winter.”

  “You really like to eat them, then.” She licked her lips, sending a stab of hot lust through him. “Are they eaten raw or cooked?”

  “Not raw!” He laughed, which made him feel a little less hot. Or maybe it made him feel a little less lust. Whichever, he felt better. “They taste awful raw,” he added with more than a little relief. “Our cook prepares them many ways, but my favorite is a pudding with lots of butter and spices.”

  “Can we have some tonight? I love trying new things.”

  She suddenly struck him as the kind of girl who would try anything. The thought filled him with unwelcome excitement. The image of kissing her was gone—well, faded, anyway—but his heart was galloping regardless.

  Bloody hell. What on earth was he going to do about this? It wasn’t right. He’d never felt so disloyal and despicable in his life.

  “Of course we can have some tonight,” he forced out through gritted teeth. “Let me dig up more, and I’ll take them to the kitchen.”

  FOURTEEN

  SEATED THREE HOURS later at the pretty hexagonal table in her bedchamber, Chrystabel cocked her head. “If you’re sure there’s no lavender, rosemary should do.”

  A knock sounded only seconds before Matthew opened the door.

  “Uh oh.” Arabel’s eyes widened as she handed over the vial of rosemary oil. “I warned you,” she whispered, “he’s going to be furious.”

  But Chrystabel hadn’t been worried, and she wasn’t worried now. When Matthew approached, one look at his face told her he was not furious, although she suspected he’d pretend he was for a while.

  She knew her brother.

  “You said you were coming back,” he scolded, just as she’d expected. “Why didn’t you come back?”

  “I was awfully cold, and I realized I had too much to do.” Wearing her best mask of blithe innocence, she unstoppered the vial and took a delicate sniff. “I had to finish decorating, and now I’m making perfume for gifts. And I still have to oversee Christmas Eve supper. Did you find a good tree to cut for the yule log?”

  “Yes. That took us only a few minutes.”

  Purposely delaying her reply, she made a note on a little card before dipping her dropper into the rosemary oil. She’d run out of lavender oil, but the rosemary would add a lovely lavender-like top note to the scent she was creating for Lady Trentingham. “If finding the log took only a few minutes, then why did you and Creath take so long to return?”

  “Maybe because we were waiting for you?”

  She peeked up at him through her lashes. “Or maybe not?”

  Shying away from her knowing gaze, he skirted the table and wandered over to the curved oriel windows. Then he just stood there, looking down on the snow-blanketed Tudor gardens in silence.

  She added two drops of the rosemary oil to her bottle and swirled it gently. “Spill it, Matthew.”

  “I don’t know what happened.” He remained facing away, his warm breath fogging the glass as his words tumbled out in a rush. “We talked and talked. And walked and talked some mo
re. It was cold, but I didn’t care, and she didn’t seem to, either. I think I could talk to Creath forever and never run out of things to say. I just met her yesterday, yet I feel I’ve known her for years.”

  Chrystabel’s mouth hung open. Never in her life had she heard her brother speak this way about a woman—or speak about women at all. Not in front of his sisters, anyway. Though her heart soared, she made no response. Instead she sniffed her concoction, decided she was pleased, and corked it. One more gift crossed off her list.

  Passing over another empty bottle, Arabel’s big brown eyes flashed with disbelief and excitement.

  Chrystabel couldn’t suppress a grin. Thankfully, Matthew couldn’t see it.

  She forced herself to focus on the bottle. “Creath is sweet, don’t you think?” she said conversationally, using a little silver funnel to add alcohol and water from two pewter flagons. “I think a floral scent will fit her. Orange blossoms, and maybe some vanilla. Lilac, I think…Arabel, do you see lilac oil?”

  Arabel searched the rows of vials with their tiny, neatly lettered labels. After handing over the requested lilac, she looked to her brother’s turned back. “Did you kiss Creath?” she asked bluntly.

  Matthew’s shoulders tensed, but he said nothing.

  “Chrystabel said you would kiss her. She also said you two would fall in love. Are you two in love, Matthew?”

  “Hell, no,” he ground out, sounding miserable. “Maybe I did kiss her. But if I did, it was a mistake. It was—” With a strangled noise, he cut himself off. His head drooped, his forehead banging into the glass. “Anyway, she hated it. She ran away right after, even though things had been going so well.”

  Chrystabel’s insides churned with shock over his candid admissions and sympathy for his hurt and confusion. She’d never seen him fall to pieces like this before. He’d scarcely ever appeared less than composed and in control.

  But besides all that, she couldn’t help feeling a stab of childish envy, too. Matthew had kissed seventeen-year-old Creath, and yet she, nineteen-year-old Chrystabel, still had yet to be kissed.