A Laird for Christmas

by Gerri Russell

  Jules deserved a chance to win a better life for himself than the one he had been given. Was that life with her or someone else? Around Jules she did not feel her body raging with fever or her mind swirling with dizziness as she did when Nicholas drew near. But perhaps that was better. Remaining in control of herself and her thoughts might be exactly what she needed in a husband, not the fiery longing Nicholas unleashed.

  Jane drew a slow shaky breath. A quiet moment ticked past. Trusting Nicholas with her heart could be self-destructive, hurtful, even devastating. He had not loved her, not in the way she had loved him. It would be foolish beyond measure to walk that path again, would it not?

  She opened her eyes and stared out across the bailey just now coming to life as servants began their daily routine. Could she deny the passion she and Nicholas shared and instead take up with someone and something else far more bland but safe? No closer to an answer, Jane turned around just as the door to the keep opened.

  “There you are, dearest,” Aunt Margaret said. “When I could not find you in your room, I suspected I would find you here.” She took Jane’s cool hands in her own. “How long have you been out here?”

  Jane shrugged. It seemed only minutes had passed, but it was probably much longer than that.

  “What is troubling you?” Margaret asked with a frown.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  Margaret gave her a level look. “You always come up here when something is wrong.”

  Jane smiled. Her aunt knew her well. “I could not sleep.”

  “Too excited about the next competition?” Margaret asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “And which of those gorgeous men you will spend time alone with next?”

  “Not exactly,” Jane replied hesitantly.

  Margaret’s smile faltered. “Jane, you are thinking about this far too much. You are supposed to let whatever happens happen.”

  “I tried being more whimsical about it all, truly, but that is not who I am.”

  “I realize that, dearest.” Margaret released Jane’s hands and her smile returned. “You must be yourself, just as your suitors must show their true colors as well. That is what your time alone is supposed to provide—insight into their hearts.”

  Jane sighed. “It is far more complicated than you make it sound.”

  “Matters of the heart have been complicated since Adam first met Eve in the Garden of Eden.” Margaret reached up and cupped Jane’s cheek. “Your heart is no exception. Steel is forged with fire. Jewels are created under pressure. And love only comes to those who risk it all.”

  “Love batters you and rakes you raw.”

  Margaret’s lips quirked at the next competition the men were to face. “Something other than your suitors’ hearts will be raw after the next competition. I am glad you liked my idea of having them sew for you. It is this sort of challenge that will lay them bare to you. Just wait. You will see.”

  Jane’s lips pulled up at the corners despite her attempt to remain serious. “Their bloody fingers?”

  That infuriating twinkle was back in Margaret’s eyes. “Oh, there will be blood, and a whole lot more. Come.” She reached for Jane’s hand. “We do not want to miss a moment of this.”

  Lady Margaret was right. Later that morning, Jane had never seen David, or Nicholas, or even Jules look so out of place in a solar. Colin and Lord Galloway and Bryce all wore frowns upon their faces. None of them were happy to be here. The thought made Jane smile.

  Each man folded his big body into one of the chairs set in a semicircle around the chamber. The announcement that they were to have a sewing competition was met with a mixture of trepidation and horror. Bryce growled an obscenity. Jules’s brow furrowed. Colin simply stared at her, his shock obvious. David’s expression darkened. Nicholas released a heavy sigh. Lord Galloway smiled.

  Angus and Ollie set two baskets in the middle of the men. One basket was filled with cloth, shears, and needles, the other with a multitude of colored spindles of thread.

  “This competition is a test of your skills in a more intimate way,” Lady Margaret announced.

  “I would rather we had a sword fight,” Colin groaned as he picked up a needle and tested the point against his thumb. He drew his finger back as the needle pricked his skin, then frowned fiercely at the blood that welled upon his skin.

  “Your challenge is to create something with a Yuletide theme for Lady Jane from the items here. You will be given until the chapel bell tolls twelve.”

  David lifted a length of cloth with the edge of his fingers as though it might bite him if he grasped it fully. “We can make anything?”

  “Your goal here is to please Lady Jane,” her aunt reiterated. “Think about her as you make your plan.”

  Jane saw a flash of temper in Bryce’s gaze. His mouth pressed into a thin line as he battled against himself. He paused, took a breath, then turned to Margaret. “Who will be the judge?”

  “Lady Jane, of course.” Margaret glanced about the room. “Are you prepared?”

  Jules frowned. “As ready as we will ever be.”

  Nicholas nodded and reached for a square of green brocade. She could see the tension thrumming through him as he turned over ideas in his mind.

  Not one of her suitors looked pleased with this latest challenge. Jane’s lips quirked. With her suitors off balance for a time, she might be able to regain a little of her own.

  “Good luck,” Lady Margaret said, taking Jane’s hand and leading her toward the door. “We will return in two hours.”

  Two hours.

  Nicholas stared at the green cloth in his hands. He had to create something grand for Jane this morning if he were to win more time alone with her. What in the heavens could he create in two hours that would win him Jane? He groaned as he selected a needle and a spindle of gold thread, then looked about the solar. The goal for this challenge was not to be the best, but simply not to be as terrible as everyone else.

  “The only stitches I have ever laid were in a comrade’s shoulder,” Colin said as he selected a length of gold cloth.

  “You are not alone there.” Jules plucked one piece of fabric after another from the basket, searching for inspiration among the remnants.

  Only Lord Galloway looked pleased with the situation into which they had been thrust. He had grabbed a length of brown fabric and had already completed sewing the ends together into a casing of sorts. He then stuffed other pieces of fabric inside, before closing the ends. He tied a knot in the string and snipped the excess with his shears, looking very at ease with the process.

  “Are you making a small pillow?” David asked, as he also noticed Lord Galloway’s comfort with a needle.

  “No,” the confident laird answered as he set several pins across the length of the pillow. He took a handful of empty spindles and wound gold string around each one.

  A chill of foreboding shot down Nicholas’s spine as he watched Lord Galloway continue his work in silence. The man appeared to know what he was doing.

  Nicholas noted he was not the only one staring at Lord Galloway.

  “We are all in trouble if he actually creates something with all that string.” Bryce frowned down at the mass of fabric in his hands. The white fabric had been stitched into what might have resembled a body if the observer had indulged in his cups.

  Nicholas narrowed his gaze and truly tried to see what it was Bryce was creating. The body appeared to have the pox, if the telltale dots of blood were to be regarded as part of his design. “What is it?” he finally asked.

  Bryce pressed his lips together, studying his own creation. “Jane was so pleased with the doll Jules gave her during our first competition, that I thought perhaps she would like another.”

  “What does that have to do with the Yule season?” Jules laughed.

  Bryce became rigid as he cast Jules a frosty glare. “It is an angel. She named her puppy by that name. It must mean she likes angels, even just a little.”

  Jules laugh
ed, delighting in Bryce’s discomfort. “You might want to add some wings.”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” he replied in a curt tone.

  David ignored the lot of them as he sewed quietly in the corner. His fingers worked not with thread, but with folding the length of yellow cloth in his lap.

  “This is not meant as a complaint,” Bryce said. “I really do hate this challenge.”

  Colin frowned. “Where did you learn how to do that, Lord Galloway?”

  Lord Galloway looked up from his many spindles. “I had five sisters. There was no one to fight with, so if I wanted company, I had to learn my way around the solar.”

  “I feel very emasculated,” Jules complained.

  “I feel out of my league,” Colin countered.

  Nicholas glanced about the chamber as the men complained about their attempts to sew. He doubted women ever complained about sewing. More like they complained about the men in their lives while they sewed. The thought made him smile.

  David growled and threw his folded cloth on the floor. “What is Jane trying to do to us with this test?”

  “This was not her idea,” Lord Galloway offered.

  David stood and strode about the chamber like a wild, caged beast. “Then whose idea was it?”

  “I might have mentioned it to Lady Margaret,” he said with a smile.

  David’s fists tightened, and he shot across the chamber until his hands were about Lord Galloway’s throat. “You pompous ass.”

  Nicholas threw down his fabric and pulled David away. “Leave him be, David. We all have our strengths. Yours was definitely hunting.”

  Lord Galloway massaged his abused throat. Several acknowledgments were echoed around the room.

  When the fight left David, Nicholas released him. “Time is slipping by with such nonsense. It would be better spent finishing your creation than killing off the competition.”

  David returned to his seat and started folding his cloth once more, grumbling beneath his breath the whole time.

  He needed to take his own advice, Nicholas realized with a glance about the solar. The other men were much further along with their creations. His gaze settled on Lord Galloway, who worked on silently. He had tied the thread of several lengths of string to the pins and expertly moved the spindles back and forth, creating a lacy pattern with the string. Nicholas released a silent groan. How could any of them compete with a man who knew how to make lace?

  Jane waited until the toll of the bell died before she reached for the door latch. Two hours had passed. The competition was at an end. A part of her was curious to see what they had created. Another part of her was less eager to have to choose a winner.

  “Are you ready to see how they fared?” Margaret asked from beside her.

  “They are awfully quiet.” Silence was all that greeted them from the opposite side of the door. “Perhaps they have killed each other with the pins?”

  “Do not be dramatic, dearest. They are most likely as nervous as you are.”

  She was nervous, but determined to get the selection of her next champion over with. Steeling herself, she opened the door and went in.

  The first surprise was that they were all alive and watching her every move as she stepped into the chamber. The second surprise was that the room was clean. The fabric had been neatly gathered and placed back into the basket. The shears, needles, and thread were collected and returned to their proper places.

  The third surprise was that each of the men waited not in his chair, but on their feet, their movements arrested as though only a heartbeat before they had been pacing like caged animals about the chamber.

  “Goodness,” Lady Margaret exclaimed, giving voice to the thoughts running through Jane’s head. “You all completed your task. That is excellent. Simply marvelous.” Her aunt moved to stand near Lord Galloway. She offered him a coy smile and color flooded her cheeks.

  Jane watched the exchange between her aunt and Lord Galloway with interest. Her aunt never blushed. And the look she gave him before leaning against the wall at his back was almost as though she were under some kind of spell.

  The tension in the chamber was thick as Jane moved into the room slowly, allowing herself time to digest her aunt’s fascination with Lord Galloway. David stood off to her left. One glance at his dark expression revealed his trapped desperation. His eyes sparked with undisguised temper.

  A quick glance at the others revealed the same caged energy. None of them were happy about the competition Lady Margaret had foisted on them.

  Returning her gaze to David she asked, “What have you created for me, Sir David?”

  David slowly unfolded his hands to reveal a bright yellow folded star.

  She offered him a smile of appreciation. “How very clever of you to fold the cloth into angles, then secure it with thread.”

  “It was all I could think of,” he admitted, his gaze dropping to the star. “Leave me in the wilderness for days on end with no food or water and I can survive. But sewing, it is the worst sort of torture and not something I ever wish to do again.” Tension coiled in his wiry frame.

  “Tell me why you chose a star.”

  “It is supposed to be the Christmas star, the one the wise men followed to lead them to the Christ child.”

  “Very well done, David.”

  At her words he met her gaze once more. Some of the tension in him vanished. “Good enough to declare me the winner?”

  “We will see,” she said, moving to her next suitor. Nicholas leaned casually against the wall by the hearth. He met her gaze boldly, confident as he held out his offering of a light green handkerchief with what appeared to be a stitched holly leaf and berries in the center if she squinted her eyes enough to make the mass of green and red into a form. He had tried his hand at needlepoint. That fact itself warmed her heart. He knew from their earlier days together how much she detested needlepoint. Although she could say without a doubt that her skills, even as poor as they were, outstripped Nicholas’s talent with a needle.

  That he had tried to make a connection with her over thread and needle warmed her to her toes. She turned the handkerchief over and inspected the sewn edges. The linen was folded neatly, but the hemming stiches were uneven, and after every three or four stitches, the thread bunched into a knot. Again, she hid a smile. She could see he had tried his best. “What a useful as well as pretty creation, Nicholas.” She set his creation on a small table nearby. “Every time I am taken by the chills or fever, I will think of you.”

  He frowned. “That is not a good thing, is it?”

  “ ’Tis part of life, and you did well,” Jane said.

  Nicholas leaned back, his frown increasing as she moved on to Bryce.

  Her cousin proudly displayed a mass of white fabric that might have been in the shape of a body, though it was oddly deformed and dotted with red spots.

  “It is an angel,” he said when she remained silent, studying the object.

  “Of course it is,” she breathed, pleased that he had informed her of such. She never would have guessed correctly otherwise. She took the angel from his fingers and held her up to the light. Large, bold stitches ran up and down the fabric, forming her body and what must have been her wings. Bryce did not have a dainty hand, but regardless the blood-spattered object she held showed he had indeed tried and sacrificed much of himself in the process. She dropped her gaze to his abused hands. “How are your fingers? Should I have one of the maids bring you a tisane to soak them?”

  He moved his hands behind his back. “They are the wounds of my efforts, and just like battle wounds, they will heal eventually.”

  Jane blinked, then searched his face, his eyes, seeking that unruly temper that usually simmered beneath the surface. What had happened to change Bryce so completely since his abuse of Jules in the lists? Was his newfound patience and humility an act, or had he truly changed?

  She liked this new side of Bryce. She narrowed her gaze. A part of her was
still suspicious, expecting the temperamental boy she had known to appear at some unsuspecting moment. “Why an angel, Bryce?”

  He straightened. “It is supposed to be a likeness of you,” he said in a low-toned voice.

  After a pregnant pause during which she assessed and considered his true motive, she replied, “I am honored by your gift.” But was his effort enough to make her declare him the winner and give him the time he so obviously wanted to perhaps explain his change of heart?

  Jane stepped toward Jules, hoping as she did that one of the creations would be far superior to all else so that her decision would be an easy one. Before her skirts had settled, Jules offered her his creation.

  “If you thought Nicholas’s gift was useful, then mine is also that and necessary.” He handed her a pair of soft leather gloves.

  Though the cut of the thin leather was uneven, she exclaimed, “Well done, Jules.” From her own experience she knew how difficult leather was to sew. She slid a hand into first one glove then the other and flexed her hands. The seams were loose enough to allow air to brush across her hands, which might be an admirable quality in the summer, but certainly not in the snow.

  Jane flexed her fingers, admiring his work. As she did, several of the stiches came loose and two fingers popped out.

  “I can fix that,” Jules assured her.

  She studied her leather-covered palms, avoiding his eyes. She knew what she would see there—eagerness and a plea for her to choose him as the winner. She had seen it in all their eyes so far. “These gloves are very thoughtful, Jules. With a little repair, I imagine they will be quite delightful during this winter season.”

  She met his gaze.

  He beamed with pride.

  Her chest tightened. It had been such a long time since she had seen any sort of pleasure on Jules’s gaunt face. A part of her wanted to see that pleasure continue, and it would if she declared him her champion. Putting the thought out of her mind, she drew in a tight breath, removed the gloves, and set them near the other gifts before moving on to Colin.