Christmas in The Duke's Arms

by Grace Burrowes

  Edith doesn’t much care for the haughty duke, but as Christmas approaches, Oxthorpe reveals himself to be reserved rather than arrogant, considerate, and—blame the mistletoe!—an accomplished kisser. Will Edith hold Oxthorpe’s earlier behavior against him, or will she learn that the best holiday gifts can be the most unexpected?

  Chapter One

  ‡

  The Duke’s Arms, Hopewell-on-Lyft, Nottinghamshire, England, 1817

  Awareness shivered down Oxthorpe’s spine. He had no notion why but took the reaction as a sign he ought to pay attention. He braced one booted foot on the edge of the plank table and tipped back his chair until it rested on the wall behind him. He had no company at this table by the fire. It was a place reserved for him alone. A carved swan and griffin adorned the top of his chair.

  That no one dared join him suited him. He preferred solitude even when in public. Especially in public. He sipped the dark ale the innkeeper brewed in his basement. As good or better than any produced by the larger brewer two towns over. Wattles, the proprietor of the coaching inn, supplied Killhope with a regular measure of this ale.

  The common room of The Duke’s Arms was crowded with a mix of locals and travelers. The locals were closing out their day with dinner before heading home. Others awaited their connections to parts north or south. From his seat, he could see the inn’s wooden sign with its painted swan and griffin echoing, rather loosely, those carved into his chair.

  When he was not looking out the windows, his inelegant position gave him a view of his boot. The left of a decent pair of boots. Suitable for the country. He’d liked them well enough three years ago; the leather was supple even still. But these excellent boots did not have the folded top cuff of his new boots. Nor did they have a maroon tint to the leather, which he thought would set a fashion—if it was possible for a man like him to set a fashion for anything but striking fear into hearts.

  He ought to be wearing his maroon top-boots and was not. Because he could not. The left of his new boots, never worn but for assuring the fit, had gone missing from Killhope. Servants had searched the house and grounds top to bottom and found nothing.

  Just as he was about to conclude that nothing untoward was going to happen after all, the front door opened.

  Winter air blasted through the room. Several of the patrons near the door shivered. A woman of about thirty came in. Oxthorpe straightened his chair and set his beer on the table. For the last month, he’d been telling himself he was prepared for this moment. He was not. This was inevitable, that they would at some point be in the same place. His heart banged away at his ribs.

  She was dressed against the chill in a black woolen cloak, hood up so that one did not see the color of her hair and little of her face other than that she was pale complected. She was of medium height. Her eyes were brown, not that he could see that from here, but they were.

  The maid closed the door behind them and stood to one side, hands clasped and head down. Of this he approved, both that her maid held her employer in the proper respect and that she’d brought a servant with her.

  With one hand, because she held a paper-wrapped parcel in the other, the woman pushed back the hood of her cloak. A spray of tiny blue flowers adorned her brown hair. She had hair combs, too. Ebony, if he was not mistaken. This was an embellishment he had never seen from her in Town. “Good afternoon, Mr. Wattles.”

  Miss Edith Clay brightened the room with her presence. Just from walking through the door, she’d made the room a happier place. This was true despite his having spent the last several months assuring himself his recollection of her had to be incorrect.

  His recollection was not incorrect. It was appallingly accurate.

  Wattles grinned from behind the bar where he stood to pull beer or ale from the tap and tell stories or, often, listen to them. “Delightful to see you, miss.”

  Mrs. Wattles, who had emerged from the kitchen for a word with her husband, saw Miss Clay and headed toward her. She wiped her hands on her apron and folded them beneath the fabric. “Always a pleasure to see you, Miss Clay.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wattles.” Her smile hollowed out his chest. She’d changed since last he saw her. She was brighter. More vibrant. Happiness suited her. “You are so kind.”

  The Wattleses’ daughter, Peg, came into the common room from the back carrying an empty tray, heading, he presumed, to the kitchen.

  “You’re early to pick up your dinner, miss,” Mrs. Wattles said.

  Peg stopped to curtsy. “Good day, miss.”

  “Peg. I hope you’re well.” She tugged at the wrist of one of her gloves. Blue kid.

  Her focus returned to Mrs. Wattles, and while she was so engaged, Oxthorpe took the opportunity to study her and tightly wrap up his response to her. He had a clear view of her from where he sat. To see him, however, she would have had to look in the shadows at the rear of the room, and she had not done so. Why would she? She’d not come to see him. For one thing, his visit this afternoon had not been scheduled.

  Waning afternoon light shone through the windows to the courtyard, with its glimpse of the Great Northern Road. A groom hurried toward the stables at the rear, his arms wrapped around his middle. Her maid was not a Hopewell-on-Lyft local. He supposed she must be from London.

  “Yes, I am a little early picking up my dinner,” Edith said. “But that’s not why I’ve come. Not the only reason, that is.”

  Strange, seeing her without her younger and prettier cousin. In London last year, and later in Tunbridge Wells, he’d got used to seeing them together. Inseparable those two, even though Miss Clay was the elder by a decade. Two years younger than he. Unlike him, she was cheerful. Always pleasant. So bloody, horribly happy even though she had no particular looks, and at the time he met her, no fortune whatever. She had been, in fact, entirely dependent on her relations.

  Mrs. Wattles waved to her daughter. “Tell them Miss Clay is here to pick up her supper.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wattles.” She glanced around the room, but her gaze slid over him. Even in London, always happy. “How is your father, ma’am? Better, I hope.”

  Mrs. Wattles’s father was ninety years old and, lately, in failing health. “As well as can be expected, I think. He says thank you for the bread and broth you sent.”

  “I shall send more, if it would be welcome.”

  “He would enjoy that, miss.” Mrs Wattles bent a knee. “We’d be grateful if you did.”

  She adjusted the parcel in her arms. The light through the windows turned her hair shades of walnut. “I hope you’ll let me know if there is anything else you need.”

  “Thank you, miss.”

  By no stretch of imagination was Edith Clay anything but a pleasant-looking woman. Not unattractive. But nothing to make a man’s head turn. She wasn’t young. At twenty-seven, nearly twenty-eight now, thirty was not far off for her. A woman, not a girl. Her cloak separated to reveal a portion of a blue frock. Robin’s-egg blue. That was unusual, her wearing colors. She never had before.

  “I am here on account of a mystery most deep, Mrs. Wattles.”

  One of the laborers in the far corner of the main room came forward with a chair. The man set it down near where Miss Clay stood near the bow windows with her parcel in her arms, then backed away. Another of them pushed forward a chair for her maid. Her maid sent a grateful glance in the direction of the men.

  “Thank you,” Edith said.

  He did not understand this fey power of hers to make people like her. He wondered if she’d walked here. If she had, she’d have a mile and a half through the cold when she left, and uphill, too. There might be snow, this time of year. Likely so with the way the sky looked.

  Edith perched on the edge of her chair, knees pressed together, feet aligned. She’d sat just so before, a woman of no importance, whom no one noticed when she was quiet. “I hope you can assist me.”

  Mrs. Wattles clasped her hands underneath her
apron. “Whatever we can do.”

  She settled her parcel on her lap. “Did you know, Mrs. Wattles, that when I moved into Hope Springs, I found a note pinned to the wall in the entryway? Just above a crate. I thought it odd.”

  These were now more words than ever he’d heard her say at one time. In London, she had guarded every word against her elder cousin’s disapproval. There were more differences between the woman she’d been then and what she was now. Besides the fashionable clothes, her face was more animated, and though she was not a beauty, there was something there. She seemed freer now than she had been. Who would not be who had made a similar escape?

  “What did the note say?”

  “It was left, I presume, by the previous inhabitant, by way of instruction. It said, ‘For Items Found.’ Is that not peculiar? I thought it peculiar.” She had a good, strong voice. She smiled with her voice, too. This, he thought, was the magic that had drawn him to her.

  “What did you find?”

  “Ah.” She held up her gloved index finger. “I suspected as much. There have been things found at my home before.”

  “There might have been.” Mrs. Wattles laughed.

  She unwrapped the parcel she held. Several of the laborers and many of the travelers in the front room craned their necks to see. “When I returned from my morning perambulations to the vale and back, I found this in my driveway.” She held up a boot. A gentleman’s gleaming boot of maroon leather with a folded-down cuff. “Is this not most mysterious? I have not been in Hopewell-on-Lyft very long, so perhaps it is common, but it seems uncommon to me.”

  True. She’d been here a month, no longer.

  “Perhaps one frequently finds a boot in one’s drive.” She was laughing at herself, delighted with the absurdity. So were the others. He, too, was smiling. Even though it was his boot.

  Peg had returned from the kitchen, and she eagerly explained. “It’s Mr. Paling’s collie, miss. From Killhope.” Paling being his groundskeeper. The man had a three-legged collie who followed him everywhere.

  Edith tilted her head. Wide-eyed innocence played to perfection. “Are you certain? For this seems so very much like a boot, to me. It’s not at all collie-shaped.”

  Mrs. Wattles laughed. Edith hadn’t a mean bone in her body. Not one. She meant to amuse, and she did. He was amused, though he did not want to be.

  “Mr. Paling’s collie is excitable,” Mr. Wattles said. He’d refilled someone’s beer and now held it in one hand. “When she’s in such a state, why she’ll snatch up something near and dash away with it. She leaves it wherever she is when the passion wears off.”

  “Ah.”

  “When he comes here with the dog, we are careful to put away anything she might carry away with her.” Wattles pushed the beer to the man waiting for it. “You’re not so far from Killhope, miss. It’s bound to happen.”

  “This is the duke’s boot?”

  Mrs. Wattles glanced over her shoulder at him. So did her husband. And Peg. And several of the locals. “I can’t say if it is or it isn’t.”

  Edith did not notice the stares in his direction because she was examining his boot. “Well. Not a princely boot, then, but a noble one. Yes, I see that now.” With a sigh, she re-wrapped his boot and retied the string. “I do wish I’d guessed that before I walked in the opposite direction from Killhope Castle.”

  Oxthorpe stood. He could do nothing else.

  Her hands stilled, and her smile faded away. She stood and dropped into a curtsy. What did one say in such situations, when one knew a lady disapproved? “Miss Clay,” he said.

  “Duke.” She’d given the field laborer a happier smile than she gave him. Most everyone else had stopped smiling, too. This was the effect he had on others. He was the Duke of Oxthorpe, and though he did his duty by his title and his estate, he was not beloved. He did not know how to be beloved the way Miss Clay was.

  “You have my boot.”

  She turned her head to one side. To avoid meeting his gaze. “Do I? Your Grace.”

  “I’ll try it on and let you judge the fit.”

  “That will not be necessary.”

  “It is when you doubt that it is mine.” He walked to her, and she handed over his boot. He examined it when he’d sat on a chair Wattles brought for him. He would not have gone through with his ridiculous challenge to her except she thought he would not.

  At last, she looked at him. Without warmth. “It isn’t the collie’s fault.”

  He drew off his boot with less effort than he’d expected and put on the other. A perfect fit. “There are tooth marks.” Too late he understood he’d spoken gruffly. Possibly, she thought he accused her of damaging his boot.

  Her expression smoothed out, and then she did what she would never have done before. She smiled brightly and said, “I assure you, Duke, they are not mine.”

  This was amusing. He recognized that. Several people guffawed, and he heard others trying not to laugh. Without allowing his annoyance and dismay to show, he changed boots again. “You relieve me, Miss Clay.”

  Once again, he had offended her. He should not care. He did not care. Why ought he to care about a woman like her? Except he did. He bowed, jaw clenched against the possibility that he would say more to offend. He strode out of The Duke’s Arms with his bloody damned boot.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  Edith flicked up her hood against the cross-wind. The air smelled like snow and felt like ice, and she hoped she made it home before either made her walk exceedingly unpleasant. She now regretted her decision to walk to The Duke’s Arms with the no-longer-mysterious boot. She and her maid would be thoroughly frozen by the time they arrived home.

  She walked faster, her maid keeping pace. Behind them came the thud of hooves on cold dirt and the creak and rumble of a carriage. Not the mail traveling south. She’d have heard the commotion of that.

  She moved to the edge of the road. Her maid did the same. The carriage slowed, passed her, then stopped a few yards ahead. Her heart sank. Even without a coat of arms, this could only be the duke’s carriage. No one else in Hopewell-on-Lyft could possibly drive so fine a vehicle and besides, the groom clinging to the back wore the duke’s livery.

  The groom jumped down and ran to hold the head of the lead horse. The animals, four matched chestnuts, were fine enough that even she took a breath at their quality. Horses like that must cost hundreds of pounds.

  The carriage window lowered and Ryals Fletcher, Duke of Oxthorpe, stuck his head out.

  Wind blew his hair into disarray. Even so, he was grand and somber and terrifying. Not yet thirty. As if age mattered at all. Despite his relative youth, he frightened everyone with his stern face and eyes that looked at one with a thousand years of wealth and privilege. “Miss Clay.”

  She walked to the door so she would not have to shout a reply to his summons. She curtsied and said, “Your Grace.”

  “It is cold.”

  “It is winter.” She reminded herself he was a duke, a man of significant wealth and responsibilities. She reminded herself that he had courted Louisa and stood poised to break her cousin’s heart or make Louisa the happiest woman in England. There was yet hope for the match. Her cousin Clay had invited him to Holmrook for Christmas and, as yet, he had not declined.

  He pushed open the door, and his groom jumped forward to hold the door and put down the step. “I will see you home.”

  She might have refused, except that her maid shivered, and indeed, she, too, felt the bite of the wind despite her thick cloak. Fifteen minutes with the man would not kill her. “Thank you.”

  The duke stepped down. Impeccable clothing. Beautifully cut and worn on a frame that hinted, no, shouted, at physical strength. This had surprised her when she’d first seen him in London, that he looked like a man who controlled his body as harshly as everything else. She did not care for tall men.

  “Your maid, too,” he said. A laugh rasped along his throat, a growl from a man who appea
red to have never laughed in all his days until now. From the side of her eye, she saw the groom look away. “No one will say I ravished two women.”

  My God. Was there anyone less gracious? Of course, if one was the Duke of Oxthorpe, who owned the better part of the land here and around Hopewell-on-Lyft and, indeed, the parish, one need not be gracious. He knew his place, and it was above everyone else. Far above.

  He signaled to the groom with a motion that included her maid. “Keep that safe for Miss Clay.”

  With a grim expression, the groom took the dinner Mrs. Wattles had wrapped up for her. This being the cook’s night off, Edith had fallen into the habit of taking away dinner from The Duke’s Arms. The Wattleses were excellent innkeepers, and the kitchen at The Duke’s Arms did a brisk trade for locals as well as travelers.

  The duke extended his hand to her, and only then did it occur to her that he might be distinguishing her because of Louisa. He was not a man to make decisions in haste, that much she knew. She put her hand on Oxthorpe’s and got in. His fingers closed around hers, and she felt the strength in him. She found it unpleasant, this awareness that he was so much stronger and larger than she. Her maid came in after.

  The duke took the rear-facing seat. Could such a joyless man really be not even thirty? He ought to be a century old at least. And yet, he had succeeded in winning Louisa’s heart.

  “Thank you,” she said when he’d settled himself. He’d left his hat on their side, and she handed it to him. Beaver, with grosgrain ribbon around the base.

  He set the hat beside him. The carriage started up. Edith smiled, got no reaction for her trouble and settled on a study of the interior. As good an excuse as any not to look at him. Lacquered wood, black leather seats, gilt lanterns, and everywhere some echo of his coat of arms; a swan or a griffin carved or painted or worked in metal.

  In these quarters, alas, it was impossible to behave as if she did not know he was there. Besides, it was rude, and like him or not, she did not wish to be rude to anyone, particularly not a man who oozed rank from every particle of his being, from his clothes, to his carriage, to the sapphire in his neckcloth.