Christmas in The Duke's Arms

by Grace Burrowes

  She rose from her seat at the morning room table and curtsied, tilting her chin and meeting him boldly in the eye, to assure herself—and him too, if he cared—that she had done nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Robina,” he said. He’d addressed her thus when they were younger, though lately they’d spoken formally. “My dear Robina…”

  Then he stopped. As usual.

  “Lord Carbury,” she said coolly. “How good of you to call. Please sit down. I hope you don’t mind if I continue with my work while we talk.” If we talk. She resumed her seat and took up her paintbrush, filling it with the shade of light brown she’d carefully mixed before her visitor was announced.

  “Please do.” Instead of occupying the chair she’d indicated, he joined her at the table. “May I look at your painting?” With a shrug, she leaned back so he could see the square of vellum. Narrowing his eyes, he looked back and forth at her watercolor and the pinecone model. “It’s very exact.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Since he seemed to have finished his examination, she shaped the brush to a point on her palette and deftly applied highlights to the scales of the cone. “I like to make a study of plants and animals, but Mrs. Madsen’s pug will not stay still, and in London in the winter, there isn’t much choice of flora.” Unless one was being courted by a man of wealth. Miss Cavendish next door received regular deliveries of hothouse flowers from her suitor. The absence of so much as a cheap posy should have alerted her to Carbury’s lack of intentions.

  “I didn’t know you painted,” he said.

  “I learned in the schoolroom, as most young girls do, but only lately have I taken it up more seriously. One must have something to do.” Trying to hold her father’s erratic household together had left her no time for ladylike accomplishments.

  “I thought young ladies preferred romantic scenes of blasted heaths and picturesque ruins.”

  “Not this one. But, then, I am not romantically minded.” She wanted to make sure he didn’t think she had any wrong ideas about them. Even though she had. She avoided looking at him and applied her brush with determined concentration.

  “I know you are not,” he said with some warmth. “That is why…” He stopped again.

  For heaven’s sake, how did the man ever manage to give a speech in Parliament? Suddenly, she was out of patience. She scraped her chair back and stood, causing him to back away clumsily, surprised at her force. “Lord Carbury,” she said. “I may have been misinformed, but my cousin gave me to believe that you feel some obligation regarding my future. I would like to assure you that you owe me nothing and have aroused no expectations of any kind.”

  “You were not misinformed. Because of our fathers’ close friendship, I feel responsible for your wellbeing.”

  Irritation warmed into something like anger. It was true that his father and hers, a pair of equally improvident charmers, had been neighbors and lifelong friends, until a hunting accident and a lung infection neglected during a marathon gaming session, respectively, had caused their early deaths. She recalled with annoyance what a dictatorial boy Wyatt had been. She barely remembered her childish worship of the splendid neighbor eight years her senior, or the schoolgirl tendre for the handsome young man on his occasional visits home.

  “There isn’t the slightest need. No one made you my guardian,” she said.

  “No, indeed, for you are of age and in control of your own fortune.”

  “Do you disapprove?” Trust him to know exactly how things stood. She was certain he knew to the penny how meager was the income left her from the portion of her mother’s dowry that her father had not frittered away.

  “As a general rule, I think it is wiser for a knowledgeable man to have government of a lady’s money, but you have always been sensible, at least in practical matters.” While not the compliment she would have chosen, at least he was talking to her and looked less like a dyspeptic bear. She’d been right to raise the subject and clear the air so they could go back to being on friendly terms. “I know how you protected your father’s estate from complete disaster,” he continued. “Edwin Weston has much to thank you for.”

  “Much gratitude I’ll get from him,” she said, rendered indiscreet by his praise.

  “He’s a paltry fellow, and his wife is worse. If he had any decency, he’d provide for you generously.”

  She could have warmed to the theme, but she despised people who complained about things outside their power to change. “He has children of his own, and Lucilla wouldn’t let him. I shall manage with my sixty pounds a year.” If she kept on saying that, it would be true. Two thousand pounds in the three percents was a respectable competence, if one was careful. Very careful.

  “You know that you will not, and that is why you must marry me.”

  So Edwin had not been wrong after all. Robina collapsed weakly onto a sofa, letting her mind readjust its assumptions.

  Carbury stood in the middle of the room, the very picture of a man approaching the height of his powers. At thirty-three, he had filled out from the reed-like slenderness of his youth. He was broad-chested beneath his perfectly cut dark blue coat and strong without an ounce of excess fat, from his firm chin down to his trim waist and muscular legs in fitted buff pantaloons and Hessian boots. His brown hair was short and neat. Neither fashionable excess in his coiffure nor a hint of bristle on his firm chin and jaw was allowed to mar the regularity of his features. He wasn’t excessively handsome, merely a fine-looking English gentleman with all the arrogance of the breed.

  Nothing in his expression spoke of the apprehension that should be felt by a man who had just offered marriage to the lady of his choice. He seemed to feel as much anxiety as he would about eating breakfast. And why not? Obviously, in his mind her acceptance was just as sure as his cook’s preparation of the morning meal. He likely expected her to feel gratitude, and with the sensible side of her brain, she acknowledged the logic of his position. Another part of her head, one linked to her heart and other sentimental organs, protested.

  “Was that a proposal of marriage?” she asked.

  “You know it was.”

  “I thought it was more along the lines of a command.”

  “Come, my dear Robina. We have known each other too long, and we are both far too sensible to indulge in romantic postures. I know we shall deal very well together, and I cannot believe you do not think the same.”

  “Do you wish to marry me? Why?”

  “Of course I do. I wouldn’t have asked if I did not.”

  “But why? And don’t mention our fathers, please. Let us stipulate that there is no obligation. I am not your duty.”

  “I beg to disagree. I have thought about the subject, and it’s clear to me that the best way to ensure your future is to make you my wife. Only thus can I look after you as my conscience demands.”

  “And what if your conscience and my wishes lead us on different paths?”

  “I find that hard to believe. I am sorry if you are piqued at my silence in the months you’ve been in London. I am a very busy man. Nevertheless, you deserve an apology for the inadequacies of my courtship. Pray forgive me and trust that I will not be as inattentive a husband.” He didn’t sound even remotely sorry.

  When Robina was seven years old, she had escaped her governess and climbed an apple tree. She had amused herself attempting to toss unripe fruit into the gardener’s water trough and made great strides in accuracy when Wyatt strolled through the orchard on his way to a neighborly call on the Westons. Without a by-your-leave, he’d lifted her down from her perfectly secure perch on the widest branch and gravely scolded her, not for wasting fruit, which would have been reasonable, but for endangering herself. He completely ignored her protests that she was an expert tree climber. Wyatt Herbert had been an insufferably interfering fifteen-year-old, and the tendency had only grown as he aged.

  She pursed her lips, sealing in words unbecoming of a lady. Carbury seemed to take her silence for encouragement.r />
  “I respect you too much to doubt you see the advantages of my offer. For my part, I know my duty, and I trust I will never shirk it.”

  Shirk was an ugly word. “If you think you need it, I give you my permission to shirk your duty to me. I never asked for charity, and that is what your proposal is.” The reins on her temper slipped away. “You, Wyatt, are a pompous ass. It has never been my ambition to share my life and my bed with a man who treats me with such supreme condescension.”

  The reference to conjugal intimacies startled him. Good. She wasn’t seven years old, but a twenty-five-year-old woman who knew what marriage meant. She’d rather remain a spinster than submit to life with a cold fish. Yet, a vision of Wyatt unbuttoned from his impeccable garments, his hair rumpled, his face unguarded, flashed through her head and kindled a spark in her chest. She blinked hard to dispel the impossible vision and regarded his patent displeasure with fierce satisfaction. Then his eyes cleared, and he nodded sharply.

  “You are upset,” he said soothingly.

  “I. Am. Not. Upset.” She stood and curtsied. “I must thank you, Lord Carbury, for the honor you do me with your offer of marriage, but I regret that I must decline. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a pinecone to finish painting.” She returned to the table with studied calm, marred only by the energy with which she stabbed her paintbrush into the water jar and swirled it in the block of dark brown watercolor.

  His hand on her shoulder was a statement of possession, his deep voice an arrogant command in her ear. “You don’t mean that, Robina. Let us discuss the matter rationally.”

  “There is nothing to discuss.”

  “What will you do if you do not marry me? How will you manage?”

  “I shall manage very well. Most people pass their entire lives in tolerable ease without your interference, and I shall too.”

  “I don’t care about most people.”

  “Do you care about me?”

  “Of course I do. I have known you all your life. I daresay I held you as a babe in arms, though I confess I do not recall the occasion.”

  She wasn’t sure which was less enticing: a husband who didn’t recall your first meeting or one who remembered you as a squalling infant. That was the trouble, she realized. Carbury made her feel like a child because that was how he regarded her.

  Shaking him off, she spun around. Paint flew off her brush and spattered his pristine starched white neckcloth. He jumped back, looking down at the speckled linen with comical dismay.

  “I am so sorry, Carbury. Now you will have to hurry home to change before your next appointment. Don’t let me keep you another minute. I know you have many important things to do. You can cross this proposal off your list with a clear conscience.” She’d heard about his memoranda for years, and ignored his recommendation that she adopt the habit. That’s all she was to him: an item on a long list of responsibilities.

  Raising her chin proudly, she glared at him, her breath emerging in brief huffs from parted lips. He glared back, and she saw the discomposed man she’d imagined earlier. His perturbed gaze dropped to her lips, as though he might kiss her, and in a fraction of a second, she wondered what it would be like. Then he stepped back, the mask of perfect control settling back.

  “I had set aside the whole morning for you, ma’am,” he said with a stiff bow. “But since I am not to achieve satisfaction in the matter at hand, I will take my leave and apply my efforts in quarters where they are welcome. Let me assure you, Miss Weston, that I will always have your interests at heart, and you must feel free to call on me for assistance at any time.”

  Once he had left, Robina sank into her chair and stared at the painted pinecone through a veil of shock. Her right hand, still clutching the fatal paintbrush, shook a little. So that was that. She’d turned down the best, and possibly the only, proposal she’d ever receive.

  Was she mad? She could have been a future countess, rich and secure with an interesting life involved in the political life of the country. Carbury was a decent man who would likely indulge her in every way as long as she obeyed him. And that was the rub. Obedience, a duty of the wife written into the marriage service, was never a virtue she had possessed. Assuming responsibility for the household and estate in the years after her mother’s death had taught her to enjoy making her own decisions and to resent it when another, in that case her father, countermanded them. She had loved Richard Weston dearly, but he had also driven her mad with his mercurial improvidence. Too often she’d instituted economies, and used the savings to invest in estate improvements, only to have her efforts ruined by Papa announcing an unnecessary and wildly extravagant purchase or, worse, a ridiculous gaming debt. She now realized her mother had felt the same way, in her case untempered by affection. Robina didn’t know why her parents married or if they had ever loved. All she could remember was scorn on her mother’s side, answered by resentment on her father’s. The lesson she’d drawn from observing the ill-matched pair was that a marriage without mutual respect and affection was worse than no marriage at all. Her father, though no more responsible, had been a good deal happier in his widowhood.

  She stared at the pinecone and thought of herself growing old and dull and dry. Washing away the brown, she mixed up a deep, rich green and carefully brushed in a branch thick with needles. On a whim, she added a curly red ribbon as though decorating a Christmas wreath. She’d always loved an old-fashioned country Christmas, but there wouldn’t be one for her this year, or perhaps ever again, now that she’d made a decision about her future.

  Her godmother bustled in a while later and found her still at work. “My dear, I thought you were determined to paint only from the life.”

  “I decided the pinecone alone was a little drab and needed some color.”

  “Quite right. We all need color. Speaking of which, Bow’s Warehouse has a marvelous new selection of silks. I bought a lavender sarsenet, and there is a light cherry that would suit you perfectly. I am determined to take you back tomorrow.” Since Mrs. Madsen enjoyed shopping above everything else, it was fortunate her husband had left her comfortable.

  “I have all the gowns I need and can afford,” Robina responded lightly. “And pray do not let us revisit the old argument. You have been generous enough with my new evening gown, besides housing me all this time.”

  “I would gladly house you forever, my love,” Mrs. Madsen said with the exaggerated enthusiasm that Robina had often seen her regret later. “But perhaps it won’t be necessary. I hear,” she said archly, “that Lord Carbury called. Was my absence enough to loosen his tongue?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “My dear child! Whatever did he say to upset you? I suppose horrid Edwin was wrong as usual.”

  “No. For once, horrid Edwin was correct. Lord Carbury condescended to make me an offer.”

  Mrs. Madsen affected a sort of fluttering vagueness that had apparently endeared her to men in her youth, including the admirably rich Mr. Madsen, but she wasn’t at all stupid. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I hope you didn’t do anything rash. You have so much common sense. Mr. Madsen used to remark on it often with surprise, considering what your parents were like. Not that I wasn’t very fond of your mother. And Richard was a charming man, but not steady. I trust that I can wish you happy and begin to plan the wedding.”

  There was no way to put this tactfully. “I declined his offer.”

  Mrs. Madsen’s elegant hands covered her mouth to cut off a shriek of horror. “Why?”

  “I do not believe that we are compatible.”

  “What does…” Her godmother began to speak, then thought better of it. She regarded Robina with native shrewdness. “Lord Carbury is nothing like your father.”

  “No, indeed. I cannot think of anyone less like Papa. Carbury lives for duty and obligations. As he so kindly informed me, I am one of the latter.”

  “To be sure, it’s more agreeable if a man shows a semblance of feeling when he proposes, but one can’t
have everything.”

  “I fear he is more like Mama.” The thought, barely conceived, burst out. “I would displease him, and he would despise me.”

  “Carbury is far too correct in his manners to treat a wife unkindly.”

  Rather than reassuring, the statement sent a chill through Robina’s blood. “His very consideration would lay such a weight of obligation on me that I would resent him. If I believed he had even a slight affection for me, beyond that of a childhood acquaintance, we might have a foundation for a good marriage. But I honestly feel that, for all he cares, Carbury might as well marry a statue.”

  She was sorry to disappoint her godmother, who worried about her. Mrs. Madsen hated to worry. Her, forehead, smooth and soft from the regular application of Olympian Dew, creased for a moment, then returned to serenity. “We shall find you a different match once people come to town for the Season.”

  “My darling Godmama, let us be practical. I am twenty-five years old, not more than passably pretty, with a fortune that is even less than passable.” She schooled her features to hide her lack of enthusiasm for her plan. “I shall return to Yorkshire. Lady Halston has offered me a position in her house. And who knows? Perhaps I shall be lucky enough to attract a curate or a half-pay officer who will love me.”

  Mrs. Madsen groaned. “To think you could have had an earl. Yet you’d prefer to become a companion to that old dragon. I cannot bear to think of it.”

  “I shall manage her, never fear. And if we cannot abide each other, I know I can return to you.” For a brief visit, she added silently. Her pride would not let her be a burden, and she had made up her mind that she would make her own way in life.

  “Are you quite sure you won’t change your mind and accept Carbury after all?”