To Wed His Christmas Lady

by Christi Caldwell

  “Cara,” he began quietly.

  With fingers numb from the cold, she fished around the pocket sewn along the inside of her cloak. She withdrew the heart pendant and stared blankly down at the crimson ruby. For years, she’d tied love and happiness to this gift given long ago by her mother. Her throat muscles struggled to work. “I want you to have this,” she said, pressing it into his hand. She wanted him to have it and remember the woman he’d met here who had been capable of feeling.

  “I cannot,” he protested, his tone gruff. He made to push it back into her hand, but she held her palms up.

  “I want you to take it, Will. And I want you to remember how important it was for you to find a woman you loved and cared for. A woman who is not c-cruel.” Her voice broke and she damned that slight catch, wanting to be done with this exchange, so she might climb in her carriage and return to the bleak, miserable existence she deserved.

  Will pierced her with his blue-eyed stare. “I will come back for you.”

  She nodded. “I do not doubt you will.” For that was the honorable, good man he was.

  He brushed the pad of his glove-encased thumb over her lower lip. “Do you know, it occurs to me, love, that you’ve still not shared your identity?” The ghost of a smile played on his lips. “However am I to find you?”

  You aren’t. Oh, the time would inevitably come when their paths crossed and he knew that Lady Clarisse Falcot—cruel and cold—and Lady Cara, with no surname, were, in fact, one and the same. By then, hopefully he’d be married to one of those cheerful sorts, capable of warmth. Oh, God. She almost buckled under the pain of that.

  Then a wry half-grin pulled his lips at the right corner. “As I intend to wed you, it seems only appropriate that I know the full name of the lady I will call my wife.” Her heart squeezed at the boy-like quality of his smile. And with that expression of mirth, a memory slipped in of Will when she’d been just a girl of six. She’d been scolded by her father for resting her elbows on the table. He’d caught her eye across the table and winked once. Oh, God. It was too much. Agony twisted in her belly.

  Some of the lightness dimmed in Will’s eyes. “What is it?” he urged quietly.

  She shook her head, incapable of words. “I-I am just…” Falling apart inside. “H-happy.” She’d created such an effective mask these years; a façade she’d presented to Society, her family, and instructors and not once had anyone questioned the validity of her mask. Cara drew on years of practice in concealing emotion and flashed a sunny smile.

  He kissed her; the faintest meeting of lips. “Cara mia?”

  Determined to take this last moment with him, she twined her hands about his neck. “My name is Lady Cara Turner. My father is the Earl of Derby. I am journeying to his estate in L-Leeds,” she stumbled over that mistruth. And fearing he’d see the lie in her eyes or hear it in her words, she kissed him.

  Will froze against her and she moaned fearful he’d stop. For this was the last taste of passion she’d ever know. The thought of that truth sent panic spiraling through her. She kissed him hard and he parted her mouth with his lips. He slid his tongue inside and found hers so that they mated in a primitive dance that should have shocked her as a proper lady but instead only resulted in a wet heat at her core.

  Will clasped her buttocks and dragged her closer. She moaned, wanting more of him. Wanting all of him.

  That jerked her to the moment. Her chest rose and fell with the rapidity of her breath. She passed her gaze over the precious lines of his sculpted cheeks, the noble jaw, the slight dimple in his right cheek. He eyed her through those thick lashes no man had a right to possess. “I love you, Will.” And she would forever love him for all the gifts he’d given her. None of them of the material sort, but more precious for what they’d shown her about herself.

  “I love you, Cara.” The wind shook the branches overhead and sent snow tumbling into the drift in a noiseless fall.

  If he utters those words once more, I will be lost. I will be the selfish, self-centered creature I’ve always been.

  “Cara, I—”

  “We should return.” Unable to meet the piercing intensity of his gaze, she glanced past his shoulder. “My maid will be missing me.”

  Will shot a hand around her forearm, staying her retreat. “I will come for you,” he said with a quiet insistence. Concern radiated from his intelligent eyes.

  Ah, through her false smile and feigned happiness, he’d seen the underlying agony taking apart what was left of her. Then, he’d been the only person to truly look at her.

  His first judgment had been the correct one. “I know.”

  Wordlessly, they made their way back to the miserable, little inn.

  And that afternoon when Will rode off to break a pledge he’d made to his father, Cara boarded her borrowed carriage once more and left the only place she’d ever been truly happy.

  Chapter 12

  William took in the familiar halls, corridors he’d raced wildly down as a child, driving his tutors and nursemaids to near madness. Evergreen boughs with holly berries and apples hung along the walls. He pressed his palm against the front of his jacket pocket. The makeshift bough he’d collected alongside Cara that morning, resonated heat in his pocket.

  With each step, his muddied boots trailed moisture and dirt on the sapphire blue carpet. His father’s butler, a young man with a serious set to his face at some point had replaced the old, grinning Halpert, shot a frown over his shoulder. At the very least, he should have changed his attire before storming into the Billingsley household as though he’d not been gone almost eight years; more a guest who came to call periodically. They stopped beside his father’s office door. And yet, he’d little intention of remaining. There was someone he longed to see more.

  The butler rapped once and then tossed the door open. In his drawn out, nasal tones, the man announced William. “Lord Grafton.”

  The Duke of Billingsley sat on the leather button sofa over by the hearth, his wife curled at his side in a bucolic tableau that defied the norms of most ton marriages. His parents stared, frozen, wearing the look of two who’d seen a ghost.

  “Mother, Father,” he greeted, dusting his palms along the sides of his breeches.

  The servant backed out of the room and his departure sprang his parents to action. With a cry, his mother climbed to her feet and raced across the room in a manner that would raise the brows of polite Society. Then, wrong or right, there were certain liberties permitted a duchess. “William,” she rasped and flung her arms about him, holding tight.

  He folded her in his arms. “Mother,” he repeated, his throat thick with emotion. He’d not regretted the years he’d spent traveling, but there was a staggering shock in finding how time had marched on, aging his parents in his absence.

  How he’d missed them. His absence, however, had been of his choosing.

  On the heel of that were thoughts of Cara as she’d been since her mother’s passing; alone, without anyone to love or care for her—through no choice of her own.

  “Oh, William,” his mother wept against his chest. He patted her back.

  Would she feel this same overwhelming emotion when, after eight years, he asked to be pardoned of the responsibility to wed her goddaughter? William stiffened as the ugly, niggling reminder of what he’d ask this day surged forward. “Father,” he said cautiously to the bear of a man eying him from over by the hearth.

  The duke stood with his hands clasped behind his back, an indecipherable look in his eyes that may as well have belonged to his son. Determined to have out with it, William spoke.

  “There is a matter I would speak with you about.”

  “What is it, William?” With only a mother’s intuitiveness, the duchess stepped away and William made his way over to where his father remained rooted to the floor.

  He held a hand out, but his father only enfolded it in his equally large fingers and pulled him close. “My boy,” he whispered and hugged him with a feroc
ity that momentarily cut off airflow.

  Where William had come and gone through the years, flitting about the Continent and countries, there was a permanency to this homecoming. For the joy of this moment, for the love he knew from his parents, there was a gripping pain for Cara—forgotten at Christmas, alone in an inn without so much as a brother or father who remembered her existence. His throat closed and he stepped away from his father.

  His father dropped his eyebrows. “What is it?” he said gruffly.

  His mother looked back and forth between them.

  He’d had hours to prepare for this exchange. In all he’d run through in his mind, nothing seemed adequate for what he’d put to his parents. Never one to prevaricate, William drew in a steadying breath. “I met a woman,” he said, meeting his father’s gaze.

  The older man puzzled his brow. “A woman?”

  For all the perplexity to that question, William may as well have just stated his intentions to climb astride Perseus’ mythical horse and take flight. “I had every intention of seeing to my responsibilities and wedding Lady Clarisse,” he continued quietly.

  His father snapped his eyebrows together in an angry line. “And?” That single syllable utterance rumbled off the walls.

  “On my journey home, I was…” captivated by a spirited lady and could not bring myself to leave.

  His father gave him a probing look. “William?”

  William cleared his throat. “Forgive me,” he said, finishing his previous thought. “I was delayed by the snow. I took shelter at an inn.” Had it only been three days? The joy he’d known in those three days outweighed every single one of the eight years he’d been gone. “And while I was there, I met her.”

  “Met who?” His father glowered in the show of anger William had expected.

  “I do not understand, William.” His mother spoke with a slowness of one trying to muddle her way through a conundrum.

  “I met a young lady. Lady Cara Turner, the Earl of Derby’s daughter,” he said quietly, ignoring the shocked confusion in his mother’s eyes. An image of Cara as she’d been with his face clasped between her delicate fingers flashed to his mind. He reached into the front of his pocket and withdrew the crimson heart she’d given him. That last link she’d had to her mother, she’d entrusted with him. He gripped the precious gift. “And I fell in love with her.” He held his father’s hard stare. “I had every intention of honoring my pledge to you, but not any longer. I cannot marry Lady Clarisse.”

  Silence met his admission. William braced for his father’s booming fury but his mother shattered the quiet, interrupting whatever words were on her husband’s lips. “Did you say the Earl of Derby’s daughter, Lady Nora?”

  He shook his head. “Lady Cara.”

  His mother gave him a gentle look. “But William, the earl’s only daughter is Lady Nora.”

  William must have heard his mother’s words wrong. A buzzing filled his ears and he gave his head a clearing shake. “You are mistaken.” His words came as though down a corridor.

  The duke folded his arms at his chest and snorted. “Your mother isn’t wrong on any matters of the ton.”

  She nodded in agreement. “He is correct, I am invariably right on all these matters.”

  William tried to make sense of her confounding words. Why would Cara lie to him about her identity? The air left him on a shuddery hiss. And how in blazes was he to find her if she’d given him a false name? He shook his head hard, dispelling the doubts planted by his mother. “You are wrong,” he snapped. Cara wouldn’t have deceived him. His insides twisted in an agonizing grip. Why would she? It did not make sense.

  “I am not.” His mother wrinkled her nose. “Well, at least not about the earl having a daughter named Nora and not having a daughter named Cara.”

  “You are certain?” he demanded.

  The duchess gave a hesitant nod.

  William scrubbed one hand down his face and, with a panicked energy running through him, spun on his heel and began to pace. “Is this a ploy to make me abandon my intentions to wed the lady?”

  That shameful question had wrung gasps from his parents. “William,” his mother chided.

  He increased his frantic movements. Nothing else made sense. Why would Cara have given him a false name? Why—? He stopped abruptly and stared at the crimson heart in his gloved palm. Pain stabbed at his belly. He shook his head. “She would not lie.” She would not have given him this gift and let him ride off, knowing they’d never again meet. William closed his eyes hard and fought to make semblance of what his mother was saying.

  “How did you come by Clarisse’s pendant?”

  His mother’s quietly spoken question brought his eyes open. He stared numbly on as his mother came closer. She bowed her head over the ruby necklace in his palm and he folded his hand closed. Sharing this part of Cara seemed… Then his mother’s words registered. “What?” He opened his hand. “This is Cara’s.” No! It was impossible.

  “No,” his mother said gently, slipping the broken pendant from his grip. She turned it over in her hands. “This belonged to Cynthia.” Her closest friend who’d died… His mind shuttered. Oh, God, it could not be. His mother peeled her lip back in a snarl, her eyes flashing a hatred he’d not believed her capable of. “Her husband forbid her from wearing—”

  “Anything but diamonds,” the words left him on a slow exhale.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, yes, that is correct. How do you—?” His mother widened her eyes in shock. “It is her. She is your Cara.”

  Cara mia.

  “I don’t understand,” his father boomed.

  Neither did he. William’s mind spun. The woman he’d spent years running from was now the only woman he wanted or needed. She was cold and cruel to her servants and devoid of all feeling…and I have spent the last eight years avoiding the responsibility expected of me. His stomach churned with nausea as he went over every last, rotted word he’d uttered to her.

  Don’t you see, I am that woman…?

  Bile climbed up his throat until he thought he’d be sick. She’d been telling him with even her words, her identity, and he’d been so consumed by age-old resentments over a vow his father had expected of him, that he’d failed to see that which was truly before his eyes.

  His throat muscles worked. “What a bloody fool I’ve been,” he breathed. In sending him away, she’d set him free. He closed his eyes. How could she not know he was only free when she was in his life? And he’d left her. Alone, at the blasted inn.

  “Wh-where is she?” his mother put forth with the same unease cloying at his thoughts.

  He attempted to right his tumultuous thoughts. Where would she go? Off to that miserable bastard who’d sired her; the only good he’d done in the whole of his loathsome life? Then understanding dawned. William spun on his heel and stalked off.

  “William,” his father thundered. “Where are you going?”

  He squared his jaw. “To collect my betrothed.” And when he did, he intended to spend the rest of his life filling her days with joy and making atonement for being such an odious beast.

  Chapter 13

  These were sorry days indeed when a lady willingly chose to spend Christmas at Mrs. Belden’s miserable halls.

  Properly attired in her ivory satin gown, Cara lay on her side, her breath frozen. Once again, she stared at walls but altogether different ones than the thin, whitewashed panels of the Fox and Hare Inn. This room sterile, yet perfect. There was no water stained ceilings or cold winter breezes stealing through the window. She flipped onto her back and flung her arm across her brow. A sad smile pulled at her lips. She’d have traded all of her father’s properties gladly for the possession of that miserable, little inn. There had been more beauty and happiness in that aged establishment than in any place she’d had the misfortune of calling home in any of her eighteen years.

  In one great twist of irony, she’d almost had every happiness she never believed herself deserving
of, or even possible… Her throat worked. Will was her William. That man she’d despised all these years for being a future duke and emotionless nobleman her father would wed her to. She caught her lower lip hard. He’d never been any of those things she’d silently accused him of being, whereas she? She had been the very cruel, cold, and calculated person he’d taken her as. And for that, she’d freed him.

  A shuddery sob spilled past her lips. She rolled onto her side again and hugged her arms tight about herself. Her skin still burned with the feel of another pair of arms folded about her. True to the selfish, needy lady she’d been for the course of her life, she wanted more of him. Wanted all of him. She swiped a hand over her face. “Enough,” she whispered. Cara shoved herself up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The mattress groaned with the slight depression of her weight. The sunlight filtered through the open curtains and she squinted at the stream of light as it drew her back to another sunny day inside a copse of juniper trees. For all the agony of losing him, happiness danced within her heart at the fleeting joy she’d known.

  A knock sounded at the door. “My lady?” Alison’s happy voice sounded from the other side of the door.

  Cara cast a glance over her shoulder and her lips twisted in a wry smile. Ah, the summons. One week too late. Or mayhap, just in time. Had her father’s carriage arrived when it ought, she’d have traveled on to his miserable, cold, and lonely estate. She would still be the same shallow, selfish creature who shut out the thoughts and feelings of others and protected herself. She gripped the edge of her bed. Mayhap this was the one gift her father had given her.