The Cavalier's Christmas Bride

by Lauren Royal

  But now she was almost glad she’d never been kissed by anyone else. Because that meant the only man who’d ever kiss her would be Joseph. And she was certain kissing Joseph would be the most wondrous feeling on earth.

  Where would it happen? Since she did feel a little cold, she decided to imagine him kissing her before a roaring fire in the magnificent great room. Heat from the flames warmed her back while Joseph held her face in his hands. He had nice hands, she’d noticed, with exceedingly clean fingernails. He must scrub them diligently after finishing up in his conservatory each day. She loved how conscientious and gentlemanlike he was.

  Anyhow, his thumbs stroked Chrystabel’s cheeks as his face moved closer. His gaze was tender and hypnotically green, his breath tickling her chin just before his full, soft-looking lips touched hers. And then…

  Well, she wasn’t exactly certain what came next. But she knew it would be magic. Her eldest sister had told her so the morning after her wedding, just before she’d left the Grange with her new husband. “When you kiss the man you’re meant to be with,” Martha had said on a blissful sigh, “it’s pure magic.”

  And Joseph was the man Chrystabel was meant to be with. She couldn’t wait to experience their magical first kiss.

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

  Chrystabel raised her chin. “I know what I’m doing, 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 continued to fret anyway. “Matthew will be furious. They could 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 shoulder-baring red gown, her cheeks flushed with holiday excitement, she suddenly looked different.

  She suddenly stole his breath.

  Holy Hades, had his mother been right?

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

  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?”

  I most certainly would. He gritted his teeth. “By all means.”

  He went to one of the fireplaces and chucked another log inside, trying to take no notice of his guest. But though she’d said she wanted to look around, 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 no notice of her, hang it. And truthfully, he hadn’t the heart to rebuff anyone who showed an interest 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 genuinely curious, 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 bent forward 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. Leaning over with her hands braced on her knees, the curve of her backside protruded from the depths of her skirts. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away.

  His heart was pounding, his temperature rising. For a moment he felt nearly as out of breath as he had dancing the volta last night. Remembering the wooly tent of a gown she’d worn—complete with dowdy Puritan collar—he found himself longing for its return.

  Because Chrystabel in a nice dress was apparently more than he could take.

  When she moved to the next box, her hips swayed beneath the scarlet drape. 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 the l
ovely roundness of her—

  No. He was not having these thoughts. He was marrying Creath in two days, for heaven’s sake. He might not fancy Creath, but that didn’t make it acceptable to fancy someone else!

  Unable to stand it a moment longer, he took her elbow and pulled her upright. A little lick of excitement bolted through him at the contact, but he gritted his teeth and 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. Her skirts were voluminous enough to conceal everything below the waist. “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.”

  “Knave,” 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 craft. Her passion 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, no one could fall in love in a single day. He wasn’t falling; he was having an understandable, male reaction to the sight of bare shoulders and a shapely bottom—and to the ideas Mother had put in his head. All her talk of delightful this and refreshing that was getting to him.

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

  He was just finding her hard to resist.

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

  “Strawberries!” Chrystabel exclaimed, drawing his attention across the chamber. It seemed while he’d contemplated love and honor and female anatomy, she’d been wandering his conservatory, examining the other plants. “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. “Mmm,” she hummed 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, forcing him to quickly avert 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 banish the image of her lips fastened on his. “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 heat through him. “Are they eaten raw or cooked?”

  “Not raw!” He laughed, which made him feel a little less hot—but no less guilty. “They taste awful raw,” he explained. “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 a girl who would be forever full of surprises. The thought brought an unwelcome thrill of anticipation and curiosity. The urge to kiss her had faded—a little—but his heart was galloping regardless.

  Hang it all. What on earth was he to do? This wasn’t right, the way he was feeling. He’d never acted 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. It seemed 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 rema
ined 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 more. 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 girl—or speak about girls at all. Not in front of his sisters, anyway. Though her heart soared, she made herself stay silent. She sniffed her concoction, decided she was pleased, and corked it. One more gift crossed off her list.

  Passing over an empty bottle, Arabel met her gaze, her big brown eyes full of disbelief and excitement.

  Chrystabel flashed her a grin Matthew couldn’t see. “Creath is sweet, don’t you think?” she said conversationally, using a little silver funnel to add alcohol and water to the second bottle. “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 their 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?”

  “The dickens, no!” he ground out miserably. “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 obviously hates me. She shrieked and ran off right after. I’m naught but a boneheaded lout.”

  Chrystabel’s sympathy was nearly drowned out by her shock. She’d thought she knew her brother, but she’d never imagined he could fall to pieces like this. Not the brother she’d grown up with, the one who always appeared fully composed and in control.

  Seeing his confidence shatter was both awful and awe-inspiring. If even Matthew could be humbled by his feelings, it meant everyone was equally defenseless. It meant they all shared this same capacity and weakness for love. It was a lesson she wouldn’t soon forget.