One Night with a Duke: 12 Dukes of Christmas #10

by Erica Ridley

  She picked up the next book and a smile broke out over her face. Before her uncle had become a sought-after traveling preacher, he had read tales to her from this volume.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mr. MacLean. “How are you going to ignore me properly if the mere thought of that one makes you giddy?”

  Splendid point.

  She set it aside and picked up the third and final book. It was a collection of songs and dance music, written and compiled by Ignatius Sancho.

  “I have a dreadful singing voice,” Mr. MacLean warned her. “But you did say you liked noise. Is Mr. Sancho a famous British musician?”

  She pressed the book to her bosom. “You don’t know who Ignatius Sancho is?”

  “Plays the pianoforte?” he guessed. “Flute? Tin whistle? Or is he more of a bagpipes-and-lute sort of fellow?”

  This was why she could indulge no flights of fancy toward Mr. MacLean. It had nothing to do with her work commitments, or him being a passing tourist. They were too different.

  “Ignatius Sancho was born into slavery in the middle of the sea on a crowded slave ship. He learnt to read and later became a butler, a composer, an actor, a shopkeeper… and an important leader and source of knowledge for abolitionists, due to his many writings about the atrocities of slavery. He was the first Black man known to vote in our parliamentary elections. I have a two-volume copy of his collected letters, if you’d like to read them.”

  “I think I would like to,” Mr. MacLean said, surprising her. “Thank you.”

  “Everyone should read them. You’ve traveled extensively. In how many places have you seen fair and equitable treatment of Black people?”

  “I’ve only traveled Scotland and England,” he answered, his eyes serious. “And I can’t say that those are the words I would use to describe what I’ve seen.”

  She inclined her head. At least he was honest.

  “London is likely both the best and the worst,” he mused. “Outside of aristocratic circles, there’s a fairly large population of free Black people, as well as people from any number of countries and cultures. But beyond London, I’ve not seen many thriving communities, much less many examples of coexisting in a way I’d claim resembled ‘fair and equitable.’ Abolition is the only ethical stance, but of course just the beginning.”

  Angelica handed back the books. She respected Mr. MacLean for not only being able to see the truth, but to say it. One did not always like the things the truth exposed.

  “My relatives cannot stand that I live so far away,” she confessed. “There are other people of African descent here in Cressmouth, but of course not as many as London. Until they came to visit, my family didn’t believe me when I insisted my fellow villagers generally treat us with the same respect they’d give any other neighbor. We’re not just welcome here. Cressmouth belongs to all of us.”

  Mr. MacLean tilted his head in speculation. “What about the tourists?”

  “Many of them are wonderful.” They delighted in her creations and lined her pockets with gold. “Some of them treat all of us like quaint menagerie specimens, regardless of color.” But their coins spent just the same as any other. “As for the rest...” She lifted a shoulder. “The bad ones aren’t any worse than the knaves you’d find anywhere else.”

  “That seems a low bar to clear,” he murmured. His gaze held hers. “Are you happy here?”

  Happy? What was happy? She hadn’t been happy in London, and she was too busy to worry about such things here. She was happy once a year, when her family came up to spend Yuletide in the castle.

  She’d be with them now if it weren’t for all this work. An hour or two with her cousins and nieces and nephews in the evenings before falling into bed exhausted wasn’t nearly enough time.

  Soon, she promised herself. She’d be finished with her responsibilities by Christmas and could enjoy her family until Twelfth Night.

  “Read aloud from whichever one you like.” She picked up her tools, then paused. “What made you choose Ignatius Sancho if you didn’t know who he was?”

  “Oh, I didn’t choose him. He was foisted upon me, along with the metamorphic rock and the parables. I was going to bring you The Venetian Sorceress or The Castle of Wolfenbach. I might be able to quote them by heart, if you like.”

  “Foisted upon you?” she repeated. “How does one find oneself the unwilling recipient of guides for geologists?”

  “Due to an ill-tempered cat,” he replied earnestly, “and a particular young lady who looks a bit like...” He pulled a notebook and a pencil from an inner waistcoat pocket and sketched a few lines on one of the pages. “…this.”

  He faced the notebook in her direction.

  Angelica’s friend Virginia gazed back at her as though she’d posed for the portrait.

  Something Virginia would never do.

  “I cannot believe you drew that so quickly!”

  “I don’t know her name,” he explained, “which made this the most expedient way to convey her identity.”

  “Expedient?” she sputtered. “Why didn’t you tell me you were an artist?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “I’m not an artist. Artists carry arty things about. I have a pencil and a notebook, and sometimes I draw things.” He seemed to think this over. “I will have to paint a few dozen illustrations when my business partner arrives.” He shook his head. “An anomaly. My watercolors won’t be part of the real catalogue. We’ll employ a skilled professional once everything goes through.”

  She pursed her lips. “I haven’t seen you paint, but if your efforts are anywhere near as ‘amateur’ as that portrait you just sketched, something smells of false modesty.”

  “No, no, no.” His eyes widened earnestly. “I’m unquestionably talented at art. But I’m not an artist. I’m a wanderer. I wander. It may or may not be what I do best, but it’s who I am.”

  Her fingers embossed mistletoe into the adornment. “Is that why you’re here? You wandered into town, and then into my shop?”

  “In a sense. I wandered into your shop that first day, and then kept coming back because I liked what I found. I wouldn’t have chosen Cressmouth, but I needed an audience with Nottingvale, and I’ve already been to London. I won’t visit the same town twice,” he added, as though that explained anything.

  Or perhaps it did. Maybe that last aside was meant to remind them both that he would soon be gone and would not be coming back.

  “Don’t you ever want to stay in one place?”

  “I have a noble mission,” he replied without hesitation. “My constant travels are what will initially spread the news—and the excitement—about Fit for a Duke.”

  “And then after that?”

  “Growth will be self-sustaining, with or without my help.” From the corner of her eye, she watched him sketch idly in his notebook.

  “I meant, and then you’ll find something else to do?”

  “Finding things is my specialty.” His pencil flew across the page. “That’s how Fit for a Duke began—I found Calvin. Before that, it was clock-making. And before that, ormolu-weaving. That’s the best part of roving about. I find people who aren’t as successful as they ought to be. I invest in them, which pays off for everyone. What price is ten percent for a year, when they’re suddenly earning dozens or even a hundred times more than they were before?”

  Angelica set a trio of paste diamonds in silence. She was impressed despite herself. Providing opportunities to those who would not otherwise have them was not something she could criticize. It was what she had always wanted for herself, and precisely how she’d ended up in Cressmouth… with terms that had cost her years with her family.

  This time, she would succeed on her own.

  “Wait,” she said. “You didn’t say your friend was going to owe you ten percent for a year. You called him your business partner.”

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “This one isn’t temporary. Fit for a Duke is special. Nottingvale will own a small percen
t, and Calvin and I will split the rest.”

  “What makes this different? It looks more profitable?”

  He waved a hand as though money were the least of his concerns. “It has the potential to be ubiquitous. If everything goes to plan, five years from now—maybe less—everyone in Britain will have heard of us.” His eyes glittered. “If a catalogue for a company I’ve created is on everyone’s table, no one can deny my success.”

  Oh, Angelica wasn’t too sure about that. Other people had all sorts of ways to decide you weren’t living up to your potential. Even those who meant well. There were plenty of friends and family members who thought her unnatural because she’d chosen to run a jeweler’s shop instead of starting a family.

  But she understood what drove him. The wish for status, for unarguable proof of her worth. All the people who thought nothing of asking her when she was going to be a wife wouldn’t think so little of her talent if her jewelry was the talk of England.

  As it was, her shop was barely the talk of her village. Wasn’t that why she’d agreed to take on more projects than she had time for? Once her jeweled holly sprigs were the stars of the Christmas festivities, and her name was featured in the Cressmouth Gazette, she too would have something to hold up and point to whenever someone dared question her success.

  “You’d never go back to London?” she asked.

  “I’ve been there before.”

  “Have you been everywhere in London?” she challenged. “What about Fournier Street in Spitalfields?”

  Rather than reply, he flipped to a new page in his notebook and sketched long, sweeping lines, followed by a flurry of shorter, lighter strokes. He held up the page when he finished.

  Her pulse scattered.

  It was her old neighborhood. Exactly as it had looked the year before she’d moved to Cressmouth. The same homes, the same shops. Her family’s awning was right there at the edge of the paper. Her breath caught as a white-hot burst of homesickness shot through her.

  “What is it?” he asked, concerned.

  “I spent the first twenty years of my life right there.” She pointed with her cross-pein hammer. “I have two communities. Cressmouth is one, and that’s the other.”

  She regretted it as soon as she said it. It sounded like bragging. She had two homes, and he had none.

  Even if he liked it that way, she could not help but feel sorry for him.

  He tucked the notebook in his pocket.

  “What are you going to do for Christmas?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said flatly. “Wander to the next town.”

  His tone closed the topic. Not that she had more to say. What was she to do, invite him to join her family holiday? She could just imagine the looks on their faces. Besides, Mr. MacLean was standing in the most Christmassy village in all of England. If he hadn’t found anything yet that tempted him, Angelica’s invitation wasn’t going to.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Would you go back to London?”

  “In a heartbeat. But I don’t know if I’d stay. Ironically, I have more opportunities here.” She adjusted her swage. “When I met Mr. Marlowe, his Christmas castle was already a brilliant success, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted an entire Yuletide village. To do that, Cressmouth needed to offer everything any tourist might desire.”

  “Not just practical needs, like a blacksmith, a bakery, a dairy,” Mr. MacLean said slowly. “He wasn’t competing with other villages. He was competing with London. He needed to offer the best of the best, so that people needn’t decide between seasonal destinations. There’d be no choice to make, if Cressmouth was the obvious answer.”

  “Which was why it was flattering for Mr. Marlowe to choose me,” Angelica said. The expressions on her family’s faces had been unforgettable. “Of course, no dreams come true for free.”

  He raised his brows. “Mr. Marlowe charged you money to move from London to this tiny village?”

  “He didn’t, actually. He gave me a private suite in the castle, and free use of this shop. If I left Cressmouth before seven years were through—left for any reason, for even a single night—the arrangement was off, and I would owe rent on both places for every day that I’d been here. But if I stayed the seven years, both the shop and the castle living quarters would be mine outright.”

  “That son-of-a...” Mr. MacLean coughed into his fist. “You couldn’t have so much as a holiday. Leaving would beggar you.”

  She nodded. “But the cost wasn’t just monetary. I missed the birth of my niece, the death of a childhood friend. My relatives don’t understand. Oh, they comprehend the mechanics of the agreement, and how well it ties my hands. What they don’t understand is why I signed it.”

  “Would you have had a shop of your own if you’d stayed in London?”

  “Not even a workbench,” she said quietly.

  “Then I understand why you signed. You wanted to be yourself. To be self-sufficient. To do something you were passionate about, and proud of.” His eyes were bright. “In your shoes, I would have signed it, too.”

  She shook her head. “Family is supposed to come first.”

  He frowned. “Then why wouldn’t you have come first, to them? Aren’t you family, too?”

  She stared back at him, speechless. It was not an argument that had ever been made on her behalf before.

  “I’m part of the family,” she stammered. “Because I can’t spend Christmastide with them, they come up and stay in the castle. You’d be surprised how many aunts and cousins can fit in one suite. The exorbitant prices that castle charges tourists for a single night’s stay... Instead, they have free lodgings, free food, and free entertainment because of me. It’s a holiday they could never have dreamed of, if I hadn’t signed that agreement. They wouldn’t have this opportunity without me.”

  “That’s not what you want, is it?” His gaze held hers. “You don’t want to be the person they visit because of a free room at the inn. You want to be the cousin they’re proud to be related to because she’s a talented jeweler worthy of admiration and respect.”

  “It’ll be seven years this Christmas,” she said with a sigh. “I thought I’d be a success by now.”

  “Aren’t you?” His voice was softer. Closer. He was no longer tucked safely at the other end of the long counter, but leaning on his elbow at a distance close enough to touch. “You look like a successful woman to me.”

  She didn’t answer. Her throat was too dry.

  “Your friend didn’t ask you to design ten important adornments at the last minute because you’re the only jeweler in Cressmouth,” he continued. “She asked because she knew you would succeed. That whatever you created would be worth writing about in the newspaper. She came to you because you’re splendid at what you do.”

  Her fingers shook. She set down the hammer and swage.

  He reached for her hand.

  She placed hers in his without question.

  He brought her fingers to his lips and pressed a soft, slow kiss to her knuckles without taking his eyes from hers. Then he cradled her trembling palm in his and began to massage the muscles. It should have been presumptuous. Instead, it was perfect.

  Had she claimed there wasn’t enough wine in England for them to kiss? She was beginning to think there was no force in England powerful enough to stop it from happening.

  Not that Mr. MacLean would be stealing anything. If Angelica found herself in his arms...

  It would be because she’d launched herself there willingly.

  Chapter 7

  By the fifth day of being snowed in, in a tiny village, with no hope of escape, Jonathan would have expected to be going none-too-quietly mad.

  Instead, he was perched on a wooden stool at the long oak counter in Miss Parker’s jeweler’s shop. He read aloud from a leather-bound collection of Ignatius Sancho’s letters whenever Miss Parker was between customers and trying to concentrate on the adornments she was making for the upcoming Yuletide ball at Marlowe Cast
le.

  According to her, Jonathan’s rugged, manly Scottish burr was the perfect tone and volume to disregard completely whilst molding gold or setting jewels. Of course, this was said with a smile. Far from ignoring his endless chatter, she seemed to truly enjoy it. Not with casual amusement, as a hackney driver or haberdasher might. Miss Parker listened carefully. She wanted to hear Jonathan’s stories. She liked his chatter. It was dizzying.

  The frequent conversations that punctuated today’s readings were just as interesting and elucidating as the text itself. Jonathan found himself engaging with the material—with Miss Parker—on a level far more profound than his usual superficial interactions. He wasn’t talking at her. These discussions were something they did together.

  Jonathan tried to pretend that entertainment was the only reason he was doing this: perhaps to learn something whilst distracting himself from his wintry plight.

  But the truth was, it didn’t feel like a plight. He looked forward to each new morning, because it was another opportunity to see Miss Parker. If she asked it of him, he would have climbed atop his stool and quoted geology texts all day. He liked watching her work.

  He liked watching her, full stop.

  Her tight black curls, escaping what was meant to be a severe, no-nonsense bun. Her wide brown eyes, framed by curling black lashes. Her dimpled cheeks and kissable lips. The column of her throat, her pulse fluttering at the base. The soft brown skin that invited his touch. The swell of her bosom, displayed to advantage in a pale pink bodice. Just beneath it, the satin ribbon that encircled her ribs. The long, billowing pink skirts that merely hinted at the ample curves beneath. He could scarcely look at her without his heart thumping wildly.

  Jonathan must have stopped reading aloud. Miss Parker wasn’t looking at the beautiful piece she was crafting in her hands, but rather across the counter at him.

  He should have moved the stool much farther than an arm’s length away. If he put down the book and moved his hand a little to the right, and if she moved hers a little to his left, their fingers would touch.

  It shouldn’t feel salacious. He touched her fingers twice a day now, to massage the tension from her hands. He longed to continue his exploratory path up her palms, past her wrists, to the tender skin on the inside of her forearms. He wanted to feel her cheek in his hand, her bodice pressed against him, her curves beneath his palms.