Betrothed by Christmas

by Jess Michaels

Their lips seemed to meet of their own accord, as if they were meant to be together always. Always meant to be making this taut pleasure. Always searching for ways to be closer.

  And so she searched too, her kiss a slow exploration of his mouth and tongue. He let her set the pace, let her kiss when she would and where she willed, sliding her lips along the firm line of his jaw, finding the salt-kissed corner of his eye. Marveling at the wonder and contradiction that was Simon Cathcart.

  He was different to her now—a different man than the simple, helpful fellow no one could have any expectation of. A real man, and not a pasteboard cutout of a masculine wallflower whose help she needed. A person who might have needs and wants of his own.

  What were they?

  “Privacy and peace,” she murmured, because that was what she wanted more than anything.

  “Oh, aye,” he agreed. “Just the thing for kissing—and other things—privacy and peace.”

  Other things. Heat pooled deep in her body at the thought.

  Tamsin closed her eyes to savor the sensation, the keen tension that coursed through her veins at his words. If he did other things with the same grace and ease that he kissed—

  “Are you all to rights, Miss T?”

  “I’m not sure.” She straightened her skirts as if it would straighten out her spine, and tucked her loosened hair back behind her ear as if she could tuck away her loosening morals. “I feel all at sixes and sevens. Maybe even eights.”

  She was happy to make him smile. “You’ll do, Miss T, you’ll do nicely.”

  “Thank you.” But she was anxious for her own performance—she had complained of slop and press but heaven forefend she had done either. “Was it all right then, the kissing, do you think?”

  “Superb,” he said. “Eminently gratifying.”

  The heat in her veins spread across her skin to other, less sensible parts of her body. “Ah. Good then. That’s good.” She cleared her own throat. “Thank you for being so accommodating. And understanding.”

  “Happy to be of some use. Best to know the strength of your powder before you light your charge.”

  For some reason she could not presently fathom, his cheerful military metaphors could not help but make her smile. “And we’ll light the charge tonight.”

  “Your wish is my command, Miss T. Give your mama quite the show, what?”

  The reference to her mama reminded Tamsin it was past time she got back—even if Mama wasn’t there, the others in her party might be looking for her. “Yes. At the Grenville musicale.” Mama had heard that the Duke of Albany’s heir, Lord James Beauclerc, was musical.

  “The library?”

  “No.” Tamsin knew from previous visits to the Grenville mansion that the library was dangerously close to the music room. “The orangery is more private. Although Mama…”

  Mama was so stubbornly set against Tamsin’s plans that some alternative arrangement needed to be made. “I fear we may have to ask Lady Evangeline to be our witness after all, though she is so well known that I fear word of our…” She forced herself not to use the word tryst. “…encounter would be spread too widely. Especially after she did urge us to discretion.”

  “Did she? Tell you what—I’ll enlist someone to find us, or report us to your mother. She can hardly ignore the offense if someone else has witnessed it, what?”

  Tamsin was no longer sanguine about anything her mama might do. Her own determination was clearly inherited from that lady, who did not give up easily. “If you think they could be discreet?”

  “Oh, aye—as discreet and silent as a tomb. I’ve a mind to rig up my pal Sergeant Mahoney in an officer’s uniform and trot him out, what? No one will know who he is, but your mama is bound to listen to a man in scarlet regimentals. You leave it to me.”

  She did. Mostly because it seemed a serviceable enough plan, but also because she was too happy, too enchanted with his kisses to think straight. She felt marvelous—giddy and exhausted and exhilarated all at the same time. So exhilarated she couldn’t stop herself from rising up on the tips of her skates and pressing a kiss to his lovely dimpled cheek. From wishing she might kiss him more.

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “Simon, please.”

  “Simon, then.”

  He raised her hands to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Until tonight then, Tamsin.”

  She was such a bonfire of hope, it was a wonder she didn’t go up in flames right there in the snow. “Until tonight.

  Chapter 11

  By ten o’clock that night, Tamsin was alive with something more than mere anticipation—she was tingling with an exquisite sort of happiness. Beneath the layers of linen and silk and velvet, her heart was dancing a lively reel within her chest. Her toes tapped against the floor. She hummed along with the orchestra’s tune.

  It was almost as if she were…happy.

  But of course she was happy. Tonight she would accomplish what she wanted—she was sure of it. Her emotions were not truly engaged with Simon himself, but with the situation. It was only her more excitable sensibilities that made her so giddy.

  “Tamsin! What is wrong with you?” her mama complained. “Sit still. You haven’t attended to a word I’ve said.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama, but—”

  “No buts.” Her mother closed her eyes to signal that there would be no further discussion. “And no running off to dark corners with the likes of that misbegotten Colonel Cathcart, who is exactly the sort of ne’er-do-well you once complained about.”

  “Not exactly,” Tamsin protested.

  “Exactly,” her mama pronounced with far more force than Tamsin liked.

  Mama’s insistence was going to play havoc with Tamsin’s plans if she wasn’t careful. But at least it meant Mama was already on her guard, and their discovery would be quick and she would not have to endure the exquisite torture of standing in Simon’s arms for overlong.

  “You’ll need to make yourself more agreeable to the gentlemen, my dear, if you want to have any chance. No one likes a judgmental, standoffish girl.”

  Especially not the judgmental men. But that was—

  “—the way of the world,” her mother continued as if she had read her daughter’s mind. “You must present yourself as amiable and desirable to the gentlemen—”

  “Oh, I’m desirable,” Tamsin murmured. She had felt the evidence of Simon’s desire in the throes of their intimate embrace. And when he had kissed her in the Serpentine. And kissed and kissed her until her lips had felt strange and—

  “Tamsin!” Her mama’s brow grew thunderous. “I declare, it’s almost as if you want to marry that idiot cousin of yours.”

  For a moment Tamsin’s heart had suggested another name—another supposed idiot, a different sort of man from Cousin Edward entirely. But she did not mean to marry Simon Cathcart any more than she would Cousin Edward. And Simon didn’t want to marry her. He didn’t want to marry at all. So there was an end to that.

  “I do not want to marry Cousin Edward, Mama.”

  “Then apply yourself to finding someone else—someone else suitable!”

  “Suitable being rich and titled.”

  “Certainly rich, if you’d like to have any comfort, for your father is like to settle nothing on you if you do not marry well, or marry Cousin Edward.” She shuddered, as if even saying the dreaded man’s name was distasteful. “Odious man—you know he’s made it plain that he will do nothing for me once your father is dead.”

  “What?” This was news to Tamsin, who, if she had not hoped for better for herself, had at least assumed better for her mother.

  “Edward even took the time,” her mother went on, “to inform me that he’s made a thorough inventory of the furnishings of Five Bells so he’ll know if I’ve attempted to abscond—abscond, he said!—with anything when I’m asked to make my removal. Abscond from my own house, with my own things that I’ve had about me all my life. Why, the very nerve of him. Ungrateful, hateful odious
man.”

  Tamsin could only agree with her about Cousin Edward. But what was she to do? Could she really set herself to marry one of the men arrayed before her in the music room? The prospect was not encouraging. “I’ll do my best, Mama. For us both.”

  Mama reached out to take her hand. “Please see that you do. You must understand. You are our only hope.”

  Mama’s words drowned out all else, muting the rest of the chatter, and nearly all of the music. Even as it played, Tamsin could hear nothing else.

  It was not only her future that she played with, but her mother’s, and very likely her sisters’ as well. What would happen to her quiet, shy older sister Anne, as well as Mary, Edwina and sweet young Lolly, if Cousin Edward put them out? It might happen—even in the Peace, Papa was still a military man, away on his ships in harm’s way for most of the year.

  She had grown too accustomed to dismissing the chance of his death from her mind. She had put the danger, the risk to them all, out of her mind. She had thought only of herself, and what she wanted, not understanding how their fates might be so tied together.

  And so when the time came at last to keep her appointment with Colonel Cathcart in the orangery, every instinct told her to stay put. To turn away from the selfish course she had set.

  But she could not just sit. It would be intolerably rude were she not to give him some explanation. Some accounting of why she had changed her mind. “If you’ll excuse me, Mama—”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The withdrawing room.” Tamsin was ashamed of how easily the little lies came from her tongue. She would need to change that. She would have to apply herself to reforming her character.

  Just as soon as she spoke to Colonel Cathcart, and told him she had had a change of heart. And a change of several other organs, too.

  But there he was, awaiting her in the corridor. “Miss T! Well met. Off we go, what?”

  A small pain, as if her heart were tearing, just a little, gripped her chest. He was so handsome. So smiling and accommodating. She really was going to miss him and his cheerful, kind ways.

  “Left here, Miss T.” He put a light hand to her elbow to guide her around a corner and into the tall stone room lined with fruit and palm trees kept warm in the winter by glowing hot braziers. “Reconnoitered already, what? Always know the ground, Miss T. Always know the field of battle.”

  It was so like him—so instinctively military at the same time as being so offhand—that Tamsin felt herself smile. She was going to miss him. So very much.

  Because she truly did like him.

  Apart from the other things she liked. Things that had to end.

  And so she took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “I’m so sorry, Colonel Cathcart, but I’ve had a change of mind.”

  She put back her shoulders like a martyr entering the arena to face the lions, head held high, as straight as a promise

  Absolutely adorable.

  And absolutely unnecessary—he would rather do anything than cause her pain.

  And she looked pained, with a furrow pleated between her light brows and her sweet lips pressed together.

  “Right ho, Miss T.” Simon played the befuddled idiot, even as his heart—or was that a different part of his anatomy?—was sinking. “Change of mind about what, exactly?”

  “Our arrangement,” she said solemnly.

  “Right ho.” But he couldn’t keep the very real disappointment from his voice. “Do you mean you’d rather not be lightly ruined?”

  “I’m afraid not. Not that I haven’t enjoyed it—the attempts at ruination—along with your company, very much. But I must…I must do other things.”

  “What sorts of other things?” Perhaps she wanted something stronger than light ruination. Perhaps she thought he wasn’t up to the job.

  “I must think of my family. And do what’s right.”

  Simon had had a lifetime of doing what was right—what he was ordered, what needed to be done. He didn’t want to do it any longer. And he didn’t want her to do it either.

  But her eyes, so luminous and bright with tears, held his, and he could not hold on to his resolution. Or his resentment. “I see, Miss T. All for the good of the troops, what?”

  “Yes, indeed. For the good of my family. I’m so glad you understand.”

  “Don’t understand much.” He fell back upon his doltish persona to mask his disappointment. “But if you say so, Miss T.”

  “I do. This must be our last meeting. Though I do appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I am most grateful.” She put out her hand to shake.

  Simon stared at it. He knew he was meant to play the idiot and give her a naffy salute, or some such. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to kiss her.

  And so he asked, “Might I perhaps kiss you goodbye?”

  She went as pink as a sunset at the waning of the day, and tilted her head ever so slightly to the side. “Surely that would do no harm,” she murmured. Almost as if she were trying to convince herself.

  He would help her. “One last kiss, Miss T. Something to remember me by.”

  Her answer was so quiet he would not have heard it if he was not already leaning down. Already set to kiss her. “Yes.”

  He wanted to swoop down upon her lips and kiss her with every ounce of disappointment and need and hope in his body. But he had learned his lesson well. So he took a steadying breath. And focused his gaze upon her lovely lush lower lip. And asked in his idiot’s sort of way, “Not quite sure how one goes about a farewell kiss, Miss T? Do you know?”

  “Not really,” she said with a bittersweet, rueful smile that told him she was perhaps as reluctant to part as he.

  “Well, I suppose to give a proper farewell kiss, like in those books you’re so fond of, I’d need to get a vast deal closer.” He stepped so close the toes of his boots nudged against her slippers. “And if I were the one writing the book, the hero would take the heroine’s hand, so he could hold it one last time.” Simon followed this direction with the action, leaning closer still. “And then he’d clasp it to his chest, so she might feel the pounding of his heart. And then, I should think, he would lower his lips to hers.”

  All of this he did, until his lips were but a hairsbreadth from hers. And then she was leaning toward him, closing the last, desperate, unspannable inch. “And then what?”

  “And then I would kiss her.”

  Their mouths met as if of their own accord and meshed as if they had been made for each other, crafted by a benevolent creator to fit as perfectly as two halves of one whole. Her lips were still as soft, still as pliant. They moved ever so slightly against his, as if she, too, were holding back. As if she too feared the end as much as he.

  So he did nothing more to touch her, keeping only his lips pressed lightly to hers, tasting slowly, sipping slightly, waiting for want and need to build. Waiting for her to deepen the kiss and take something more. Take all she wanted.

  All he had to give.

  She did so, finally, settling her hands upon him, gripping his lapels, pulling him down to her, so he could not move away and leave her before she thought better of kissing in the brazier-lit dark.

  But she did not think better of it. She kissed him with her own want, her own need, sighing into his mouth, pressing her lush body nearer to his. Filling his mind and his senses with her.

  His hands went around her back, pulling her close, encouraging her to follow her own unspoken desires. Willing her not to be done with him.

  Kiss by kiss, he gave himself away, using every ounce of remembered skill, battering open the siege doors of his passion. Tasting her sweetness, and breathing in her delicate clean scent. Giving way to his own possibilities.

  What would it be like to keep such a lass forever? To have this sweetness and levelheaded charm in his life to ease his way? To drop his mask of idiocy and finally be completely himself?

  Whoever that was.

  “Simon,” she whispered.

 
; “Yes.” It was his only answer to anything she asked.

  “I think we ought to stop now.”

  Anything she asked but that.

  But stop he did, because he was a gentleman. And because he liked her. For herself alone and not only for her kisses.

  But nothing could ever be stopped completely, for the world turned, and even if plans changed, arrangements progressed on their own schedule.

  “I say.” A deep voice cleared its throat. “Is that you, Colonel Cathcart?”

  Mahoney, damn his eyes, right on cue. “Colonel, forgive my interruption.”

  And because fate was not in the least bit kind, a second voice joined Mahoney’s—Tamsin’s mama, looking at him like a French grenadier, ready to run him through with her saber.

  “Thomasina Elizabeth Lesley. For the last time, get yourself away from that man.”

  Chapter 12

  Two hours of applying herself to being agreeable to the assembled japes and jackanapes were almost more than Tamsin could stand. But stand she did, as well as dance, though her toes were frequently and painfully trod upon. Her mother had rung such a peal over her head that she dared not make so much as a peep.

  So she smiled with as much good humor as she could muster at every pronouncement that fell from the assembled jackanapes’ lips, just as her mama had adjured her. And was bored out of her skull.

  “And then I said, ‘Well, how’s a ruddy fellow supposed to know that, what?’” one of the titled jackasses—some lord or another—brayed.

  It annoyed her to hear Simon’s familiar way of ending a sentence from anyone but him—these fellows had none of Simon’s sunny, self-deprecating wit.

  She was annoyed enough to finally answer them. “By reading a book.”

  “What was that?” The fellow gaped at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Or no idea that she could speak. Or perhaps no experience in anyone having the temerity to speak to him in such a tone at all.

  Tamsin sighed and smiled just as her mother had instructed, to mitigate the sting of her words. “A book, Lord James. You might find such information in a book. The city is full of them, if you know where to look. If you’ll be so kind as to excuse me…”