Betrothed by Christmas

by Jess Michaels

  His hand went to the hem of her skirts, pushing aside the wool of her Spencer coat, gathering up the layers of skirt and petticoat to find the hem of the shorter shift beneath. He pulled the fine lawn taut beneath her long stays, tugging the neckline of her shift down just far enough to expose the tips of her breasts. “Perfect. So much lovelier without all that interfering cloth.”

  She felt imperfectly perfect—a diamond of the last water, perhaps, but not the least bit counterfeit.

  Especially not when Simon cupped her breasts within the confines of her stays, his clever, clever fingers rolling and tweaking her nipples into tight furls of needy pleasure. A low hum of something more, something deeper began to thrum within as his clever fingers plucked and played her body. And he knew just what chord to play.

  He rucked her skirts up to her thighs but raised them no higher. “Spread your legs for me, sweet,” he urged. His big hands covered her knees, pressing them lightly, showing her the way. Leading her to expose herself to his touch. “Yes,” he encouraged before he traced his beautifully articulate fingers along the length of her thighs until she thought she would burst from the anticipation.

  And then he cupped her mound, and it was…everything. “Just so,” his low voice crooned in her ear. “Exactly so.”

  He set his fingers in a gentle rhythm upon her until it was almost too much, the pleasure and need and achy, incandescent joy. Until it wasn’t enough, and she began to move her hips, chasing her rising passion, riding his hand as it played against her.

  “That’s the way of it.” He slowly slid one long finger within, and Tamsin felt her body clench and release and clench again in an agony of pleasure and anticipation.

  She turned her head toward him in mute appeal and he kissed her deeply, his tongue tangling with hers in rhythm with his hands. In the next moment, he eased another long finger alongside the first—a rush of heat and desire blossomed from her belly and spread to the edges of her being.

  Tamsin closed her eyes to stop thinking and only feel, as he touched and played and murmured. Her body wound itself higher and higher. Closer and closer to some unseen place—some not-so-distant meeting of mind and body and soul and pleasure so beautiful she wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time.

  She wanted this. She wanted more. She wanted nothing less than absolute bliss.

  Tamsin could not stop the sound of want and desire that flew from her lips when he touched her there, at the center of her pleasure and need, grazing ever so lightly against the sensitive nub his fingers exposed. She arched wildly one last time and he swallowed her cry as her climax shuddered through her, hot and delirious and imperfectly perfect.

  Simon wrapped his arms around her and held her, safe and secure, as she collapsed against his chest, sated and numb and more alive than she had ever felt before.

  She turned in his arms to hold him, to put her lips against the hollow of his throat and feel the strong pulsing of his blood and hear the hard pounding of his heart. “Heavens.”

  “One of the bright stars in the sky,” he said as he slowly and systematically began putting her clothes to rights as neatly as if he were a dresser.

  “You’d make some lucky woman a marvelous lady’s maid.”

  “Thank you.” He placed a sweet kiss upon her mouth. “As luck would have it, you are that woman.”

  “Lucky indeed.” Lucky to have found such a man, this strange, masculine wallflower.

  The coach began to slow, and Simon leaned over to check out the window. “We’re almost to Berkeley Square.”

  “I wish we would never arrive.” She wanted to stay with him, stay with the warm feeling of sated satisfaction as long as possible. But it was not possible. “Thank you,” Tamsin said as she checked her clothing and hair more attentively. She knew she must look a fright, but she was too happy and sated to care or blush. She was too happy to do anything but smile. “For everything.”

  “You are most welcome. Happy to help, what?”

  There it was—the return of his idiot’s persona, come back as if he’d never had a thought in the world of so competently and completely bringing her to a shattering climax not so many minutes before.

  “You don’t have to do that with me, Simon—talk like that.”

  For the briefest moment she thought she saw a spark of acuity—of consciousness—in his eyes. But then it was gone before she could name it. “No, with you I can be my muzzy-headed self. And you don’t care. That’s why I like you.”

  Like you.

  He liked her. Just as she was—by turns inexperienced and afraid, confident and curious to find out more about the world. More about life. He never questioned her choices or told her what to think. He never once corrected her.

  Simon Cathcart was that rarest of rare creatures—a man who could become her friend. Perhaps he already was.

  The only question remained—what was she going to do about it?

  Chapter 16

  Tamsin was happy to find her legs still worked when she alit from the carriage, and that she had enough presence of mind to remember her errand in Piccadilly before she could return home.

  But not even thoughts of Mama could turn her thoughts away from Simon, and the strange conundrum of his behavior. There had been nothing simple or sleepy or stupid about Simon today. He had spoken so directly, without any of his usual verbal tricks—the whats and right hos. He had acted for all the world like a man in full possession of his faculties until she had spoken to him about it.

  It was baffling.

  And intriguing.

  Tamsin found herself at Mattigan’s Bookshop, and went straight toward the high counter where Mr. Mattigan kept the coveted copies of the Lady’s Magazine and La Belle Assemblée, ensuring that customers would purchase the magazines before they pored through them. “One of each please, Mr. Mattigan.”

  “Nothing else for you, Miss Lesley?” Mattigan’s twinkling eyes peered over the top of his spectacles. “I still have a few copies of that new book by Maria Edgeworth you had your bright eye on—Patronage.”

  “Oh!” She had indeed looked at the novel on her previous visit—thinking she perhaps could purchase the book as a Christmas present for her sister Anne, who was deeply fond of Mrs. Edgeworth’s novels. But now she might use the gift as an excuse to return to Hampstead so the authoress herself might inscribe it. “Yes, please.”

  “Just along there.” Mr. Mattigan gestured to the shelves. “You know the way.”

  Tamsin did indeed know the way. But she had to hurry—she had already been gone many hours more than her mama would like.

  She darted into the row of novels, only to come face to face with— “Lady Evangeline!” What a happy coincidence—she could use their meeting as an acceptable excuse for her lateness. “What a pleasure it is to see you here.”

  Though she should not have been surprised—Lady Evangeline might not have identified herself as a bluestocking, but clearly she was a lady of progressive thinking.

  “Indeed.” Lady Evangeline pressed Tamsin’s hand warmly. “I have found myself looking for you since our last meeting, and wondering about you and your…your plan.”

  “Yes, my plan.” It had seemed simple enough—to lightly ruin oneself. But in actuality, there was nothing simple about what had just happened in the carriage. Nothing simple about the way she was beginning to feel for Simon. But she could hardly tell Lady Evangeline that. And certainly not in such a public place.

  But her blushing face must have betrayed her.

  “Come, sit with me by the fire,” Lady Evangeline offered, taking Tamsin’s hand, and leading her to the private reading space near the back of the shop. “How is it really going between you and Simon?”

  “Fine.” Tamsin firmed her voice in an attempt to sound brisk and easy, anxious not to betray herself with any more blushes. “Perfectly fine, thank you.”

  And he was—the most perfectly fine, most perfectly gentlemanly man in all of creation.

  As Lad
y Evangeline expressed her approval, Tamsin took a deep breath and bit down on the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. And to keep herself from confessing all.

  “…I am also pursuing a gentleman at this time, though it is with an eye toward marriage.”

  “Marriage!” Tamsin could not keep her surprise from her voice, though she worked to hide her dismay. What would it be like to be pursuing marriage to Simon, instead of chasing ruination? “Let me be the first to wish you happy. Who is the lucky gentleman?” Some duke or marquess, no doubt. The news would send Mama into another paroxysm of hope and renew her push for Tamsin to seek out a nobleman. Poor Lord James Beauclerc would be in for an unfortunate amount of toadying manipulation from Mama—if he wasn’t Lady Evangeline’s choice.

  “Henry Killam,” Lady Evangeline said.

  Tamsin didn’t know when she had last been so surprised.

  No, she knew exactly when she had been more surprised—less than an hour ago when Simon Cathcart had put his lips and his hands upon her—

  Tamsin cleared her throat, and strove for something to the point about the Honorable Mr. Killam, who didn’t seem at all the sort of gentleman a peeress like Lady Evangeline would seek for a husband—while the lady had advised Tamsin to seek a masculine wallflower, she had never indicated that she would do so herself. “You are to be congratulated in your choice. I understand now why you discouraged me from choosing Mr. Killam for my own plans.”

  “Considering how well your plans with Simon appear to be progressing, I hope you are glad for that?”

  “Indeed.” Tamsin felt her face warm with telltale heat. Her plans had progressed far beyond her expectations, hadn’t they? “Yes, it is indeed all for the best.”

  Ruination was what was best for her, wasn’t it? She wasn’t going to find a suitable masculine wallflower for a husband in the time Mama had allotted—Simon had on numerous occasions stated that marriage was not for him. “Rather not get married myself,” he had said, and “no want to be trapped…”

  Or was that her?

  But it was Lady Evangeline who wanted to get married, though she looked…uncharacteristically wistful. “Lady Evangeline? I don’t want to intrude, but since you were kind enough to assist and advise me…” Tamsin trailed off, unsure how one asked such a woman as Lady Evangeline if anything was wrong. She was sure to tell her everything was fine, even if it were a lie. Or else she would simply tell Tamsin off for being too presumptuous. “I hope your plans with Mr. Killam are progressing according to your wishes?”

  “Fine,” Lady Evangeline assured her with a bright, serene smile. “It’s all very fine.”

  “Lovely.” Tamsin was glad to hear it. At least one of them should get their heart’s desire. It wasn’t Lady Evangeline’s fault that Tamsin’s heart seemed to have changed its mind without consulting her.

  Tamsin strove to be grateful. “I am very glad to have met with you here. Indeed, I had hoped I might. I must confess to having used your good name to further my plans”—she lowered her voice to the barest whisper—“with Colonel Cathcart. I hope you will forgive me for being so bold as to use your name—telling my mama I was meeting you here, when in reality I was engaged in meeting the colonel.”

  But Lady Evangeline wasn’t attending her—she was staring off into space with that beautiful but somehow bittersweet look of wistfulness across her face.

  “Lady Evangeline?” Tamsin called softly, not wanting to impose herself. “Lady Evangeline, are you well?” She reached out a gentle hand.

  “Yes.” The lady recalled herself with a brisk breath. “And please, you must call me Evangeline, for we are friends, are we not?”

  “Indeed, I would be honored. As I would be if you would call me Tamsin.”

  “Tamsin.” That beautiful, luminous smile warmed her new friend’s face. “And of course you may use my name to further your plans with Simon. It’s well known that I favor Mattigan’s with my custom and am regularly to be found here.” She stood. “But I realize I have another appointment that slipped my mind.”

  “Of course.” Tamsin rose to take her leave.

  “I really do love seeing you, my friend. Perhaps before the new year, you and I could meet. I’ll send you an invitation to tea.”

  “I would be honored,” Tamsin said again, sensible of all the advantage Lady Evangeline conferred upon her, though she knew that Tamsin’s feet were set on the road to ruination. “It was lovely seeing you again.”

  Lady Evangeline smiled and took her leave. “Good day!”

  “Good day,” Tamsin repeated, though her friend had already passed out of earshot.

  And just as well—the clock at the front of the shop chimed out the hour, sending Tamsin scurrying for the front desk to purchase her wares, so she could run for home.

  She had been six hours away.

  She’d be lucky if there were only hell to pay.

  Chapter 17

  “Well, you seem to have made a rather long exercise of your errand.” Mama’s cool voice carried into the corridor and warned Tamsin to think better of rushing by.

  “Yes, thank you.” Tamsin bustled purposefully into the drawing room where her mama was taking her tea. “I took a long walk before I went to the bookstore—I needed to think.” It was the best and only excuse she could think of—Mama had been used to Tamsin and her sister Anne taking long walks at home in the country. “And I met with Lady Evangeline at Mattigan’s. We talked for some time.”

  “Very nice.” But her mother was not yet convinced. “Your color is high,” she observed. “I hope you didn’t take a chill?”

  “I assure you, I was well bundled—I hardly felt the cold at all.” This at least was true. She had felt many other things over the course of the past few hours, but not the kind of chill her mama worried about. Tamsin plastered an unconcerned smile upon her face. “Here are your magazines.”

  “Thank you.” But Mama did not look pleased. She was looking at Tamsin with something more than mere concern—something that was perilously close to censure. “I hope, while you were taking your very long walk in the cold and talking with Lady Evangeline, that you were thinking about your situation. We’ve had nigh unto a month here, Tamsin. A month full of parties and balls full of handsome, eligible men—handsome, eligible, marriageable men. And still here we are, with you disappearing from the dance floor with ne’er-do-well, living-with-his-rich-relations, dim-witted, sold-out officers, and taking very long walks the whole day through.”

  Tamsin kept herself from leaping to that particular officer’s defense by telling her mama that he wasn’t nearly so dim-witted as people liked to think. Or perhaps, as he wanted them to think—she wasn’t sure which. But discretion was definitely the better part of conduct, so she kept mum.

  Yet some portion of the truth was overdue—Mama was too intelligent to entirely bamboozle. “I also met with some friends of Aunt Dahlia’s. Some bluestockings.” She put up her chin, for she wasn’t ashamed in the least. “I went to Hampstead to meet Joanna Baillie, the playwright, and Anna Barbauld and her niece, Lucy Aiken, and the novelist Maria Edgeworth.”

  “Hampstead?” From her tone, one might think Tamsin had gone to the devil and not the heath. Mama’s mouth pinched in a tight show of indignation. “I should have suspected as much, though my sister promised me she would not interfere.”

  “Don’t blame, Aunt Dahlia, Mama. This was something I arranged of my own accord.”

  “Oh, you and your arrangements,” Mama scoffed. “Always thinking you can arrange things the way you like. What good have those arrangements done you? How will they settle your future if it is to be anything other than strife and woe.”

  As little as Tamsin wanted to enter into argument with her mother, she could not let the point pass. “The life of a bluestocking is not strife and woe.”

  “Perhaps not,” her mother countered. “But if you don’t reconcile yourself to finding a more suitable husband, your life with your cousin Edward will be nothin
g but strife and woe, for you’re too determined to have your own way, and too combative to have anything but a dreadful time with him. You’re sharp chalk to his moldy cheese, but he’ll take the upper hand—and if he’s anything like his father, the baronet, he’ll take that hand to you. Is that what you want?”

  “No!” Tamsin cried. “You know I revile him.”

  “Then you must find an alternative.” Mama punctuated each word for emphasis. “Or there will be no money. Do you not understand that? A few thousand pounds of prize money your father sends home will not see us through our days when Cousin Edward takes over the manor and farm. He will put me and your sisters out. And you too, if you disoblige him by still being about after not marrying him. Is that what you want?”

  Tamsin had heard such arguments before—they were the reason why she was in London, why she had consented to this farce, in the first place. “Why must it be my job to sacrifice myself to secure everyone else?”

  “Why must it be such a sacrifice to marry a rich, handsome man of your choosing? That is why I have brought you here—you and not one of your sisters, who are not so beautiful as you—so you may escape both Edward and poverty.”

  “Why must I do it now? What is the unholy rush?”

  “London is expensive, and money does not grow like mistletoe on trees. You had until Christmas to get yourself betrothed. Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that we must go home? That you have other sisters I must see to besides yourself?”

  Tamsin was at the end of her patience with this line of thought. “Then go to them, I beg you. Go home for Christmas and leave me with Aunt Dahlia. Give me time to find someone who will truly suit.”

  “Leave you with Dahlia!” Mama’s face crumpled into her handkerchief. “You have no idea how that wounds me—or how it pained me when she first suggested it, and pains me still. That you prefer to go to her after all I’ve done for you—all the trouble and expense, for where do you think the money for this rented house, for this season came from? From my portion. From what little money I will have to live on when I am a widow and your father’s odious nephew puts us out. I spent that on you.”