Mismatched Under the Mistletoe

by Michaels, Jess

  “I think Lady Honoria was trying to shake hers off,” he said.

  She stopped on the path with a gasp. “Was she? I didn’t even notice.”

  “She leaned back so far I thought she was trying to detach her arm rather than untie the ribbon,” he said.

  She bent at the waist as laughter rocked her. “Well, birds are not for everyone. I feel terrible that they are going to have to endure so many. But it is for a good cause.”

  He motioned her to walk again, and she did. This time the silence was more comfortable, but it remained charged. “I know you have something to say,” she said at last. “I can practically hear that mind of yours buzzing.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m just realizing how truly invested you are in this endeavor, Emily. I thought it was a lark, one of your fantastical ideas, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She ignored him and kept walking. The rest of the party had gathered in the clearing where tables were set up and a spread of delightful winter delicacies awaited. A few more steps and she would be safe from Cav’s watchful eyes and his questions that poked into the softer parts of her.

  Places he likely shouldn’t go, no matter how friendly they were.

  “Emily,” he said, his tone suddenly firmer. He caught her hand, and she was kept from going down the hill to her guests. She pivoted slowly and faced him. His blonde curls had been stirred by the light breeze as they walked, and she felt the strongest desire to reach up and smooth them. Her gaze flickered unexpectedly to his lips, a little darker in the cold air. Full, though. The kind of lips other women dreamed of kissing.

  Not her. Other women.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice suddenly lower, rougher.

  She swallowed hard and looked down at the others milling about, some still in their original pairings, some broken off in other groups. She ought to be marking that, adding it to her notebook of what was working and what wasn’t.

  Instead she tried to find an answer for a man who knew her almost as well as she knew herself.

  “I had love,” she whispered, bent her head to look at the brown grass at her feet. “And like this grass, it died. But I know the power of it. The beauty of finding a person who completes your heart.”

  She looked up and expected Cav to have sympathy on his face. Understanding. That was his usual expression when they discussed the past, Andrew, what they had both lost.

  Today, though, it was different. His expression was guarded, those full lips now pressed together as if he were…upset at the topic. His body was filled with tension, his fingers flexing open and shut at his side.

  “You can’t force that, though, Emily,” he said softly. “I know that better than most. You can’t make people love each other by marching them down to the clearing and giving them punch.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “I’m…not trying to make them. I just think everyone deserves love. Or at least a chance at it. Don’t you believe that?”

  “Yes,” he said, his tone a little strangled.

  She worried her lip. This exchange was troubling. Not what she had expected. She moved a step closer to him, perhaps too close. Certainly she felt too close now, though they’d been this close while dancing or when he helped her from a carriage. Why did this feel so different than those other times?

  “What about you? Is there anyone you would like to…” Her tongue suddenly felt thick and she had to force the next words from her lips. “…match with?”

  He held her stare for what felt like forever. Then he caught her hand in his and squeezed. “I’ll take care of my own match, Emily. Now let’s join them, shall we?”

  He released her and walked off down the hill and into the crowd. She forced herself to move, to catch up.

  Over the years, she had heard many people ask Cav about his intentions, his heart. He’d always laughed them off. But today he hadn’t denied that there was some woman he was hoping to match with. Someone specific. Who was she? Was she here?

  And why did that thought make her head spin and her knees go weak? Cavendish was her friend. She should be happy he was considering the future—it was troubling that he had never done so before.

  Yet when she pictured this man wooing and wedding another woman, it wasn’t joy for him that filled her being. It was something else, something darker. Something she had no place feeling.

  So she pushed it away, tried to ignore it, and focused on the matches she already had planned. Cav couldn’t be her problem. To make him so was courting a danger she had never realized existed.

  Chapter 4

  Three French Hens

  Cav had always leaned into the cliché that a rake kept abed until the afternoon. It was one of the beliefs that made his world go ’round: stay out late, sleep all day. But today, on the third morning of Emily’s party, he found himself wide awake before the sun. He’d dressed and paced and read and paced, but his troubles didn’t fade. After all, he was in the usual room he took when he stayed at Crossfox. Six doors down from her room.

  Just the knowledge that she was so close was enough to make him toss and turn and fantasize long into the night.

  “And this is how you wake up hard as a rock,” Cav muttered as he tossed the book he’d been unable to focus upon aside and stared out the window instead.

  At present he truly hated himself. Hated that yesterday he’d touched her just a bit too long when he helped her with her cloak. Hated that she’d looked at his mouth and his heart leapt with hope. Hated that she’d asked who he wanted to woo and ruined any fantasy that she might be interested.

  “You are an idiot,” he said to himself.

  “Me?”

  He turned and stifled a sigh. Emily was standing at the parlor door. She was wearing the dark green gown, the one with the velvet ribbon around the edging and the beautifully stitched peacocks at the hem. A matching velvet ribbon was wound through her corn silk hair, and he had a desperate desire to tug it free and let the curls loose.

  He blinked. “Of course not you,” he said. “I didn’t realize anyone else was up and moving yet.”

  She had not yet entered the room, which was odd. She was just standing there…staring at him. Why was she staring at him like that?

  “Em?” he pressed.

  She blinked and took a long step toward him. “Er, yes…no.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “What was that?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s been an odd day already,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m finding it difficult to focus. I believe we are the only two actually downstairs yet, but reports are that the others are beginning to stir and ready for the day.”

  “Day Three. If I’m not mistaken, a true love should bring to you—er, them—three French hens. I look forward to seeing what that will look like from your wonderful mind.”

  She bent her head and her gaze darted away from him. “For supper tonight we’ll have coq au vin and I’ve drawn out the most adorable little hen nameplates.” She lifted her gaze. “Would you like to see them?”

  “Of course.” He didn’t have to force the smile despite how awkward this conversation was turning out to be. “I always love seeing your handiwork.”

  She blushed and held up a hand before she dashed from the parlor. He could easily imagine her next steps, rushing to her study down the hall, a pretty room that overlooked the garden. Her escritoire had been given to her by Rutledge in their second year of marriage. He’d insisted Cav come with him to pick it out. Rutledge had tried to choose some big, awful oak thing. Cav had steered him differently. He’d won.

  And hearing her coo over that desk had kept him satisfied for six months afterward.

  He blinked as she re-entered the room. “I only brought yours so I won’t mix up the stack,” she explained as she held out the folded sheet of heavy paper.

  She had hand-drawn three French hens in the corner of the nameplate, pecking at unseen corn.
Beautiful little sketches, and he was certain everyone at the table would be enchanted by them because she was a wonderful artist. In a different time, with a different life, perhaps she could have even been a professional.

  But it wasn’t the hens that made him keep staring. He and Emily had exchanged hundreds of letters over the years. Writing was the way of Society, after all, even if they were in the same city. But no one else in his acquaintance wrote his name like she did. The swirl of the C in Cavendish felt like a caress. It didn’t make him proud, but he absolutely planned to take this nameplate once supper had ended. He’d add it to the chest of letters she’d written and drawings she’d made for him, and all the other keepsakes that marked their friendship over the years.

  “Is it that awful?” she asked, both teasing and nervousness in her tone as she asked the question. “You’re just staring at it.”

  He let himself meet her eyes. “It’s beautiful. I love the way the one little hen is tilting her head, looking right at the person at the table.”

  She blushed. “Thank you. I only did that with yours. I thought you might like to make eye contact with a bird. That’s what…you men sometimes call women birds, don’t you?”

  He chuckled. “Sometimes, yes. Well, then I see who you’ve matched me with for your grand experiment.” He held up the card next to his face. “Do we suit?”

  She giggled and snatched the card away. “You and your great love will have to get to know each other tonight. Until then, I will sequester her from your rakish charms.”

  “I will find a way, Lady Rutledge,” he teased. “You shall not keep us apart.”

  Her gaze remained on his face for a moment, and to his surprise, something in the room shifted. He knew how to recognize it. Aside from the fact he’d been desperately in love with a woman he couldn’t have for almost a decade, in every other way he was a true rake. He took lovers, he danced with ladies…all in a desperate attempt to find one who would make him forget the one before him…but no one had to know that small fact.

  Still, with his experience, he understood when a woman was attracted to him. He recognized the tells of how her gaze might slip to his lips or her pupils might dilate or she might lean in a little toward him.

  Emily swallowed hard, her gaze slipped to his lips, her pupils dilated and she leaned toward him a fraction. His stomach flipped. Was he seeing this because he so badly wanted to see it? Or was it real?

  “So supper and nameplates,” he choked out, trying to keep the conversation light so he wouldn’t frighten her away from whatever was happening between them. “Is that all?”

  She shook her head slightly, as if she were trying to shake off the same thing he’d felt spark between them. She stepped away. The spell was broken.

  “Well, no,” she said, and her mouth twitched with a smile. “There is one other thing. Would you like to see?”

  “You look positively wicked, my lady,” he said. “So yes.”

  She laughed as she motioned him to follow her and he did. They wound through the halls and down and out a back entrance that led directly into the garden. He stopped and stared, because a dozen footmen were bringing small covered cages to arrange beneath the guestrooms above.

  “Emily, you aren’t—”

  She glanced over her shoulder with a smile and nodded. “Come on then!”

  He followed her out into the garden and she grinned as she lifted a hand and then dropped it dramatically. The footmen uncovered and opened the cages, and the birds exited. They began to squawk and call and cock-a-doodle-doo, filling the air with screeching. At the windows above, faces began to appear. The other guests, looking down some with interest, some in horror and some with annoyance.

  “They’re French Hens,” Emily said, covering her ears.

  “They’re cocks,” he corrected her, shouting to be heard over the cacophony.

  She shook her head like she didn’t understand him, and he laughed as he grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the squawking. She wasn’t wearing gloves and neither was he, and he reveled in the softness of her fingers in his. He couldn’t help but stroke the ball of his thumb in that tender place where her thumb and forefinger met. Her hand squeezed tighter in his in response and he glanced down, but her expression hadn’t changed.

  They had to go halfway into the garden, through the hedge maze, before it was quiet enough that he could be heard. “Well, that’s one way to wake your guests up.”

  “On French Hen Day, one must provide French hens,” she said, though she looked back toward the house with a concerned expression.

  “Except you didn’t. Those are cocks,” he repeated as he leaned forward. “Trust me, I know cocks.”

  Her mouth dropped open and she laughed. “Cav, you devil.”

  He was painfully aware of how close they were now. He could feel her warm breath in the brisk cold of the morning, brushing his chin, almost touching his lips. He had to stop himself from reaching for her, from tracing the line of her arm with his hand, from tugging her closer and molding her against him.

  Her breath hitched, her pupils dilated again, and this time it wasn’t something he could explain away or ignore. For the second time in a quarter of an hour, he felt that she…desired him. His world ground to a halt as he processed that realization.

  This was not his heated imagination. This was not wanting something that wasn’t there. Her hands trembled at her sides, she looked at his mouth, she leaned just a fraction closer. Everything about her said kiss me, kiss me, please kiss me.

  He might have done so, he wanted desperately to do so, but she seemed to realize what she was doing. She staggered a long step away, her hands coming up to her lips.

  “Thank you for your help,” she rasped. “I-I should go inside. I should…I should go inside.”

  She pivoted and practically ran toward the house, leaving him to stare after her, stunned. Stunned and…thrilled. If she wanted him, even in some deep, dark corner of herself that she had never allowed free until now, until this moment…then he had a chance. Desire could be molded into something more. Surrender on a physical sphere might open the door for surrender in some other way.

  His grandfather’s words rang in his head again. He had never taken his shot with Emily. First because of Andrew. Later because of her grief and the threat it might cause to everything they’d become to one another. But now she was out of mourning. Now she was free. And he had to take this chance. Slowly, perhaps. Carefully.

  He walked toward the house, toward the calling, squawking cocks that still raced around the yard beneath the windows, and he could not help the spring in his step. The chance he had longed for from the moment he’d first laid eyes on Emily was happening. And he wasn’t going to walk away this time.

  * * *

  Emily’s hands shook as she poured tea for the women in her party. The men had gone riding for the afternoon. A good thing because since that morning, she had felt…out of sorts. She couldn’t place why.

  God, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly why. That moment in the garden with Cav was why. They’d been laughing and teasing as they always did, and then suddenly she’d looked up into his eyes and all she’d wanted to do was touch him. All she’d wanted was for him to touch her. Not as a friend. Not in a grazing fashion she could pretend away later.

  She’d wanted him to claim her mouth with his. Hard and fast, until the cold in the air melted away and all that remained was the heat of him.

  Had she thought of Cav in sexual terms over the years? Perhaps. Always fleeting, always pushed away. She’d had a few detailed dreams, as well. Especially in the last eighteen months or so. Dreams where he was in her bed…naked. Doing things she hadn’t had done to her in years. She’d woken with her hand between her legs, sweating as her body shook with pleasure. Self-loathing always followed.

  But those were secret fantasies! The garden had been something else entirely. That had been real. He was real. He was her friend. She couldn’t…want him.
r />   “Isn’t that right, Lady Rutledge?”

  Emily started as she realized Abigail Delafield was talking to her. The eldest daughter of the second son of the Earl of Wayland was a pretty woman, raven-haired and quick to smile. Emily had always enjoyed her company and couldn’t understand why she’d never married. She was a catch by anyone’s imagining.

  “I’m sorry, I was woolgathering,” she said, trying to focus. “What was that?”

  Abigail smiled. “I was just saying that after the first few days of your Twelve Days of Christmas theme, I have to imagine we have much to look forward to.”

  Emily blinked. Though most in the room were smiling and nodding, a few of the ladies or their chaperones were whispering amongst themselves as if they were a little annoyed. And to be fair, the morning with the chickens had not gone exactly to plan. Who would have thought the cocks would squawk so much and try to fight?

  “I do have plans, though I must admit wrangling birds is a bit more difficult than I imagined,” she said. She shifted. She really should focus on her efforts rather than think only about Cav and whatever had transpired between them in the garden a few hours before. “Are you all enjoying yourselves? What do you think of the gentlemen?”

  The ladies in the room exchanged glances and then the polite murmurs began. Emily frowned. Honestly, she’d pictured this entire endeavor going very differently. The birds were supposed to be docile, the ladies and gentlemen were supposed to take to each other immediately and Cav was supposed to be her support, not haunting her dreams.

  But no, she couldn’t be discouraged so swiftly. Tomorrow’s display with the blackbirds was going to be beautiful, and she just needed to find the right matches for the ladies. As for Cav…

  “The Earl of Allington was just telling me last night about his horses,” she said, looking across the room toward the Mulberry twins. Everyone knew they adored horses, so perhaps this would spark their interest in the earl.