Christmas Betrothals: Mistletoe Magic

‘But you could find an hour or so for a lady who has asked you?’ Her hand closed over his and the chaperon looked away.

‘Certainly.’ Luc resolved to make a large party of this sojourn even as he removed his fingers yet again from hers.

Forty-eight long minutes later the St Auburns’ country seat came into view and the woman who sat next to Lady Shelby finally seemed to deem it time to haul the antics of her young charge in.

‘Your hat is a little crooked, dear,’ she said, deft fingers straightening the bonnet that had come askew when she had fallen forwards against him on one of the more rutted sections of the road. ‘And you really ought to replace your gloves.’

The sight of the house as they swept on to the circular drive was welcome and it seemed as if many of the houseguests still languished in the glassed-in conservatory, enjoying the last rays of the sun. He easily picked out Lillian, her pale hair entwined today into one single bunch, simple and elegant and the white gown complimenting her figure. She had not seen him, but was talking to Cassandra and next to her stood … John Wilcox-Rice.

‘Damn.’ He swore beneath his breath, glad for the chance to vacate the carriage and escape the company of the irritating Lady Shelby and her dour chaperon.

Nathaniel met him first. ‘Wilcox-Rice is here.’ A warning flinted strong.

‘I saw him.’

‘Should I stand between you?’

‘To keep the peace, you mean?’

‘He is rumoured to have offered for her hand. If you mean to pursue that gleam I can see in your eyes …’

‘Have patience, Nat. Any protection that you feel the need to give me will be relinquished in a few weeks.’

‘You think that you’ll be on that boat?’ A strange smile filled the eyes of his friend.

‘Of course I will be. My passage is booked and paid for. There is nothing to hold me here.’

‘Or no one?’

Luc laughed suddenly, seeing where it was Nathaniel was going with this line of question. ‘I tried marriage once.’ His words were bleak and he hated the tightness in them.

‘Elizabeth was a woman who would drive anyone to the bottle. God knows why you still wear her damn ring.’

Luc felt a singular shot of fury consume him. ‘I wear it because it reminds me.’

‘Reminds you of what?’

‘Never to make the same mistake twice.’ He grabbed a drink of fruit punch from the table as he moved away.

Lillian turned as Lucas Clairmont downed a large glass of punch, the lot hardly touching his throat before he helped himself to another.

He looked angry and she could not quite reconcile this man with the one who had sent her flowers and kept silent about a scandal that could easily ruin her. The bruising around his eye was largely gone and the velvet of his dangerous glance made her wary and uncertain. Caroline Shelby seemed bent on following him and Lillian could well see why she had been often named as the most beautiful girl of her Season. Wilcox-Rice beside her laid his hand beneath Lillian’s elbow in a singular message of claim and she saw Clairmont take in the movement.

Caught between convention and other people’s expectations, she could do nothing save for smile, her practised speech of thanks buried under the weight of a careful control.

‘Miss Davenport.’ When she gave him her hand he held it briefly. The warmth of his skin made her start with the recognition of his touch.

‘Mr Clairmont. It is nice to see you once again.’

He dropped contact almost immediately.

‘You two know each other?’ Cassandra was astonished.

‘A little.’ Her words.

‘Not well.’ His.

Cassie’s giggles drew the attention of Caroline Shelby as she gained their small circle.

‘What a lovely party! I knew I should have left London earlier. If it had not been for you, Mr Clairmont, I should not even be here by now. I hope that I have not missed too much, for you all seem very festive.’

‘I am certain you are quite in time, Lady Shelby,’ Lillian returned.

‘Miss Davenport. How wonderful that you should be here. I have long admired your sense of style and bearing and your dress—’ she gestured to the white moiré silk ‘—why, it is just so beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’

‘My friend Eloise says you have your clothes made in England, but I think that cannot be true as the cut and cloth is just too wonderful and I said to my mother the other day that we should ask you about your seamstress and use her ourselves because …’

Was she nervous, Lillian thought, switching out of the constant barrage of never-ending chatter, or just frivolous? She made the mistake of glancing at Lucas Clairmont and almost laughed at the comical disbelief on his face. Lord, and he had had a whole hour of it coming down from London. No wonder he had almost leapt from the coach as soon as it had stopped.

‘Do you enjoy flowers, Miss Davenport?’ Caroline’s shrill and final question pierced her ruminations.

‘I do indeed.’

‘Is not the garden here just beautiful? All in shades of white, too. I suppose with your penchant for the paler hues you would prefer your flowers in the same sort of palette?’

Lillian smiled. Now here was an opening she could take, and easily. ‘Lately I find that I have a growing preference for orange.’

She caught the expression of puzzlement on Lucas Clairmont’s face, but with John at her side could make no further comment.

‘Orange?’ The girl opposite almost shouted the word. ‘Oh, no, Miss Davenport, surely you jest with me?’

When Cassandra St Auburn suggested that the party now retire to dress for dinner Lillian could do nothing but lift her skirts and follow, noticing with chagrin that Lucas Clairmont did not join them.

Chapter Eight

Luc took a sixteen-hand gelding from the stables of St Auburn and rode for Maygate, a village a good ten miles away. He was tired and using the last light of dusk and the first slice of moon to guide him he journeyed west.

Dinner would still be a few hours away and he felt the need to stretch his body and feel the wind on his face and freedom.

Lord, how the English enjoyed their long and complicated afternoon teas, something which in Virginia would have been thought of as ludicrous.

Virginia and a green tract of land that reached from the James to the Potomac. His land! Hewed from the blood, sweat and tears of hard labour, the timber within his first hundred acres bringing the riches to buy the rest.

A piecemeal acquisition!

He ran his thumb across the scar on his thigh, feeling the ridges of flesh badly healed. An accident when the Bank of Washington was about to foreclose on him and he had no other means of paying to get the wood out. He had dragged it alone along the James by horse, unseated as a log rose across another and his mount bolted, pushing him into the jagged end of newly hewn timber. The cut had festered badly, but still he had made it to Hopewell and the mill that would buy the load, staving off the greed of the bank for a few more months.