Christmas Betrothals: Mistletoe Magic

‘And as you have not listened to either of us I have another solution. Leave this place and move in with me and I’ll throw the grandest ball of the Season and make certain that anyone who is anyone is there. Properly done it could bury the whispers of your past for ever, and as the guest of honour with Nat and me beside you, who would dare to question?’A smile began to form on Stephen’s face. ‘You’re a friend of Miss Davenport’s. If we can get her and her fiancé to come, then all the others will follow.’

‘She is engaged to Wilcox-Rice!’ Luc tried to keep his alarm hidden.

‘I heard it said this evening and on good authority that the wedding will be after Christmas …’

‘The devil take it!’ Luc’s curse stopped Hawkhurst in his tracks.

‘What did I miss?’

‘Nothing, Hawk,’ Luc replied, ‘you missed nothing at all, and I should have damned well known better.’

A whoop of delight made his heart sink. ‘You are enamoured by Miss Davenport? The saint and the sinner, the faultless and the blemished, the guilty and the guiltless. Lord, I could go on all night.’ Hawk was in his element now, fingers drumming against the surface of the blankets as he mulled over his options. Luc sat up against the headboard and wished to hell that he had said nothing.

‘I suppose you could always hope that Wilcox-Rice will bore her to death?’

‘I could.’ From past experience Luc knew it was better to humour him.

‘But with the wedding planned for early next year that probably won’t give you enough time.’

‘That soon?’

‘Apparently. Davenport is her cousin, you know that, don’t you, so when you wrap your arm around his neck next time, best to do it out of sight of your lady.’

‘She isn’t my lady.’

‘An attitude like that won’t effect any change.’

‘Enough, Stephen. It’s early and I am tired.’

His friend frowned. ‘Nat and I were the closest to brothers you ever had, Luc, so if you want to talk about anything …’

‘I don’t.’

‘But you would not be adverse to the ball?’

‘You were always the problem solver.’

‘Oh, and another thing. When I was out tonight I heard from a source that the police have determined Paget’s death as suicide and we both know what that means.’

‘I won’t be had up for his murder!’

‘If you stopped harassing Davenport and quit the gambling tables, you wouldn’t be a suspect and, to my mind, Daniel Davenport isn’t worth the trouble no matter what he has done to make you believe otherwise.’

‘My wife might have disagreed.’

‘Elizabeth knew him?’ Surprise coated the query.

‘If the letter Davenport sent her was any indication of the feelings between them, she knew him very well.’

‘Hell.’ Luc liked the shock in Hawk’s word, for he had begun to question his own reactions to all that he was doing.

‘If you kill him, you’ll hang. Better to do away with him on some dark night far from London’

‘Shift the blame, you mean?’ He laughed as Hawk nodded and felt the best he had done in months.

‘On reflection I don’t think it was all her fault. Towards the end I liked her as little as she did me.’ Honesty was a double-edged sword and Luc wished he could have had Hawk’s black-and-white view of the picture.

‘When did you become so equitable?’

Unexpectedly Lillian’s face came to Luc’s mind. She had tempered his anger and loneliness and despair and replaced his feeling of dislocation with a trust and belief in goodness that was … staggering and warming all at the same time.

‘It’s age, I think.’ He smiled as he said it and knew that his words were a complete lie. As the first birdsong lilted into the new morning Stephen stretched and yawned.

‘I have to go to sleep. Goodnight, Luc.’

‘Goodnight, Hawk.’

When his oldest friend simply curled up at the bottom of his bed and was soon snoring, Lucas smiled. There were definitely advantages to being back in England and Stephen was one of them.

The following morning he left Stephen still asleep in his lodgings and walked along the Thames, the winter whipping the river into grey waves that swelled up the embankment and threatened to engulf the pathway. He didn’t want to go to a club or a tavern or even to the Lindsay town house where he always felt welcome. No, today he simply walked, on past the Chelsea Hospital and down the route that the body of Wellington must had been taken during his state funeral last November. A million people had lined the streets then, it was said, and they would again at the next funeral, the next celebration, the next public function that caught the fancy of a nation.

Life went on despite a wife who had betrayed him and an uncle who had died well before his time.

Stuart Clairmont!

Even now the name was hard to say and he ground his teeth together to try to stop the sorrow that welled up over the thought. A man who had been the father his own never was. A man who had loved and nurtured a lost child newly come from England and given him back the sense of purpose and strength that had been leached away from him under the punitive regime of a father who thought punishment to be the making of character.

He still bore the scars of such bestial brutality and still hated William Clairmont with all the passion of a young boy who had never stood a chance.

Where was Lilly? he wondered, the news of her engagement angering him again. She would marry a man who was patently wrong for her, a man who neither kissed her with any skill nor fought with a scrap of dexterity. He remembered the feeble slap Wilcox-Rice had given Paget before he had intervened, the breathless sheen on his face from the effort of doing even that, pointing to a spouse who would not protect a wife from anyone.

The flaws in his argument pressed in. John Wilcox-Rice was a man who would not have enemies, his life lived in the narrow confines of an untarnished society. Why should he need to be adept at the darker arts of survival, the things that kept a man apart and guarded? As he was!

The number of differences between Lillian and him spiralled upwards as he ran for the omnibus, and as the conductor inside issued him a ticket for the cramped and smelly space he was certain that the permitted twenty-two passengers was almost twice that number.

Chapter Eleven

No one was speaking to Lucas Clairmont, Lillian saw as she walked into the Billinghurst soirée that evening and found it was divided into two distinct camps.

Oh, granted, the Earl of St Auburn and Lord Hawkhurst leaned against the columns on his side of the room, the smiles on their faces looking remarkably genuine, but nobody else went near him.

It was the death of Lord Paget, she supposed, and the fact that much was said about the card games Lucas Clairmont was involved with. Gossip that did not quite accuse him of cheating, but not falling much short either.

‘Mr Clairmont does seem to inspire strong feelings in people, doesn’t he?’

Lillian looked around quickly, trying to determine if her friend was including herself in that category.

Lucas Clairmont looked vividly handsome on the other side of the room, dressed in a formal black evening suit that he looked less than comfortable in.