Christmas Betrothals: Mistletoe Magic

‘It was a mix-up,’ she replied as they swirled effortlessly around the room. He was a good dancer! No wonder the Parker sister had looked so thrilled.

‘Are there other mix-ups on your card?’

She laughed, surprised by his candour. ‘Actually, I have the last waltz free …’

‘Pencil me in,’ he replied, sweeping her around the top corner of the room, her petticoat swirling to one side with the movement of it, an elation building that she had never before felt in dancing.

Safe. Strong. The outline of his muscles could be seen against the black of his jacket and felt in the hard power of his thighs. A man who had not grown up in the salons of courtly life but in a tougher place of work and need. Even his clothes mirrored a disregard for the height of fashion, his jacket not the best of cuts and his shoes a dull matt black. Just a ‘little dressed,’ she thought, his apparel of a make that held no pretension to arrogance or ornament. She saw that he had tied his neckcloth simply and that his gloves were removed.

She wished she had done the same and then she might feel the touch of his skin against her own, but the thought withered with the onslaught of his next words.

‘I am bound for Virginia before too much longer. I have passage on a ship in late December and, if the seas are kind, I may see Hampton by the middle of February.’

‘Hampton is your home?’ She tried to keep the question light and her disappointment hidden.

‘No. My place is up on the James River, near Richmond.’

‘And your family?’

When he did not answer and the light in his eyes dimmed with her words, she tried another tack. ‘I had a friend once who left London for a home in Philadelphia. Is that somewhere near?’

‘Somewhere …’ he answered, whirling her around one last time before the music stopped. Bowing to her as their hands dropped away from each other, he asked, ‘May I escort you back to your aunt? Your father does not look too happy with my dancing style.’

Lillian smiled and did not look over at her father for fear that he might beckon her back. ‘No. I have not supped yet and find myself hungry.’

The break in the music allowed him the luxury of choice. If he wanted to slip away he could, and if he wanted to accompany her to the supper room he had only to take her arm. She was pleased when he did that, allowing herself to be manoeuvred towards the refreshment room.

Once there she was at a loss as to what to say next, his admission of travelling home so soon having taken the wind from her sails. She saw the Parker girls and their friends behind him some little distance away and noticed that they watched her intently.

When he handed her a plate she thanked him, though he did not take one, helping himself to a generous drink of lemonade instead.

‘Are you in London over Christmas?’ His question was one she had been asked all the night, a conversation topic of little real value and, when compared to the communion they had enjoyed the last time of meeting, disappointing.

She nodded. ‘We usually repair to Fairley Manor, our country seat in Hertfordshire, in the first week of January.’ When he smiled all of the magic returned in a flood.

‘Nathaniel Lindsay is to give a house party at his country estate in Kent on the weekend of November the twentieth. Will you be there?’

‘The Earl of St Auburn? I do not know if I have an invite …’

‘I could send you one.’

Shock mixed with delight and ran straight through into the chambers of her heart.

‘It is not proper.’

‘But you will come anyway?’

He did not move closer or raise his voice, he did not reach out for her hand or brush his arm against her own as he so easily could here at this crowded refreshment table, and because of it, the invite was even the more clandestine. Real. A measure taken to transport her from this place to another one.

An interruption by the Countess of Horsham meant that she could not answer him, and when he excused himself from their company she let him go, fixing her glance upon the tasteless biscuit on her plate.

Alice watched him, however, and the smile on her lips was unwelcome. ‘I had heard you witnessed the fellow in a contretemps the other evening? Do you know him, Lillian, know anything of his family and his living?’

‘Just a little. He is a good friend of the Earl of St Auburn.’

‘Indeed. There are other rumours that I have heard, too. It seems he may have inherited a substantial property on the death of his wife. Some say he is here to collect that inheritance and leave again, more gold for his gambling habit and the fracas with your cousin still unresolved. Less kind folks would say that he killed the woman to get the property and that his many children out of wedlock are installed in the place.’

‘Are you warning me, Countess?

‘Do I need to, Lillian?’

‘No.’ She bit down on the lemon biscuit and washed away the dryness with chilled tea, the taste combined as bitter as the realisation that she was being watched. And watched carefully.

Of course she could not go to Kent even if she had wanted to. Pretending a headache, she excused herself from the Countess’s company, and went to find her aunt.

Luc saw her leave, the ball still having at least an hour left and the promised last dance turning to dust. The Countess of Horsham’s husband was a man he had met at the card tables and a gossip of the first order. Lord, the tale of his own poor reputation had probably reached Lillian and he doubted that she would countenance such a lack of morals. Perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps the ‘very good’ had a God-given inbuilt mechanism of protection that fended off people like him, a celestial safeguard that separated the chaff from the wheat.

When the oldest Parker sister obstructed his passage on the pretext of claiming him in the next dance, he made himself smile as he escorted the girl on to the floor.

Once home Lillian checked the week’s invitations scattered on the hall table. When she found none from the Earl of St Auburn, she relaxed. No problem to mull over and dither about, no temptation to answer in the affirmative and have her heart broken completely. She remembered her last sight of Lucas Clairmont flirting with the pretty Parker heiress she had seen him with earlier in the evening, the same smile he had bequeathed her wide across his face.

On gaining her room, she snatched the stupid orange pyracanthus from the vase near her bed and threw it into the fire burning brightly in the grate. A few of the berries fell off in their flight, and she picked them up, squeezing them angrily and liking the way the juice of blushed red stained her hand.

She would invite Wilcox-Rice to call on her tomorrow and make an effort to show some kindness. Such an act would please her father and allay the fears of her aunt who had regaled her all the way home on the ills of marrying improperly and the ruin that could follow.

Lillian wondered how much her father had told his only sister about the downfall of his wife and was glad, at least, that Aunt Jean had had the sense not to mention any such knowledge to her. Indeed, she needed to regain her balance, her equanimity and her tranquil demeanour and to do that she needed to stay well away from Lucas Clairmont.

Chapter Five

Woodruff Abbey, in Bedfordshire, was old, a house constructed in the days when the classical lines of architecture had been in their heyday, early seventeenth century or late sixteenth. Now it just looked tired, the colonnades in the portico chipped and rough and numerous windows boarded in places, as though the glass had been broken and was not able to be repaired. The thought puzzled him—the income of this place was well able to cover expenses towards the upkeep and day-to-day running, according to Thackeray, his lawyer. Why then had it been left to look so rundown?

At the front door he stopped and looked at the garden stretching from the house to the parkland below and the polluted business of London seemed far away. Breathing in, he smiled, and the tense anger of the past few years seemed to recede a bit, the faded elegance of the Abbey soothing in its dishevelled beauty.

The door was suddenly pulled open and a man stood there. An old man, whose hat was placed low upon his head and whose eyes held the rheumy glare of one who could in truth barely see.

‘May I be of assistance, sir?’ His cultured voice was surprising.

‘I am Lucas Clairmont. I hope that Mr Thackeray has sent you word of my coming.’

‘The lawyer? Clairmont? Lord! You are here already?’

‘I am.’ Luc waited. The man did not move from his place in the middle of the doorway, his knuckles clutching white at the lintel as though he might fall.

‘The Mr Clairmont from America?’

‘Indeed.’ He bit back a smile. Was he going to be invited into his own house or not?

‘Who is there, Jack? Who is at the door? Tell them that we need nothing.’