Unlaced At Christmas: The Christmas Duchess / Russian Winter Nights / A Shocking Proposition

Generva’s hands tightened on the handle of the broom. If John were still alive, he’d have called the fellow out. Men were far more sensible in that way than women. They saw such problems and found a solution. But as the widowed mother of the wronged girl, there was little society would permit her to do, other than wring her hands and bear her share of the disgrace.

‘In dulci jubilo...’ From the road outside, she heard the sound of a deep voice raised in song.

For a moment, she paused to lean on the broom and listen. John would have declared the fellow to have ‘a fine set of lungs’ and thrown open the door to him and any friends who accompanied him. Then he’d have poured drinks from the hearth and matched them verse for verse with his own fine tenor voice. He’d told her that, for a sailor on land, a good, old-fashioned Christmas wassail was as near to grog and shanties as one could hope.

She smiled for a moment, then glanced at the empty pot beside the kitchen fire. It was a lost tradition in this household. If a widow did not want to incite gossip, she did not open the house to misrule and invite strangers to drink punch in the kitchen. She missed it all the same.

‘There was a pig went out to dig, on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day...’ The singer had finished his first song and gone on to another. He sang alone, but the carol was suited to a troupe. It had been an age since she had seen mummers in the area, putting on skits and begging door to door. It harked back to an earlier time, when Christmas was little more than a chaotic revel. Right now, she could imagine nothing more pleasant than throwing off the conventions of society and running wild.

She forced the thought to the back of her mind. Someone must keep a cool head while they weathered the current disaster. It would be her, since she could not count on her daughter, her son or her servants to behave in a rational manner. She had no time or money to spare for seasonal beggars. Nor did she have the patience. The wedding feast she had been preparing for nearly a month would go to charity. Surely that was enough of a holiday offering. When the housekeeper came to get her, if that woman could tear herself away from the drama upstairs to answer the door, Generva would plead a megrim and tell her to send the caroller away.

She heard the distant sound of the knocker at the front of the house and waited for the inevitable. But then, the song began again, growing louder as the singer rounded the corner of the house. ‘There was a crow went out to sow...’ She saw the shadow of a large body passing the window and there was a pounding on the back door.

She turned away, so that he might not know she had seen him. Damn the man and his industrious animals. She began to sweep again with more vigour. Perhaps he would think her deaf and move on to the next house.

Behind her, she felt the rush of cold air at the opening of the kitchen door. ‘Hallo! Is anyone there? I knocked at the front, but there was no answer. Is there a drink for a humble traveller who bears good news?’

She sighed. Was no one in this house tending to their posts? Was everything to be left to her? She turned back to the short hall that led to the back door and found it full of man.

Perhaps there was a better way to describe it, but she could not think of one. The gentleman standing by the door was tall and broad shouldered, and seemed to occupy all of the available space. What was not full of his body was crowded with the sheer force of his personality. The voice that had called out had not simply spoken, it had boomed. It had not been particularly loud, but deep and resonant. There was none of the awkwardness in his step of a man uncomfortable in unfamiliar surroundings. He approached as if he owned the room.

And it appeared that he could afford to do so. She had expected some beggar in a tattered mask. But the cost of this man’s coat, with its perfect tailoring and shiny brass buttons, was probably near to the annual rent of her cottage. His boots were equal to a second year. Slowly, she raised her eyes to look into his.

They were the blue of moonlit snow, bright and clear, but not cold, or even cool. They sparkled like the first drop of water on thawing ice. Perhaps it was his smile that brought the beginning of spring. It was soft and warm, seeming to light his whole person, making him seem young for his years, as though the silver in his black hair would melt away like hoarfrost. His face was as well formed as his body: high cheeks, even planes, strong chin and a nose that was regally straight but without the disdainful flare of nostrils that some rich men had when entering a simple house such as hers.

She was gawping at him and embarrassing herself. At five and thirty, she should be past the point of noticing the finer points of the male physique. She had two children to tend to and no time to spend on daydreams. But she’d have to have been blind not to admire the fine-looking man who stood before her. Despite the fact that he had come, uninvited, into her home, at the sight of him she curtsied politely. And judging by the heat in her cheeks, she was blushing.

He noticed and responded with a knowing grin, stomping the ice from his boots and swinging his arms to force warmth to his hands. ‘My dear, you are a sight for travel-weary eyes.’ He spoke slowly and clearly, as though he suspected that she had not just ignored his knock, but truly could not hear. ‘The roads are nothing but ruts from here to Oxford. I abandoned my carriage, stuck in the mud, and rode the rest of the way myself. But by God, I am here on time.’ He reached into his pocket, withdrew a paper and slammed it down on the kitchen table. ‘Go find Mr Marsh and tell him that the day is saved! The special licence has arrived. The wedding will go on as planned. Then get me a cup of mulled wine, or whatever passes for a holiday drink in these parts. I am frozen to the bone.’ He dropped down into the best chair by the fire and removed his boots so that he might warm his feet.

For a moment, all about Generva seemed to freeze, as well. She could not decide what made her the most angry. Was it the demand for wine? To be mistaken for a servant in her own home? Or that the assumption came from this particularly attractive man? In the end, she decided it was the licence that most bothered her.

It was a pity. Until that moment, she had been managing to contain her emotions on the subject quite well. But to have the thing appear when she was holding a weapon...

Chapter Two (#u43271bf6-1783-5c5a-b052-b2dbdcf0c6ba)

‘What the devil?’ It was all the Duke of Montford could manage to get out before the broom hit him a second time. He raised an arm to take the majority of the force, but the bristles still slapped sharply against the back of his head. The blow was surprisingly strong coming from such a petite woman.

‘Take your licence back to your master and tell him what he can do with it,’ she said, raising the broom again.

It was the last straw, a strangely appropriate metaphor given the instrument that struck him. ‘I have no master other than the Regent.’ He turned, stood and grabbed the broom handle on the next downswing. ‘Now find Mr Marsh. I must speak with him.’

‘I am Mrs Marsh,’ she said in a glacial tone, not releasing her hold on the other end of the broom. ‘State your business, sir.’

They stood for a moment, gazes locked. ‘And I am the Duke of Montford. I have come with the special licence for my nephew’s wedding.’ He did not add, ‘And put down the broom.’ With the mention of his title, it should not have been necessary.

‘You are not,’ she said, with such conviction that he almost doubted his own identity. She kept a firm grip on her end of the handle. ‘The duke is estranged from his nephew and was not expected here.’

Montford winced. It was perfectly true. But to hear it spoken as common knowledge was still painful. ‘What better time than at a Christmas wedding to mend the relationship between myself and my heir?’ It was one thing to maintain a cordial distance from young Tom and quite another to ignore his marriage. The boy was a blockhead for choosing to marry in the country at such an inappropriate time of year, of course. But when had he been anything but a blockhead? ‘He asked for help with the licence. I obliged. Now I have come to meet the girl who will be the next duchess and give my good wishes.’ If she was anything like her mother, she was comely enough. He must hope that she was better tempered.

‘The next duchess?’ Mrs Marsh smiled with incredulity. ‘Then you will not be looking in this house, Your Grace. There will be no wedding. Now put on your boots and be on your way.’ She released the broom and pointed a dire hand at the licence. ‘And throw that thing into the fire.’

‘I beg your pardon, madam.’ He tugged on the broom again and delivered the words with the faintest hint of warning to remind her that this was no way to treat a peer.

‘You heard me, unless you are as deaf as your nephew is dishonourable. Throw that thing into the fire and leave my house this instant.’

‘I most certainly will not.’ He grabbed the broom and threw it aside. ‘I went to some trouble procuring it to allow for the Christmas Day wedding your daughter desired.’

‘Well, you can unprocure it. It is not needed. Take it to London, or take it to the devil for all I care. But it and you are not welcome in this house.’

What had Tom done now? When he had realised that he was likely to die childless, Montford had informed the young man of his future and offered advice and guidance. In response, his heir had announced that he was of age and past the point where he need seek approval of his decisions. He would do just as he pleased, now, and at such time as the title fell to him.

It was just what Montford feared most. He calmed himself, for there was no reason to fan the flames. ‘Please, madam, enlighten me. Was there an estrangement of some kind that might still be mended?’

To this, she did nothing but laugh. ‘Estrangement? No, why should there be? Everything was as right as rain until the third reading of the banns. There was a disturbance in the church. An objection,’ she said with a dark look.

‘Who could possibly object, if I did not?’ he said, equally surprised.

‘You nephew’s wife seemed to think she had the right,’ Mrs Marsh replied, wiping her hands upon her apron as though she had touched something distasteful. ‘His Scottish wife. His pregnant Scottish wife. If you wish to meet your next duchess, I suggest you go to Aberdeen.’

The duke dropped the broom and sat down in the chair, for the moment as overwhelmed as the housewife.

She stood over him, clearly unwilling to give way. ‘We will have to return to that church on Christmas morning for services. There will be no wedding, of course. Just shame and embarrassment, and the gossip from the congregation. We are already the talk of the High Street. It is likely to get much worse as more people learn of it.’ She waved an arm around the house. ‘Here am I with the larders full of dainties, a wedding cake already baked and a daughter locked in her room who will not stop weeping.’

It was worse than he could have imagined. He would not reject a Scottish bride, or a child born barely to the right side of the blanket. But he could not allow the title to fall to a man who would flirt with bigamy as a solution to an awkward first marriage. ‘And I suppose your daughter is compromised,’ he said gloomily.

‘How dare you, Your Grace.’ Mrs Marsh grabbed for the broom again, and he snatched it out of her reach. ‘Perhaps things are different in London, where chaperones are easily duped. But I know better than to allow my only daughter to be alone in the company of a gentleman, no matter how august his family connections. I did not allow so much as a kiss to pass between them.’

He held up the hand that did not already hold a broom. ‘My apologies, my dear Mrs Marsh. My statement has more to do with my knowledge of my heir than your lovely daughter. The boy is a moron in most things, but can be sly when it is least convenient. I find it hard to believe that he did not at least attempt...’

‘Of course he attempted,’ she said with a frown. ‘But I am a very light sleeper.’ She looked significantly at the broom in his hand and smiled as though reliving a fond and violent memory.

‘Very well, then.’ He sighed with relief. ‘All is not lost.’

‘So you say,’ she said with a huff. ‘The truth will not matter, when all is said and done. Gentlemen of good family are unlikely to take my word for her virtue. What mother would not lie if she felt her daughter’s happiness was at stake? They will assume the worst. No man will want her now that she is notorious.’

She was right, of course. It was a disaster for the Marsh family and a black mark on his own. A greater calamity lay ahead. Since he would be dead when his nephew took the coronet, there would be no way he could clean up the future messes that were made, as he would with this.

It was not fair. He thought of the row of graves in the family cemetery, two large and two small. He had vowed that there would be no third attempt to get a son of his own.

Now it seemed there was no choice.

When he spoke, it was slowly and with some care. ‘I cannot mend a broken heart. But I think there is a solution that will solve all other problems to your satisfaction. If you would do me the honour of allowing me to pay court to your daughter, I will make an offer and marry her myself, assuming she is agreeable to it.’

Chapter Three (#u43271bf6-1783-5c5a-b052-b2dbdcf0c6ba)

Generva sat on the bench opposite him and tried to catch her breath. His strange announcement took the air from her lungs as effectively as a blow from the broom. When she could gather her wits sufficiently to respond, she said, ‘You cannot be serious.’

The duke gave her another thoughtful look. ‘I do not see why not.’