Gift-Wrapped Governesses: Christmas at Blackhaven Castle / Governess to Christmas Bride / Duchess by Christmas

The kiss from the morning turned in her mind, again and again, compelling and intense. She had kissed Trey Stanford back, too, pressing herself against his body like a wanton woman. The thought had her eyes opening and she stared into the amber glance of the very man she dreamt of.

‘I saw you come out here through the window of my library,’ the duke explained, gesturing to a room behind a row of barren espaliered fruit trees, light showing through diamond-panelled windows.

His hair this evening was tucked carelessly into the generous collar of a military coat: a soldier, a hero, a man whose very accent summoned the amount of years that he had served in Europe for England. She imagined just what he must have experienced.

‘It was quiet out here, my lord, and a sheltered place to rest.’ She wondered if she should invite him to sit, but he seemed restless, his fingers playing against intricate gold buttons in a line down his front, the same fingers that had caressed her neck and threaded through her hair as he had kissed her.

No. She must not think of this now, for she sensed a barely held anger broiling beneath the careful surface.

‘My sons like you, Lady Seraphina. Gareth informed me last night that he wished we might keep you.’

Astonishment leapt quick, though he was not finished.

‘I have no wish for them to be disappointed again, for they would not weather it. The boys’ mother was …’ He hesitated. ‘She was not the sort of woman who held the maternal instincts in high regard, you understand, and they have suffered. Therefore, if you feel in the light of what happened today that you no longer wish to remain at Blackhaven Castle until the end of January, I would provide you with transport back to London and a generous stipend for the trouble taken for coming here in the first place.’

For the only time since she had met him he looked slightly abashed, a peer of the land who was also a father and a man.

‘I should also like to say that I have come into the gardens to find you in order to personally apologise for my lack of regard.’

‘You speak of our kiss?’ Anticipation sizzled amidst an unsettled anger. If he should say their kiss was a mistake or an error or a lapse in judgement, she would scream because to her it was none of those things. To her the very soft rightness of it still made the blood race in her veins, and the hope of more was in her answer. ‘I could have refused your advances, Lord Stanford, easily, but I found myself not wishing to.’

At the words Seraphina stood, the evening wrapping around them both and her breath white in the half-light when she spoke. ‘I do not consign what happened under the mistletoe as an error, but see it as a gift that was precious to me beyond words.’ The vulnerability creasing his face made her reach up to his cheek and place her finger across the hard angles.

He felt warm even despite the chill, a twelve-hour stubble roughening his skin: a man who was solid and reliable and honourable. ‘If, indeed, there is anything I might say, it would be to ask you to kiss me again,’ she simply stated, standing on her tiptoes so that he might have better access to all that she offered him. She could no longer be careful or circumspect or judicious. She wanted him, his taste, his feel and his warmth. She wanted to know again that which she had in the room full of Christmas, the ache of delight filling every part of her body with heat.

The shards in his eyes lightened from brown to gold, melting into response, and his lips came down to hers, the slam of need attesting to a control he had suddenly lost hold of.

His tongue met her own, duelling against entry as he deepened the kiss, changing that which she offered into something else. Wonderment and lust. She felt his hips move even through the thick layers of wool between them, asking for what men and women through all the centuries had sought to understand in an elemental promise. When she answered back, his voice broke hoarse into the silence, her name whispered fiercely before his lips returned to take—only them in the world, only this feeling of an utter and precise truth, far away from the specifics of any dividing fact or faith. Together, and for this moment, everything was perfect.

A wintry blast of wind brought her back though, the facade of Blackhaven looming above, darkened in the dusk and watching. The bricks of the newer annexe addition glowed almost black and she fancied the shadows of those at work in the castle flickering across some of the small light in its windows.

Understanding her reticence, he let her go.

‘You are right, for this is neither the place nor the time.’ She thought he might stop there and walk away. She could see he meant to from the gleam of distance in his eyes, but he did not go. Rather, he began to speak again and in a tone she had never heard him use before. ‘I am only a man, Lady Seraphina, and every time I look at you I am reminded of the fact, but know that if you wish me to stop any of what has begun between us … I will.’

The memory of Ralph Bonnington, she supposed. It was Trey Stanford’s way of telling her that he was nothing at all like him. She was speechless as he bowed his head and left because his troth was exactly that which she wanted, and because the compliments he had given her were so unexpected.

He liked her and so did his sons! Even a new blast of snow did nothing to diminish her happiness as she turned the strange conversation over and over in her mind. He had promised her so much more than she thought he might, and although the gardens were not the place to press anything further, Seraphina was certain they would soon find another occasion.

Laying her fingers across her lips, she smiled behind her hands, a joy rising from deep within her. She was overwhelmed with the astonishment of one who finds herself in exactly the place that she had long hoped to be. Her eyes wandered across the high-and-ancient walls of Blackhaven, the patina of stone worn in places from time and weather, hundreds of years of protection imbued in their very strength. When she had arrived here she had found the castle forbidding and hostile. Now all she could see was the beauty of it.

Chapter Six

23 December

Voices brought Seraphina from her room early the next afternoon to be confronted directly by a large group of strangers in the salon at the foot of the stairs.

She recognised one of them as Lady Frobisher, an inveterate gossip and snoop and her heart sank accordingly. Lord Blackhaven did not look pleased at all as three young women leaned in towards him and amongst their company she saw exactly how he would be received in London. It would be with complete and utter delight, for his form was nothing at all like the fops that overran the social halls and ballrooms with their mincing ways and effeminate habits.

Nay, Trey Stanford with his night-black hair, amber eyes and danger would be like a panther amongst kittens. The Titian-haired beauty next to him had her hand upon his arm. Proprietary and challenging!

‘I should love you to come to our place for Christmas, my lord. Mama has made a great show of the decorations and our cook came highly recommended.’

‘I think not, Lady Lydia.’ His fingers unlinked her hand and he moved back.

The Frobisher matriarch, however, was having none of it. ‘You said the same last year, my lord, and we heard that you had hardly celebrated the season. Besides, my daughters and I would be most happy to see you at our table with the children, of course.’

The girl she presumed to be Lydia coloured dramatically. There was not much of an age difference between them, but Seraphina felt a hundred years older. Not wishing to be caught in the awkward position of an uncertain exit, she came forwards. Helen Frobisher raised her monocle, peering up at her with a quizzical expression and Seraphina saw the exact moment she recognised her.

‘Good God, Stanford. This gel on your staircase is the lost Moreton chit, is she not? What on earth is she doing here and in such awful clothes when the whole of London town is searching for her? Come down, gel, and let me see you better.’

The mouths of the three younger ladies behind were wide-open, eyes filled with shock as Seraphina moved to the last step. She was glad for the slight height that kept her above them all—it meant she did not have to meet their glances so directly.

‘Why is she here, Blackhaven?’ The older lady’s voice had taken on a shrill tone, the flinted anger in her words mirrored in her eyes. ‘If she is alone in your company, then she is exactly as her mother was—a whore who pretended to be a lady.’

‘No, you have it most wrong.’ Seraphina finally found her voice at such a brutal criticism. ‘I am at Blackhaven Castle because—’

‘Because she is my intended.’ Trey Stanford finished the sentence for her as he strode forwards, taking her hand in his and pulling her close. ‘Just this morning, Lady Seraphina has done me the honour of agreeing to become my wife.’

Seraphina felt the pressure in his fingers bearing down on her own. Keep quiet, they said, and we may yet get through this. Her heart was beating so fast at this unexpected new turn of events that she doubted speech could have come anyway.

‘Your intended? There are rumours she is promised on the bequest of her father to Ralph Bonnington, the Earl of Cresswell, and now you say she is also your bride-to-be? If this is a trick, Stanford, you will pay for it. My Lydia was under the impression that it was her hand in marriage you had sought and to be so rudely compromised …’

The young woman in question began to sob, softly at first, but then building, until the whole room was filled with her anguish.

Trey stepped forwards. ‘I have been largely reclusive in Essex, Lady Frobisher, and I am sorry if you were under the impression that my one meeting with your family in town a month ago constituted anything like a proposal of such permanency. It was not my intention at all.’

‘Lydia said there were other more clandestine arrangements made?’

The howling heightened.

‘I see.’ The woman pulled herself together and faced Seraphina straight on, the chagrin on her face because of her daughter’s lies sharpening her query. ‘I take it that you are without a chaperone?’

Seraphina was relieved when the Duke answered for her. ‘My sister Margaret, Lady Westleigh, and her husband are in residence and she is a stickler for the correct.’ His lie sounded eminently authoritarian, but short of demanding the presence of these others, Lady Frobisher had no way of accounting for the truth or otherwise.

‘Then be careful, Stanford, that this betrothal is not as foolish as your last one and hope that the daughter of Elizabeth Moreton failed to inherit the wanderlust her mother was cursed with.’

The stillness in the Duke of Blackhaven was more menacing than any raised shout. ‘You have said enough, Lady Frobisher. It would be wise if you went now before you say more.’

‘Now listen here, my lord …’ A man at the rear of the group had taken up the argument, his face florid with anger.

But the Duke was at the very end of patience. ‘Get out.’

With a heavy click of her fan the woman turned, then thought better of it. ‘I feel it to be my God-ordained duty to let the magistrate in Maldon know of this contretemps. If I were you, Stanford, I should keep all the silver ewers well out of sight before you, too, feel the heavy weight of the Moreton temperament descend upon you just as Cresswell did.’

With that they were gone, the door shut behind them and a servant Seraphina did not recognise standing at attention by the door.

Trey unlaced his grip on her hand in a quick movement and waved the man away, the tension in the room building as all the shouted insults of the woman were remembered. Finally, he spoke.