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

‘Lady Frobisher will probably calm down once she has had the time to think things over. I doubt she will want to alert the magistrate.’

‘How could she know anything about me?’

‘The papers are full of the mystery of your disappearance from London and with you gone …’

He stopped as she looked up at him.

‘With you gone anyone can say anything. And they have.’

‘I see.’ He had not mentioned the matter of her being his intended at all. Rather he moved back and poured himself a drink from a decanter on a small desk. Brandy, Seraphina thought by the colour, so shocked that she had begun to shake. Trey Stanford swallowed his tipple in a single shot and poured another. This one he handed to her.

‘I find a clear mind often only makes matters worse, Seraphina.’ The first time he had ever used her Christian name and she liked the sound of it off his tongue. Upending the liquid just as he had, she coughed as the burn crawled down her throat.

‘Lady Frobisher is a woman who could ruin your reputation in a heartbeat,’ he said at length. ‘And to find you here at Blackhaven without a chaperone would constitute a great scandal.’

She smiled, fortified by the effects of the drink, for if only everything could be so very easy.

‘Oh, I think my reputation is already ruined, my lord.’

‘Perhaps not. The world will be wary of the word of a man who is both a gambler and a heavy drinker. Although Ralph Bonnington might say you attacked him, he is without witnesses. Conjecture is all anyone has to work with.’

Seraphina had had enough. ‘I can see no conjecture bigger than the false news of the betrothal you confided to the group who have just left, sir.’

He laughed at that. ‘Surely you understand that a governess looking as you do would be fodder for endless debate. No one would believe you were here merely to watch over my children and you would never again be accepted back into the society you are used to.’

‘I had no mind to go back, my lord.’

‘Your mother said exactly the same thing to me after Terence died, but she was at odds to find another place to be at peace in, no matter how hard she tried to.’

This truth made her sad, but she could not leave it there. ‘My parents’ marriage was as false as you profess your own to have been and both ended badly. I should never agree to marriage unless there was love.’

‘Indeed, those are my sentiments exactly.’

Such words confused her and a hope long missing from her life bounded into possibility. Was he saying he could love her? Did he mean to keep to the words given to Lady Frobisher because of such an emotion? She shook her head. A man like him would have the choice of any woman he wanted, one spotless of reputation and from a family well able to bring in a substantial dowry.

But what if it was she he desired? What if even for this small moment she might be his?

The clock on the mantel struck the hour of four and outside she could hear heavy rain against the window, melting the snow. The boys would be being readied for a bath by the night nurse and supper was more than three hours away.

Here, then, for this time she was cocooned in a room with a man who had stood up for her in front of strangers. No, more than that even—a man who had placed his own name on the line for hers, protective and honourable. The kisses from yesterday still burnt into her lips and the drink she had taken made her bones feel languid and heavy.

Lord, she was so very beautiful, the blue of her eyes fanned by a pale grey ring and her nose sprinkled with freckles, true and straight. As beautiful outside as she was inside, the soft honesty of her words in the garden still rang in his brain. She had admitted her share of the depth of feeling between them and had told him directly that the kisses they had enjoyed in the gardens were a gift. Catherine would have allocated only blame and reproach, but Seraphina Moreton spoke of truth and love.

The pad of his thumb drew along her jaw carefully and up across her swollen top lip and her gaze did not falter as her lips came to meet him, sampling, pushing forwards.

He knew that he should pull away, but it was too late for that, too late for anything altruistic or honourable because he wanted Lady Seraphina Moreton as he had never wanted anyone else before in the whole of his life.

Helen Frobisher’s false and perfidious assumptions were everything he hated in society. Lord, his wife had been a master at gossip and innuendo and the memories of those hurt by her sharp tongue were numerous. Seraphina, in contrast, was an innocent, crucified by all those about her who held a duty of protection and had neglected such obligation. As his hands tightened about her arms, his mouth came down upon hers.

Soft warmth met him in an equal measure, his lips slanting hard, seeking entry and finding it, no mind now for anything save the feel of loving, the promise making his heartbeat quicken. Aye, bodies had their own particular language and the feel of her skin, lustre smooth and unblemished, made him groan.

She was like rain after a long drought, moisture to fill all the dried and lost recesses of heart and soul. The words he had given to the Frobishers burned between them too, thrust into a kiss that was unequalled, a stack of papers on his desk falling around them as he inadvertently knocked them over, no sense in anything save that which nullified reason, the melding of two souls long left alone. He pressed in closer, his manhood swelling, all time and place lost as each sought the promise of more. He felt her shaking, moving, wanting, her fingers threaded through his hair as she drew him in, the honesty of her tender touch shattering the cold anger that had resided in him.

Released and unfettered.

When he pulled away he cradled her head against his chest. Protection had its own voice too, and it was not one that thought only of the heat of the moment. Seraphina neither deserved nor needed that.

‘Lord, help me,’ he said even as he meant not to, frustration cresting against pure and utter lust. The buds of her nipples showed hard against the perished blue velvet of her bodice and he softened his grasp.

‘My sister and her husband should have been here by now.’ Words of warning and intent. Words to take the sting from any perceived pressure and leave her with a choice she had long seemed bereft of. To do just as she wanted!

The blue of her eyes filled with question. ‘The Moreton name does not hold the power it once did. She might hate me, this sister of yours, as much as the Frobishers. She might hear of the false promises you have made and believe that you meant them.’