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

He turned at her words. ‘For what?’

‘For allowing me to keep at least a measure of pride here.’

‘One cannot take away that which was never lost in the first place, my lady.’

‘I will bear that in mind when I wrap myself in the borrowed cloak then, my lord.’

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘you do just that.’

This time he did not tarry as his man came forth and they both disappeared through the portal that led to the front steps.

She never said or did what he expected her to, Trey thought as he walked through the snow to the carriage. He wondered if it was deliberate, this knack of hers to throw him out just when he was beginning to understand her, her pale blue eyes laced at times with the fear of saying the wrong thing or inciting anger.

Hell, he would like to have laid his hands around the neck of her father and brother and squeezed hard, so little care they had taken with her. The dress she wore today was, if possible, even worse than the one she had on yesterday, the seams on the side of the bodice showing through to her white chemise. A ruffled velvet over-layer hid some of the damage, but the overall effect was unlike anything he had ever seen a lady wear before.

Catherine had been a woman whose wardrobe was full to bursting and one who was never happier than when taking a new shipment of ornate and expensive clothing. He grimaced. Would Lady Seraphina be slighted if he asked Mrs Thomas to select a few of the winter gowns his wife had never worn and take them to her room for appraisal?

Pulling his hand across his eyes as he felt the movement of the coach, he breathed in. He wanted Seraphina Moreton happy. He liked her smile and the deep dimples in each cheek, apprehension and alarm making way for the sort of joy he had long since forgotten. Part of him wanted to bang on the roof of the carriage and order it back so that he might go and find the Christmas greenery that she had spoken of, and the laughter. But he had promised her ribbon and candles and sweets and the look in her eyes when he had done so made the mission as important as any he had ever undertaken.

She seemed to be pulling them together, all of them, the boys, the dog, the servants and … him. Even the castle was to get a Christmas face of festive greenery and colour. He should say stop, of course, should halt such a transformation before the shape of their lives changed in such a way that they would be for ever stranded when she left them.

Which she would!

This isolated backwater of Essex would cease to be a haven for her before too many weeks had passed and the city and all its pleasures and amusement would call again. Was that not the way of beautiful young ladies, even one who was temporarily down on her luck?

The sun on the snow was harsh and the eye above his damaged cheek watered as it often did against such brightness. The gunpowder had burnt into his skin in Corunna, the sea voyage on the retreat through the storms of the Bay of Biscay stinging the weeping open wound with salt. He had arrived back in Essex just on the end of the Epiphany to find his wife had cuckolded him before dying, his sons left alone for months whilst their mother had sashayed her charms in London with numerous and adoring swains.

A hopeless wife and mother. Sometimes he wandered down to Catherine’s marking stone in the small graveyard just to make sure that she was actually gone. Such a sorry thought made him sit forwards and he was glad that his man rode on the box seat outside.

Loss. Love. Beauty. Betrayal. Death. And now nearly Christmas.

The thought had him turning to look at the fir trees lining the driveway of Blackhaven, his practised gaze picking out one that might be the perfect specimen for candles, nuts and sweets.

Chapter Five

The evening drew on and still Trey had not come back to Blackhaven Castle; the children were tucked into their beds and the light had faded long past into darkness. Seraphina had made some ground with the boys today, yet they remained distant and suspicious of her, despite all that she had done to try to win them over. Terence had been a little more forthcoming but the others had made it plain that they should like her gone. Still, she was not a person to give up easily and tomorrow when they decorated the front parlour she would make certain to tell them all the stories she had read of Christmas cheer.

She had thought of the duke many times through the day, expecting to see him in the mid-afternoon. But he hadn’t arrived even as the clock ticked on into midnight. Was he safe? Had the coach overturned? Did he freeze in the snow, waiting for aid that would not come? Cursing her vivid imagination, she shook away such doom-say and stood at her window, searching for a light. ‘Lord, let him be safe,’ she prayed over and over again, the flames in the hearth burning down to embers before she saw movement.

A moment later there was a flurry of action beneath her window as people ran out, the horses lifting their heads and prancing to try to keep the cold at bay. Packages were transferred into waiting hands and then Trey alighted, his cloak billowing as he mouthed instructions she could not hear.

When she changed her position to see him better he looked up and Seraphina knew that he saw her, but was unable to move. The force of his glance had left her shaking.

Why had she not met him three years ago on her first Season out when he might have seen her as she wanted him to, her father still solvent and a hundred suitors at her feet? Now, life bent her into a different woman, worry written in her eyes every time she looked in the mirror.

It was so ironic. When all seemed lost and hopeless she had arrived at the house of an honourable man who would help her as her own family had not, who would shelter her without question until the end of January. The truth of it made her frown.

‘Please God, do not let him have been my mother’s lover.’ The words tumbled into the dark, standing on the edge of it like arrows piercing a growing want that blossomed inside her. For him. For Trey Stanford, the sixth Duke of Blackhaven. Seraphina had known her mother had a suitor because Elizabeth had told her so, once late at night when she had come to her mama’s room and found her crying. The ring on her finger had not been her father’s, and her anguish was such that no amount of help could assuage it.

The following week they had buried her and her father had taken to the bottle in earnest.

Her parents, lost to death and to scandal. Biting at the nail on her thumb, she sat down again on her bed and listened as the noises below faded into silence.

Trey had seen her face at the window looking down, caught into stillness, her hair like a halo around her head, gold and wheat and pale pure flaxen. He would have liked to mount the stairs and knock on her door to see her blue eyes widen as she heard the reason as to why he had returned so late.

Ralph Bonnington, the Earl of Cresswell, was telling the world that Lady Seraphina Moreton had attacked him, unprovoked and unexpected, her anger at the loss of Moreton Manor so acute she could not countenance his windfall. He had been found by two of his friends, almost unconscious, according to the paper, and now demanded she be brought to trial.

Running his hands across his face, Trey strode into his library, helping himself to a liberal brandy to chase away the cold. For now, the winter protected Seraphina, kept her safe away from others and all the gossip that had ensued.

Each paragraph on the first two pages of The Times had speculated as to where Lady Seraphina had gone. Beneath the banter was another more dangerous thread. Trey imagined Cruikshank’s caricatures in ‘The Scourge’ depicting the fallen daughter of a bankrupt family engulfed in ignominy, ruined and exposed to the delight of those who exchanged tittle-tattle on the dance floor. A young woman’s reputation would not recover from such a public drubbing and Seraphina Moreton looked too fragile to weather any of it.

Refilling his glass, he sat before the fire, thinking.

Margaret and her husband were due to arrive in two days’ time and his sister was no fool. She would recognise Lady Seraphina and when she did …?

Small footsteps behind had him turning. Gareth stood in his nightwear, his hair tousled and his eyes sleepy.

‘I noticed your light from my window when I woke up, Papa, and I needed to ask you something.’

Trey already knew what was to come next. It was always the same question, every single time.

‘Mama loved us a hundred thousand times over, didn’t she?’

Settling his smallest son on his lap, he brought a blanket from the chair beside him to wrap away the cold.

‘A millions times over,’ he replied in the same vein, the truth of Catherine in London caring not a jot for her three small boys nowhere near his words.

‘Terry thinks Miss Moorland likes us, too?’

Now this was new. He nodded and waited.

‘He thinks we should, maybe, keep her?’

God, sometimes his children almost broke his heart with their want for a mother, though the small pitterpatter of paws saved him an answer as Melusine’s head poked around the corner.

‘Her dog wishes that you were in bed with him, Gareth,’ he replied as he stood to carry his son back to the nursery.

22 December

The Duke of Blackhaven looked different this morning as Seraphina came to the breakfast table, for his hair was loose around his face, giving the impression of a pirate from the dangerous South Sea Islands. However, his jacket was double breasted and the beige superfine in his trousers well ironed.

Her own attire was unforgivably dowdy, the rips on her skirt repaired badly and her only pair of boots still damp from the deep snow.

‘Mrs Thomas says that you declined the use of the gowns she laid out on your bed?’

‘I did, sir, for the ones I own shall suffice.’

‘If it is because you do not wish to wear my wife’s clothes, my housekeeper assures me she could fashion something from the many bolts of fabric that are stored in the attic. She is an expert seamstress by all accounts.’