Sure enough, Sophia was alone in the room to which the doddery old butler directed James when he asked after the second parlour. He gave the room a quick and cursory scan before focusing his attention on the woman standing on a ladder and hanging garlands across the huge painting on the window wall. She leaned to her right to reach up to the carved pediment above the window, clutching at the draped maroon curtains to keep her balance.
James was across the room in seconds. “Careful,” he said, steadying the ladder.
Sophia looked down. “Lord Elfingham. What are you doing here?”
“I was looking for something useful to do, Lady Sophia. May I be of service?”
She examined his face and then nodded. “You are between Scylla and Charybdis, are you not?”
James laughed. “You have it exactly. On the one side, the ladies who think it worth the gamble to pull a possible future duke down into their watery vortex, and on the other, the multi-headed monster of innuendo and insult in the company of the gentlemen.”
“Neither ladies nor gentlemen by their behaviour,” his own lady said tartly. “Very well, Lord Elfingham, I will put you to work.” She put one hand on his shoulder to help herself from the ladder. “Bring the ladder, please. I have more garlands to hang.”
James lifted the ladder and followed obediently in her wake. “What are we doing, pray tell?”
“We are having a costume party tonight. You heard?”
James nodded. His wardrobe was limited to what he could carry in his saddlebags, but the duchess had ordered chests of costumes and fabric brought down from the attics, and he had found the means to replicate his festival clothes as a mountain prince, or at least close enough for the audience.
If they wanted a barbarian, he would give them a barbarian.
“We did not decorate in here on Christmas Eve, since we had so much else to do, so I am putting up Christmas decorations. See? The evergreen is a symbol of life in this most holy season. And the holly, have you heard the song about the holly?”
Sophia sang for him, in a light alto, all the verses his father had taught his family when James was a tiny child. This European holly was not precisely the same as the holly he had grown up with, but it was similar. For the pleasure of hearing her voice, he kept his counsel.
She went on to explain the other Christmas customs, not just the foliage and ribbons and other materials used in the decorations, but the pudding that had been served at Christmas dinner, the Yule logs burning in various fireplaces around the house, and the boxes the duchess had delivered the previous day to poor families around the district.
“Cedrica and I, and several of the other ladies, were her deputies,” Sophia explained. “It was wonderful to see the happy little faces of the children, James.”
James had stayed back from the hunt organised for the men in the hopes of spending time with Sophia, and had found out about the charity expedition too late to offer his services. “I am sorry that I missed it,” he said sincerely.
He noted one glaring omission in her descriptions. “Just a decoration,” she had told him, mendaciously, when he asked about the kissing boughs.
And now pretending to be ignorant of these English Christmas customs was about to pay off. One day, when she was safely his wife, he might admit to Sophia that he and the whole citadel had hung on his father’s tales of an English Christmas, that his mother and her maids had decorated high and low, and his father had led the troops out to find a fitting Yule log to carry home in triumph on Christmas Eve. A harder job in his dry mountains than in this green land.
But this was not the time for that story. Not when Sophia was relaxed and about to pass under a kissing bough that retained its full complement of mistletoe berries.
James suppressed a grin. “Look,” he said, at the opportune time, pointing up. “My Kaka—my Kaka—told me about these.”
She stopped, as he had intended, and with a single stride, he had reached her, wrapped her in his arms, and captured the lips that had been haunting his dreams this past eight months.
And she kissed him back. For a moment… for one long glorious moment, while time stood still and the world ceased to exist, Sophia Belvoir kissed him back.
Sophia was twenty-five years of age, had been betrothed twice, and had been kissed under her share of kissing boughs. But she had never been kissed like this. This was no respectful salute on the cheek or brief, light brush across the lips. His mouth settled over hers, and what he did with his lips and then his teeth and his tongue set her senses reeling. Her consciousness would have narrowed entirely to those delicious sensations, except that he held her firmly in his arms and the feel of his long strong body against hers caused parts of her body she seldom thought about to suddenly demand her immediate attention.
My goodness. My goodness gracious. No wonder girls were kept so closely guarded! She was a hair’s breadth from throwing caution to the wind and…
Sophia stiffened and drew back, and was inordinately disappointed that Elfingham let her go. His dark eyes were watchful, but a smile played around those lips she had just been kissing. She licked her own lips, and he caught his breath as his eyes riveted on the movement.
Sophia shook her head to try to clear it. “Lord Elfingham, the tradition requires just a simple peck on the cheek, nothing so…” She did not have words for the type of kiss they had just shared.
Elfingham reached up and plucked a berry from the bunch. “There are at least another twenty,” he said, his expression absurdly hopeful. “I am sure I could improve with practice.”
If he improved any more, Sophia would burst into flame.
She shook her head, backing away. “That is the kind of kiss that belongs to dalliance,” hoping she sounded firm. “I am not the kind…” She blushed. She did not at all mean to say that she was not the kind of woman men dallied with, true though it might be. She gathered her scattered dignity. “I hope I have not given you the impression I am available for dalliance, Lord Elfingham, for I am not.”
The amusement on Elfingham’s face faded, and he dropped to one knee, his eyes fixed on Sophia’s. His voice vibrated with sincerity as he said, “It is the kind of kiss that belongs in marriage, Lady Sophia. I would never insult you with less. My esteem for you, my respect… I did not mean to speak so precipitously, but the kissing bough was there, and you looked so charmingly.”
He was not offering marriage, surely. He was courting Felicity; everyone said so.
“You would do me the greatest of honour if you would consent to be my wife, Lady Sophia.”
He had been carried away by the kiss, and her scold led him to think he owed her a proposal.
“You do not want to marry me, Lord Elfingham. It was only a Christmas kiss. We shall not regard it.”
“I have dreamed of kissing you for months, and I want to marry you more than I want to take my next breath,” the unaccountable man said.
Could it possibly be true?
But before she could adjust to the idea, the door slammed open, and Hythe burst into the room.
“What is going on here? What are you doing with my sister, you blackguard?”
Lord Elfingham rose calmly to his feet, brushing at his knee. “I was proposing marriage to your sister. Lady Sophia, I do not demand an answer now. Just tell me you will think about it.”
“She will do nothing of the kind, Elfingham, or Winderfield, or whatever your name should be.” Hythe was nearly dancing with rage. “She has more sense than to throw herself away on a baseborn mongrel.”
Sophia put her hand on Hythe’s arm. “Lord Elfingham has behaved with the utmost respect, Hythe. You have no reason to be so alarmed.”
Her brother glared at her. “Really? Then why do you look as if you have been thoroughly kissed, Sophia Belvoir? And by the same scoundrel, I’ll be bound, who was seen kissing your sister in the garden not half an hour ago!”
Sophia felt herself pale, as she turned to Elfingham for an explanation.
“Yes, I came here from talking to your sister,” he confirmed. “She castigated me for not making it clear which sister I was courting and told me where to find you.”
“See, he admits it!”
Elfingham rounded on Hythe. “I gave a brotherly peck on the cheek to the woman I hope to make my sister, and if you were watching, Hythe, you know that to be true.”
“That is not what Hamner says,” Hythe declared. “‘Kissing and cuddling,’ he said, but you need not think you can compromise her into a betrothal, you swine.”
Elfingham threw his hands up then turned back to Sophia. “Hamner lies, my lady. I wish to marry you, not your sister. Not any other lady on this earth. You do believe me, do you not?”
“Sophia knows you asked me for Felicity’s hand,” Hythe insisted, “and I refused.”
“I did no such thing!” Elfingham turned back to Sophia, taking her hands. “I informed Hythe I wished to make you my wife, Sophia. It has never been Felicity. Only you since the day we met.”
Hythe tried to shove Elfingham away from Sophia. “What about your cousin Charlotte?”
“Not one other lady on this earth,” Elfingham repeated.
Sophia put her fingers to her forehead, where a headache was beginning to pound. “Go away, please. I have work to do here.” It was not polite, but she needed them out of the room.
Elfingham stretched a pleading hand. “Talk to Lady Felicity, my lady. She will assure you—”
“You have your answer.” Hythe sneered. “She does not want you.”
“Both of you!” Sophia said sharply. “I do not want either of you, here, in this room, cutting up my peace.”
Elfingham hesitated then turned for the door, his shoulders slumped.
“Sophia…” Hythe began in his ‘I am male and will be tolerant of a mere female’ voice. Now, more than ever, it set her back arching.
“Not another word, Hythe. Out. Now.”
Hythe retreated towards the door that Elfingham was holding open, his open face showing alarm, then an incipient sulk, and then—as he passed Elfingham—smug satisfaction. It was the last that prompted her to call after Elfingham as he closed the door.
“Lord Elfingham?”
He opened the door again, poking his head inside, his eyes wary and anxious.
“Hythe is wrong. I have not given you my answer.” He smiled, and more of him appeared in the doorway, but she heard her brother’s voice protesting from the hall, and said, “Go away, my lord. We shall talk later.”
He withdrew his head and shut the door. Well. It was what she asked, no—demanded. Foolish, then, to want to weep because he had not stayed, had not held her again, and kissed her into submission. If he had been kissing Felicity, she did not want him. Of course, she didn’t. Not that she believed Lord Hamner, not for a moment. A brotherly kiss. It was possible, was it not?
Sophia shook her head slowly, stupid tears filling her eyes and brimming over to run down her cheeks. How could anyone prefer plain, boring, opinionated, managing Sophia to pretty, charming, sociable Felicity? Or Lady Charlotte Winderfield, who was both beautiful and graceful? It was a foolish dream, and Elfingham was playing some kind of game. Undoubtedly, he had left the room and probably forgotten all about her immediately.
Her maudlin thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. If either of those two had returned, she would give them something to think about.
She rose to her feet, scrubbing away the tears with the back of her sleeve. “Enter.”
It was Cedrica with a tea trolley. “My dear Sophia, what has happened?”
The tears welled again, and she fought them back. “Nothing, Cedrica. Hythe and Lord Elfingham were just… It is nothing. I am being silly.”
“Lord Elfingham sent me. No. Not exactly. He came looking for a maid to bring you tea. He said you were working hard and needed to be looked after. I thought I would bring it myself.”
“He asked me to marry him.” Sophia had not expected to blurt that out, but Cedrica did not seem surprised.
“And what did you say?” Cedrica continued calmly preparing the tea, and Sophia found herself telling the whole story, from the rescue in the village to the kiss that Hamner claimed he saw.
“I would not believe Lord Hamner over Lord Elfingham,” her friend mused, handing her tea prepared just the way she liked it, and a plate with some of Monsieur Fournier’s dainty little cakes. “Hamner is courting Felicity when he can tear his eyes away from Matilda.”
“Cedrica, I cannot marry a man who has been courting my sister!”
“Sophia, it is plainly obvious even to someone like me, who has never had a suitor, that Lord Elfingham is interested only in you, and if you think about it you will see that I am right.”
A knock at the door proved to be a maid with a domestic crisis that required Cedrica’s immediate attention, and she hurried away, leaving Sophia to her tea, a plate of dainty cakes, and her thoughts.