Nicholas exchanged a look with Delacroix. Winterbourne had ever been the joker of their group. Not even the worst of war’s ugliness dampened his spirits. A façade to be sure. The three of them had survived. Sterling had not. And each of them had traded swords for façades. Soldiers armed themselves for all of life’s battles. The made-wise-by-life scrutiny of a slip of a woman of two-and-twenty who had known them all their lives was a definite call to arms.
Elizabeth gazed at the group’s scoundrel with obvious exasperation before she turned to Nicholas. In the grey mists of her eyes he saw her brother, and the pain of what Sterling’s death meant squeezed his chest without mercy.
“A Perfect Christmas? With you three in residence?” She stretched up to brush the snow from his shoulders. Her hair smelled of jasmine and roses. Nicholas drew it into his lungs and held it to keep himself from holding her. Elizabeth touched her hand to his chest and handed his great coat to the butler before she turned back to Winterbourne and Delacroix. “A Perfectly Ordinary Christmas is what I said and I will settle for no less.”
“She has a list,” Delacroix said with his usual tone of comic solemnity.
“Does she, indeed?” Nicholas teased. He was rewarded with the militant tilt of Elizabeth’s chin he so admired. Her eyes flashed silver-grey daggers, but the nearly imperceptible twitch of her lips gave her away. No man would ever get the best of her. Good.
“Christmases, gentlemen, in my two-and-twenty years, have fallen into five sorts—Perfect, Perfectly Ordinary, Ordinary, Dreadful, and Perfectly Dreadful,” she informed them.
“What, pray tell us, constitutes a Perfectly Ordinary Christmas?” Winterbourne tossed his coat to a footman with a black eye.
“A few minor episodes with burnt or undercooked food, no more than three arguments between Mrs. Holly and Shepherds, and perhaps a smattering of snow.” She ticked them off the fingers of her left hand and tucked her right beneath Nicholas’s arm. Across the marble floor made slick by the snow he and Winterbourne had tracked in, Nicholas matched his uneven steps to her dainty ones, just as she intended. They followed the others up the stairs at neither more nor less than the right pace. Slow enough to accommodate his nearly useless leg, but not so slowly as to acknowledge anything had changed. Had the others even noticed? He did. He noticed everything about her. Five minutes back in her life and nothing had changed. For him.
“Sounds deadly dull to me. I like a bit more excitement with my Christmas goose.” Winterbourne sauntered through the drawing room door held open by another footman, this one with a nasty gash on his forehead.
“You and your excitement turned an Ordinary Christmas into a Dreadful Christmas last year, my lord.” Elizabeth lowered herself gracefully onto the plump sofa nearest the fire and patted the seat beside her. Nicholas’s body obeyed. His mind refused to keep quiet. She is not for you, Nicholas. She is not for you.
“Me?” Winterbourne adopted an attitude of affronted martyrdom even as he plundered the ornate sideboard for a bottle of brandy and glasses.
“I think she means your little tryst in the conservatory.” Delacroix waved off the man’s offer of a drink. “You remember. Screaming? Pistols? A small fire?”
“These things are expected at house parties.” Winterbourne didn’t ask Nicholas, simply handed him a glass and splashed a generous dose of brandy in it. With one booted ankle crossed over the other, he propped an elbow on the mantel and raised his own glass to Elizabeth.
“She was the vicar’s wife, Alex!” Use of one’s given name indicated the Little General was in high dudgeon.
Winterbourne being Winterbourne ignored it. “Well, it was Christmas.”
Elizabeth laughed softly—a rich, sultry sound so very different from the petite, proper lady she presented to the world. Nicholas watched in silent amusement as she took Winterbourne to task for his cavalier exploits with women. She’d directed Nicholas to the seat closest to the fire. He was grateful, but not surprised. The warmth stole into his aching bones and dulled the constant reminder of all he’d lost at Waterloo.
Shepherds arrived bearing a large tea tray, which he placed on the low table next to Elizabeth. “Will there be anything else, miss?”
“This is lovely, Shepherds. Offer Cook my thanks.” She lifted the teapot, but stopped before she poured. “I am concerned about the snow.”
“Yes, miss. I am not certain it is within my power to stop it, but if you have a suggestion, I am more than willing to try.” The man’s face moved not a muscle.
Delacroix succumbed to a coughing fit. Winterbourne choked on his brandy. Nicholas only had eyes for Elizabeth. She tilted her head up and curled her lips into a smile of terrifying innocence.
“And here I thought you could do anything,” she said sweetly. “No matter. Send one of the grooms to check the roads from the village. We should make certain they are clear for our other guests who will be arriving tomorrow.”
Delacroix took the cup of tea Elizabeth offered him and raised it in salute as Shepherds closed the door behind him. He and Winterbourne fell on the cakes and tarts on the tea tray like starving infantrymen after a week’s forced march.
“Well done, Miss Sterling.” Nicholas accepted the dainty plate she offered him and again she laughed.
“Shepherds doesn’t quite know what to do with me. There hasn’t been a lady of the house since Delacroix’s mother died. I’ve only been here a fortnight, but it has been a very trying fortnight for him, poor dear.”
He broke off a piece of warm apple spice cake and glanced at the elderly lady huddled in the commodious chair across the room. “What about Aunt Merryweather?”
“What about her?” Elizabeth placed a lemon tart on his plate.
They watched Delacroix’s only living relative for a moment or two. Or three. At least he thought she was living. Nothing. “She is well?” Nicholas asked. “Isn’t she?”
The old dear startled awake and began to work furiously at the bundle of knitting in her lap. After half a row, she nodded off again and began to snore, none too softly. Nicholas turned in time to see Elizabeth smother another of those dusky, all too alluring laughs.
“She is exceedingly well, my lord. But no match for Shepherds.”
“Don’t.” God, he hadn’t meant to snap. My lord. The words pounded hour by hour against the battlements he’d built against his grief. Her voice gave those words power, made being the earl real. And the battlements threatened to crumble.
“You must accustom yourself to it sometime, Nicholas.” Her soft voice, in words meant for his ears alone, chided and soothed. It was her gift, one of many.
“Not now. Not by you.” Was it strength or weakness to beg the understanding of the one person who never failed to give it?
“I’m sorry.” She covered his hand with hers. “It’s been seven months since you lost your brother. I just thought …” Her eyes met his. He wrapped his fingers around hers and held tight. His world had been in an ever-increasing spin for over a year. The war had held it at bay until Waterloo, a macabre solace against wars he could not fight at home. And now the touch of his friend’s betrothed proved the only power to stop the whirl in its tracks. He should not have come.
“How is your mother?” With her free hand, she’d prepared a cup of tea exactly as he preferred it.
He let go of her fingers one by one, took the cup, and let the flavor and heat of it remind him he was in England again. He was home. When he opened his eyes, Elizabeth was studying his face even as she smiled at Delacroix and Winterbourne’s squabbles over the teacakes.
“Mama is well. She sends her regards.” He took another sip of his tea. “She is in London with her sisters. With everyone gone, she isn’t ready to spend Christmas at the Hall. Neither was I.”
“Then I am pleased you have come to us for Christmas.” She spoke with her usual sparkling sincerity, but he did not miss the little catch in her voice nor a flash of uncertainty in her gaze.
Us. Elizabeth and Delacroix. His appetite for spice cake and lemon tarts fled.
“What about me, General?” Winterbourne reached for a lemon tart and earned a swat from the lady for his efforts. He scooped up the last gooseberry tart instead. “Are you happy I am come for Christmas?”
“I am.” She handed him a plate to catch the crumbs he was scattering over Delacroix’s expensive carpets. “I am amazed Major St. Gabriel was able to drag you away from the delights of London at this time of year.”
Delacroix raised an eyebrow at her avoidance of Nicholas’s title. Nicholas answered with a raised eyebrow of his own.
“The delights became a bit too delightful.” Winterbourne stuffed the entire gooseberry tart in his mouth and returned to the sideboard for more brandy.
“His father was in town.” Nicholas finished his tea and moved his bad leg closer to the fire.
“Ah.” Elizabeth looked from Winterbourne to Nicholas expectantly.
“As were three ladies of his acquaintance.”
“Three of my former mistresses.” Winterbourne crossed the room to perch on the arm of the sofa next to Elizabeth.
“Don’t speak of mistresses in front of Lizzie.” Delacroix warned. “She is a lady.”
“I learned the meaning of the word listening to you three and my brother playing at cards when I was twelve years old, Delacroix.” She leaned forward to refill Nicholas’s cup of tea. Three small chestnut curls caressed the back of her neck. Were they as soft as they appeared? “And I am a gentlewoman, not a lady.”
“Is there a difference?” Nicholas asked.
“Yes. Gentlewomen have more fun.” The mischievous young girl they’d caught hiding in the window seat of the billiards room all those years ago peered at him from the beautiful woman’s face.
Winterbourne snorted. “I don’t know about that, but avoiding a devil incarnate father and three women one has bid a not-so-fond adieu can be dashed trying on a man with a constitution as delicate as mine.”
“Delicate constitution.” Delacroix rolled his eyes. “Tell that to the French.”
“You look none the worse for wear.” Elizabeth observed.
She had taken all their measures years ago. Dead clever is that Miss Sterling. She was indeed.
“You are ever kindness itself, Fair Elizabeth,” Winterbourne said with an overdramatic sigh.
“Then again, you have had that just-leapt-from-the-wrong-bed-in-the-nick-of-time look as long as I have known you.”
Winterbourne chuckled. “Have you made no effort to dull that sharp tongue of hers, Delacroix?”
“I simply try to stay out of striking distance.”
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to wed a shrewish woman.”
“Try not to mangle Shakespeare and insult my future wife in the same hour, Lieutenant.”
“As you command, Captain.” Winterbourne took possession of Elizabeth’s hand and raised it to his lips. “My apologies, General.”
Elizabeth pulled her hand free and gave Winterbourne a shove.
Nicholas had accepted Delacroix’s invitation for this. Less than one hour in her company and Elizabeth had drawn them back to a time before wars abroad and losses at home had left the three of them living hollow lives in dark places. She had a gift for reminding them of the young men they’d been, and now that gift would be Delacroix’s forever. The comfort that had begun to seep into the cold room where Nicholas kept his heart retreated and something inside him shivered. It was time to put an end to this. Delacroix needed to marry Elizabeth. Soon.
“When are you to marry?”
Well that certainly had all the subtlety of a cavalry charge. Delacroix had the expression of the last fox of hunting season. Winterbourne merely raised an eyebrow and downed his drink. Even Aunt Merryweather bestirred herself long enough to knit a few rows. Elizabeth, however … Elizabeth snuffed out the candle of her smile in an instant. Damn.
“Sir.” Shepherds stood in the door as stone-faced as ever. Something Nicholas had never seen in Delacroix’s butler lurked in the man’s eyes. Panic. Panicked or not, his entrance could not have come at a more fortuitous moment.
“Yes, Shepherds.” Delacroix threw Nicholas a furious glare. “What is it?”
“There is a small situation in the kitchens, sir.”
“Oh for pity’s sake.” Elizabeth flounced to her feet. “What is it now?”
“I really think the master would be better—”
“The master couldn’t handle a footman dangling from the chandelier, and he has guests.” She spared neither Nicholas, Winterbourne, nor Delacroix a backward glance. “I will take care of this, Shepherds.” She motioned him into the corridor ahead of her. “The rumor is I will be the mistress of this house one day.” She grasped the door. “Eventually,” she fired back into the room before slamming the door shut behind her.
Nicholas and Delacroix shot to their feet.
“Why haven’t you married her?”
“You don’t have to do this, Leistonbury.”
Their words clanged like crossed sabers. They stood breathing at each other.
Winterbourne strolled between them and gave them both a shove. “Give over.” For a man who wanted nothing to do with his father’s dukedom, he played the arrogant arse exceedingly well when it suited him. “Sit down. The both of you.” He collapsed onto the sofa Elizabeth had vacated and took a noisy pull from the brandy bottle. “It’s going to be a long damned Christmas.”
Winterbourne was right. And a long Christmas with Elizabeth Sterling was the last thing Nicholas needed.