“Happy Christmas, Lord Leistonbury.”
Nicholas glared at Mrs. Holly from bleary eyes and muttered what might have been an appropriate reply before he continued up the staircase to the east wing.
“You’re in a cheerful mood this fine Christmas morning.” Winterbourne had joined him for breakfast. A surprise in and of itself as the man seldom rose before midday. Now, as they left the dining room and climbed the stairs, he appeared determined to drive Nicholas mad before Christmas dinner.
“I sat up half the night getting foxed with two fools,” Nicholas said.
“You didn’t sleep well? I always sleep like the dead after getting foxed.”
“No, I did not sleep well. I can do this on my own, Winterbourne.”
“Bad dreams?”
“What?” It was far too early to endure the lieutenant’s perambulating conversation.
“Did bad dreams keep you from sleeping?” Winterbourne asked. “You were far quicker of wit when the French were trying to kill us, you know.”
Nicholas had no desire to be reminded of last night’s dreams. After making a cake of himself with Elizabeth, and then getting drunk to try and forget it, his dreams had been plagued with deliciously inappropriate visions of the lady in his bed.
“My dreams are none of your affair.”
“I see.”
“I truly hate it when you say that.”
“I know.” Winterbourne had a gift for getting under his friends’ skins. Very likely the reason he had so few friends.
They stopped to look up and down the corridor. Not a soul in sight. Nicholas headed for Miss Tidings’s chamber.
“I’m certain the irony of all of this has not escaped you, Leistonbury, even if you are half seas over.”
The footmen all had injuries. No one would notice if Winterbourne sported the black eye Nicholas very much wanted to give him. “What irony?”
They reached the door. Nicholas raised his hand to knock.
“An enceinte woman named Mary arrives on Christmas Eve by way of donkey accompanied by a fellow named Joseph? There is no room at the inn? Quite amusing if one thinks on it.”
“Joseph?” Nicholas rapped his knuckles on the door to keep from strangling his pestiferous friend.
“That four-legged carpet she passes off as a dog is named Joseph.”
“The dog’s name is Joseph?”
“Come in,” a woman’s voice beckoned over the soft woofs of the dog in question.
“You would know that if you actually conversed with the woman you intend to marry.”
Nicholas elbowed Winterbourne in the ribs and pushed past him into the chamber. To his surprise, Delacroix was seated in a chair at Miss Tiding's bedside.
“Good morning, St. Gabriel.” Their host sounded entirely too cheery. “Winterbourne, what are you doing about at this time of day?”
“Shame, Delacroix,” Winterbourne chided. “You will have Miss Tidings think I am a person of low character.” He dropped onto the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. The ridiculously large dog ambled over and set to sniffing his pockets.
“I know you are a person of low character, Lord Winterbourne,” Miss Tidings replied as she made an effort to sit up against the abundance of pillows at her back. “But you are vastly entertaining in spite of your faults. And Joseph appears to like you. You neglected to tell me Michael’s sister would be here.”
She accused Winterbourne, but she looked squarely into Nicholas’s face.
“I did not know you would be forced to come here, ma’am.” Unable to move, Nicholas stood a few steps from the door. His leg ached like the devil. Miss Tidings had improved a great deal since yesterday afternoon. No longer pale, she was wrapped in a dark blue wool dressing gown with her hair in one long braid over her shoulder. The remains of a tray of food on the dressing table and another on the bedside table indicated she had a hearty appetite. Then again, the dog had probably dispensed with half the contents himself.
“We agreed,” Miss Tidings said. “Miss Sterling need not know of our little arrangement, Lord Leistonbury.”
Nicholas flexed his hand against his leg. “And she will not so long as you keep to this room. I will make arrangements to move you to Leistonbury Hall as soon as the roads are safe to travel.”
“She has traveled from London by mail coach and barely made it from the village in that travesty of a donkey cart,” Delacroix started. “I don’t think she needs to be moved again.”
“What is she like?” the lady in question inquired.
“I beg your pardon?” Nicholas checked his friends’ expressions. Miss Tidings had managed to catch them all off their guard.
She folded the coverlet over her pronounced belly and crossed her hands in a prim governess pose. “What is Miss Sterling like? Is she the sort of woman who would scorn me? Is she a fine lady?”
Neither Winterbourne nor Delacroix said a word. Her tone sent a little niggle of alarm across Nicholas’s neck. Why had she asked such a question? Her expression was smug, almost as if she already knew the answer.
“She is the finest of ladies, but she would not scorn you.” Nicholas’s stomach clenched. The two women he’d wronged the most were under the same roof; and he was selfish bastard enough not to want them to know what he’d done. He had come to this house party to fulfill a promise to Captain Michael Sterling, to his friend now buried on a Belgian battlefield. He had no right to salvage his honor or his heart. To his shame, he was coward enough to try.
“It will be more comfortable for all of us if Elizabeth knows nothing of this business.” Nicholas tried and failed to keep the rancor from his voice. “Perhaps, in time, you will meet her as my wife and the mother of my child and the two of you may become friends.”
His friends continued to do fair imitations of mutes. When he wanted them to speak, they were quiet. When he wanted quiet, they prattled on like maiden aunts at Almack’s.
“I see,” Miss Tidings replied.
Nicholas ground his teeth at Winterbourne’s delighted bark of laughter.
“You laugh, my lord, but I agree with his lordship. Miss Sterling may well be a kind lady, but we would not want to upset her frail sensibilities, especially in the midst of playing hostess at her first Christmas house party.”
“Thank you, Miss Tidings.” Nicholas inclined his head. “Your father was an excellent soldier and a fine man. He raised a fine daughter.” His throat grew dry. The slow thud of his heart made it difficult to breathe. She’d lost so much and now, for the sake of her child would agree to a loveless marriage with a scarred, crippled wreck. None of this was her fault and still he resented her. In this moment, he resented her, and Sterling, and Delacroix, and all of the necessary horrors of war and honor that kept him from the woman he needed more than his next breath. He had to leave this room.
“I’m certain we will be most comfortable together once we are married. Happy Christmas, Miss Tidings.”
If she made a reply he didn’t hear it. He was out the door and halfway down the corridor before Delacroix and Winterbourne caught up to him.
“Stubble it,” he growled and forced his leg to lengthen his strides.
“Didn’t say a word,” Delacroix offered.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Winterbourne agreed.
Where was an interrupting housekeeper or a superior butler when one needed one?
“I must say that was the worst proposal of marriage I’ve ever heard.” Apparently Winterbourne simply could not resist.
Nicholas stopped on the landing and turned on the duke’s heir turned cavalry officer. “It wasn’t intended as a proposal.”
“Damned good thing too.” Winterbourne shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned.
“Delacroix, would you mind terribly if I pushed him down the stairs?”
“Wouldn’t mind at all, Leistonbury, but if he dislodges the greenery or bleeds on the carpets, Lizzie will have our heads.”
“Happy Christmas, gentlemen.”
The three of them spun to face the landing and snapped to attention like recruits on review. God, she was a vision. In a gown of blue and gold velvet she stood at the bottom of the stairs smiling up at them. She had no inkling of the scheme they’d hatched. And none of them suspected the flames licking up every inch of Nicholas’s body at the mere sight of her.
“Hmm,” she mused, her grey eyes bright with unspoken laughter. “You three have the look of boys who have been into the Christmas pudding. What are you doing in this wing of the house?”
“Uhm.”
“Err.”
“Happy Christmas, Fair Lizzie.” Winterbourne met her halfway down the stairs and kissed her cheek. The look he cast up at Nicholas and Delacroix said clearly I’ve done my part. You two ninnies are on your own.
“Just checking the preparations are all in place for our guests, my dear,” Delacroix said, a bit too desperately.
“I thought we were guests,” Nicholas muttered.
“Pestilence, not guests,” Delacroix shot back.
“You didn’t go into any of the rooms, did you?” She peered at each of their faces. For a moment she seemed almost frantic. Then Nicholas’s gaze caught hers.
Questions, mysteries, unspoken desires—a world of things passed between them. On the most hopeful day of the year, they were all for naught.
“We didn’t disturb a thing on your lists, Lizzie.” Delacroix ambled down the stairs, took Elizabeth in his arms, and kissed her soundly on the mouth.
“Oh.” She touched her fingers to her lips and glanced at the mistletoe overhead.
Nicholas’s blood went cold. He curled his fingers into his palms tight and tighter still.
She looked up the stairs at him, stunned and more than a little wary.
“I’ve a surprise for you, Lizzie,” Delacroix announced. “I sent for a special license. I thought we might marry on Twelfth Night.”
Delacroix continued to talk as he and Winterbourne escorted her down the stairs, but Nicholas heard not a word. Elizabeth murmured responses of some sort. All the while, she peered over her shoulder at Nicholas, her lips tilted up the barest hint at the corners. He stood on the landing and watched his every Christmas wish for the rest of his life glide gracefully out of sight.
“Another tray for Miss Tidings?” Elizabeth marveled at the abundance of food traveling up and down the back stairs to her secret guest’s chambers.
The startled maid stepped away from the servants’ door, bumped it closed with her hip, and approached with the tray clutched in shaky hands. She bobbed a curtsey. “Yes, miss. Cook sent it up, miss.” The poor girl looked about the corridor as if she expected an attack by hungry highwaymen. Perhaps she’d met Joseph.
“I thought Miss Tidings just finished her luncheon.” Why was the girl so nervous?
“I don’t know, miss. Cook said bring it up. Said she’s fair knackered taking all these orders.”
Mrs. Holly knew what she was about when she’d placed Miss Tidings in the Chinese bedchamber rather than the one Elizabeth had suggested. This room was closer to the servants’ stairs, which led directly to the kitchen. Still, when Elizabeth had questioned her about the change, the housekeeper had behaved most peculiarly.
The maid edged past Elizabeth, brushed the latch up, stumbled into the chamber, and shut the door as if the devil himself were on her heels. It had to be the weather. The snow continued to fall, the rest of the guests were trapped in the village, and no one cared to venture out of doors for more than the time it took to care for the horses or bring in more firewood. Everyone had gone a little mad.
Delacroix stood first among madmen in Ivy House. For months he’d been silent as the grave about kisses, weddings, and marriage. He chose Christmas Day to deliver her first kiss, pull a special license out of his pocket, and suggest they marry in less than a fortnight. Worse, he and Winterbourne conversed at length as to the details of her wedding and no doubt fully expected her to toddle along and say her vows without the first question.
The arrival of his friends had everything to do with her betrothed’s sudden urge to marry. Elizabeth had nothing to do with it at all. As much as she had resigned herself to a comfortable marriage, their high-handedness infuriated her no end.
She stared at Miss Tidings’s closed door a moment more before she set off to retrieve her shawl from her own bedchamber. The mysterious Mary wasn’t exactly mad, but she wasn’t terribly forthcoming either. Elizabeth had spent the last hour in a pleasant visit with her, but she seemed distracted and secretive to say the least. Every polite inquiry Elizabeth put to her was met with an equally polite, but odd question.
How long have you known the master of Ivy House, Miss Sterling? How long have you been betrothed? Do you have any family, Miss Sterling? What sort of person is your mother, Miss Sterling? You lost your brother at Waterloo? What kind of man was he, Miss Sterling?
Her odd questions coupled with her restless demeanor had Elizabeth’s curiosity piqued. The mystery of Miss Tidings would have to wait. Two gentlemen very dear to her had conspired to force Delacroix into marrying Elizabeth before he was ready. She wanted to know why. They wouldn’t confess theft of a single tart under dire torture. Which meant she had to stoop to those most unsavory of women’s wiles—badgering and eavesdropping.
She marched into her bedchamber and rummaged through the clothes press for her blue paisley shawl. The pier glass caught her reflection as she draped it around her shoulders. Estelle’s locket glittered against the blue of her gown. Nicholas. He’d stood on the landing while Delacroix kissed her and announced they would marry, but he’d spoken not a word. His face, however, spoke volumes—if only she knew how to read it. She wanted to think longing and anguish accounted for the hard line of his mouth and the fire in his eyes. Something of those feelings fairly shook from him when he’d placed his sister’s locket around her neck. Or had she merely wished it so?
Elizabeth closed her hand around the locket. What am I to do, Estelle? The reflection of the gold links of the chain winked at her from the pier glass. Right, then. Time to take fate into her own hands. And she knew just where and how to do it.