Mary's Christmas Knight Read online

  “Then it would seem we both have unfulfilled desires.”

  He huffed, then managed to swallow his laughter. “Mary, darling,” he said on a whisper. “I warned you not to go about making such lascivious comments. You’re embarrassing my conservative sensibilities.”

  She made a sound suspiciously close to a snort then opened her last present, a purple box tied with a purple bow. He saw no tag. She peeled open the paper — also purple — and let out a tiny gasp. “How beautiful,” she purred. Little tease, she didn’t hold it up for him to see. What had delighted her so? Made her eyes spark with pleasure?

  “May I ask what your secret admirer sent?”

  “Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

  He couldn’t help chuckling, and on impulse he lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles. What he really wanted to do was suck on the tip of each finger until she blushed again.

  “What, not the Orlov Diamond? No white tigers? Any swain worth his salt should at least send a Taj Mahal replica.”

  She looked skyward and pressed her lips in a flat line, but he suspected he’d hit a nerve; no one seemed to understand Mary beyond her books and nursing and committees. Did no else see that she hid behind all those to keep her passion from boiling over?

  “Someone should give you diamonds, Mary. Or do you prefer pearls?”

  “I am a simple woman.” Her thumb stroked a jeweled comb in her lap.

  “No, I don’t think so. Not at all. What’s this?” He leaned to look over the purple paper.

  She turned the comb to show him. Studded with amethysts and surrounded by delicate filigree. “From Alysia Villier, my good friend. She is abroad, unfortunately for me.”

  “Ah, yes. I have made Miss Villier’s acquaintance.” Cryptic, but not untrue. “A lovely lady — in every way.”

  Mary’s eyes narrowed. “Philip is quite in love with her,” she warned.

  “And so is Lord Preston, I hear. That should be an interesting affair.”

  Mary only answered, “Hmm,” and studied the pretty comb from her friend.

  “And what did you send Miss Villier in return, may I ask?”

  “Chocolate truffles from Paris. She’s fairly an addict.”

  Wesley nodded, but internally a truth flashed: people typically gave the presents they wished to receive. A toy ship for her nephew, Philip had unwrapped an engraved brass telescope with fancy dials and levers, and chocolates for her friend. Beauty and novelty. A dull sadness accompanied the understanding that everyone except Alysia Villier and Tom Hart had told Mary she was a boring spinster by giving her a book.

  Across the room, Lady Devon and Elise were probably plotting his fate, their heads together, flashing appraising glances in his and Mary’s direction. He would find out soon enough.

  Martin, the butler, announced elevenses. Wesley perceived it was significant that Philip Cavendish made a point of taking the seat next to his. Wes made it easier on him. He said in a quiet voice, “I must confess being enchanted with your sister, old mate.”

  “Darcy.” Philip shot him a dark look. “She’s married and quite virtuous.”

  A test? Perhaps other men had failed to look past the eldest Cavendish sister, an undeniably impressive creature, if too iconical for his tastes. “Of that I have no doubt.” Or perhaps Philip made an oblique reference to Wesley’s past conquests. “I’m referring to Miss Cavendish. Try to keep up.”

  Philip made an expression that put Wes in mind of a bulldog. “Mary is a gentle girl. And spiritual and innocent.” Hands off, his implication.

  “Indeed. A most capable, accomplished lady. It’s her sharp wit and unconventional perspective I admire most.”

  Philip stiffened as though Wesley had made an insult. In the absence of her late father, the approval of Mary’s brother was vital, and Wesley sensed his interview was going poorly somehow. He risked a glance at Mary, wondering if she noticed him and Philip conspiring.

  She seemed withdrawn, careful not to engage the company, affectedly occupied with a rather sparsely served plate. Plain toast with two bites taken out of it, the white part of a boiled egg, and a quarter slice of an apple.

  Her corset had creaked yesterday, it was so tightly laced, he assumed. Often she placed a hand on her belly, and last night her stomach had growled. She passed on all the sweets. Before her now lay a sparrow’s meal.

  Mary thought she was fat?

  Taking into account all else he’d seen, no other explanation made sense. But then, it didn’t make sense. Did she not own a mirror? She took after her brother, them both Cavendish through and through with their dark, dramatic features. Mary should look to the heroic-shaped figures by the great masters for guidance, not her nymph-like sisters and aunt.

  Wesley would take her to all the best museums and show her life-size paintings by DaVinci and Botticelli and Titian, and the Pre-Raphaelites such as Rosetti and Waterhouse, filled with lovely, healthy, voluptuous women. Women shaped as they were meant to be and not disfigured by steel-reinforced corsets.

  Wesley hadn’t thought much about the modern ladies’ fashions, except to stay informed on how to remove them. But he did have sisters, and he heard the talk of the ladies backstage. Tightlacing and boasting about waistlines eighteen inches, sixteen, fifteen…

  “Darcy?” Philip nudged his elbow.

  He shook himself out of his one-sided lecture, disturbed as he watched Mary take a carefully measured bite of boiled egg. He wanted to put a chocolate truffle in her lips and bite off half of it. “I wonder why she is yet unmarried.”

  “Mary turned down half a dozen proposals last Season.”

  Wes took a bite of bacon-wrapped sausage, wondering what it would be like to never eat it again. “As well she should. Good for her.” He swallowed then tried to sound only mildly curious when he asked, “Miss Cavendish seems to consider herself a spinster, but she cannot be more than twenty?”

  “She is twenty.”

  “Then she should take her time. She is young.”

  “Too young for you.”

  “Possibly, but at twenty-and-nine, I still have all my teeth, and my bones creak only a little.”

  Philip stabbed an unsuspecting sausage and sawed it in half. The message was not lost on Wes. “Too young in the ways of the world, Darcy.”

  “Then it’s to the credit of her excellent older brother.” Hopefully he hadn’t visibly flinched, but nothing to be done for his poor reputation. It was half-deserved, the parts about his rakish exploits. As a man of the theater it was to be expected.

  But when

  Lenora Pendleton, his fiancée, took ill with the influenza and died, the rumor that she’d been poisoned by the dastardly Sir Wesley Samuel Darcy had been too sensational for the ton to put down. Its entertainment factor had made it true in the eyes of society. They said he’d killed her to get her money, but her death meant he got nothing, of course, so it made no sense.

  Just the same, if Philip meant to protest Wesley’s eligibility on the grounds of his poor character, he had a valid point.

  Philip leaned close, spearing Wes with his captain’s leer. “Have a care, Darcy. I would hate to have to geld you, but I would do anything for my sister.”

  “I would expect nothing less, old mate. However, might I ask you to set your knife down before I confess that I too would do anything for your sister.”

  “No,” Philip ground between clenched teeth, his fist gripping white-knuckled on the knife handle, which made Wesley a bit anxious.

  He nodded, trying to keep a cool head. “Might I ask how you like your brother-in-law, Lieutenant Sherman?”

  Philip looked as though he’d been pinched hard under the table. Likely Wes had struck to the heart of it: Philip believed as any brother should, that no man was worthy of his sisters. Wesley had the same philosophy for his two sisters, and he’d managed to marry them off without killing their interloping husbands… both of whom proved to be tolerable.

  “Give the idea some time,” Wes said
then took another bite of sausage.

  “Does Mary love you?”

  I think so, yes. “That’s a question I should ask her. In private.”

  Philip conceded wordlessly with a terse nod, as though he had to fight his own neck to do it.

  After the meal, Wesley did what he’d come to Rougemont to do; he entertained the family in the drawing room with dramatic readings. He performed A Visit from St. Nicholas for the children, who thought his impression of St. Nick’s belly laughing “like a bowlful of jelly” was hilarious. He read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Madeline prompted Mary to join him in reciting favorite scenes from Shakespeare and insisted on Romeo and Juliet. Wes decided he liked Mary’s crafty little sister very much.

  Wesley missed his family, but only marginally. He simply couldn’t be pitied and fawned over any longer. Lenora Pendleton was dead, and she wasn’t coming back. Wesley refused to relive the misery, even if relief meant borrowing another family for Christmas.

  Chapter Eight

  What sweeter music can we bring,

  Than a carol, for to sing

  The birth of this our heavenly King?

  Awake the voice! Awake the string!

  Heart, ear, and eye, and everything, Awake!

  Dark and dull night, fly hence away,

  And give the honour to this day,

  That sees December turn'd to May.

  ~Robert Herrick, 1648

  NOT UNTIL AFTER her visits to the parish widows and after Christmas dinner did Wesley find the chance to get Mary alone. She went out for a walk right as dessert was served, he noticed. Wesley pocketed a bunch of grapes and said he wanted to go for a ride before it grew dark. On his way to the stables, he passed Mary, wearing a purple hat and cloak.

  “Will you go for a ride with me?” He nodded toward the stables, expecting her to take his arm and follow.

  “No, thank you. I don’t like to ride.”

  “You don’t? Truly?” How could anyone not love the rush of speed and wind and the thrill of partnership between steed and rider?

  “Truly. And I’d like some time alone to think. Surely even you can understand that.”

  A little smile meant she was teasing — progress, since the previous day her barbs had all been intended. “As my lady wishes.” He made a low, formal bow then went to the stables. He couldn’t help keeping an eye on her as he followed the trail, making sure her purple cloak stayed in sight along the crest of the hill she walked.

  His horse kicked a cobble, stumbled, then limped. Wesley reined to a halt and dismounted. Tapping the gelding’s left flank, he prompted the animal to lift its hoof, revealing what he suspected: the shoe knocked loose and hanging by a couple of nails. Levering the hoof against his thigh, Wes pried free the remaining loose nails, pocketed them, then dropped the horseshoe into the saddlebag. Guiding the reins over the gelding’s head, he led the animal carefully down the hill, gingerly avoiding rocks.

  Mary sat atop the rock wall dividing Rougemont from the easterly tenant farm, her face to the wind and her hat removed. Hopeful that she’d had enough time alone, Wes made his way toward her. She turned as he approached, her expression unreadable. Glad to see him, perhaps, but a haunted look warned him not to be jovial.

  Wordlessly he brushed away the snow on the wall and sat next to her. He switched the reins to his right hand to give his injured arm a rest.

  Their shoulders touched, as did their legs from flank to knee. He liked the feel of her next to him. His other shoulder burned, an irritating, nerve-drilling fire. Occasionally the wind blew one of her curls across his neck, which made him close his eyes and focus on the silky, tickling sensation.

  He remembered the bunch of grapes in his pocket and offered them to her. A small victory that she took them and ate them, even if he’d rather watch her eat something substantial.

  Content to say nothing for a while, before long he decided to take a leap. “You brother tells me you rejected no fewer than six heart-broken suitors last Season.”

  “Yes, I carved a path of destruction through the Beau Monde.”

  Saucy remarks like that made him want to kiss her. “I’m curious what you found lacking.”

  She tilted her head one way then the other in a thoughtful gesture. “Mercenary. Political aspirations.” She counted on her fingers. “Another fortune-hunter, a below-the-chin-looker—”

  Wesley huffed and gestured, sweeping a hand in her direction as though unveiling a painting. “Badly done, of course, but can you blame him?”

  She shook her head in scolding, but her cheeks blushed again, on top of the color from the wind.

  “Two more,” he prompted, afraid his interruption had put her off.

  “Not well-read and too slight of frame.”

  “I read books without pictures. I have no interest whatsoever in politics, and I’m a large fellow.” He counted on his fingers. “And I promise not to look below your lovely chin until I have the right. But once you’re mine, I intend to look. A lot.”

  She laughed, flashing beautiful, clean teeth, which made him aware of not having seen her smile much before. He hadn’t noticed she had a pair of dimples in her cheeks.

  “Don’t practice your proposals on me, Sir Wesley. Though I daresay it needs a great deal of work.”

  “What if I’m in earnest?

  “Don’t worry, you’re not.”

  He pressed his lips together, trying to discern if she was teasing. “What if you’ve enchanted me? Stopped time so that two days feels longer. Long enough to recognize a sympathetic soul. Long enough to know I don’t want to leave you.” He quit before adding, You belong to me.

  She turned and speared him with a half-angry, half-incredulous look. He let her stare.

  “Mary Diana Cavendish. Marry me.”

  “No!”

  “You’re right — I must sound like a lunatic.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Well, I haven’t had much practice proposing, and you’ve had plenty rejecting, so it’s not quite fair.”

  “You’ve had enough practice.” Her tone made it clear she thought him dubious. If she believed the rumors, then she must think him a bad sort indeed.

  Wes refused to rise to his own defense. In time his character should speak for itself, and if she was ever brave enough to ask frankly if he’d killed his fiancée, he’d tell her the truth. “You should be warned; I don’t surrender easily.”

  “I wish you would. I’m tired.”

  He let out a breath and decided to take her at her word rather than leave her be, as she’d politely requested. With an arm draped across her shoulders, he opened his coat, tucked her against his side, then wrapped his coat around them both to counter the chill on the breeze and the cold seeping from the stone wall.

  She went without protest, fitting her head in the dip between his chest and shoulder. Some thoughtful designer had made Mary just her height and Wesley just his size so that they fit together precisely the way they should. Didn’t she notice?

  Minutes later he felt the tentative brush of her fingers on his lapel. He hummed in his throat, encouraging her, waiting. Before long she grew bolder and slipped her fingers under his collar and rubbed over his shoulder, back and forth across the ridge where his pectoral joined the deltoid muscle. If she’d been uninspired by a smaller man, then the way her hand moved on his skin seemed to convey appreciation.

  He cleared his throat. “Is it the money?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t want your money, Mary. I have my own. The Duke of Sutherland is my uncle. I have a generous allowance.”

  “Oh.”

  The insight that his roguish persona appealed to her prevented him from clarifying that he was second in line to inherit. The philanthropic, artistic, rebellious part of Mary, which he suspected she’d revealed to no one else but him, would not be lured by the prospect of being a duchess.

  The horseshoe nails in his pocket bothered him. He took them out, tossing away
the one with jagged edges but keeping the smoother one, which he tuned over in his fingers. “What else am I lacking, Mary?”

  “Open the front door so I can roll out the list.”

  His hand already resting in the crook of her waist, he gave her a light pinch and chuckled. With his wife, his inclination would be to spank her for teasing. “Be serious. I want to know. Which of my faults are unforgivable?”

  She sighed, drew breath, then didn’t speak. Finally she said, “You are impulsive, and therefore inconstant, I wager. How can you make my acquaintance yesterday and propose marriage today? That sounds like a morphine delusion to me.”

  “On the contrary, my head has never been clearer. Haven’t you ever laid eyes on something for the first time but felt it had been yours forever? It resonates with truth and gives you peace. How else can you explain your behavior?”

  She made a sound like an angry hen. “My behavior?”

  “I assume you’re not in the habit of climbing into a fellow’s lap and kissing him into tomorrow.”

  “Of course not!”

  “Not until you met me. Because you know me already. And I think you do care for me, Mary.”

  “How could I? You are a rapscallion and a libertine. And I never met a beautiful man who wasn’t vain.”

  “Confidence is not vanity.”

  “But you couldn’t possibly be satisfied with Mary Cavendish forever. And I don’t want a philandering husband.”

  “I would never.”

  “I want a knight on a white charger.”

  He almost gestured to the gelding and said, “Will a dapple grey do?” then was glad he didn’t make a joke when she’d likely just confessed a secret. “You should have a white knight, Mary. And diamonds, and chocolate truffles. You should have everything.”

  She sniffed, and he feared he’d made her cry. Wes traced his thumb over the nail, replaying his words and trying to discern what had been offensive. The tapered head of the nail slid between his fingers, and it occurred to him that it was called a “diamond.”

  Pulling his other hand free, he leaned to retrieve the horseshoe from the saddle bag. Inserting the nail through a hole, he levered the horseshoe against the stone wall to bend the point of the nail against the “diamond” head in a closed loop.