Barbara Metzger
Authors: Father Christmas
Father Christmas
By Barbara Metzger
Copyright 2011 by Barbara Metzger
Cover Copyright 2011 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
First published in print by Ballantine Books, 1995
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Also by Barbara Metzger and Untreed Reads Publishing
A Suspicious Affair
Ace of Hearts (Book One of The House of Cards Trilogy)
An Angel for the Earl
Jack of Clubs (Book Two of The House of Cards Trilogy)
Queen of Diamonds (Book Three of The House of Cards Trilogy)
…Dedicated to Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All Mankind. Soon.
Contents
The Duke of Ware needed an heir. Like a schoolyard taunt, the gruesome refrain floated in his mind, bobbing to the surface on a current of brandy. Usually a temperate man, His Grace was just a shade on the go. It was going to take more than a shade to get him to go to Almack’s.
“Hell and blast!” Leland Warrington, fifth and at this point possibly last Duke of Ware, consulted his watch again. Ten o’clock, and everyone knew Almack’s patronesses barred its doors at eleven. Not even London’s premiere
parti,
wealth, title, and looks notwithstanding, could gain admittance after the witching hour. “Blasted witches,” Ware cursed once more, slamming his glass down on the table that stood so conveniently near his so-comfortable leather armchair at White’s. “Damnation.”
His companion snapped up straighter in his facing seat. “What’s that? The wine gone off?” The Honorable Crosby Fanshaw sipped cautiously at his own drink. “Seems fine to me.” He called for another bottle.
Fondly known as Crow for his anything-but-somber style of dress, Fanshaw was a studied contrast to his longtime friend. The duke was the one wearing the stark black and white of Weston’s finest evening wear, spread over broad shoulders and well-muscled thighs, while Crow Fanshaw’s spindly frame was draped in magenta pantaloons, saffron waistcoat, lime green wasp-waisted coat. The duke looked away. Fanshaw would never get into Almack’s in that outfit. Then again, Fanshaw didn’t need to get into Almack’s.
“No, it’s not the wine, Crow. It’s a wife. I need one.”
The Tulip slipped one manicured finger under his elaborate neckcloth to loosen the noose conjured up by the very thought of matrimony. He shuddered. “Devilish things, wives.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Ware said, and did. “But I need one nevertheless if I’m to beget the next duke.”
“Ah.” Crow nodded sagely, careful not to disturb his pomaded curls. “Noblesse oblige and all that. The sacred duty of the peerage: to beget more little aristocratic blue bloods to carry on the name. I thank heaven m’brother holds the title. Let Virgil worry about the succession and estates.”
“With you as heir, he’d need to.” Crow Fanshaw wouldn’t know a mangel-wurzel from manure, and they both knew it.
The duke’s friend didn’t take offense. “What, ruin m’boots in dirt? M’valet would give notice, then where would I be? ’Sides, Virgil’s managing to fill his nursery nicely, two boys and a girl… I’m safe.” He raised his glass in a toast. “Condolences, old friend.”
Ware frowned, lowering thick dark brows over his hazel eyes. Easy for Crow to laugh, his very soul wasn’t engraved with the Ware family motto:
Semper servimus.
We serve forever. Forever, dash it, the duke unnecessarily reminded himself. His heritage, everything he was born and bred to be and to believe, demanded an heir. Posterity demanded it, all those acres and people dependent upon him demanded it, Aunt Eudora demanded it! God, King, and Country, that’s what the Wares served, she insisted. Well, Leland made his donations to the church, he took his tedious seat in Parliament, and he served as a diplomat when the Foreign Office needed him. That was not enough. The Bible said be fruitful and multiply, quoted his childless aunt. The King, bless his mad soul, needed more loyal peers to advise and direct his outrageous progeny. And the entire country, according to Eudora Warrington, would go to rack and ruin without a bunch of little Warringtons trained to manage Ware’s vast estates and investments. At the very least, her annuity might be in danger.
Leland checked his watch again. Ten-ten. He felt as if he were going to the tooth-drawer, dreading the moment yet wishing it were over. “What time do you have, Crow?”
Crosby fumbled at the various chains crisscrossing his narrow chest. “I say, you must have an important appointment, the way you keep eyeing your timepiece. Which is it, that new red-haired dancer at the opera or the dashing widow you had up in your phaeton yesterday?” While the duke sat glaring, Fanshaw pulled out his quizzing glass, then a seal with his family crest before finally retrieving his watch fob. “Fifteen minutes past the hour.”
Ware groaned. “Almack’s” was all he could manage to say. It was enough.
Fanshaw dropped his watch and grabbed up the looking glass by its gem-studded handle, tangling ribbons and chains as he surveyed his friend for signs of dementia. “I thought you said Almack’s.”
“I did. I told you, I need an heir.”
“But Almack’s, Lee? Gads, you must be dicked in the nob. Castaway, that’s it.” He pushed the bottle out of the duke’s reach.
“Not nearly enough,” His Grace replied, pulling the decanter back and refilling his glass. “I promised Aunt Eudora I’d look over the latest crop of dewy-eyed debs.”
Crosby downed a glass in commiseration. “I understand about the heir and all, but there must be an easier way, by Jupiter. I mean, m’brother’s girl is making her come-out this year. She’s got spots. And her friends giggle. Think on it, man, they are, what? Seventeen? Eighteen? And you’re thirty-one!”
“Thirty-two,” His Grace growled, “as my aunt keeps reminding me.”
“Even worse. What in the world do you have in common with one of those empty-headed infants?”
“What do I have in common with that redhead from the opera? She’s only eighteen, and the only problem you have with that is she’s in my bed, not yours.”
“But she’s a ladybird! You don’t have to talk to them, not like a wife!”
The duke stood as if to go. “Trust me, I don’t intend to have anything more to do with this female I’ll marry than it takes to get me a son.”
“If a son is all you want, why don’t you just adopt one? Be easier in the long run, more comfortable, too. M’sister’s got a surplus. I’m sure she’d be glad to get rid of one or two, the way she’s always trying to pawn them off on m’mother so she can go to some house party or other.”
The duke ignored his friend’s suggestion that the next Duke of Ware be anything less than a Warrington, but he did sit down. “That’s another thing: No son of mine is going to be raised up by nannies and tutors and underpaid schoolmasters.”
“Why not? That’s the way we were brought up, and we didn’t turn out half bad, did we?”
Leland picked a bit of imaginary fluff off his superfine sleeve. Not half bad? Not half good, either, he reflected. Crow was an amiable fribble, while he himself was a libertine, a pleasure-seeker, an ornament of society. Oh, he was a conscientious landowner, for a mostly absentee landlord, and he did manage to appear at the House for important votes. Otherwise his own entertainment—women, gaming, sporting—was his primary goal. There was nothing of value in his life. He intended to do better by his son. “I mean to be a good father to the boy, a guide, a teacher, a friend.”
“A Bedlamite, that’s what. Try being a friend to some runny-nosed brat with scraped knees and a pocketful of worms.” Crosby shivered. “I know just the ticket to cure you of such bubble-brained notions: Why don’t you come down to Fanshaw Hall with me for the holidays? Virgil’d be happy to have you for the cards and hunting, and m’sister-in-law would be in alt to have such a nonpareil as houseguest. That niece who’s being fired off this season will be there, so you can see how hopeless young chits are, all airs and affectations one minute, tears and tantrums the next. Why, if you can get Rosalie to talk of anything but gewgaws and gossip, I’ll eat my hat. Best of all, m’sister will be at the Hall with her nursery brood. No, best of all is if the entire horde gets the mumps and stays home. But, ’struth, you’d change your tune about this fatherhood gammon if you just spent a day with the little savages.”
Ware smiled. “I don’t mean to insult your family, but your sister’s ill-behaved brats only prove my point that this whole child-rearing thing could be improved upon with a little careful study.”
“Trust me, Lee, infants ain’t like those new farming machines you can read up on. Come down and see. At least I can promise you a good wine cellar at the Hall.”
The duke shook his head. “Thank you, Crow, but I have to refuse. You see, I really am tired of spending the holidays with other people’s families.”
“What I see is you’ve been bitten bad by this new bug of yours. Carrying on the line. Littering the countryside with butterstamps. Next thing you know, you’ll be pushing a pram instead of racing a phaeton. I’ll miss you, Lee.” He flicked a lacy handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed at his eyes while the duke grinned at the performance. Fanshaw’s next words changed that grin into so fierce a scowl that a lesser man, or a less loyal friend, would have been tempted to bolt: “Don’t mean to be indelicate, but you know getting leg-shackled isn’t any guarantee of getting heirs.”
“Of course I know that, blast it! I ought to, I’ve already been married.” The duke finished his drink. “Twice.” He tossed back another glassful to emphasize the point. “And all for nothing.”
Fanshaw wasn’t one to let a friend drink alone, even if his words were getting slurred and his thoughts muddled. He refilled his own glass. Twice. “Not for nothing. Got a handsome dowry both times.”
“Which I didn’t need,” His Grace muttered into his drink.
“And got the matchmaking mamas off your back until you learned to depress their ambitions with one of your famous setdowns.”
“Which if I’d learned earlier, I wouldn’t be in this hobble today.”
The duke’s first marriage had been a love match: He was in love with the season’s reigning Toast, Carissa was in love with his wealth and title. Her mother made sure he never saw past the Diamond’s beauty to the cold, rock-hard shrew beneath who didn’t want to be his wife, she wanted to be a duchess. There wasn’t one extravagance she didn’t indulge, not one risque pleasure she didn’t gratify, not one mad romp she didn’t join. Until she broke her beautiful neck in a curricle race.
Ware’s second marriage was one of convenience, except that it wasn’t. He carefully selected a quiet, retiring sort of girl whose pale loveliness was as different from Carissa’s flamboyance as night from day.
Her
noble parents had managed to conceal, while they were dickering over the settlements, that Lady Floris was a sickly child, that her waiflike appeal had more to do with a weak constitution than any gentle beauty. Floris was content to stay in the shadows after their wedding, until she became a shadow. Then she faded away altogether. Ware was twice a widower, never a father. To his knowledge, he’d never even sired a bastard on one of his mistresses, but he didn’t want to think about the implications of that.
“What time do you have?”
Crosby peered owl-eyed at his watch, blinked, then turned it right side up. “Ten-thirty. Time for another drink.”
He raised his glass, spilling only a drop on the froth of lace at his shirt-sleeve. “To your bride.”
Leland couldn’t do it. The wine would turn to vinegar on his tongue. Instead, he proposed a toast of his own. “To my cousin Tony, the bastard to blame for this whole deuced coil.”
Crosby drank, but reflected, “If he was a bastard, then it wouldn’t have mattered if the nodcock went and got himself killed. He couldn’t have been your heir anyway.”
His Grace waved that aside with one elegant if unsteady hand. “Tony was a true Warrington all right, my father’s only brother’s only son. My heir. So
he
got to go fight against Boney when the War Office turned me down.”
“Protective of their dukes, those chaps.”
“And
he
got to be a hero, the lucky clunch.”
“Uh, not to be overparticular, but live heroes are lucky, dead ones ain’t.”
Leland went on as though his friend hadn’t spoken: “And he was a fertile hero to boot. Old Tony didn’t have to worry about shuffling off this mortal coil without a trace. He left twins, twin boys, no less, the bounder, and he didn’t even have a title to bequeath them or an acre of land!”
“Twin boys, you say? Tony’s get? There’s your answer, Lee, not some flibbertigibbet young miss. Go gather the sprigs and have the raising of ’em your way if that’s what you want to do. With any luck they’ll be out of nappies and you can send ’em off to school as soon as you get tired of ’em. Should take about a month, I’d guess.”
Ware frowned. “I can’t go snabble my cousin’s sons, Crow. Tony’s widow just brought them back to her parents’ house from the Peninsula.”
Fanshaw thought on it a minute, chewing his lower lip. “Then marry that chit, I say. You get your heirs with Warrington blood, your brats to try to make into proper English gentlemen, and a proven breeder into the bargain. ’Sides, she can’t be an antidote; Tony Warrington had taste.”
It’s forbidden for a man to wed his brother’s widow, though I suppose one could get a dispensation. The duke merely looked down his slightly aquiline nose and stood up to leave. “However, she’s merely a vicar’s daughter.”
“Good enough to be Mrs. Major Warrington, eh, but not the Duchess of Ware?” The other man nodded, not noticing that his starched shirtpoints disarranged his artful curls. “Then you’d best toddle off to King Street, where the
ton
displays its merchandise. Unless…”
Ware turned back like a drowning man hearing the splash of a tossed rope. “Unless…?”
“Unless you ask the widow for just one of the bantlings. She might just go for it. I mean, how many men are going to take on a wife with
two
tokens of her dead husband’s devotion to support? There’s not much space in any vicarage I know of, and you said yourself Tony didn’t leave much behind for them to live on. ’Sides, you can appeal to her sense of fairness. She has two sons and you have none.”
Leland removed the bottle and glass from his friend’s vicinity on his way out of the room. “You have definitely had too much to drink, my tulip. Your wits have gone begging for dry land.”
And the Duke of Ware still needed an heir.
* * *
Heaving breasts, fluttering eyelashes, gushing simpers, blushing whimpers—and those were the hopeful mamas. The daughters were worse. Aunt Eudora could ice-skate in Hades before her nephew returned to Almack’s.
Ware had thought he’d observe the crop of debutantes from a discreet, unobtrusive distance. Sally Jersey thought differently. With pointed fingernails fastened to his wrist like the talons of a raptor, she dragged her quarry from brazen belle to arrogant heiress to wilting wallflower. At the end of each painful, endless dance, when he had, perforce, to return his partner to her chaperone, there was
la
Jersey waiting in prey with the next willing sacrificial virgin.