Compromised by Christmas (18 page)

One year a certain unmarried lady, not known to be
with child, had nearly given birth on the ballroom floor. Another
year, three gentlemen and one lady had a horrid accident during the
hunt, which resulted in two broken limbs, a broken crown and a lost
front tooth. Another year, Scully had been the disaster that had
haunted her ever since. Fanny was beginning to jump at her own
shadow, waiting for whatever would go wrong this year.

Of course there had been the spilling of hot tea on
Roxana, but with the wisdom of her years, Fanny knew that did not
rise to the level of her annual disaster. More than anything she
feared a repeat with Scully.

Fanny sought out her guest in the crowd. Roxana took
a place in a set forming with Max. Lady Malmsbury glared
daggers-drawn at them. An older woman needed to learn to step aside
when a man started the hunt for a bride.

Although Max had denied his need to take a wife, she
knew her words had not fallen on deaf ears. Max always did the
right thing. She just hoped he was not deciding so soon after
realizing he needed to marry. He did not seem to single out Roxana
for special attention, he just looked at her differently. Truth
was, Fanny far preferred Max with Miss Winston than Scully with
her.

While Fanny glanced over the company and fretted,
Scully stepped closer. She tried even harder to concentrate on her
stepson and his settling down. Of course that put her in an
untenable position.

Scully was so close she could feel the heat off of
his body. For one second she felt herself leaning toward him. She
took another step back.

"Forget about me?" Scully asked with a quirked
eyebrow and another step closer.

"For goodness sake, how could I forget about you?
You—"

"My thoughts exactly."

"—are nearly standing on my toes." Fanny stepped back
again.

"I have never trod on your toes, dearest."

"Shhh!" She put out a hand to stop him from moving
closer.

His lightning grin flashed, and Fanny felt that
momentary blindness that always hit her when Scully smiled at her.
Of all of Max's friends for her to fall for, Scully had to be the
worst. Yet he never failed to make her heart flutter. He pressed
his chest against her palm and she took another step backwards.
"Scully."

His blue eyes were amused, laughing at her, laughing
at a too-old woman he could toy with and fluster. God, she was too
old to be rattled by a rake like him. But the feel of his chest
against her palm passed a current of energy through her.

"Another step, Fanny. Did I tell you that you are
looking radiant? Remarkably beautiful. Ravishing, actually."

"Stop," she whispered, dropping her head and trying
to put space between them, before the whole room was looking at
them, before he could see her eager interest. But even if he wanted
to resume their dalliance from long ago, Fanny could foresee no
good outcome and many horrid ones.

"Yes, we can stop now, love," he said.

His loose use of endearments tore at her.

He pushed her hand up to his shoulder. "Look up,
Fanny. There is much magic in the mistletoe this year."

Fanny frantically looked to her right and left,
realizing Scully had backed her into the kissing corner. She tried
to dart around him, but she could hardly do it without looking like
a ninny, not a duchess of twenty years. "You—"

"Yes, me," said Scully as he gathered her to him.

*~*~*

Max took one look at Roxana and caught his breath.
She was stunning in her scarlet gossamer silk gown. The very
sheerness promised sin. Yet try as he might he could see nothing,
but he could fill in details from the memory burned in his
mind.

He had kept his distance, not trusting the weakness
of his control around Roxana. When had he ever had trouble staying
within the bounds of propriety? Max could not remember finding
doing the right thing so difficult. And Scully would not let him
forget it.

Roxana's light placement of her fingertips on his
sleeve made a shudder pass down his spine. Where was Breedon when
he needed him?

"How are you tonight, Miss Winston?" he asked as they
assumed their position in the set forming for the next dance.

"I am quite well, thank you."

"Are you enjoying the ball?" he asked politely.

She looked around the room as if the thought of
enjoyment had never crossed her mind. "Everyone is dressed so
beautifully. I have never seen so many remarkable ballgowns all
together. I
am
enjoying myself," she said, almost as if
surprised to realize it.

The sparkle in her eyes indicated that she told the
truth. Why was she always surprised to find pleasure? With a house
party designed around indulgences, she should have expected to
enjoy herself. But then, Roxana had come with a mission.

"Ah, then you would enjoy the opera."

"The opera?" she said. "Do you think so? For music is
not my forte. My sister Katherine loves music. I think she would
enjoy the opera so much more than I."

"Ah, well, not everyone attends the opera for the
performance. It is the place to display all one's best finery."

Roxana smiled. "Then I would enjoy it."

"Then you must allow me to extend an invitation to my
box, next season."

Her expression fell. Then she masked her
disappointment with a soft smile. "I do not believe I will have the
opportunity to accept your most generous offer, but thank you just
the same."

She looked across the room where Breedon stood with
his mother, and Roxana's eyes narrowed.

"Do you not expect to be in London next season?"
whispered Max. "Mr. Breedon will be there, you know. My offer would
of course include him."

Roxana's blue eyes clouded. A furrow pinched her
brows together. "Well, I hope to be in London, then."

The pattern of the dance took them apart and Max
asked himself what he was doing. Setting up a smooth path to
seduction later, after she was married?

And why was Roxana no longer confiding in him? Their
steps brought them back together again and her manner was so much
more serious than before.

"You have outdone yourself tonight," he said. "You
are beyond a doubt the most beautiful woman in the room."

"I should have worn white gloves." Roxana glanced
down at her scarlet gown and then looked over to where Lady Angela
and the Misses Ferris stood in their pale pastel gowns. They were
like faded flowers and Roxana, a rose in bloom.

Now he knew he had lost his mind.

Perhaps the inappropriate maturity of her dress made
him want to overstep the lines of propriety. Her appearance gave
more than a hint of sinful pleasure. Yet she bore herself so
regally. At the same time she was kind and responsive to his sister
and brother. She would make a husband immensely proud.

His thoughts swirled as he and Roxana came together
in the dance again and he took her hand. Heat flashed up his arm
and pooled low in his gut. She was beautiful, and when he was with
her he felt less alone, less cognizant of the loss of his
family.

With her pragmatic nature, she was used to employing
economy through her sewing. Her alluring new riding habit looked
suspiciously like his old bedspread. Perhaps she would even make a
good wife to a man drowning in inherited debt. How mired in dun
territory was her father?

"You are very quiet this evening, your grace," she
said.

"I need to speak to you in private," he said. A
sensation somewhere between relief and desperation rolled through
him. "When do you plan to return home?"

She frowned at him as if faintly puzzled. Then she
looked around furtively, as if trapped. "When everyone else does, I
suppose. After the twelfth night?"

"I will escort you there after all the other guests
have left."

Roxana's blue eyes rounded in alarm. "I assure you
that will not be necessary."

Max could not leap into a courtship after all his
protestations. And what about Thomas, he asked himself? "I want to
meet your parents," he said firmly.

Roxana shook her head. "Shall we just see what comes
of things?"

Was she hoping that Breedon would come up to scratch
before then? Could she actually prefer that puppy? The idea of
being second best rankled. Yet, holding her, dancing with her,
contemplating asking Roxana to marry him, felt deliciously
right.

Max paced down the snow-covered drive trying to clear
his head. The gate to the cemetery clanged and the north wind blew
steadily. He crossed the yard and entered the small family plot,
latching the wrought iron gate behind him. He removed his hat as he
walked among the gravestones.

He needed a respite from the company. The Ferris
girls wanted his opinion on everything. Lady Angela constantly made
sheep eyes at him and Lady Malmsbury had continued to mistake his
room for hers. After escorting her back to her bedroom without
staying, Max would have thought she would have gotten the
message.

Mostly, his change of heart last night when holding
Roxana's hand in the dance alarmed him. She did not fit into his
plans and he did not know that he was overreacting to a strong
desire to bed her.

Slapping his hat against his thigh, Max walked toward
the newer graves. His ears stung with the cold. Pausing at his
mother's grave, he whispered a prayer. He barely remembered her.
His father's grave came next. Then his two brothers lay
side-by-side in the cold ground. Imagining them so still and robbed
of life after too short a span of years made his throat ache.

The gate clanged behind him and he turned. Roxana
wove her way among the tombstones, her head down. She read the
markers and touched her gloved hand to the tombstone of his
father's sister who had died in infancy.

She rounded the corner and drew up short. She looked
at the recent row of graves and then up at him. "Am I
intruding?"

"No. The gate was unlatched; I came to shut it." He
did not come to the graves often. He found it still too difficult.
If he did not look upon the markers he could think of the long
silence as merely the gap between letters that happened when his
brothers adventured around the world.

Max had never left England. His duties to the estate
prevented lengthy trips abroad. How he had looked forward to those
letters describing places he would never see.

"I saw you without a hat. I thought you could use
this gift early." She reached under her cloak and drew out a
muffler the color of burnished ivory. She drew up as she realized
his hat was in his hand.

"My hat does not keep my neck warm. If you would,
please." He held out his hat for her to hold.

She took it, while handing him the folded rectangle
of fabric.

He wound the long ribbed silk scarf around his neck,
pulling the edges up to cover his stinging ears. The scarf was
thicker and much warmer than he expected. The lengthwise stitches
gave it enough substance to stand high. "Thank you, Miss
Winston."

Roxana read the markers as the first flakes of snow
hurtled down. "Your brothers?"

"This was Samuel. He died in Aboukir. And this is
Alexander. He died at Copenhagen." Words seemed so inadequate.

"Would you tell me about them?" she said softly.

He looked at the graves. "They both fell in battle.
Samuel lingered a while, but we did not know soon enough to get to
him." Max had been preparing to go the continent when the news
arrived that Samuel had expired. Then their sealed coffins had
arrived, dashing any hopes he had of mistake.

He could feel her watching him and he wanted to say
so much more, yet his throat felt closed.

Roxana sidled closer to him as if seeking his warmth
or offering hers. Yet he kept thinking how cold his brothers must
be, lying in their wooden boxes in the frozen ground.

"It must be extraordinarily difficult to have lost
brothers," she said. "I have been incredibly lucky to have all my
sisters and brother hale and hearty."

"They were both . . ." his voice trailed off. She
offered sympathy, not a suggestion that his brothers were not
healthy. Good health was little impediment to a bullet. "They were
both so full of life. It is hard to believe they're gone. I'm sorry
you did not meet them."

Roxana glanced up at him. "You are afraid Thomas will
suffer the same fate?"

Max's first inclination was to deny any fear, but he
was deathly afraid of just that. When each of his brothers died it
was as if a piece of him had withered and blackened too. His own
role in their choices haunted him and bore down on him with the
weight of a medieval press. "Yes."

"Have you explained your fears to Thomas?"

"Miss Winston, you do not understand."

"Oh, I think I do. As the oldest it is ever my
feeling that I must shelter my siblings from every ill wind that
blows. Accepting that I cannot protect them from every true thing
in the world has been difficult for me."

Again Max wondered about her family life. She said so
little about it. Yet he knew she had not offered advice that led to
death. Alexander, at least, had considered taking a living their
father had open, but had really wanted a chance to serve under his
hero Nelson. Unable to imagine his wild younger brother as a
clergyman, Max had urged him to that course. The living could be
held until Alexander decided if he wanted it after experiencing the
world.

"I know you want to protect Thomas. Even though he
has charged me with dissuading you from being so adamant with his
learning the estate, honestly, my sympathies lie more with your
position."

Max clasped his hands behind his back. The wind
riffled his hair, but to hold it down was futile. Snowflakes fell
against his skin and hair, then quickly melted. "Do you think I am
being too harsh with him?"