Home for the Holidays

V
INCENT
E
VERETT SAT IN HIS COACH ACROSS THE STREET
from the fashionable town house in London. It was one of the colder nights of the winter season, but he had slid the window open so he could see clearly across the street. He wouldn’t be surprised if snow was imminent.

He wasn’t sure why he was there, subjecting himself to inclement weather. He didn’t doubt that his secretary, Horace Dudley, would serve the notice that gave the occupants two days to vacate the house. It wasn’t that this was another stepping-stone in his decision to ruin the Ascot family, who lived there. It was more likely that he
was simply bored and had had no other plans for the evening.

Even the decision to ruin this particular family wasn’t an emotional one. Vincent hadn’t experienced any real emotion since his childhood, nor did he ever again want to know such pain. It was much, much easier to exist with a stone for a heart, made simple matters such as evicting a family during the Christmas season just a matter of course.

No, the methodical destruction of the Ascots wasn’t emotional, but it was personal. Vincent’s younger brother, Albert, had made it personal, when he had put the full blame for his failed business and finances on George Ascot.

Albert had lost most of his inheritance, solely on his own. However, he had learned from his mistakes. He had taken what little was left of it and tried to start a business that would support him, so he wouldn’t be a continuous drain on Vincent. And to give himself some pride. He had bought several merchant ships, opened a small office in Portsmouth. But apparently Ascot, an established shipping merchant himself, had been afraid of the competition and had set out to undermine Albert’s efforts at every turn, to break him before he even began.

These were the details in Albert’s letter, which was all he’d left behind before he disappeared, that and an astounding number of debts that continued to land on Vincent’s door. Vincent feared that Albert had taken himself
off to quietly kill himself somewhere where he wouldn’t be found, as he had threatened so many times. What else was he to think, when Albert’s letter had ended with “This is the only way I can think of, to no longer be an embarrassment or burden to you”?

Albert’s demise had left Vincent without family, though to be honest, he’d never really felt a part of his own family, so his lack of one now hardly made a difference to him. His parents had died just after Vincent reached his majority, within a year of each other, leaving only the two brothers. With no other relatives, even distant ones, the brothers should have been close. Not so. Albert might have felt a closeness, or more to the point, a dependency, but then Albert expected the world and everything in it to revolve around him, a silly notion that their parents had fostered by making him their joy, their amusement, their favorite. Vincent had merely been the reserved, boring heir they never took notice of.

It was amazing that Vincent had never hated his brother, but then you had to experience emotion to hate. By the same token, there had been no love, either, for his weakling of a brother, merely a tolerance because he was “family.” That he had picked up the gauntlet, as it were, on Albert’s behalf was more a long-standing habit, as well as a matter of pride. It was a blight on his own name, that George Ascot had successfully crushed an Everett without
consequences. He would soon know differently. It was the last thing that Vincent could do for Albert, to at least pay back Ascot in kind.

The snow he had been expecting arrived, just as the door opened across the street to Dudley’s knock. Vincent’s view was hampered by the white flakes, but he could still make out a flowing skirt, so a female had answered the knock. Ascot himself wouldn’t be there. Reports were that he had set sail on one of his ships in the first week of September, and more than three months later, had yet to return to England. His absence was making this retaliation simple. When Ascot did return, he would find his credit canceled with many of his merchant suppliers, and his home lost to him due to lack of payment on demand.

Vincent hadn’t decided yet whether to continue his campaign after tonight or to wait for Ascot’s return. Tonight’s eviction would be a decisive blow, the culmination of several weeks’ work, but hardly satisfactory when Ascot wouldn’t be there to know of it yet.

Actually, this whole matter of revenge was rather distasteful. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, had ever done before, or likely ever would again, but was something he felt he
had
to do this one time. So he would as soon get it over and done with. But Ascot wasn’t obliging in that, being out of the country for longer than expected.

He should have returned by now. Vincent had counted
on his being back by now. Waiting was not something he did well. And waiting in his coach, in the cold, when he didn’t need to be there and still wasn’t even sure why he was there, was starting to annoy him, especially since Dudley was taking his sweet time delivering the notice. How bloody long did it take to hand over a piece of paper?

Across the street, the door finally closed. But Vincent’s secretary still stood there facing it, unmoving. Had he accomplished his task, or had the door been closed on him before he could? What the devil was he doing, standing there in the snow doing nothing?

Vincent was about to leave the coach himself to find out what was going on, when Dudley finally turned about and headed back toward him. Vincent opened the coach door, more in his impatience than to get Dudley out of the biting cold sooner. But Dudley didn’t rush inside when he got there, he didn’t enter the coach at all, was once again just standing there in the snow, as if he’d gone totally daft.

However, before Vincent could ask about this strange behavior, Dudley announced, “I have never in my life done anything so despicable, my lord, nor will I ever do so again. I quit.”

Vincent raised a questioning brow at him. “Quit as in—?”

“You will have my formal resignation on your desk in the morning.”

Vincent savored a moment of amazement. It wasn’t often that he could be so thoroughly surprised. But then his impatience returned.

“Get in the bloody coach, Mr. Dudley. You can explain yourself when we are out of this damnable weather.”

“No, sir,” Dudley replied stiffly. “I will find my own way home, thank you very much.”

“Don’t be absurd. You won’t find a hack this time of night.”

“I will manage.”

With that, the secretary closed the coach door and started marching down the street. Ordinarily Vincent would have shrugged and dismissed the man from his mind, but he was in an impatient frame of mind, which was as close as he came to being emotional.

He found himself leaving the coach himself and marching after Dudley to demand, “What the devil happened at that house to give you leave of your senses?”

Horace Dudley swung around, his face suffused with emotional color rather than paled from the cold. “If I must have further discourse with you, my lord, I fear I will disgrace myself beyond regret. Please, simply accept my resignation and leave it go at—”

“The devil I will. You’ve been with me for eight years. You do not just resign over a small matter—”

“Small!?” the little man burst out. “If you could have
seen the stricken look on that poor girl’s face, it would have broken your heart as it did mine. And such a pretty girl. Her face is going to haunt me the rest of my days.”

Having said so and apparently believing it, Dudley scurried off down the street once more, refusing to speak more of it. Vincent let him go this time and turned a scowl on the house in question.

The property belonged to him now. He’d called in a considerable number of favors to coerce the previous owner to ignore his verbal commitment with George Ascot and sell him the deed instead. Ascot had had a gentlemen’s agreement with that previous owner, had paid him a very large portion down on the town house and agreed to pay off the balance within a few years. There still being a mortgage, he was not yet in possession of the deed.