To Wed His Christmas Lady (The Heart of a Duke Book 7) (11 page)

She stilled and, for a long moment, examined their joined hands. Did she wish to commit this moment to her forever memory, as he did? Then she met his eyes. The muscles of her throat moved.

“You deserve far more in a future than the world you speak of. Not all families are like yours, Cara.” He infused earnestness into his tone. “There is laughter and teasing and happiness.”

A sad smile formed on her lips, with evidence of her earlier iciness, and he braced for the hint of that aloof lady from yesterday. But then she looked to the frosted window. Her eyes grew stricken. “The storm has ended.”

The absolute quiet for the first time in two days filtered through this stolen interlude. He followed her stare. Indeed, it had. And with the cessation of that thick snow, he could soon be on his way. The moment he rode out, they two would each live their lives and their time here would exist as nothing more than a too-brief moment in time. Regret and panic merged as one, clawing at him.

“I…” She shoved back her chair and hopped to her feet with such alacrity, her seat nearly tipped precariously and then righted. Did she see that their time had come to an end and she would be off with her maid and driver to the pompous betrothed who’d, no doubt, shape her into the lady Society expected her to be…crushing the fledging spirit that had stirred these past days. Ah, God, that inevitability gutted him until he wanted to snarl and howl. Cara’s hands fluttered about her chest. “Of all the places you’ve been, if you could go anywhere, in this moment, where would it be?”

He stood. The irony not lost on him. Since his return to England, he’d dreamed of being anywhere but here. And now… He couldn’t drum up a single place he’d traveled or longed to visit that he’d rather be just then. Cara probed him with a look, her eyes begging him for an answer he didn’t have. He searched his mind and gave her the place he’d show her, if the circumstances of life and fate had been altogether different. “The isle of Capri,” he said quietly. “It has water a shade of blue you did not know existed and skies to match. The sun possesses warmth that cleanses a person’s soul.”

The muscles of her throat worked. “I would very much like to see that place,” she said hoarsely.

Do not go.
Dishonorable words he had no right thinking with the pledge he’d made his father eight years ago. “Cara,” he said quietly. She bowed her head and then silently fled. He stared after her, hungry with the need to call her back. William looked to the frosted panes. Yes, the winter storm had ended. And yet, an altogether different tempest raged inside.

C
ara despised mornings. Particularly the cold of winter mornings. She preferred to burrow deep into the feather down of her bed and snuggle under her coverlets, absorbing the warmth and dream. Dream of painting and dream of being far away from Mrs. Belden’s cheerless rooms, and even farther away from her father’s lonely halls. In the brief moments before she arose and greeted the truth of her existence, those fantasies belonged to her.

This morning, she despised above all others. But she despised it for altogether different reasons. Cara stood at the widow and stared at the smooth surface of the untouched white snow that gleamed from the sun’s bright rays reflecting upon it. A pressure weighted her chest and threatened to cut off her airflow. She leaned her forehead against the cool pane; the sun’s warmth penetrated the glass at odds with the cold. Those once jagged, fierce icicles dripped a steady stream into the ground below.

And this stolen interlude, this momentary reprieve from the cold world in which she lived, and peoples’ disdain of her, and her disdain for herself, was at an end. She was once more the Duke of Ravenscourt’s daughter; hated by all, reentering the hallowed halls of that loathsome man who’d sired her. A sheen of tears flooded her eyes, and whereupon her arrival at this place days earlier, they’d been a token of weakness that she’d despised herself for showing, now she embraced those drops which blurred her vision. Her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs. Her forehead knocked noisily against the window.

This was what came of forgetting her station and flinging propriety into the wind for the company of a man. Nay, not just any man—Will. Only, he’d penetrated that carefully crafted veneer; a façade so convincing, she’d come to believe it herself. And now that he’d shaken the foundation of her artificial world, she could not reconstruct the wall and put the pieces of her former self back together. Cara cried all the harder.

How naïve he’d been with his talk last evening of a loving family who cared. That was not her world. That was his. And she hated him for making her hunger with this desperate ferocity for a sliver of it—but not just with any gentleman. With him. A man whose last name she did not even know. A man who’d forced her to look inside herself and confront that she’d become a person she detested, and wished to be…someone different.

Cara allowed the tears to freely fall and then drew in a shuddery sigh. “Enough,” she whispered. She dashed her hands across her cheeks. Will would leave. Today, no doubt. And she would board the earl’s carriage and be off to the father who’d forgotten her and the brother who may as well be a stranger for how well she knew him. Another sob burst from her lips and she stifled it with a hand. “I-I cannot.” To return to her father and Mrs. Belden would mean her eventual descent into marriage with that someday duke—just another man like her father. One who’d crush what little remained of her spirit and force her into the Societal mold expected of a lady. She stared blankly at the earl’s driver in the distance as he made his way from the stable yards to the inn. “I-I cannot,” she whispered to herself, fisting her hands at her side. She needed more time. And with jerky movements, spun on her heel, quietly pulled the door open, and collided with Alison.

Despite her wan complexion, Alison wore her perpetual smile. “My lady.” She dipped a curtsy, but then her cheer dipped as her eyes went to Cara’s cheeks. “My lady?”

Cara averted her face from the girl’s concerned stare. “Alison, you should be abed.” And once more she was the selfish Lady Clarisse, for she wished Alison to the rooms so that she might have another taste of that beautiful freedom she’d known these days. That precious gift withheld from women.

“I am fine, my lady.” She eyed Cara’s rumpled gown with a frown. She made a tsking noise. “Come, my lady.” With her usual boldness, she stepped past Cara. “The earl’s man has fetched your trunks. Allow me to help you into another gown.”

Of its own volition, her hungry gaze moved beyond Alison and into that hall. Then some of the fight slipped from her being and seeped out her feet. She gave a curt nod and moved with wooden steps back into the room. Her maid entered and closed the door behind them, closing off that path to freedom.

The young woman cleared her throat. “I-I…” She shifted on her feet, looking anywhere and everywhere except at Cara. “I am so sorry,” Alison murmured. “I sh-should have been seeing t-to you and I understand you must speak to His Grace about my failing to see to my responsibilities.” She gulped loudly.

What would the young woman say if she discovered Cara had not been hidden away in her miserable, private rooms as the other girl supposed, but rather taking her meals in a public place, without the benefit of a husband or chaperone or father? It was the level of impropriety that would ruin her for anyone…

“It is fine,” she said at last. The look Alison gave Cara proved that she knew her failing to attend her responsibilities was not fine. Or to the duke it would not be. “We will not speak of it again.”
Someone will inevitably find out.
There were the innkeepers. Though they did not know the truth of her identity, the earl’s driver, in fact, did. He’d seen her in the tavern. Alone. Speaking to Will.

While Alison rushed about the room, tidying the space and collecting a change of garments for her mistress, a defiant smile pulled at Cara’s lips. Would it truly be such a very bad thing if the pompous nobleman her father would see her wed discovered that the proper, propriety-driven daughter of a duke had been alone at an inn, with a man? Her lips burned. A man whose kiss she’d begged for and still craved. A kiss she would continue to crave until she was an old woman, alone, with nothing more than the sweet memories of these few days.

In an uncharacteristic silence, Alison helped Cara from one gown and into another. Then with skillful fingers, she set to work pulling at and arranging her curls into some semblance of a proper chignon. As she tugged at the strands, tucking them into the butterfly hair combs, questions spun through Cara’s mind.

How could her maid not know while she’d been healing in her rooms, Cara’s entire world was flipped on its ear by a stranger who’d challenged her at every turn?

“There you are, my lady.”

The girl’s wan pallor indicated how much energy her efforts had cost her. Guilt pulled at her. “You need to rest,” Cara said softly, leading her back to her rooms.

The loyal maid widened her eyes.

“What is it, Alison?” Cara asked.

“You are… you are…”

She gave her head a shake, urging a suddenly taciturn Alison to finish those words.

“…being kind.”

You do not apologize. You do not speak to servants. You are not kind to them. They are your inferior in every way. Is that clear, Clarisse…?

Her father’s even, disdainful tone echoed around the chambers of her mind.

Shame filled her at the shocked confusion in her maid’s tone. Cara managed a wry smile. “Well, it is never too late for a person to learn something new.” She followed her words with a wink that elicited another weak smile from the girl.

Will had wrought havoc upon her ordered world. Only this disorder, which had set her adrift at sea, was the exhilarating type that made her want to toss free the shackles that had bound her all these years. They’d reached Alison’s rooms and Cara helped her inside. Cara paused in the doorway. An apology earned, is an apology deserved… “I am sorry,” she said softly.

Alison furrowed her brow. “My lady?”

“I have not been kind to you through the years and…” She caught the inside of her lower lip between her teeth. “…and for that I am sorry.” Her toes curled reflexively into the soles of her boots at those humbling, unfamiliar words on her lips and before the young woman could respond, Cara hurried from the small rooms and closed the door behind her.

Inside the hall, she eyed the steps and then looked at the stairwell at the opposite end of the floor, just past Will’s rooms.

Will.

Her throat spasmed and with desperation driving her movements, she made her way silently down the hall, hesitating a moment outside his rooms. Cara pressed a kiss to her fingertips and then brushed them over his scarred door. And then she continued on to the stables.

William stood at the window. With the frost now thawed from the glass, it left a watery trail, sad and sloppy in its wake. He brushed his hand over the pane, clearing the moisture, and leaving the mark of his blurry palm print.

His packed saddlebags reflected in the crystal while the fierce sun beat down on the snow covered ground and roads. It was time to go. He closed his eyes a moment. Just days ago it had been the lady facing him at the end of that proverbial road who’d made it impossible to finish the journey home. Now, he could not force his legs into movement to finish this journey for reasons that had nothing to do with his future betrothed and everything to do with Cara. Only, this make believe world they’d allowed themselves to believe was real would ultimately end this day.

The time would come, by the very nature of his station and hers, that their paths would again cross. A future duke and a lady betrothed to some priggish, English peer would one day again meet. The air left his lungs on a swift, broken exhale. For the moment that would be—they would each be wed to their respective matches with the intimacy of these past couple of days a secret memory they would share, breathed aloud by neither, existing only in their minds.

I can offer for her…

The tantalizing thought slid in and, for a moment in time, he grasped on to that scandalous and yet enticing possibility. He cursed and as soon as the words left his mouth, a broken laugh escaped him with the remembrance of Cara’s secretly scandalous tongue. Which only roused tantalizing memories of the contours of her lips.

William swiped a hand across his eyes. What hold did she have over him? Upon their first meeting, he’d not even liked the lady. But then, he’d looked closer, under the practiced façade. Truly looked. And what he’d seen underneath was a woman who’d known loss in her mother and battled years of coldness at a remote father’s hands. A woman who’d been instructed to be that which Society expected of a proper English lady, who’d adopted that icy exterior to prevent herself from pain. The hurt flashing in her blue eyes, however, was the powerful emotion belonging to a young lady who felt a good deal—and who fought hard to suppress any and all emotion. No doubt in a bid to make herself immune to further hurts. Deep inside, however, dwelled a woman who longed for more.

And God help him, he wanted to forsake the pledge he’d made his father about the duke’s daughter and be the man to give Cara more.

He pulled at his lapels. But it could not be. If he did not leave now, he’d be only further drawn into the seductive spell she’d cast upon him. He turned, just as a flash of green caught his eye. With a frown, William looked on as Cara took wide, lurching steps forward into the still-deep snow. He skimmed his gaze about for sign of her servant or driver, for anyone…but found the grounds empty. Periodically, she would steal a glance around and then with a final furtive look about, she disappeared inside the stables.

He scrubbed his hands over his face.
She is not my business. Soon I will be off and she will remain behind, and carry on with her life, and I will carry on with mine and…
“Bloody hell.” William spun on his heel and strode across the room.

The chit didn’t have a blasted brain in her head. He jerked the door open so hard it shook on its hinges. Fury thrumming through him, William marched from his small, rented chambers and walked purposefully through the short hall. He took the stairs quickly and then, ignoring the lady’s driver who sat taking the morning meal, exited the tavern.

As he stomped a path to the stables, the birds sang a maddeningly cheerful tune. His boot steps churned up the icy snow as he followed the trail of Cara’s smaller footprints. With each step closer, fury built in his chest. What in blazes was the lady thinking? Did she not have the sense to realize what peril awaited her? Then, as a sheltered, protected lady, she didn’t know the dangers that existed—unscrupulous men who’d not hesitate to steal her innocence. A growl climbed up his throat and he continued on to the stables.

“Bloody hell.”

Her whispered curse cut through the doors and brought him to a stop. Despite his annoyance, a grin split his lips. William quietly shoved the door open. The rusted hinge screeched in protest. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimly lit quarters. He scanned the area and frowned. Why, it was as though she’d simply vanished. He whipped his head about, searching for that golden-haired temptress who’d laid claim to his thoughts. Where in blazes had she—?