Christmas with the Duchess (9 page)

Lady Susan gave a little gasp. “Oh, you haven’t told him?” she cried. “Oh, Anne! Silly little Anne! That is no way to go about it. There’s no need for deception. Your nephew seems to be an honest and dutiful young man. I’m sure that once he understands that it’s his
duty
to marry one of your girls, he will gladly embrace his fate.”

“I have no idea what you mean, Sister!” Anne repeated desperately.

“So you keep saying, my dear,” Lady Susan said dryly. “Well, Camford? Are you ready to embrace your fate? Is it to be humble Augusta? Conceited Cornelia? Friday-faced Flavia? Or pretty, jiggling, little Julia?”

Unable to bear any more, Nicholas sprang to his feet.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “I hope my cousins will excuse me. I—I am very tired from the journey. Good night, Aunt Anne,” he added.

Bowing to the ladies, he hurried from the room.

Lady Anne began to cry helplessly.

Lady Susan patted her on the back. “Poor Anne! Despite your best intentions, I’m afraid you’ve made a mess of it.” With a grunt, she heaved herself up from the settee and went back to her card games, serene in the knowledge that
her
girls were well married, and that none of Anne’s inferior brood would ever be a countess.

Nicholas strode away from the drawing room with giant steps. Lord Scarlingford had been dead right! he realized now. The abominable Lady Susan had plucked the scales from his eyes. Lady Anne’s guilty expression had told him all he needed to know.

As he rounded the corner, he nearly collided with Monty, who had just stepped out into the hall in front of him.

“Your leg seems better,” Nicholas observed grimly.

“Oh, it’s you,” Monty said, grinning. “I thought it was one of
them.
Sneaking off to spend the night with the duchess?”

“Certainly not!” Nicholas said coldly.

Monty’s grin widened. “Would you like to?” he asked simply.

Emma sat on the Aubusson rug in her private sitting room, surrounded by sketches and plans, a tiny set of spectacles perched on her nose as she studied her drawings. Her brother Otto reclined on the sofa behind her, looking over her shoulder, and, from time to time, giving her the benefit of his advice. Not entirely sober, Colin sat at his sister’s pianoforte, idly manipulating the keys. Cecily had gone to the nursery to check on the children. They were all drinking wine, the servants having been dismissed for the night.

“You’re such a coward, Emma,” Colin complained. “You should have told that bitch to her head, ‘Yes, Byron was my lover. He used to eat grapes from between my toes and drink wine from my navel.’”

“Thank you, but unlike yourself, I don’t care to boast of my mistakes,” Emma replied tartly, pouring herself another glass of Beaujolais. “And, for your information, it was the Tsar who wanted to eat things off of me. Byron was a bit boring actually.”

“Oh, how sad,” said Colin. “It’s true what they say, then? Poets make bad lovers? The better the poetry, the worse the lovemaking?”

Emma giggled. “If that is so, then Byron must be the greatest poet who ever lived!”

“There!” Colin complained. “Why couldn’t you say something like
that
to those hags?”

“You weren’t there to make me think of it,” said Emma, looking at him fondly. “You are the fountainhead of my wit. You are muse, my inspiration. My wine steward,” she added hopefully, holding out her glass to be refilled.

After a moment, he obliged her.

“Then I am forgiven for Monty’s interference in your romance with the sea lord?”

Emma laughed. “Thank goodness
that
is all over. Though I must tell you, no one in his right mind would ever think that
I
would take
Monteith
to bed! He’s funny looking.”

“He’s ruggedly handsome,” Colin protested.

“Ruggedly funny looking,” Emma muttered.

“Well, they can’t all be pretty, pretty boys like Camford.”

“Why do you tax me with Camford?” she complained. “My interest in him was…completely disinterested. I made good use of him, but now it is over. I have won.”

“What do you mean, it’s over? With Camford, do you mean?”

Otto’s voice startled the twins.

“Lord, Blotto, we thought you was asleep!” said Colin, his hand on his heart. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a body like that!” He retreated back to the pianoforte.

Emma turned around to look at her elder brother. “Of course I am finished with Camford. You heard Hugh make the announcement,” she said. “Harry and Grey will be home on Saturday. As for my letter, he will give it to me if he wants his money, which he does. I have turned the table. There’s no reason to continue this farce with Camford. And you said yourself, it was a shame to drag him into this mess.”

“You assume that Hugh will not break his word,” said Otto.

“But how can he?” Emma wanted to know. “He has told everyone that Harry and Grey are coming home. He can’t go back on his word now. I have won the battle, Otto. This is, in fact, my victory party. Can’t you just congratulate me on a job well done?”

Otto did not look convinced.

“You should seduce him anyway, Emma,” said Colin. “It’s the only way to save him.”

“Save him!” Emma scoffed. “Save him from what?”

“From the Fitzroys, of course.”

“Emma, you are a heartless jade,” said Otto, prodding his sister in the back with his foot. “You used Camford shamelessly, and now you cast him to the wolves, without so much as an apology.”

“But that was always the plan,” she protested.

“It’s too cruel, Emma,” Colin accused her. “You showed him a glimpse of heaven.”

“I showed him a glimpse of the secession houses,” Emma retorted. “I flirted with him a little. You think I should apologize?”

“That was Otto’s idea. I can think of something a young man likes better than an apology. Take him to bed. You owe him that much at least.”

“And what is your interest in the matter?” she demanded.

“I think you like him,” Colin accused her. “You never could fool me. I saw the way your eyes lit up when you saw him in his uniform.”

Emma smiled faintly. “He did look rather nice,” she said, “in his blue coat.”

“Nice as a Christmas present,” Colin teased. “If you like him, Emma, why give him up? Why let the Fitzroys take him from you? This is not the code of the Greys, or have you turned coward? We Greys take what we want, and the world be damned.”

“But I
don’t
want him,” Emma said firmly. “I never wanted him. And now I don’t even need him. It certainly isn’t necessary for me to take him to bed. The Miss Fitzroys are welcome to him. He is a good-looking young man, but that is all. We have nothing in common. We are not compatible. It’s none of my business what happens to him now!”

“You’re finished with him? Just like that.” Colin snapped his fingers.

Emma looked at him over the rims of her spectacles. “Naturally, I wish him the very best in life, and all that sort of thing, but that’s the sum of it. Now can we please talk about something else?”

Colin gaped at her. “You don’t care if he marries one of the Fitzroys?”

“Not a jot. I wish them joy.”

“Hmmm. I hope he’s not going to get stuck with Augusta,” Colin said presently, “though I
will
say she’s not as bad as Octavia.” He shuddered. “Is she a girl, or is she a block of ice? No one knows for sure. Flavia, of course, is quite out of the question. Poor thing! She looks like a potato with teeth stuck in. No, I hope it’s Julia. She’s pretty. She’s…dramatic. She has flare. She has what the French call
c’est la vie.
”

“I presume you mean
joidevivre,
” Otto said.

“I don’t think so,” said Colin, sniggering. “A
joi de vivre
is a streetwalker.”

“No. That would be a
fille de joi,
” Otto told him.

At that moment, Cecily, Lady Scarlingford, breezed into the room, her curly brown hair down around her shoulders, and her yellow satin gown a rumpled ruin. “I wish Nanny would not rub gin on the baby’s gums!” she complained. “I have heard that gin is bad.”

Otto yawned. “My love! What is this strange obsession you have with your children? You talk of nothing else. Come here. Look to your husband.”

Without regarding his words in the least, Cecily took her place on the sofa beside her husband, who sat up to make room for her. “What did I miss?” she asked eagerly.

“Your husband was just telling us all about French street-walkers,” Colin told her. “Apparently, he’s quite the expert.”

“Otto!” cried the gullible Cecily.

“Actually,” Emma said primly, “we were just going over my plans for the ballroom decorations.”

“Actually, my love, we were just deciding which of the Fitzroy girls will get Camford for Christmas,” Otto said at the same time.

Cecily seemed to find her husband’s topic more interesting than Emma’s. “Oh, I do hope it’s not that Cornelia! She’s such a nasty, spiteful, little thing. I must say, I think
he
is lovely. I don’t suppose it will be possible for him to marry for love,” she added, sighing.

“He will have to marry one of his cousins,” said Otto. “There’s nothing else for it.”

Colin fluttered a hand. “But Cornelia would be better than Octavia, I say. As long as it’s not Octavia, I am well satisfied.”

“Why? What do you have against Octavia?” cried Cecily. “She’s the stateliest of the girls. She
looks
like a countess. I wish sometimes that I had her poise and assurance.”

Otto shuddered. “Never say such things, my love.”

“No, indeed! She’s a cold fish!” Colin protested. “We all hate her. Anyway, she’s engaged already, supposedly. Julia is the obvious choice. Julia has
joi de ville.
”

“Julia’s too young,” Cecily objected.

“He’s
obviously
going to marry Miss Augusta,” Otto declared. “After Octavia, she comes next in the order of precedence. Therefore, he is hers by right of seniority. We must have Order, after all. We cannot give in to Chaos.”

“I
do
prefer Augusta to that horrid Cornelia,” said Cecily. “What do you think, Emma?”

“I’m sure I don’t care
who
he marries!” cried Emma, getting to her feet. “Why the devil should I? I never set eyes on him before today. In the future, I hope to see him as little as possible. When he leaves here, it is very likely I will never see him again. In a month, he will be forgotten entirely. What is there to remember about him, really? He’s just an ordinary boy who happened to fall backward into an earldom! I am sick of hearing his name.”

In the middle of her speech, Colin suddenly ducked his head and coughed. Belatedly, Emma felt eyes on the back of her neck. Spinning around, she saw Nicholas and Monty standing in the doorway.

“Surprise,” Monty said weakly, holding up two bottles of Champagne.

Nicholas stared at Emma, a stricken look in his blue eyes.

Cecily and Otto discreetly averted their eyes from the unpleasant scene.

Emma’s cheeks flamed. Ashamed of herself, she reacted irrationally by going on the attack. “You should not have brought him here,” she told Monty angrily. “He should be in the drawing room with his family. What were you thinking?”

Belatedly, she snatched off her spectacles and stuffed them into her bosom.

“I’m sorry,” Monty spluttered. “I thought—I thought he was your friend, Emma. I didn’t see any harm in inviting him along. What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” Emma echoed irritably. “Now you are inviting people to my private rooms? And is that Champagne from my cellar?”

“I should not have come,” Nicholas said, his face stiff with embarrassment. “Lord Ian persuaded me that I would be welcome. I see that I am not. I can only beg your pardon, madam. Good night!”

“You must forgive Emma,” Colin said, coming out from behind the pianoforte to prevent Nicholas from leaving. “She’s horrid. She’s always been horrid. Despite our father’s best efforts, daily beatings did not improve her.”

Nicholas could not be drawn into the room. “If the duchess does not want me here, of course I will go,” he said stiffly, avoiding looking at Emma. “Only…Only could someone please show me the way back to my room? I don’t think I can find it on my own.”

Monty set the Champagne on Emma’s pianoforte. “I brought you here,” he said, looking gravely at Emma. She glared back at him, unrepentant. “I’ll take you back.”

“No,” said Nicholas. “Stay with your friends. May I ring for a servant, ma’am?”

“My servants have all retired for the night,” Emma said ungraciously. “I see no reason to wake them up.”

“Emma!” Cecily cried in astonishment. “That is uncivil!”

Emma rounded on her. “
He
bursts into my room, uninvited and unannounced, and you say that
I
am uncivil?”

“He hardly burst in, old girl,” Monty objected. “Look, it’s all my fault. By all means, be furious with
me.
Throw
me
out. Punish
me.
I deserve it. But don’t take it out on poor Nick.”

Walking over to the young man, he placed a sponsoring hand on his shoulder. Colin assumed a similar pose on the other side. “It’s not your fault, Monty. It’s
my
fault,” said Colin. “I was just teasing Emma about a certain forthcoming marriage. Apparently, she’s quite prickly on the subject. I think she may be jealous. As we all know, hell hath no fury like the green-eyed monster.”

“Colin!” Emma said, furious and humiliated.

“But I am not getting married,” Nicholas said vehemently. “Did someone tell you I was to be married?” he asked, directing the question at Emma.

“But aren’t you going to marry one of your cousins?” Colin insisted.

“That’s a lie!” Nicholas said hotly. “I—I beg your pardon, Lord Scarlingford. I should have taken you more seriously when you tried to warn me in the billiard room. But it all seemed so utterly fantastic!”

“But no longer?” Otto guessed, quirking a brow.

“It was that dragon, Lady Susan,” said Nicholas. “Though, perhaps, I should not speak ill of her; she has done me a good turn. She made it clear that everyone thinks it is my duty to marry as soon as possible, and that my aunt and uncle expect my bride to be one of my cousins. Lady Susan as good as said I could have my pick of the litter! They will even bring Out Julia for me—a mere child of fifteen. My aunt’s guilty expression confirmed all.”

“Oh, you poor little lamb,” said Colin. “Emma, you
can’t
send him back! He’s in the fire now. He doesn’t want to go back to the frying pan. And, you know, you did say he looks very nice in his blue coat. She did say that.”

Nicholas lifted his eyes to her. “If you want me to go…”

Emma threw up her hands. “Of course I don’t
want
you to go,” she said impatiently. “I just thought you should be with your family. Oh, all right! You can stay. But your uncle won’t like it.”

Nicholas smiled. “I do not answer to my uncle, ma’am,” he said, “but I will gladly answer to you.”

“In that case,” said Emma, beginning to smile, “you must wear a tinsel hat. Otto will give you his.”

“I won’t,” said Otto, as Monty opened one of the bottles of Champagne.

Colin ran to get glasses. “Typical, Monty!” he scolded. “Will you never learn to fetch the glasses
before
you pop the cork?”

“Not as long as I have
you
to fetch them for me,” Monty said lightly.

“You’re getting Champagne everywhere,” said Otto, taking charge of the bottle.

Champagne in hand, Cecily sat at the pianoforte with her brother-in-law. Laughing, Monty explained to them how he had escaped from the drawing room by pretending to be in agony from an old wound.

“Don’t you like music?” Cecily asked him.

“Aye, ma’am! And that is why I was so eager to escape the concert!”

Colin began to play, Monty began to sing. Cecily joined in. Otto drank his champagne. In short, everyone made a point of ignoring anything that might be taking place on the other side of the room.

Nicholas remained standing just inside the doorway. “Are you sure you want me to stay?” he asked Emma. “After all, I’m just an ordinary fellow who fell backward into an earldom. Actually, that’s quite true,” he admitted.

Emma knelt down to gather up her drawings. “I know I shall be sorry for this in the morning,” she muttered under her breath. “Stay. I want you to.”

Instantly, he was beside her, down on one knee, saying, “Let me help you.”

“Thank you,” she said, wishing he did not look so handsome in his uniform. “I am sorry if I was uncivil,” she mumbled. Of all the things in the world, she hated apologies the most.

With a quick glance at the others, he lowered his voice. “Is that why you left the drawing room before I returned?” he asked. “Because you thought I was going to marry one of my cousins?” He seemed pleased with the idea that she might be jealous.

Emma’s response was studied. “I assumed that you probably would.”

“Why?” he demanded. “How could you think so?”

She shrugged.

Nicholas frowned. “Surely, you do not think it is my
duty
to marry one of them?”

Emma seated herself on the sofa, taking her plans onto her lap. “Do you not think it is your duty?” she countered. “You have inherited a great estate. Is it not fair that one of your cousins should share it with you? After all, any of them might have inherited, had she not had the misfortune to be born a female.”

Nicholas was taken aback; he had never considered the matter in this light. “Naturally, if any of my cousins is in need, I will always come to her assistance. But marriage?” He shook his head. “I could never marry a girl I did not love,” he said simply. “That would be a falsehood.”

Emma blinked at him in surprise. “Falsehood?”

“Oh, I do not fault those who marry for other reasons,” he said quickly. “But, for
me
…I could never wed with an empty heart.”

Emma could not help but smile at such touching naivete. “Are you real, Lord Camford? You’re like something from a fairy tale, you are. People wed with empty hearts every day.”

“And I think it very sad,” he said solemnly.

“
My
marriage was arranged,” she said. “Do you pity me?”

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t know.”

“The day I met my future husband for the first time, I was summoned from the schoolroom into the rarified atmosphere of my father’s study. I was but fifteen. ‘Here is your husband, girl,’ my father said. Somehow, I found the courage to raise my eyes, and there he stood: the Duke of Warwick! He was horribly old, at least a hundred, or so I thought. He looked like moths had been eating him. I thought I would faint!”

“Good God,” Nicholas murmured.

“He stretched out his cold, bony hand to me, and said, ‘I’d like you to meet my son, Henry.’” Emma laughed, as much at Nicholas’s expression as the memory of that first meeting. “And there he was! Thank God! A reasonably good-looking seventeen-year-old boy. I was so relieved, I believe I gave him my heart on the spot. And, I think, he was not too disappointed in me. We were wed three months later.”

“A happy ending, then.”

Emma laughed ruefully. “By no means. But we
did
have a happy beginning. That is more than some people get.”

Otto’s voice intruded upon their tête-à-tête. “Perhaps
Camford
can convince my sister that her mad scheme will never work,” he drawled, reaching over the back of the sofa to hand them glasses of Champagne. “I have done my best to reason with her.”

All at once, Nicholas realized that he was in a ridiculous position, kneeling at Emma’s feet. He stood up to accept the glass of champagne. After a moment of indecision, he sat down next to Emma on the sofa. “Are you scheming, ma’am?” he asked her.

“Always,” said Emma. “But my brother refers to nothing more sinister than my Christmas plans.”

Nicholas looked at her drawings admiringly. “I do not think
battles
are so carefully planned,” he said. “You did not tell me that you were an artist, ma’am.”

“But I have not had time to tell you everything, sir!” she answered. “Here is my vision for the Great Hall,” she went on, showing Nicholas her sketch. She sat looking at him as he studied it. “When the guests arrive for the ball on Christmas Eve, this is what they will see. What do you think?”

“It is what you
wish
for them to see, Emma,” Otto corrected her. “You will never realize it,” he declared, leaning on the back of the sofa. “My sister has never heard of gravity or Sir Isaac Newton. As you can plainly see, the tree is much too tall.”

“Is that a tree?” Nicholas asked, squinting at the sketch in Emma’s lap.

Emma gasped indignantly. “Yes, of course it’s a tree. A remarkably well-drawn tree! A fir tree, to be exact.”

“You will never get that thing through the doors,” Otto predicted. “And, even if, by some miracle, you get that—that ridiculously enormous tree through the doors, into the house, how do you propose to make it stand up? Hmm?”

“That will be the servants’ lookout,” Emma said crossly. “I pay them handsomely enough to do my bidding.”

“You
do
realize that trees only stand up outside because they’ve got roots stretching deep into the earth?” said her brother. “When a tree is cut away from its roots, it invariably falls over. It makes a bit of a crash, if that matters to you.”

“Oh, don’t be such a damper, Otto!” she snapped.

“I don’t mean to discourage you, Emma,” said Otto. “I’m simply pointing out that your plan will never work. You can’t have a tree that reaches all the way up to the ceiling—the ceiling in the Great Hall is twenty feet high! A tree of that height would fall over and kill someone—
if
you could even get it through the doors, which you can’t.”

“Oh, but you don’t mean to discourage me!”

“This may be a silly question,” Nicholas said, “but why do you want to put a tree, of all things, in the middle of your hall?”

“Of course it makes no sense to
you;
you’re English,” Emma laughed. “But my mother was German. She brought her customs with her when she married my father. We always had a Christmas tree at Chilton.
Der Weihnachtsbaum,
we called it. It’s usually a fir tree—
die Tannenbaum.
We always had such fun decorating it.”

“We had a
small Tannenbaum
at Chilton,” Otto said. “In the nursery.”

Emma ignored him. “When I married into the Fitzroy family, they all thought I was mad, but my boys had a
Tannenbaum
in the nursery every year,” Emma told Nicholas. “We always used to decorate it together. My boys didn’t have much of a Christmas
last
year,” she went on more seriously, “with their father dying so suddenly, you understand. Oh, it was dreadful. I want this year to be extra special for them, to make up for it.”

“I think I can help you,” Nicholas said slowly. “It can’t be any more difficult than raising the mast on a ship, and I’ve done that a few times in my day. Not by myself, of course.”

“You will have servants to assist you, of course,” Emma assured him. “Anything you need. There, you see, Otto!” she said triumphantly. “It
can
be done!”

“I still think it very strange that you would want to cut down a perfectly good tree and drag it into your house,” said Nicholas. “But, yes, I think it can be done.”

Monty came around with the bottle to make sure their glasses were full. “A toast. To peace!”

Emma and Nicholas scrambled to their feet. “To peace!”

“La guerre est mort!”
Colin announced in execrable French, lifting his glass in a toast no one could resist joining.
“Vive le paix!”

Soon they were all drunk.

The party began to break up a little after midnight when Otto took his thoroughly inebriated wife to bed. Cecily, who never drank more than a glass or two with her dinner, was really suffering. Leaning heavily on her husband’s arm, she left the room, white faced with nausea, yet still mumbling bravely about going to the nursery to check on the children.

Monty and Colin stood up at the same time. “I have to get up very early,” said Monty, kissing Emma’s hand. “I’m going out shooting with Bellamy’s men. If my wound isn’t troubling me, that is,” he added, grinning.

Colin yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “Well, I’m off to bed, too,” he said.

“No,” Emma said plaintively. “Don’t go! Stay! We’ll get more Champagne from the cellar. We’ll sing Christmas carols.”