His By Christmas (Hamilton Sisters) (17 page)

If he’d had a drink he would have choked on it. “And just how many men have you kissed, Yvette?”

Her cheeks suffused with color. “I’m not sure I should talk to you about such things, Jeffrey.”

“Why not? We’ve been talking about everything else.”

Her brow arched in question. “Well, in that case, how many women have you kissed?”

He would have laughed if he hadn’t wanted her to answer his question so desperately. Just who had Yvette been kissing and when? And why did it bother him so much to think of her kissing anyone but him? It was the oddest conversation to be having in the Devon House drawing room, her mother ill upstairs, and her almost fiancé having just left them alone. Things seemed to have changed so suddenly between them since last night. But Yvette deserved an answer from him. And if he expected an answer from her, it was only fair to reciprocate. Honestly.

“Over the years, I’ve kissed more women than I could possibly count.”

Her blue eyes widened in astonishment. “Oh my.”

He irrationally wished he could have given her a different answer. One that wouldn’t have shocked her. “And you?” he prompted.

“Not nearly as many as you. There have been three, if I count Lord Shelley.”

He imagined they were brief, stolen kisses by the young bucks in town, who were half mad with wanting her. They couldn’t have been very memorable. But a mature man like Lord Shelley . . . he would be quite experienced and know how to kiss a woman like Yvette. At least as experienced as Jeffrey was. That thought made his stomach roil. “Did you like kissing Lord Shelley?”

“Yes.” She nodded her head slowly, as if giving the matter some consideration. “It was nice.”

“Oh, I see.” Jeffrey struggled to contain his laughter.
Nice
. Lord Shelley’s kisses were merely
nice
. Filled with relief, he now knew with 100 percent certainty that Yvette was not in love with Lord Shelley nor had she been properly kissed by him. Jeffrey also thought smugly that if
he
had been the one to kiss Yvette, she certainly wouldn’t describe his kisses as
nice
. Oh, no. He would kiss her so thoroughly she wouldn’t be able to—

“Have you ever kissed any of my sisters?”

Startled out of his thoughts of kissing Yvette, Jeffrey sat bolt upright in his chair, his feet planted on the floor. “What did you say?”

“While we were on the subject of the thousands of women you’ve kissed, I just wondered if any of them were my sisters.”

“I never said I kissed thousands.”

“Hundreds then.”

“Yes, that’s more accurate.” He nodded. “I don’t think I’ve hit the five-hundred mark yet.” He winked at her.

She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“You haven’t answered my question and I’ve answered yours.”

He was evading her question. He sighed reluctantly, grateful for the darkening room as the sun set outside and returned to his comfortable reclining position on the chair, propping his feet up once again. “Yes. I kissed Colette many years ago.”

“Colette?”
Yvette couldn’t contain her surprise at his revelation. “You kissed Colette? She’s the last one I would have guessed.”

He nodded, not willing to divulge more. His one kiss with Colette Hamilton had been before she’d married his best friend and it had been a mistake.

“Oh,” Yvette said, realization suddenly dawning. “Is that why Lucien hit you?”

Again he nodded at her. “Partly, yes.”

“I never knew that.” She looked deep in thought, her expression pensive and almost amused. “We always suspected there was a romance between you and Juliette.”

Jeffrey laughed at that. “Good God, no! I love your sister dearly, but Juliette and I have never been anything other than the best of friends.”

“And you haven’t kissed Lisette or Paulette either then?”

“No.” He laughed ruefully. “I hate to disappoint you, Yvette, but I don’t go around kissing every woman I happen to know. You Hamilton sisters are exceedingly beautiful, but alas, your sisters were already in love with someone else and not me.”

“Have you ever been in love, Jeffrey?”

“No.”

She paused in thought. “So you have no more experience in the area of love than I do.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Surprisingly, he didn’t mind admitting that to her.

Jeffrey had never been in love with a woman. In lust, yes, and there were one or two occasions when he thought he might be in love. But as for true love and wishing to marry and spend your life with one woman . . . no, that he had not yet experienced. Over the years he’d watched his friends declare themselves in love and marry, one by one. First Lucien, then Harrison and Quinton. They all seemed happy enough. Hell, they seemed ridiculously happy with their wives and then their children.

Once in a while he wished he’d had someone to love. Someone who belonged just to him, someone who could love him in return. So far, that hadn’t happened. Certainly not with Jennie Webb. Or Olivia Trahern. Or any of the other beauties he’d bedded over the years. And now he looked at Yvette Hamilton sitting in the chair across from him and remembered the feel of her sleeping in his arms last night. A knot tightened in his stomach at the memory. There had been something very right about holding her so close to his heart.

A silence grew between them as the shadows began to lengthen across the room. Jeffrey found it quite peaceful sitting there with Yvette, talking quietly in the dimness.

“Do you ever wish to be in love, Jeffrey?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” he answered, feeling a strange flutter in his heart.

“I suppose so.”

“You don’t think you should be in love with William Weatherly before he proposes?”

“I shall be in love with him at some point, I would imagine.”

“I don’t believe you can plan something like that, Yvette.”

“Why not?” she asked. “People have arranged marriages all the time and grow to love each other afterward.”

“Yes,” he admitted, “but those are the exception and not the rule. Arranged marriages are basically cold and distant contracts and they don’t always end happily. In fact, they can end quite disastrously and my father can attest to that. You used to be the most romantic little girl, Yvette. I’m surprised to hear you say these things.”

Yvette remained silent.

Jeffrey added, “I would rather experience the thrill of falling head over heels in love before asking a woman to marry me.”

“I know my sisters had that experience,” she said, a touch of wistfulness in her voice.

“Don’t you wish to feel that way about the man you marry? Don’t you believe you deserve to be in love, Yvette?”

“Yes. I believe it would be wonderful.”

They grew quiet, each in their own thoughts. Again, he wanted to ask why she would marry Lord Shelley when she was not in love with him, but he already knew the answer to that. Yvette wanted to be a duchess more than she wanted to be in love with her husband.

“Jeffrey,” she interrupted his thoughts, changing the subject completely. “May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“What is it that you do?”

His brows furrowed. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking, Yvette.”

“I mean, what is it that you do when you’re away? Traveling? When you went to France, you said it was partly business.” She sat up and looked at him curiously. “What business do you do?”

He had not been expecting that question from her at all, and he was uncertain how much of the truth to tell her. “Well, I have various business ventures that need my attention, my shipping enterprise, for one.”

“Yes, but I thought I overheard you and Lucien talking once about the government and I was wondering if you did something in that capacity.”

“Are you asking if I do work for the government?”

She nodded. “Yes. Do you?”

“From time to time,” he admitted reluctantly. “When they need me.”

Her face lit up with wonder. “Is it secretive?”

She looked so excited he wanted to kiss her. “Yes. Very. And I don’t wish for anyone else to know about it.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” She paused. “Is it dangerous?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are you careful?”

“Very.” He winked at her.

“Excuse me, Miss Yvette?” Granger entered the room, which had grown dark since the sun had set in the late autumn sky. He lit one of the gas lamps on the wall, casting the room in a yellow glow.

“Yes, Granger?” she asked.

“Will you and Lord Eddington be having supper in the dining room this evening?” he asked solicitously. “Or shall I bring something up to the small sitting room again?”

“Are you staying for supper, Jeffrey?” Yvette asked him softly from the depths of her chair. “Please don’t feel obligated to stay because of me. You were here last night and all day today. I’m sure you must have other engagements and things to attend to rather than staying here with me.”

“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than here, dining with you, Yvette.”

Jeffrey did have any number of obligations that needed his attention, but her smile of pure delight was his reward for ignoring them.

“We shall dine in the sitting room upstairs again, Granger,” she said. “To be near my mother.”

Jeffrey couldn’t have been happier. He was going to spend an evening alone with Yvette. Again.

17

Westward Leading

November 1878

Fleming Farm

Rumson, New Jersey

Colette Hamilton Sinclair read Yvette’s most recent letter with growing alarm, while trying to ignore her younger son’s impatient tugging on her skirt.

“Mama! Come with me! Please . . .”

“I will, Simon, I promise. Please be patient for just a moment, darling,” she murmured absently, staring at the words scrawled across the page in Yvette’s careless script. Mother had suddenly taken ill and Yvette seemed more than a bit frantic. Her youngest sister wasn’t known for her correspondence so the fact that she’d written such a detailed and lengthy letter caused Colette’s heart rate to increase.

“But Mama,” Simon wailed again with mounting urgency. “Phillip and Sara are hiding and I can’t find them anywhere. Please help me.”

“Oh, all right, Simon,” Colette said with a sigh. His green eyes were too much like his father’s to be ignored.

Folding the letter and tucking it into the pocket of her gown, Colette took her five-year-old’s little hand in hers. The children had been cooped up inside the house all day due to the rainy weather and were apparently wearing on each other. “I’ve already told them once to stop hiding from you, Simon. Come now, let’s go find them again, shall we?”

Once she had rounded up the errant and giggling Phillip and Sara from behind the long, velvet drapes in Juliette’s bedroom, Colette brought the three children to the nursery, under strict instructions not to hide from each other again.

“Now play nice,” she admonished, trying to appear stern and not laugh. Especially at her pretty dark-haired niece, whose impudent face was so much like Juliette’s that it brought back memories of her own childhood. She then left the children to quietly assemble a wooden puzzle before bed, with their nanny looking after them.

Colette then found her husband with her sister Juliette and her brother-in-law Harrison in the main drawing room of their beautiful New Jersey estate. The three of them sat talking and drinking coffee before a cozy fire as the cold rain continued to come down outside.

“I think we should sail back to London right away,” Colette announced to them as soon as she entered the room. “Maybe before the end of the week.”

Lucien, taking in his wife’s worried expression, set down his cup and asked, “What on earth for, sweetheart?”

“This letter from Yvette that came today,” Colette explained walking toward them. “It seems Mother is very ill.”

Juliette, her blue eyes flashing, laughed dismissively and waved her hand. “Oh Colette, when has our mother ever
not
been ill?”

Colette shook her head. “No, this is quite serious and different from anything that has happened in the past. She had some sort of apoplectic attack and fell to the floor. This is real and not imaginary. Yvette seems terribly distraught and said she feared that Mother might die . . . that first night.” Colette blinked back tears. “The doctor has been there and he’s afraid that Mother might have lost the ability to speak or to move the right side of her body.”

The room grew silent and the sardonic amusement completely vanished from Juliette’s expression. “Truly?”

“That’s what Yvette has written.” Colette held the letter in her hand. “So I think we need to go home as soon as we can.”

She moved to sit on the sofa beside her husband. He took her other hand in his and Colette instantly felt calmer. Just his presence had that effect on her, even after eight years together. His green eyes filled with concern as he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. Oh, how she loved this handsome man!

“It sounds very similar to what happened to my father,” Lucien said. “He suffered an apoplectic attack that left him paralyzed and his speech impaired. And I agree with Colette that we should leave right away.” He looked to his brother-in-law. “Is that possible, Harrison?”

“Of course it is. I can have the
Sea Minx
ready within a day. If we pack tonight, we can leave for New York tomorrow afternoon and sail the day after.” Tall and blond, with a rugged handsomeness that came from years of sailing his beautiful clipper ship, Captain Harrison Fleming was a strong and charismatic man.

Although relieved to be returning to London a little earlier than planned, Colette felt a bit sad to be ending their holiday. It was their first visit to America, and they had enjoyed their time in Juliette’s home. But their mother and sister needed them now.

“That’s settled then?” Juliette asked. “We are leaving right away?”

“Yes. Mother’s illness sounds quite serious and I’m very worried,” Colette said. “And poor Yvette. She also wrote that Lisette has been occupied tending to baby Elizabeth, who’s been quite ill as well, leaving Yvette to care for Mother on her own.”