Mistletoe Magic (3 page)

She stopped walking quite so briskly once she was back amongst others, finding a certain safety in numbers that she had never felt the need of before. Would he come again and speak to her? Would he create a fuss? The very thought had her hauling her fan from her reticule, to waft it to and fro, the breeze engendered calming her a little. She stuffed the sprig of orange berries into her velvet bag, glad to have them out of her fingers where someone might comment upon them.

‘Your colour is rather high, Lillian,’ her aunt Jean said as she joined her. ‘I do hope you are not sickening for something so close to the Yuletide season. Why, Mrs Haugh was saying to me just the other day how her daughter has contracted a bronchial complaint that just cannot be shaken and…’

But Lillian was listening no more, for Lucas Clairmont had just walked in from the balcony, a tall broad-
shouldered man who made the other gentlemen here look…mealy, precious and dandified. No, she must not think like that! Concentrating instead on the mark around his bottom lip that suggested another fight, she tried to ignore the way all the women in his path watched him beneath covert hooded glances.

He was leaving with the Earl of St Auburn and a man she knew to be Lord Stephen Hawkhurst. Well-placed men with the same air of menace that he had. The fact interested her and she wondered just how it was they knew each other.

As they reached the door, however, Lucas Clairmont looked straight into her eyes, tipping his head as she had seen him do at the Lenningtons’ ball. Hating the way her heartbeat flared, Lillian spread her fan wide and hid her face from his, a breathless wonder overcoming caution as a game, of which she had no notion of the rules, was begun.

Once home herself she placed the crumpled orange pyracanthus in a single bloom vase and stood it on the small table by her bed. Both the colour and the shape clashed with everything else in her bedroom. As out of place in her life as Lucas Clairmont was, a vibrant interloper who conformed to neither position nor venue. Her finger reached out to carefully touch the hard nubs of thorn that marched down its stem. Forbidding. Protective. Unexpected in the riot of colour above it!

She wished she had left it on the balcony, discarded
and cast aside, as she should be doing with the thoughts of the man who had picked it. But she had not and here it was with pride of place in a room that looked as if it held its breath with nervousness. Her eyes ran over the sheer lawn drapes about her bed, the petit-point bedcover upon it in limed cream and the lamp next to her, its chalky base topped by a faded and expensive seventeenth-century tapestry. The décor in her room was nothing like the fashion of the day with its emphasis on stripes and paisleys and the busy tones of purple and red. But she enjoyed the difference.

All had been carefully chosen and were eminently suitable, like the clothes she wore and the friends she fostered. Her life. Not haphazard or risky, neither arbitrary nor disorganised.

Once it had been, once when her mother had come home to tell them that she was leaving that very afternoon
‘to find excitement and adventure in the arms of a man who was thrilling’.
The very words used still managed to make her feel slightly sick, as she remembered a young girl who had idolised her mother. She was not
thrilling
and so she had been left behind, an only child whose recourse to making her father happy was to be exactly the daughter he wanted. She had excelled in her lessons and in her deportment, and later still when she came out at eighteen she had been daubed an ‘original’, her sense of style and quiet stillness copied by all the younger ladies at Court.

Usually she liked that. Usually she felt a certain pride
in the way she handled everything with such easy acumen. But today with the berries waving their overblown and unrestrained shapes in her room, a sense of disquiet also lingered.

Poor Lillian.

John Wilcox-Rice and his eminently sensible proposal.

Her father’s advancing age.

The pieces of her life were not quite adding up to a cohesive whole any longer, and she could pin the feeling directly to Lucas Clairmont with his easy smile and his dangerous predatory eyes.

Standing by the window, she saw an outline of herself reflected in the glass. As pale as the colours in her room, perhaps, and fading. Was she her mother’s daughter right down to the fact of finding her own ‘thrilling and unsuitable man’? She laid her palm against the glass and, on removing it, wrote her mother’s initials in the misted print

Rebecca Davenport had returned in the autumn, a thinner and sadder version of the woman who had left them, and although her father had taken her back into his house he had never taken her back into his heart. No one had known of her infidelity. The extended holiday to the Davenports’ northern estate of Fairley Manor was never explained and, although people had their suspicions, the steely correctness of Ernest Davenport had meant that they were never even whispered.

Perhaps that had made things even harder, Lillian thought. The constant charade and pretence as her mother lay dying with an ague of the soul and she, a
child who went between her parents with the necessary messages, seeing any respect that they had once had for each other wither with the onset of winter.

Even the funeral had been a sham, her mother’s body laid in the crypt of the Davenports with all the ceremony expected, and then left unvisited.

No, the path Rebecca had taken had alienated her from everybody and should her daughter be so foolish as to follow in those footsteps she could well see the consequences of ‘thrilling’.

John Wilcox-Rice was a man who would never break her heart. A constant man of sound morals and even sounder political persuasions. One hand threaded through her hair and she smiled unwillingly at the excitement that coursed through her. Everything seemed different. More tumultuous. Brighter. She walked across to the bed and ran a finger across the smooth orange berries, liking the fact that Lucas Clairmont had touched them just as she was now.

Silly thoughts. Girlish thoughts.

She was twenty-five, for goodness’ sake, and a woman who had always looked askance at those highly strung débutantes whose emotions seemed to rule them. The invitation to the Cholmondeley ball on the sill caught her attention and she lifted it up. Would the American be attending this tomorrow? Perhaps he might ask her to dance? Perhaps he might lift up her hand to his again?

She shook her head and turned away as a maid came to help her get ready for bed.

L
uc spent the morning with a lawyer from the City signing documents and hating every single signature he marked the many pages with.

The estate of Woodruff Abbey in Bedfordshire was a place he neither wanted nor deserved and his wife’s cries as she lay dying in Charlottesville, Virginia, were louder here than they had been in all the months since he had killed her.

He did not wish for the house or the chattels. He wanted to walk away and let the memories lie because recollection had the propensity to rekindle all that was gone.

Shaking away introspection, he made himself smile, a last armour against the ghosts that dragged him down.

‘Will you be going up to look the old place over, Sir?’

‘Perhaps.’ Non-committal. Evasive.

‘It is just if you wish me to accompany you, I would need to make plans.’

‘No. That will not be necessary.’ If he went, he would go alone.

‘The servants, of course, still take retainers paid for by the rental of the farming land, though in truth the place has been let go badly.’

‘I see.’ He wanted just to leave. Just to take the papers and leave.

‘Your wife’s sister’s daughters are installed in the house. Their mother died late last year and I wrote to you—’

Luc looked up. ‘I did not have any such missive.’

The lawyer rifled through a sheath of sheets and, producing a paper, handed it across to him. ‘Is this not your handwriting, sir?’ A frown covered his brow.

With his signature staring up at him, Luc could do nothing else but nod.

‘How old are these children?’

‘Eight and ten, sir, and both girls.’

‘Where is their father?’

‘He left England a good while back and never returned. He was a violent man and, if I were to guess, I would say he lies in a pauper’s grave somewhere, unmarked and uncared for. Charity and Hope are, however, the sort of girls their names suggest, and as soon as they gain their majority they will have no more claim to any favours from the Woodruff Abbey funds.’

Luc placed the paper down on the table before him. So poor-spirited, he thought, to do your duty up to a certain point and then decline further association. He
had seen it time and time again in his own father, the action of being seen to have done one’s duty more important than any benefit to those actively involved.

Unexpectedly he thought of Lillian Davenport. Would she be the same? he wondered, and hoped not. Last night when he had run his fingers across the pale skin on her wrist he had felt her heartbeat accelerate markedly and seen the flush that covered her cheeks before she had turned and run from him.

Not all the ice queen then, her high moral standards twisted against his baser want. Because he
had
wanted her, wanted to bring his hands along the contours of her face and her breasts and her hips hidden beneath her fancy clothing and distance.

Lord, was he stupid?

He should not have made his presence known. Should not have sparred with her or held her fingers and read her palm, for Lillian Davenport was the self-styled keeper of worthiness and he needed to stay away from her.

Yet she pierced a place in him that he had long thought of as dead, the parts of himself that he used to like, the parts that the past weeks of sobriety had begun to thaw against the bone-cold guilt that had torn at his soul.

The law books lined up against the far wall dusty in today’s thin sun called him back. Horatio Thackeray was now detailing the process of the transfer of title.

Woodruff Abbey was his! He turned the gold ring on his wedding finger and pressed down hard.

Lillian enjoyed the afternoon taking tea in Regent Street with Anne Weatherby and her husband Allen. His brother Alistair had joined them, too, a tall and pleasant man.

‘I have lived in Edinburgh for a good few years now,’ he explained when she asked him why she had not met him before. ‘I have land there and prefer the quieter pace of life.’ Catching sight of a shopkeeper trying to prop up a Christmas tree in his window, he laughed. ‘Queen Victoria has certainly made the season fashionable. Do you decorate a tree, Miss Davenport?’

‘Oh, more than one, Mr Weatherby. I often have three or four in the town house.’

‘And I am certain that you would do so with great aplomb if my sister-in-law’s comments on your sense of style are to be taken into consideration.’ He smiled and moved closer. ‘If I could even be so bold as to ask for permission to accompany Anne to see these Yuletide trees next time she visits, I would be most grateful.’

The man was flirting with her, Lillian suddenly thought, and averted her eyes. Catching the glance of Anne at her side, she realised immediately that her friend was in on the plot.

Another man thrust beneath her nose. Another suitor who wanted a better acquaintance. All of a sudden she wished that it could have been just this easy. An instant attraction to a man who was suitable. The very thought
made her tired. Perhaps she was never destined to be a wife or a mother.

‘You’re very quiet, Lillian?’ Anne took her hand as they walked towards the waiting coach.

‘I have a lot to think about.’

‘I hope that Alistair is one of those thoughts?’ she whispered back wickedly, laughing as Lillian made absolutely no answer. ‘Would he not do just as well as Wilcox-Rice? His holdings are substantial and Scotland is a beautiful place.’

The tree in the window was suddenly hoisted into position with the sound of cheering, a small reminder of her father’s ultimatum of choosing a groom before Christmas. Lillian placed a tight smile across her face.

‘I am not so desperate as to throw myself on a stranger, Anne, no matter how nice he is and I would prefer it if you would not meddle.’

The joy had quite gone out of the afternoon and she hated the answering annoyance in her oldest friend’s eyes. But today she could not help it. She had not been sleeping well, dreams of Virginia and the dark-haired American haunting her slumber, the remembered feel of his thumb tracing the beat on her wrist and the last sight of him tipping his head as he had left the room in the company of his friends.

To compare Lucas Clairmont to these other men was like equating the light made by tiny fireflies to that of the full-blown sun, a man whom she had never met the measure of before in making her aware that she was a
woman. Breathing out heavily, she held on to her composure and answered a question Alistair asked her with all the eagerness that she could muster.

T
he gown Lillian wore to the Cholmondeley ball was one of her favourites, a white satin dress with wide petticoats looped with tulle flowers. The train was of glacé and moiré silk, the festoons on the edge plain but beautiful. Her hair was entwined with a single strand of diamonds and these were mirrored in the quiet beading on her bodice. She seldom wore much ornamentation, preferring an understated elegance, and virtually always favoured white.

The ball was in full swing when she arrived with her father and aunt after ten; the suites of rooms on the first floor of the town house were opened up to each other and the floor in the long drawing room was polished until it shone. At the top of the chamber sat a substantial orchestra, and within it a group of guests that would have numbered well over four hundred.

‘James Cholmondeley is harking for the renommée
of a crush,’ her father murmured as they made their way inside. ‘Let us hope that the champagne, at least, is of good quality.’

‘He must be of the persuasion that it is of benefit to be remembered in London, whether good or ill.’ Her aunt Jean’s voice was louder than Lillian would have liked it. ‘And I do hope that your dress is not hopelessly wrecked in such a crowd, my dear, and that the floor does not mark your satin slippers.’ She looked up as she spoke. ‘At least they have replaced the candles in the chandeliers with globe lamps so we are not to be burned.’

Lillian was not listening to her aunt’s seemingly endless list of complaints. To her the chamber looked beautiful, with its long pale-yellow banners and fresh flowers. The late-blooming roses were particularly lovely, she thought, as she scanned the room.

Was Lucas Clairmont here already? He was taller than a great deal of the other gentlemen present so he might not be too hard to find.

John Wilcox-Rice’s arm on hers made her start. ‘I have been waiting for you to come, Lillian. I thought indeed that you might have been at the MacLay ball in Mayfair.’

‘No, we went to the Manners’s place in Belgrave Square.’

‘I had toyed with the idea of going there myself, but Andrew MacLay is a special friend of mine and I had promised him my patronage.’ A burst of music from the orchestra caught his attention as the instru
ments were tuned. ‘The quadrille should be beginning soon. May I have the pleasure of escorting you through it?’

Her heart sank at his request, but manners forced her to smile. ‘Of course,’ she said, marking her dance card with his name.

The lead-off dance might give her the chance to look more closely at the patrons of this ball, as the pace of the thing was seldom faster than a walk and Lucas Clairmont as an untitled stranger would not be able to take his place at the top of the ballroom without offending everyone.

Her heart began to beat faster. Would he know of those rules? Would he be aware of such social ostracism should he try to invade a higher set? Lord, the things that had until tonight never worried her began to eat at her composure.

Still as yet she had not seen him, though she supposed a card room to be set up somewhere. She unfurled her fan, enjoying the cool air around her face and hoped that he would not surprise her with his presence.

The quadrille was called almost immediately and Lillian walked to the top of the room, using up some of the small talk that was the first necessity for dancing it as she went.

Holding her skirt out a little, she began the
chasser,
the sedate tempo of the steps allowing conversation.

‘Are you in London for the whole of the Yule season?’ Wilcox-Rice asked her, and she shook her head.

‘No, we will repair to Fairley in the first week of January and stay down till February. Papa is keen to see
how his new horses race and has employed the services of a well-thought-of jockey in his quest to be included in next year’s Derby Day at Epsom. And you?’ Feeling it only polite, she asked him the same question back.

‘Your father asked me down after Twelfth Night. Did he not tell you?’

Lillian shook her head.

‘If you would rather I declined, you just need to say the word.’

She was saved answering by the complicated steps of the dance spiriting her away from him. The elderly gentleman she now faced smiled, but remained silent; taking her lead from him she was glad for the respite.

Luc watched Lillian Davenport from his place behind a colonnade at the foot of the room. He had seen her enter, seen the rush of men surround her asking for a dance and Wilcox-Rice placing his hand across hers to draw her away from them. Her father was there, too; Nat had pointed him out and an older woman whom he presumed was a family member. She seemed to be grumbling about something above her and Luc supposed it must be the lighting. Lillian looked as she always did, unapproachable and elegant. He noticed how the women around her covertly looked over her dress, a shining assortment of shades of white material cascading across a lacy petticoat.

She had worn white every single time he had seen her and the colour mirrored the paleness of her skin and hair.
He smiled at his own ruminations. Lord, when had he ever noticed what a woman had worn before? The mirth died a little as he thought about the ramifications of such awareness. With determination he turned away, the quadrille and its ridiculous rules taking up the whole of the upper ballroom. British aristocracy took itself so seriously; in Virginia such unwritten social codes would be laughed about and ignored. Here, however, he did not wish for the bother of making his point. In less than two months he would be on a ship sailing back to America where the nonsensical and exclusive dances of the upper classes in London would be only a memory.

The chatter of voices around him made him turn and Nathaniel introduced two very pretty sisters to him, the elder laying her hand across his arm and showing him a card that she had, the dances named on one side and a few blank spaces that were not filled in with pencil upon the other.

‘I have a polka free still, sir. If you should like to ask me…’

Nat laughed beside him. ‘I have been fending off interested ladies since you arrived, Luc. Do me at least the courtesy of filling your night so that I have no further need of mediation and diplomacy.’

Cornered, Luc assented though it had been a long time since he had learned the steps to the thing. A complicated dance, he remembered, though not as fast as the galop. He wished he had taken better heed of his teacher’s instructions when he had been a lad, and
wished also that it might have been Lillian Davenport that he partnered.

The girl’s younger sister thrust her own card at him and he was glad when they finally turned to leave.

Lord, time was beginning to run short and he did not want to be in England any longer than he had to be.

A flash of Lillian caught his eye as she finished with the quadrille and bowed to her partner. Finally it looked as though Wilcox-Rice might depart of his own accord and that he could get at least a little conversation with the most beautiful woman in the room.

But when another man claimed her for the waltz he admitted defeat and moved into the next salon to see what could be had in the way of supper.

The dancing programme was almost halfway through and Lillian was quite exhausted. She had deliberately pencilled in two waltzes with made-up initials just in case Luc Clairmont should show, but by midnight was giving up the hope of seeing him here.

Sir Richard Graham, a man who had pursued her several years earlier and one she had never warmed to, had asked her for the third galop and she had just taken her place in the circle when she felt a strange tingle along the back of her neck.

He was here, she was sure of it, the shock of connection as vivid as it had been on first seeing him outside the retiring room at the Lenningtons’.

Gritting her teeth, she took four steps forwards as her
partner took her left hand in his, and when she moved back again she casually looked across her shoulder.

He was three or four couples behind them, partnering a pretty girl whom she knew to be the younger one of the Parker sisters and he looked for all the world as if he might actually be enjoying the dance. Certainly the Parker girl was, her colour high and her eyes flashing, the dimples in her cheeks easily on show.

Perhaps he had been here all night and made no effort to single her out. Perhaps this sharp knowledge she felt when he was near her was not reciprocated. Stepping forwards, she gained in ground on the couple in front of her and Graham’s hand closed upon her own, slowing her down. Concentrate, she admonished herself. Concentrate and pretend that Lucas Clairmont is not there, that you do not care for him, this reckless colonial who can only do your reputation harm.

For the next few figures in the dance she felt her confidence return, then drain away altogether as he winked at her when she caught his eyes across the small space between them. She turned away quickly, not deigning any reply, and listened to some inconsequential thing her partner was relaying to her, trying to give the impression of the free-and-fancy woman she did not feel at all. When the dance ended she curtsied and allowed Graham to take her hand and lead her back to the shelter of her aunt, a courtesy she rarely took part in.

‘You look flushed, my dear,’ Jean said as she finished off a sizeable glass of lemonade, followed by a straw
berry bonbon. The first strains of a waltz filled the air and Lillian looked at her card. The initials she had written there stared back at her.

‘Your partner for this next dance is rather tardy.’ Aunt Jean looked around expectantly. ‘Ahh, here he is now.’

Lillian’s head whipped upwards as Luc Clairmont strode into view beside them, and again she was mesmerised by his reckless golden eyes.

‘Miss Davenport,’ he said before turning to her companion. ‘Ma’am.’

Her aunt’s mouth had dropped open, the red of the strawberry bonbon strangely marking her tongue.

‘Aunt Jean, let me introduce you to Mr Lucas Clairmont, from America. Mr Clairmont this is my aunt, Lady Taylor-Reid.’

Again Luc bowed his head. ‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am.’

Her aunt flushed strangely. ‘How long have you been in England, Mr Clairmont?’

‘Only a few weeks’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Indeed I do.’ He looked straight at her, the dimple in his cheek deeper than she had seen it, the gold of his eyes glinting in mirth.

The music had now begun in earnest, the dance getting underway and, excusing herself, she allowed Lucas to guide her through the throngs of people.

On the floor his hand laced around her waist and she felt the warmth of it like a burn. In England it was
proper for couples to stand a good foot apart, but the American way seemed different as he brought her close, his free hand taking her fingers and clasping them tight.

‘I had thought I would have no chance for a waltz with you, Lillian. How is it that your card is empty on the best dance of them all?’

She ignored his familiar use of her name, reasoning that as no one else had heard him use it, it could do no harm.

‘It was a mix-up,’ she replied as they swirled effortlessly around the room. He was a good dancer! No wonder the Parker sister had looked so thrilled.

‘Are there other mix-ups on your card?’

She laughed, surprised by his candour. ‘Actually, I have the last waltz free…’

‘Pencil me in,’ he replied, sweeping her around the top corner of the room, her petticoat swirling to one side with the movement of it, an elation building that she had never before felt in dancing.

Safe. Strong. The outline of his muscles could be seen against the black of his jacket and felt in the hard power of his thighs. A man who had not grown up in the salons of courtly life but in a tougher place of work and need. Even his clothes mirrored a disregard for the height of fashion, his jacket not the best of cuts and his shoes a dull matt black. Just a ‘little dressed,’ she thought, his apparel of a make that held no pretension to arrogance or ornament. She saw that he had tied his neckcloth simply and that his gloves were removed.

She wished she had done the same and then she
might feel the touch of his skin against her own, but the thought withered with the onslaught of his next words.

‘I am bound for Virginia before too much longer. I have passage on a ship in late December and, if the seas are kind, I may see Hampton by the middle of February.’

‘Hampton is your home?’ She tried to keep the question light and her disappointment hidden.

‘No. My place is up on the James River, near Richmond.’

‘And your family?’

When he did not answer and the light in his eyes dimmed with her words, she tried another tack. ‘I had a friend once who left London for a home in Philadelphia. Is that somewhere near?’

‘Somewhere…’ he answered, whirling her around one last time before the music stopped. Bowing to her as their hands dropped away from each other, he asked, ‘May I escort you back to your aunt? Your father does not look too happy with my dancing style.’

Lillian smiled and did not look over at her father for fear that he might beckon her back. ‘No. I have not supped yet and find myself hungry.’

The break in the music allowed him the luxury of choice. If he wanted to slip away he could, and if he wanted to accompany her to the supper room he had only to take her arm. She was pleased when he did that, allowing herself to be manoeuvred towards the refreshment room.

Once there she was at a loss as to what to say next,
his admission of travelling home so soon having taken the wind from her sails. She saw the Parker girls and their friends behind him some little distance away and noticed that they watched her intently.

When he handed her a plate she thanked him, though he did not take one, helping himself to a generous drink of lemonade instead.

‘Are you in London over Christmas?’ His question was one she had been asked all the night, a conversation topic of little real value and, when compared to the communion they had enjoyed the last time of meeting, disappointing.