To Wed His Christmas Lady (The Heart of a Duke Book 7) (6 page)

The couple gone, Cara grimaced and picked up her fork. She shoved her fork around the holiday fare that might or might not have been some form of pudding. She picked some up on the edge of her utensil and carried it close to her eyes. If this was holiday food, then she most assuredly saw why Cook avoided these items on the menu.

Splat
.

Cara wrinkled her nose as the ivory colored slop landed noisily amidst the burnt potatoes.

“Never tell me,” a droll voice sounded beyond her shoulder, “you find yourself disapproving of your evening meal.”

At that slightly mocking, rough baritone, she stiffened. “Surely you have something preferable to do this evening than to keep company with a brat,” she gritted out, not taking her gaze from her plate.

With the effrontery better afforded a duke, he came around the table, pulled out the chair opposite her, and claimed the seat. His broad body filled the small, oak frame of the dining table. When no response was immediately forthcoming, she lifted her gaze, and found a sardonic half-grin on his lips. “Never tell me, I hurt your feelings, princess?”

She thinks she’s a princess. And boys will want to marry her, but the only reason anyone will want her is because she’s a duke’s daughter.

That memory of her first day at Mrs. Belden’s came rushing back and she stared unblinkingly at the opening of the stranger’s white shirt. She’d not thought of that moment in years, so much so that she’d convinced herself that those ugly sniggerings hadn’t really mattered. Why, with this man looking on, did she acknowledge the truth—it had mattered, mattered because they’d seen the lonely girl without a friend in the world as icy and aloof?

He passed his blue-black gaze searchingly over her face. “Where are your biting words, princess?” He tried to bait her. As one who’d fielded snide looks and cruel whispers, she recognized as much. Would he even care that his words had caused this tightening in her chest?

Heat burned her cheeks and she quickly dropped her gaze. “I have told you once, do not call me princess.”

The legs of his chair scraped along the floor as he pulled closer to the table. “Never tell me I offended you…
princess
?”

Cara swallowed the scathing retort. Over the years she’d had far more formidable foes than him. She’d not let him needle her. Schooling her face into an expressionless mask, she winged an eyebrow upward. “You might call me a brat and self-important and all other manner of insults you’ve leveled at me, but I am not a bully.”
Liar
.
You have been a bully plenty of times in the past
. Her half-sister, Jane’s visage slipped to her mind and an odd pressure squeezed her heart—remorse. Through her impulsivity and a futile attempt to protect herself from the hurt of her father’s disdain, she’d been the worst sort of bully to Jane Munroe. To rid her throat of the blasted lump there, Cara took a sip of the tepid glass of watered wine.

The stranger dropped his chestnut eyebrows. She braced for his taunting challenge. Instead, a frown played about his lips and he set his tankard on the table. “My apologies,” he said quietly.

Cara yanked her startled gaze up to his. Men did not apologize. Not her domineering father, or her self-important brother, and certainly not rude strangers who challenged her in a taproom before servants. Nor was she deserving of that.

Another one of those half-grins formed on his lips, this time devoid of its early mockery and coolness. “Are you surprised I apologized?” And staring at him just as her heart started at the staggering truth—why, with his ruggedly cut features and too-long, chestnut locks, he really was quite—handsome. She forced her attention back to his words requiring a response.

“I am,” she said stiffly. “Those I know do not apologize.” Even as the words left her lips, she knew she’d just fueled his ill perception of her.

The man raised his glass to his lips. “That is unfortunate. An apology earned, is an apology deserved.” He stared at her over the rim of his tankard. “Regardless of rank or status.”

She would have to be as deaf as an adder to fail to hear the silent admonishment contained within those words. He was one of those who despised the lords and ladies for their birthright. In truth, belonging to that cruel, glittering world, she secretly concurred with his assessment of that Society to which she belonged. Cara returned her attention to her plate, effectively ending any further opinion from him on manners and kindness.

“Have you eaten a bite?” Humor laced those words.

“I have.” She lied. The fork hadn’t made it past her lips and she’d wager the heart contained within her trunks, left behind in the snow-covered countryside, that he knew as much, too.

He planted his elbows on the table and shrank the space between them. “Have you?” The man stretched out that last single syllable utterance.

Lifting her chin at a defiant angle, she took a bite. And promptly gagged.

“Then you are far braver than I, princess. I haven’t touched a single serving of mine.”

Cara choked on her swallow and grabbed her stained napkin. “You, sir, are no gentleman,” she said around the fabric, glaring at him while he chuckled.

“I never presumed to be, pr—”

In a like manner, she dropped her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Do. Not. Call. Me. Princess. One. More. Time.” They locked gazes in a silent, unspoken battle, but she’d had so many years of staring down mean-spirited girls and whispering servants that she’d not be shaken by this bear of a man.

“Will.”

She blinked in confusion. What was he on about?

There was a grudging respect in his eyes. “My name is Will.”

She tested that name, running it through her mind.
William
—the name of kings and conquerors. It suited this man who issued orders and commandeered conversations between unfamiliar ladies and servants.

He continued to study her over his pewter tankard. “And does your station prevent you from sharing your name?”

She frowned. “Propriety keeps me from freely sharing my name.” Except, as soon as the words left her lips, heat slapped her cheeks. Young ladies did not sit and converse with a stranger, in an empty taproom—and most especially without the benefit of a chaperone or escort. Speaking to this gruff man shattered the grounds of propriety in every way. His wry grin said he’d followed her thoughts, as well. “Cl—Cara,” she quickly substituted.

Will winged an eyebrow upward. “And your title, princ—Cara?”

Triumph filled her at unnerving the bold man who’d chided her since she’d arrived. He’d expected her to supply her title and hold him to the bounds of propriety. A thrill ran through her at the audacity of this entire exchange; her being alone in the taproom of an inn with a man, challenging him and his expectations for her and of her. Since her mother’s passing, she’d fit neatly into the mold designed by her father and Society. “What use would there be in turning the proper form of address over to a man who so disdains polite Society?”

He stilled and then tossed his head back. The tavern thundered with his laughter and she started, stealing a glance about at that shockingly bold sound of his mirth. Then, Will raised his tankard in salute. “Brava, madam.”

Pleasure warmed her belly. He thought she was…amusing. No one thought she was anything beyond the…well, ice princess he’d taken her for.

His laughter died and his smile slipped. He worked his piercing gaze over her and lingered on her mouth.

Cara froze and touched her fingertips to her lips. “What is it?” Her question emerged with a hesitancy she did not recognize in herself. She picked up her napkin to brush it over her mouth once more. “Do I have something on—?”

He held up a powerful, olive-hued hand drawing her gaze to his long, naked fingers. “It was your smile.”

She worried her lower lip. “My—?”

“It softened you,” he spoke quietly, as though marveling to himself.

It softened you
. Had those words been uttered by her father or the girls at Mrs. Belden’s, they would have been tossed out as nasty jeers. Yet this man’s low baritone wrapped that word in the gentlest caress, more beautiful than any effusive endearment. For with those three words, he’d plunged her into this unfamiliar universe where she craved a sliver more of the warmth his words had hinted at.

This weakening before him, a stranger who taunted her one minute and enticed her the next, roused fear at the power of her response to him. When most were content to avoid her, this man tempted and teased. Her chest tightened. People did not tease her. They did not compliment her. Not for any reasons that were kind, and only born of reasons that were cruel. Cara passed her searching gaze over his face. What game did he play? Annoyed at herself for believing for one moment that someone, somewhere might be so genuine as to like her for her, Cara set her lips and looked hard at him. “You seek to have fun at my expense, do you?” He opened his mouth. Not allowing him the opportunity to kill that joyful fluttering in her belly, she hopped to her feet and adopted the glare befitting the ice princess he’d declared her to be. “I do not know what business you have coming over here teasing me—”

Will came slowly to his feet. His tall frame dwarfed her smaller figure. “I am not teasing you.” He spoke quietly, as though calming a fractious mare which only burned her ire all the greater.

Cara slashed a hand at the plate of untouched holiday fare. “Oh, and what was that earlier ploy to have me try the…the…” She wrinkled her nose. Whatever blasted food the innkeeper had plated her. “Food,” she finished lamely.

He blinked slowly. “Well, that time I was teasing you.”

Shooting a hand across the table, she waved a finger up toward his face the way he’d done upon their first meeting. “Perhaps you are bored or perhaps you are having fun at the expense of a lady of the peerage because you despise those of an elevated station.” He snapped his eyebrows into a harsh, angry line. “But I neither want nor welcome being made light of.” Then with years of regal pride drilled into her, she swept her borrowed skirts away, stepped around him, and marched from the cold, lonely taproom.

L
ater that evening, Will lay abed. He shifted his frame upon the lumpy mattress and stared at the water-stained ceiling. With the hay-stuffed bed, he could certainly blame the miserable accommodation on his inability to sleep, and yet… He moved his gaze to the white, plaster wall. A faint sniffling came muffled through the wall and echoed off his hollow chambers. Yet, he’d be lying to himself. Since Cara, the lady without a surname, had stormed abovestairs with a grace befitting the ice princess, she’d held an unrelenting hold on his thoughts. A hold she’d easily maintained sharing the room beside him.

He should be grateful her stinging diatribe quashed his momentary captivation with that small, wistful smile on bow-shaped lips; lips he’d had a desire to crush under his. Which was madness. With the lady’s icy cool and thoughts on station, she was everything he despised in women of her lofty status. Only the softness in her blue eyes and that tremulous smile on her full lips had transformed her into…a gentle, captivating beauty. There had been a hesitancy to her, an uncertainty that belied the unrepentant, chilled figure she presented to the world.

A faint noise met his ears. He strained to pull the noise in past the hum of nighttime silence. A sniffling. William stilled. Crying. There was a person crying. Nay—a young lady. The muscles of his stomach contracted. For his dislike of the rude woman, he’d sooner lob off his own arm than hurt one.

“B-bloody bastard.”

Through the thin, plaster walls, her quiet weeping reached him. His gut clenched at the piteous sound of Cara’s misery.
Christ
. He’d made her cry. Her earlier accusations against him came rushing back. The vise of guilt twisted all the harder. She’d taken him for a bully, and yet, with her weeping, this private window into her own hurt was more powerful than any words she might have hurled. He shoved himself to an upright position, swung his legs over the bed, and settled his bare feet upon the cold, wood floor.

“…I despise you…”

He winced. Just then he despised himself. Even if the lady had been ordering her servants about, he’d not see her hurt. Then, as though he’d merely conjured those tears of his own guilt, a black curse reached him.

“Bloody, codpiece-wearing, lice-infested dastard.”

He froze. A grin pulled at his lips and some of the pressure in his chest eased. For his earlier annoyance with the pompous young lady, he far preferred this spitting and hissing, unrepentantly bold miss to the whipped and wounded woman she’d been a moment ago. “Whoreson of another whoreson dastard.”

His smile widened. He knew the lady not even the course of an evening but he knew enough that if she’d found him listening in to her inventive curses that would have driven a king’s soldier to blush, she’d take apart the wall and then promptly take apart him with her delicate fingers. His smile fell. He’d never known a lady to curse as this one did. That incongruity hardly fit with the flawless, rigid mold he’d placed Cara into earlier that afternoon. He furrowed his brow and stared contemplatively at the wall separating them. Perhaps there was more to the lady as the innkeeper had suggested. He caught his jaw between his thumb and forefinger and rubbed. Nor had he ever been one to form inflexible opinions of a person. He had, however, proven himself a rather good read on an individual. Such had proven a skill more than anything else in his traveling to distant countries and meeting people of foreign tongues.

His first read on Cara had been definitive—self-centered, self-important, emotionless lady.

And yet, seated across from him a short while ago, her eyes had sparked with an unguarded brightness that spoke of an altogether different woman…a woman who now wept in private.

“…miserable, rotted-eyed bastard…”

And who cursed like a sailor three sheets to the wind. Cara’s words pulled a laugh from his chest. After endless minutes of having his ancestry and parentage called into verbal question by the cursing lady, silence descended. Then—

“Who is there?” The frantic, faintly panicked edge to that question carried into his room.

He remained frozen, staring at that thin plaster separating them. Following the lady’s indignant march from the taproom, he’d sooner announce himself than he would march naked through the snow-covered hills outside.

The quick, soft tread of footsteps indicated the lady moved. Then a faint click sounded through the quiet inn like a shot in the midst of the blizzard. Bloody hell, the lady would wander alone, unchaperoned in the inn in the dead of night, no less? “Hullo?” she called, this time louder.

William bit back a curse and shoved himself to his feet. What if he were not the gentleman sharing her wall but some other bounder with dishonorable intentions, one who’d take advantage of her solitary presence and then claim the lush bounty that was her lips? Fury thrummed inside him while he closed the distance to the door in four long strides. A low growl rumbled up from his chest as he yanked it open.

Cara gasped and spun about.

“Are you—?” His words ended on a slow exhale and he froze in the doorway. He took in the lean, lithe creature clad in nothing more than a too-small nightshift that clung to her bountiful breasts. The garment climbed high above her ankles, exposing the delicate creamy white flesh. His gaze slid involuntarily closed. By God, she was the manner of beauty men waged wars over.

“Were you laughing at me—” The lady’s indignant question brought his eyes open. “Again?” Cara stood, hands poised on her hips, with fire burning from her blue eyes and a wave of desire rolled through him as in her fiery stance, her shift pulled taut over her breasts.

“Laughing at you?” His words emerged hoarse. Had he? How could he ever laugh about one such as this tall, Spartan-warrior princess? And more, how could she have no idea he stood like a green boy before her, with lust raging through him?

She cast a glance up and down the halls and then returned her stare to his. Doubt filled her expressive eyes. “Someone was laughing at…m—” Cara pressed those bow-shaped lips into a flat line.
Me
.

Once again the lady fretted over the possibility of anyone smiling with her or about her. What did a lady who, by her birthright and beauty alone, likely commanded ballrooms, worry about people making light of her? That niggling question drove back the haze of desire that had cloaked his senses. To regain a footing in the world, where he was not this unnerved by a golden Athena who cursed like a thief from the Dials, he folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. Mindful of her maid sharing rooms on this very floor, he dipped his voice to a hushed whisper. “And do the opinions of others matter so very much that you’d leave your rooms in an inn with all manner of possible danger awaiting you?”

The first flash of unease lit her blue irises. Cara darted her tongue out and skittered her gaze about.

He narrowed his eyes. The lady believed him capable of harming her. Of course, she knew him not at all beyond their two previous meetings—both meetings which had been filled with plenty of jeering coolness on his part. He took in the faint tremble of her fingertips as she smoothed her palms over her nightshift and despised himself for giving her reason to be wary of him.

Cara followed his gaze downward and immediately ceased her distracted movements. All earlier indecision fled, replaced with the stoic calm befitting the lady who’d swept into the inn and made demands of her servants and the innkeeper. She gave a flounce of her hair. “Do not be ridiculous. I am not afraid,” she raked her gaze over him, “of you.” God, she was as bold and fearless as that Spartan princess he’d likened her to. “And,” she edged her chin up a notch. “I hardly care what opinion people carry of m-me.” There was a faint tremor to that last word.

William worked his gaze down the heart-shaped planes of her face, to the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Did the lady know she lied to the both of them with that hollow pronouncement? “Oh?” He gave her a pointed look.

Most every other lady would have looked away from the unspoken accusation he leveled. Cara tossed her head and glowered with an austere power that could be taught to future kings. Only, the icy look she adopted was effectively quashed when her untidy chignon tumbled free of the combs loosely wound in her hair. A golden waterfall cascaded about her shoulders, falling in rippling waves to her trim waist. Her eyes widened with the same manner of shock as if she’d just lost that ill-fitting nightshift. “Oh, blast.” The lady quickly set to work gathering those silken tresses in her fingers.

He froze. His pulse thundered hard and fast, numbing his thoughts and blotting out sound as he stood, bewitched by this siren in white. In his travels, he’d earned the favors of some of the most skilled courtesans; wicked women in the finest satins, with experience in their eyes, and practiced fingers and movements. Not a single one of those creatures of falseness could hold a dimly lit candle to this lady’s brightly burning, and more, guileless flame. Through her hopelessly futile efforts, he remained transfixed.

One of her hair combs slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor, and startled him into movement. He gave his head a clearing shake and bent to retrieve the delicate, ruby piece, the same moment Cara bent forward. Their heads cracked together and the ruby heart fell from her hand once more.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered and teetered sideways.

He quickly straightened and caught her against him, steadying her. They stood there still, their chests pressed against one another, moving in the same jerky rhythm. As a young boy, he’d been instructed early on of the perils of being alone with an unwed young woman; most of whom would have designs upon his title and, with those designs, could and would jeopardize the match his parents intended for him. In this moment, the lady could have had off with his future title and all the holdings that went with it, and he’d have handed them to her gladly for this moment. Will lowered his head and brushed his nose over the golden crown of her hair. The luxuriant tresses proved as satiny soft as he’d taken them for.

“Y-you sh-should n-not…” Her words, faintly breathless, came quickly as though she’d run a race.

The scent of her wafted over his senses—a heady, citrus fragrance that put him in mind of summer and purity. “I should not what?” he whispered against her ear.

“Touch you?”

The lady’s audible swallow filled the quiet corridors.

William drew back and a small sound of protest caught in her throat.

Do not stop. Kiss me.

Those shockingly improper, and all things sinful, words remained unfinished.

Never in the course of her entire life had she been this close to a man. Nay,
any
person. As the ice princess this man had called her not even six hours earlier, people did not speak to her, and they certainly did not touch her. When all the girls at Mrs. Belden’s had whispered and chatted about those first forbidden kisses they’d received, a vicious envy had snaked through her—a desire to be that woman who drove gentlemen to dare conventions.

And now, standing in nothing more than her shift, in the powerful arms of this tall, virile stranger, eying her through his thick-hooded chestnut lashes, she felt—wanted. And there was something so very heady in
being
wanted.

William ran the pad of his thumb over her lower lip and her mouth parted slightly. “Cara mia,” he whispered. His breath invaded her senses like a potent aphrodisiac made of ale and peppermint. “
Sei bellissima
.”

My Cara, you are beautiful.
All those blasted Italian lessons she’d despised her father for insisting she take, worth every moment of suffering and tedium to have William wrap those words in his mellifluous whisper.

Oh, God. Her lashes fluttered wildly. No one had ever called her beautiful. Since she’d been scuttled off to finishing school, nothing but cruel words and mocking jeers had been leveled at her—words she’d been entirely deserving of. His husky baritone, wrapping about those Italian endearments, caused a warm fluttering in her belly that fanned out and raced through her.

He lowered his face so a mere hairsbreadth separated them and froze. For one agonizing, endless moment, fear spiraled through her that he’d draw back and she’d never, ever know the passionate kiss of a man who desired her for more than her wealth or status as a duke’s daughter. Then she, who’d cloaked herself in a fictional strength and austerity, whispered, “Please.”