Once Upon a Christmas Eve Page 2

  Adam found himself perilously close to losing his temper with the little virago.

  Which was ridiculous. He’d traded far more cutting barbs with other ladies. There was just something about Miss St. John that made him feel savage.

  Not that he was about to let her know that.

  “Gentlemen in their eighth decade, no doubt,” he murmured as he edged past her with Grand-mère in his arms. He shot Miss St. John an easy, guileless smile. “I do understand. A lady such as yourself might find any younger gentleman too fearsome.”

  He turned before he could see her reaction, but he rather thought his volley had hit by her indrawn breath.

  “A lady such as myself?” she asked with terrible calm.

  Oh, yes indeed, he’d gone over the walls with that last one. Adam lowered Grand-mère to the bed before glancing up at his feminine adversary. “A lady of…” He paused delicately. “A certain age.” Adam widened his eyes innocently. “That is why you’re not wed, yes? Because you’re, what? Two and thirty?”

  “Seven and twenty,” she bit out. “And I can’t believe you’re so concerned about my age when you’re older than I.”

  “Ah, but I’m a man,” he replied, “And but five and thirty. A mere youth relatively.”

  A blush had risen in her cheeks—no doubt a sign of ire rather than embarrassment—and he couldn’t help but note how ravishing it made her look. Her light-brown eyes were wide and nearly shooting flames at him, her head thrown back, her soft red lips parted in outrage…

  Well.

  He wondered if this was how she might look in the throes of passion.

  The thought went straight to his groin. He might not particularly like Miss St. John, but he couldn’t deny her allure.

  Even if he suspected she was quite unaware of it herself.

  He cursed under his breath, glancing away, just as Grand-mère spoke.

  “I wonder…” She paused to cough and his attention was immediately on her. Grand-mère’s hand shook as she raised a handkerchief to her lips, the huge sapphire ring on her left hand winking in the candlelight. “I wonder if I might have that tea now. And perhaps the brandy as well.”

  Her voice sounded thin and frail.

  Adam’s brows snapped together. “Of course, darling. Let me help you out of your cloak so that you can rest.”

  He glanced up to see that Miss St. John was already pouring a dish of tea from the teapot sitting on a nearby table.

  He bent over his grandmother, helping her to remove her cloak and shoes. Cannon, her lady’s maid, should be up soon. The maid was nearly as old as her mistress and had been with Grand-mère since her marriage. They were fiercely loyal to each other, and Grand-mère would not hear of acquiring a younger lady’s maid.

  Even if that meant waiting on the elderly maid climbing the stairs.

  “Here,” Miss St. John murmured.

  He looked up to find her at his elbow, holding the dish of tea. Her brows were drawn together, and when she met his gaze, her eyes held concern. “Dr. Christopher Manning is one of our guests for Christmas. He’s a friend of Godric’s and quite a good physician. Perhaps I might have him attend Lady Whimple?”

  “Thank you,” he replied, truly grateful.

  She turned and quickly left the room.

  Adam picked up his grandmother’s hand and chafed her cold fingers between his hands, absently noting that her sapphire ring was loose on her finger. She’d lost weight. “I know that you don’t like doctors, but perhaps a quick look before you undress for bed.”

  “If you think it a good idea,” she replied in a wan voice so unlike her usual brisk tones that he felt his heart sink in fear.

  “I do,” he replied, careful to not let any of his apprehension show.

  “That gel, Miss St. John…” She paused to cough again. “I rather like her.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Because she hates me?”

  Grand-mère ignored that. “She challenges you. She isn’t won over by your charm.”

  He winced, remembering Miss St. John’s thrown-back head. Her fiery eyes as she set him down. Odd that she should arouse him so. “Yes, and I find her bellicosity the most irritating thing imaginable.”

  Grand-mère watched him with eyes that had always been much too perceptive. “Do you?”

  Sarah hurried to the ivy sitting room, where the house party had assembled after dinner. Lord d’Arque had worn a small wrinkle between his brows when she’d left his grandmother’s room. For such an urbane man—one skilled in hiding his true feelings—that wrinkle had been like a horn blaring his worry for Lady Whimple. The viscount was a vain, bold man like all rakes, but she found his devotion to his grandmother rather…sweet. Had it been any other man, she might even go so far as to call it endearing.

  She shook her head. This was Lord d’Arque, one of the most notorious roués in London, a man known for his seduction of women. Endearing was the very last epithet one would chose for him—and she must remember that.

  With that thought Sarah opened the door to the sitting room.

  Inside, the party was gathered around her mother, Clara St. John, and Godric, who appeared to be delivering a summary of his journey with Lord d’Arque to the wrecked carriage.

  Everyone looked at her when she entered.

  “Oh, Sarah,” Mama said, “how is Lady Whimple? It’s such a cold night for an elderly lady to be out.”

  “I’m afraid not well,” Sarah replied. She looked at Dr. Manning, a handsome man of eight-and-twenty with cheerful blue eyes and a broad, open face. He eschewed the bobbed wig worn by most of his profession and instead pulled his ginger hair into a simple queue. “Will you come, Dr. Manning?”

  “Of course.” He set aside his teacup and rose at once. “I’ll need to go to my room to fetch my bag.”

  Sarah nodded, turning toward the door with the doctor immediately behind her.

  “I believe Mama put you in the blue room?” she asked when they’d made the hall.

  “Yes.” He grimaced. “An unfortunate business, this, Viscount d’Arque’s carriage going off the road.”

  She glanced at him curiously as they mounted the stairs to the next floor. “You sound as if you know Lord d’Arque?”

  “Not as such,” Doctor Manning replied. “I…er…have heard of him, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” Sarah murmured.

  Dr. Manning cleared his throat, darting a glance at her. “I doubt a lady such as yourself would know of his reputation, but he’s rather notorious.”

  “Ah,” Sarah said noncommittally.

  It was sweet that Dr. Manning thought that ladies didn’t gossip about such things.

  She waited outside his room as the doctor retrieved his bag, and then led him around a corner to the east wing.

  They came to Lady Whimple’s room, and Sarah knocked lightly before opening the door.

  Inside, Lord d’Arque was just rising from where he’d been perched beside his grandmother on the bed.

  “My lady, my lord,” Sarah said, “This is Dr. Christopher Manning, late of Oxford. Dr. Manning, Lady Whimple and her grandson, Viscount d’Arque.”

  Dr. Manning bowed, looking quite competent and dashing with his professional bag and serious air.

  In contrast, Lord d’Arque seemed an indolent aristocrat as he strolled forward to shake the other man’s hand. “Thank you for coming, Doctor.”

  The viscount’s saturnine good looks differed sharply from the doctor’s boyish fair complexion and hair.

  “Not at all,” Dr. Manning said. “I’ll need a moment alone with Lady Whimple, if you don’t mind. Her lady’s maid may stay, of course.” He nodded to the elderly maid sitting on a chair on the other side of the bed.

  “If that meets with your approval, Grand-mère?” Lord d’Arque asked his grandmother.

  “Yes, yes,” she replied, waving her hand at her grandson in a shooing motion. “Go and have some tea…or more likely brandy.”

  The viscount smirk
ed as he bowed to the old lady. “As you wish.”

  He ushered Sarah out of the room and then paused, staring back at the door with a small frown.

  He looked so worried.

  She cleared her throat a little awkwardly. “We do have tea and brandy in the sitting room, my lord. I find tea can be quite refreshing to the spirits.”

  Lord d’Arque turned at her words, a cynical smile immediately replacing his frown. “Sympathy for the devil, Miss St. John? How easily you are won over by a bit of melancholy.”

  Sarah stiffened, reminded once again why she disliked this man.

  “If you’ll come with me,” she replied, turning without waiting for him.

  He made a tsking sound, easily catching up to her with his long legs. “Now, now. Don’t be that way. I’ve a secret fondness for tea myself. Drink gallons of the stuff, I assure you, usually after a vigorous romp with some lovely lady.”

  “Must you be so vile?” The words burst from her mouth quite without her volition.

  There was a short silence as they came to the stairs.

  Then he spoke, his voice lower, though still as mocking. “Oh, I think so. Feminine flesh and debauchery are my bread and water—without them I wither and die. If you wish for gentleness and chivalry, apply to your Dr. Manning instead.”

  Sarah found herself at a near run now, her fury lending speed to her descent. It was no wonder, then, that she caught her heel on one of the treads.

  For a moment she felt the sickening swoop of her stomach and the sure knowledge that she was about to fall headlong down the stairs.

  Then a strong arm wound around her waist and jerked her close to a hard chest.

  She breathed deeply, feeling his heat behind her, his legs against her bottom.

  “Careful, sweetheart,” he rasped in her ear, his breath brushing her neck, and it was strange because she could’ve sworn there was real concern in his voice. “You nearly fell at my feet just then.”

  Chapter Three

  A tiny voice piped up from the middle of the pond. “I can fetch you your dagger, Prince.”

  Prince Brad looked around. “Who said that?”

  “I did,” said a grass-green frog sitting on a lotus leaf. “I will fetch you the dagger if, in return, you bring me to your castle and let me sleep in the bed you sleep in and eat from the plate you eat from for a fortnight.”

  Prince Brad smiled. “Very well.”…

  —From The Frog Princess

  Adam fought down the instinctive fear he’d felt when Miss St. John had wobbled on the stairs. She hadn’t fallen. He’d caught her. There’d be no blood at the bottom of the staircase this time. He watched as Miss St. John’s breasts rose and fell beneath her fichu. The sight awoke the hunting instinct within him. She was ripe for the picking, so close and so innocent.

  Innocent.

  He blinked, pulling back enough to put space between their bodies.

  He didn’t, as a rule, chase unmarried ladies. Ladies who were unused to the sport of passion—the pursuit, the sly dodging and weaving of the prey, the inevitable mutually satisfactory capture.

  Miss St. John, for all her quick wit, her rapid verbal parries, was a virgin.

  And he did not touch virgins.

  Adam let go of her, his fingers lingering even as he withdrew—perhaps to steady her.

  Perhaps to feel her in his grasp for as long as possible.

  He inhaled, trying to calm himself. It was uncommonly hard, maybe because while his intellect told him this woman was forbidden, the male animal within him considered her his prize.

  But man was nothing without intellect.

  He forced his lips into a nearly civil smile and held out his arm. “You mentioned tea.”

  Miss St. John blinked as if waking from a deep sleep. Gratifying, that. One’s pride always liked to see a female ensnared, even if she was to be let go.

  Then Miss St. John’s eyes narrowed at him and any hint of enthrallment vanished. “Tea. Of course.”

  She ignored his proffered arm and continued down the stairs, chin tilted at an imperious angle.

  He bit back a smile and trailed her, watching the twitch of her skirts and the angle of her shoulders.

  They made the lower floor and she turned a corner, continuing at a brisk stride that was no doubt meant to outpace him. In that she failed. She was, after all, a full head shorter than he and thus presumably had correspondingly shorter legs.

  Legs.

  He shook himself. Best not to think about Miss St. John’s legs, hidden so well under those swishing skirts. Were they shapely, with a generous curve from ankle to knee? Or did she have lithe thin calves, muscular from walking? And her thighs…

  No, no, no.

  This was incorrigible even for him. He needed to keep his eyes—and thoughts!—above Miss St. John’s waist.

  She stopped at a door and gave him an amusingly stern look before opening it.

  The sitting room was all that was considered wonderful in the Christmas season: a roaring fire, green boughs decorating the mantel, two dogs lounging before the fire, and a roomful of people.

  Adam repressed a shudder.

  “D’Arque.” St. John nodded at their entrance. “I hope all is well with your grandmother?”

  “We shall soon see,” Adam replied, forcing cheerfulness into his voice.

  “May I introduce you to my family and our house guests staying for the Christmas season?” Miss St. John asked.

  “Please.”

  She nodded. “You know my half brother Godric and his wife, Lady Margaret, who are visiting from London.”

  “Half brother?” Adam looked with interest between Sarah St. John and Godric St. John.

  “My mother was our father’s first wife,” St. John spoke up. “Clara”—here he bowed to Mrs. St. John—“was my late father’s second wife. Hedges is the dower house.”

  Miss St. John cleared her throat. “If you don’t mind me continuing?”

  “Do.” Adam waved a gracious hand just to see her eyes narrow.

  Miss St. John nodded. “May I present my mother, Mrs. St. John, and my sisters, Charlotte and Jane?”

  Adam bowed first to the younger women and then to Mrs. St. John, a pleasant-looking woman. “Madam. Thank you for your most gracious hospitality.”

  The smile Mrs. St. John bestowed on him lit her face from within. “Think nothing of it, Lord d’Arque. I’m only glad that we could be of help.”

  She had the blond hair of her daughters, though now dulled by gray, and red cheeks and chin. Both of Miss St. John’s sisters were pretty girls, though Charlotte St. John, with fine green eyes and a perfect oval face, was obviously the beauty of the family. The sisters sat close together like huddled birds, and Adam felt his lips twitch at the sight. They were obviously fond of each other.

  Miss St. John turned to the remaining two members of the party. “My lord, may I introduce you to Sir Hilary Webber, our neighbor from the next county, and Gerald Hill, Baron Kirby, a second cousin twice removed of my sister-in-law, Lady Margaret?”

  Both men were not much past thirty. The first was large and rather alarmingly athletic looking, as if he were a latter-day Hercules. The second was tall and thin and wore a neat white wig and spectacles.

  Adam bowed to both.

  “Good to meet you, my lord. Awful business, your carriage wrecking on the high road,” Sir Hilary said in a loud voice that was surprisingly high pitched. “Roads are terrible hereabouts. Happens in the country, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s true,” Lord Kirby said. “My carriage nearly wrecked as well, and we were driving in fair weather.”

  “Lord Kirby traveled from Edinburgh, where he is well known as an expert on exotic flora,” Miss St. John explained with a small smile at the fellow.

  Adam’s own eyes narrowed before he remembered: she wasn’t his. She wasn’t even potentially his. If Miss St. John had an interest in Lord Kirby and his boring plants, then it was no concern of Adam’s.
<
br />   Still. He rather felt like growling.

  “My lord.”

  The call came from the doorway where Dr. Manning stood.

  “Excuse me,” Adam murmured to the ladies, and strode to Manning. “How is my grandmother?”

  The doctor gestured him into the hall and Adam clenched his jaw against possible bad news. Grand-mère was three and eighty, and though she seemed an indomitable force, she was only human.

  Manning turned once they were out of earshot of those in the sitting room. His broad country face looked grave. “Lady Whimple is beset by pleurisy,” he said bluntly. “She told me she has pains in her chest and a shortness of breath, not to mention a persistent cough.”

  It was a moment before Adam had himself under control enough to speak. “Can you do anything for her?”

  “I can give her such medicines as I have at my disposal,” Manning said slowly, “but the most important treatment is bed rest. It’s imperative that Lady Whimple not be moved for at least the next fortnight.”

  Adam stared. It appeared that he and his grandmother were to be uninvited guests at Hedge House for Christmas.

  The next morning dawned with the kind of bright, clear light that occurs only when the sun reflects off snow.

  Sarah threw back the coverlet of her bed and rose.

  Her maid, Doris, was already busy stoking the fire. “Good morning, miss. I do hope you slept well?”

  “Yes, thank you, Doris,” Sarah replied, making for the pitcher of fresh hot water on her nightstand. “And you?”

  “Oh yes, miss, despite all the bother over the viscount’s servants come to stay.”

  Sarah wet a cloth and began to wash her face. “Were you able to find beds for everyone?”

  “We did indeed, miss.” Doris gave a final brush to the hearth and stood. “Mind, we was crowded already due to the valets comin’ with the gentlemen and o’ course Lady Margaret’s maid, but there. I’ve shared a bed often enough as a wee thing it’s no worry now.”

  Sarah glanced at her maid. “That sounds crowded.”