Once Upon A Regency Christmas: On a Winter's Eve / Marriage Made at Christmas / Cinderella's Perfect Christmas. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ house. It is treacherous underfoot.’

      ‘Certainly.’ How cool she sounded. Not at all like a woman who was quivering with desire, lapped by heat, almost speechless with embarrassment at her own recklessness. When Giles came back from checking water buckets and feed she was ready to slip her hand under his proffered arm, curl her fingers around his sleeve.

      He was rock-steady as they negotiated the yard, lit by starlight reflecting off the snow. ‘My goodness, I am chilly.’ An exaggerated shudder would hide her shaking, surely?

      Once inside she went directly to the stairs—walking, not breaking into a run, not fleeing to her room to bury her head under a pillow. ‘Would you check the doors and windows are secure and the fire safely banked? I do not yet know how much reliance to place on Smithers.’

      ‘Of course. Goodnight, Lady Julia.’

      ‘Goodnight, Captain. Sleep well.’ He would make sure all was safe, she was certain of that. Giles Markham made her feel protected, sheltered. Rejected.

      Sleep well. Lady Julia, Julia, had a sense of humour hidden under that baffling exterior because she surely couldn’t have been serious with that blessing. Giles hauled the blankets up over his ears and wondered why the arousal was not keeping him warm. Or why the cold was not killing the arousal, come to that. This was the worst of both. He was stone cold and hard as a hot icicle.

      You shouldn’t have kissed her, common sense pointed out. She kissed me first, came the answer from considerably south of his brain. Yes, but you were going to kiss her, weren’t you? Telling yourself she needed comforting, pretending that all you wanted was to offer a shoulder to cry on. Haven’t you learned your lesson? You start out in a fit of gallantry, or of lust, then you get yourself tangled deep in whatever webs they are spinning and you end up as damaged as you would after a bayonet in the chest.

      He was a soldier—that was what he was, what he did. What he had been, he reminded himself, giving the pillow a thump. No more.

      Yes, but… That was what was keeping him awake, almost more than his frozen feet and the throb of desire. She kissed me and she had no idea what she was doing.

      Not that it had been any less delightful for that. Julia had tasted delicious, her lips under his had been sweet and generous, her body curving into his had promised an abundance of the femininity that her practical manner struggled to deny. Yet she was a widow and, from what had been said, had been married and in India for several years. So what was the truth? A marriage in name—or was the husband a complete fiction? In which case, was she even Lady Julia Chalcott and the daughter of an earl?

      A blast of wind hit the window panes, sending a draught swirling around the room. Giles swore and got out of bed, still fully dressed save for his neckcloth and boots. He had slept like a log in far worse conditions than this, but not if there was an alternative. He bundled up the bedding and let himself out of the room, then went down to the drawing room, where at least there was a fire.

      He made himself a nest in front of the hearth on top of the sofa cushions and set to work on the sullen coals. By the time he had a cheerful blaze going he felt warmer and his brain was beginning to focus. He climbed the stairs again, dug in his bag for the thick red book he had bought to study, that had cost too much to throw away as he’d ploughed through the snow.

      Giles settled back into his makeshift bed before he began to investigate the Peerage and Baronetage.

      Sir Humphrey Chalcott, second baronet, born London 12th May 1752.

      He would be sixty now, if he had lived.

       Only son…

       Married 1804, in Calcutta to Julia Clarissa Anne, daughter of Frederick Falmore, Fourth Earl of Gresham.

      No first wife, so Miss Chalcott must be the daughter of a mistress.

      Giles looked for the Falmores. Julia had been born in 1787, the only child of the Fourth Earl, who had died in early 1803, five years after his wife. The title passed to the son of his youngest uncle. Giles did the calculation. She had married a man thirty-five years her senior when she had been barely seventeen years old.

      Who would put a grieving, orphaned girl of sixteen on a ship to India? The ‘fishing fleet’ was for the desperate and the poor, the plain or the otherwise ineligible women seeking a husband eager to take any British wife of gentility as they struggled to make their way in India.

      If Julia really was who she said she was, then perhaps her husband had been unable through illness or infirmity to consummate the marriage to his young bride. He had obviously once been virile, Miss Chalcott was proof of that.

      Giles threw another log on the fire, blew out the candle and settled down to sleep, his curiosity now thoroughly aroused. Which was, he concluded as he finally began to drift off, rather more comfortable than what he had been suffering from earlier.

      There were doubtless more embarrassing social situations than meeting over the breakfast cups the man you had inexpertly kissed the night before and who had then firmly but kindly rebuffed you. Just at the moment Julia couldn’t think of any and she was applying her mind to it when Giles opened the dining room door.

      Having all one’s clothing drop off in the middle of a dinner party? Walking in on the Governor General in his Calcutta mansion while he was pleasuring his mistress on the billiards table?

      ‘Good morning.’

      She dropped the sugar bowl, sending lumps of sugar scattering across the table.

      ‘Julia!’ Miri was laughing at her. ‘Whatever are you thinking about? Good morning, Captain Markham.’

      ‘Billiards,’ she managed.

      ‘And what is there about billiards to make you blush?’ Miri was intent on teasing.

      ‘If you must know, I was thinking about the Marquess of Hastings. His billiard table. Government House.’ She cast a harassed glance at Giles, who had seated himself at the end of the table. ‘Good morning, Captain. There is bacon, eggs, bread and butter. You could ring for cheese. There are also some preserves. Damson, I think. Tea? There is no coffee or chocolate.’

       And if I keep on talking long enough the floor may simply open up and swallow me.

      ‘Thank you.’ Giles accepted the tea cup. ‘What is there about the Marquess of Hastings and billiards to bring the colour to your cheeks? Is he such a bad player?’

      ‘No, I am.’ The floor remained disappointingly intact and Giles’s—Captain Markham’s—faint smile remained provoking. ‘It has stopped snowing. Perhaps the roads will be open soon.’ And you can leave. Please. Before I make more of a fool of myself than I have already.

      ‘I’ll go out and see, although I doubt it. The temperature is as low as ever, so nothing will have thawed.’ He buttered a slice of bread and addressed himself to his food while Julia sought for innocuous topics of conversation.

      ‘I’ll come with you,’ Miri announced. ‘Mrs Smithers has some stout boots that she said she would lend me.’

      ‘Have you ever seen snow before?’ Giles asked.

      ‘No, not before СКАЧАТЬ