How the Dukes Stole Christmas Read online

  “I confess,” Lawton interjected with a wave at the violin, “I am astounded by the revelation that you are a musician.”

  “I’m not.”

  “That’s not true,” Jack said.

  “I’m out of practice.”

  “Perhaps you should return to practicing,” Lawton said. “It would suit the staff well for you to work less.”

  Aunt Jane snorted at that. “Since the day he became duke, Allryd has worked. Do not expect it to change now.”

  “That doesn’t make him less of a tragic figure,” came Lawton’s amused reply. “With his sad, lonely existence.”

  Eben blinked. “You realize I am standing right here, do you not?”

  Lawton looked to him. “If you were to sit, you could eat some of this delicious meal.” He paused, then added with a twinkle in his eye, “Or perhaps you would like to play? A feast such as this deserves entertainment.”

  Eben cut the other man a look, at once tempted by the delicious scent of roast goose and by the possibility of avoiding a meal with this trio, hell-bent on his discomfort, when Jack asked, quietly, “Is he lonely?”

  For a moment, silence fell.

  “No.” Only when he thought of her.

  “Desperately so,” Lawton said at the same time.

  Eben narrowed his gaze on his business partner.

  “What?” Lawton cut him an innocent look, the bastard. “I’m merely answering the question.”

  God knew why, but he yanked back the chair at the empty place setting and sat. “I don’t see how you could possibly have information relating to the question.”

  “I do not need information, Duke; I have eyes.”

  A plate appeared beneath Eben’s nose, on the end of a lovely long arm that had been kissed by the sun. He focused on the meal rather than his embarrassed ire, noting the choice morsels of goose and the crusted edge of potato, next to the perfectly turned carrots and an exquisite parsnip crème.

  She’d given him all the best bits—the bits she should have kept for herself—and for a mad moment, he imagined stealing her and that plate away to a quiet place and rectifying the injustice. Feeding her until she was full of the very best he could buy, and he was able to feast on the one thing for which he hungered . . .

  Her.

  He had clearly gone mad if a plate of roast goose had him thinking about kissing her. Of course, everything made him think about kissing her. Her voice, her laugh, that beautiful red dress with its beautifully cut bodice, revealing the long line of her, the rich swell of her breasts above it—deliciously freckled skin and that gold locket again—where had it come from?

  The Scot, no doubt.

  Eben scowled at the thought, his eyes rising to hers, which were full of curiosity. Somehow, he managed to look away, grumbling, “Thank you.”

  Down the table, Aunt Jane helped herself to the carafe of wine at her elbow and fired her weapon. “Tell us why you think the duke so very lonesome, Charlie?”

  Eben willed Lawton silent. No such luck. The other man turned and looked to Aunt Jane. “Well, one cannot imagine anything but, what with how the man works all the time.”

  “You certainly like to spend the funds I make.”

  One of Lawton’s brows rose in surprise. “The funds we make, friend.”

  Eben scowled. “Someone must do the research to bear out all the hunches you insist are good business.”

  Lawton smirked. “My hunches are always good business, but we’ll leave that for another time—this conversation is about you.”

  Eben regretted ever entering into business with Charles Lawton.

  “You, and the fact that you never do anything but work and count your money as if it keeps you warm.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Except it was, of course.

  “And is there a great deal of money?” Aunt Jane asked. It never failed—people of means were always interested in the means of others.

  Eben stabbed a morsel of goose and ate. He might have thought it delicious if he weren’t so consumed by the conversation. “There is, as a matter of fact,” Lawton said, “a very great deal.”

  More than that, if they were honest. In twelve years, he’d turned the dukedom of Allryd into one of the richest in Britain. And Lawton had made enough to keep himself in perfectly tailored gold brocade for life.

  “And does it?” Jack. Soft and steel.

  He looked up, meeting her brown eyes. Too big. Too knowing. “Does it what?”

  “The money. Does counting it keep you warm?”

  I haven’t been warm since you.

  He remained silent.

  Lawton answered for him. “Never so warm as it did last night, when washed down with my best whisky.”

  “No one likes a drunk,” Aunt Jane said, toasting the table with another glass of wine.

  “Allryd drunk is a rarity. He never drinks—except on Christmas Eve.” Lawton looked to him, a knowing gleam in his eye. “Why is that?”

  Eben’s reply was like ice. “You overstep.”

  “I don’t think so.” Jack, now. Quiet and firm and terrifying in the knowledge he wished she didn’t have. “You were in your cups last night. Why?”

  In the hopes that I would forget you left me on Christmas Eve.

  “A man is allowed to celebrate on Christmas, isn’t he?”

  She watched him, those eyes that had haunted him for twelve years seeming to see everything. Don’t care for me, Jack, he wanted to say. Don’t you dare care for me and then leave to marry another.

  “But I thought you loathe holidays,” she said, echoing their earlier conversation.

  There was a time when her teasing tone would have tempted. “Perhaps I was celebrating my solitude.”

  She watched him for a long moment, her quiet inspection underscored by the heavy weight of their audience. Then she said, “What is past does not have to be future, Eben.”

  The words stole his breath, and he returned his gaze to his plate, where his food was invisible—as invisible as she was present, with her quiet truth. It was bad enough he could hear her when she added, “You needn’t be alone on Christmas.”

  The words were a sliver of hope, more painful than he could have imagined, because it was wrong of her to promise such a thing. Wrong of him to hope for it. He’d been alone on Christmas for twelve years. He’d been alone ever since the Christmas she’d left.

  He was alone even now. Because tomorrow she would leave to marry another, and what was past would be future. Set in stone.

  The thought was a festering wound.

  He might have been able to tolerate it if she hadn’t decided to spend the last day of her spinsterhood snowbound with him, tempting him to touch her and talk to her and—even now—pull her into his lap and kiss her senseless.

  “Ah, but I am not alone on Christmas. Behold my motley crew.”

  “How lucky you are to have us.” She smiled, too brightly. Blindingly so.

  “Is it luck?”

  How did she have such straight, white teeth? “Not every duke can claim such esteemed company.”

  “Lawton, who would rather be in Marylebone, Aunt Jane, who would rather be on the high seas, and you . . . who would no doubt rather be with her fiancé.”

  Deny it, he willed. Deny it and give me more of that hope you have in spades.

  What a fucking masochist he was.

  Her smile softened. “Perhaps it is where we are meant to be that matters.”

  She was meant to be with him, dammit. She had always been meant to be at the other end of the table, with half a dozen children and a score of others between them. She was meant to meet his gaze and lift her glass and toast their life—past, present, and future all.

  And he was meant to play the damned violin as she danced. He was reaching for the instrument before the thought was even complete, unable to stop the movement before three sets of eyes tracked it, and the room went still.

  He froze.

  Lawton wa
s the first to speak. “Go on then, Allryd.”

  Eben lifted the violin, unable to tear his gaze from Jack’s, riveted to the instrument.

  Perhaps you will play for me later, she’d said to him all those years ago, on that last night, when she’d come to him and given him a final chance to make everything right. When he’d ruined everything. When he’d set all this in horrid motion.

  What if he had played for her that night?

  What if he played for her now?

  It was too late.

  He shook his head and returned the violin to the table. “You shouldn’t have brought it here.”

  He ignored the silence that fell in the words’ wake, the barely there exhalation from Aunt Jane, the sound of Lawton’s jacket rustling as he sat back in his chair.

  And from Jack, nothing. No movement. No response.

  Not until she stood, without a word, and left, the sound of her magnificent red skirts sliding against her like gunfire in the room, punctuated by a soft snick as she closed the door behind her, the door latch sounding like a cannon.

  And he, left ragged.

  Of his own design.

  “Well,” Lawton said.

  “Shut up,” Eben replied.

  Thank God, his partner did shut up.

  “I should like to see you try to tell me the same,” Aunt Jane interjected, her icy blue gaze finding his from her place down the table. When he remained silent, she said, “Ah, so some semblance of the sense you had as a child has remained.”

  She stood, seeming suddenly far taller than she was—looming large like the words she threw like a weapon. “That girl has spent twelve years with you in her thoughts. Most of them with you in her heart, as well. And you’ve spent twelve years here, without either thought or heart, it seems.”

  It wasn’t true, he knew. She couldn’t have possibly cared for him after she left. He’d promised her a future, full of everything she deserved. And all she’d had to do was wait for him.

  You once vowed you’d always come for me.

  He couldn’t come for her. She’d left him. Didn’t anyone see that? Why didn’t anyone see that? He was the one who had been consumed with thoughts. It was his heart that had been heavy with the weight of lost love—a love who’d left him and returned only when she was about to marry another.

  He did not say any of that, though, as Jane moved to the sideboard and lifted a plate laden high with foul shortbread. “Make no mistake, Duke.” She spat the title. “You don’t deserve her.”

  “That’s never been in doubt,” he said.

  “And you don’t deserve my shortbread.”

  He had a feeling he very much deserved that shortbread. But he didn’t think the old lady would appreciate his disagreement on that front, so he remained silent as she swanned from the room.

  “I rather wanted that shortbread.”

  He looked to Lawton. “I promise you didn’t.”

  His partner lifted his glass and leaned back in his chair, dark eyes hooded with judgment. “You’re an ass.”

  Truth. “Because of the shortbread?”

  Lawton did not bite. “What do you imagine your life is for?” When Eben did not reply, the other man pressed on. “The question is not rhetorical. Is it money? Because you’ve money beyond reason—more than you can spend in a lifetime.”

  “There is an estate to think of,” Eben growled, knowing it was an idiotic answer.

  “There’s enough for that, too, enough to keep it healthy and happy long after you’re gone—which won’t matter, as you have no children to inherit it, so it will be another Allryd’s problem. There’s two off the list. It’s not money, and it’s not children.”

  There’d been a time when he expected it to be children—pretty, red-haired girls, and boys with big brown eyes, their mother filling their heads with dreams of the wide world, while he planned for them to see every inch of it.

  “Shall I tell you what I thought it was for?”

  Eben resisted the urge to stand and turn the table over. “No.”

  Lawton pushed back from the table and drank again, seeming to see everything. “I always thought it was for a woman.”

  The room went blazing hot. Eben shoveled potato into his mouth, though he could not taste it as his friend continued.

  “No doubt, it was ridiculous of me to think that, what with your lack of social grace and the fact that the only time you leave the house is when there is a vote in Parliament.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You’re right. You also go to the bank.”

  Eben ignored the truth.

  “At any rate, the idea that there was a woman in play was madness, I told myself. And then lo, one turns up in your kitchens on Christmas morning. And not just any woman. One with a pretty smile and a prettier laugh.”

  “Neither of which are for you,” Eben growled before he could stop himself.

  Lawton tilted his head. “Are they for you, then?”

  “No.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because she left me.”

  “That’s because you were a proper ass. Good Lord. The woman cooked you a goose. Unsolicited.” He picked a piece of meat from his plate and continued around it. “A damned good goose, too.”

  “Not today,” Eben said. “She left me twelve years ago. Walked right out of this house and was gone the next day, to a life that I was not party to.”

  Just as she’d be gone tomorrow.

  “Were you not invited to that life? Or did you choose not to attend?”

  “Does it matter? She left me.”

  Why did that feel like the worst lie he’d ever told?

  “She found another,” he added softly, a reminder to himself more than anyone else. He’d lost her.

  Lawton nodded and stood. “Except it’s Christmas Day, and she’s here with you and not with him.”

  Eben sat in the empty room for a long time after his guests left him, turning Lawton’s final words over and over, telling himself again and again that she was there because of the snow, until that simple, pure word was all there was.

  Snow.

  Chapter Eight

  He found her outside in the late-afternoon light, without a cloak, six inches deep in the snow, that stunning red gown getting more spoiled by the second, her face turned up to the sky, looking part angel and part ruin.

  She did not turn to face him when he let the door to the kitchens close behind him, shutting out the empty house that had haunted him since the day she left. Instead, she remained still beneath the snow, and he found himself envious of the flakes that had permission to caress her face.

  He watched her for a long moment, unmoving. Perhaps if he never moved . . . if he never spoke . . . perhaps then the moment would not end, and she would not leave, and he would not be alone once more.

  But he had to speak. “I am sorry.”

  “For what?” She spoke to the sky, and somehow, madly, he turned and looked to the clouds, as though they might answer for him. They didn’t, however. Perhaps because there was too much for which he must atone.

  For everything.

  “For being an ass.”

  Her full lips, kissed by snowflakes, curved in a tiny smile, there and gone before he could savor it.

  Then she said, “Why haven’t you married?”

  “I’ve never wanted to.” It was a lie.

  “I’m sure countless women have courted you,” she said. “I’m sure they were beautiful and droll and rich and perfect.”

  They hadn’t. And even if they had, it was difficult to imagine a woman more perfect than Jack. But he couldn’t find a way to say that. So instead, he repeated himself. “I’ve never wanted to.”

  She looked to him then, her cheeks flushed red with the cold. “Not even to me.”

  Yes to you. Always to you. “What did you mean when you said people change?”

  She turned away again. “Did I say that?”

  “Inside. At dinner.”r />
  She smiled, small and knowing. “I wondered if you were eavesdropping.”

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

  She slid a look at him. “No?”

  His cheeks grew warm. “No. It’s impossible to eavesdrop inside one’s own home.”

  “Well, that’s absolutely incorrect.”

  When he did not reply, she seemed to consider her next words carefully—un-Jack-like. He hated that. He wanted the immediate answer and not the crafted one. The truth, and not the lie. “I suppose I meant that it isn’t impossible to imagine that you might find happiness once more.”

  He didn’t like that, either. Like he was a stray to be cared for. “So that’s it? You’re here to try your hand at mending me?”

  She did not rise to the challenge in the words. “Are you mendable?”

  “Not by you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” He let the words trail off.

  Because I don’t wish to be mended for another.

  He sure as hell wasn’t telling her that.

  Her enormous eyes seemed to see it anyway, to see all the bits he’d been trying to hide since he’d found her in his kitchens in the dead of night. Since before that. Finally, she nodded, turning back to the snow. “It’s getting dark. Soon we shan’t be able to see the snow.”

  He was riveted by the flakes tangled in her hair, his hands itching to pull it down and complete her transformation into a Christmas angel. “You always wanted snow on Christmas.”

  She smiled, breaking him. “And now I have it.”

  “Perhaps—” He caught the words before they cracked. Cleared his throat. “Perhaps it’s a sign.”

  She turned to him. “Of?”

  “That the future might bring you everything you want.”

  “Starting now?”

  He shrugged. “Seems that a marriage is a good time to begin a future.”

  “So, tomorrow, then.”

  He nodded, hating the knot in his throat. “One more day of the past, and then, the future.”

  She faced him. “One more night, you mean.”