How the Dukes Stole Christmas Read online

  He joined in again, and they sang in unison, their voices gaining strength. It was as though they’d reached an understanding—they’d launched into this madness, and they had to finish it. They might as well do so with the full holiday spirit. “To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray. Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy . . .”

  By the end of three verses, they were singing in parts with confidence. Mr. Nightcap’s entire household had gathered at the door. At their audience’s urging, they followed the first carol with two others, and were forced to exchange many hearty Christmas greetings before making their escape.

  They made it all the way down the lane and around a corner before bursting into laughter. It was several moments before either of them could talk.

  Louisa wiped tears from her eyes. “That was brilliant. Very quick thinking.”

  “It would have been a disaster had you not played along.”

  “For that, you can thank the brandy. Where did you learn to sing like that?”

  “Well, the North Riding isn’t London. We don’t have performance halls, but we do manage to make our own concerts.” As they walked, making footprints in the thin layer of snow, he nudged her with his elbow. “You weren’t so bad, yourself.”

  “What fulsome praise.”

  “I meant it.”

  She turned to him. “We did sound well together, didn’t we?”

  She was thrown back to the moment before their impromptu performance, when he’d nearly kissed her in the doorway. Would their lips meld as well as their voices did?

  She changed the subject. “We must have done well enough. We got pudding out of it.” She held up a slice of dense, plum-studded cake, wrapped in brown paper. “When we reach Hyde Park, we’ll have a proper picnic.”

  Chapter Ten

  “There now.” Once they’d reached the park, Louisa spread her arms and twirled, indicating the glittering splendor of the new-fallen snow. “Even you cannot deny this is splendid.”

  “Very well. I will concede that London has some beauty.”

  His eyes fixed on her with unnerving intensity. Louisa felt the power of that stare, all the way to her core.

  “And now,” he said, “you must permit me to have my turn. In the spirit of fair play.”

  “Your turn? What can you mean?”

  “To prove the superiority of the countryside.”

  She laughed. “I don’t know how you mean to accomplish that. I am not in a particular hurry to return home, but I think even my parents would object if I disappeared to Yorkshire.”

  “We don’t have to go to Yorkshire. I can show you right here.”

  He crouched and began to draw figures in the fresh snow, breaking through the wafer-thin crust of ice with his bare finger. Louisa crouched beside him, balancing on the toes of her slippers and drawing her gown about her knees.

  “The estate is situated like so. The hall, of course. Right about here, on a prominence overlooking the valley. On a clear day, the southern vantage stretches for miles of green farmland. To the north”—he pushed snow into a rough plateau—“are the moors. Craggy and sparse and endless. I can’t describe it, but it’s beautiful all the same. A kind of magnificent emptiness. The wind whips and buffets you. You’re helpless to stop it, but there’s a feeling to pressing against it. As if you’re utterly insignificant, but invincible at the same time.” He shook himself from his reverie. “I’m explaining it poorly.”

  “Not at all.” She never would have said so, but his description sounded terribly romantic.

  He crafted two elongated heaps of snow. “Here’s the valley. The Rye runs all the way through it.”

  He grew more animated, adding furrows and creeks to his model. Louisa couldn’t help but smile as she watched him. A certain boyish enthusiasm had caught him up, tempered by an engineer’s eye for planning.

  “It sounds beautiful,” she said.

  “Aye, it is that.” His Northern accent bled through. “Beautiful to the eye, at least. To the farmer, it’s a bloody difficult place to be. The problem is here.” He drew his finger through a long, winding stretch of virgin snow flanked by makeshift hillocks. “It would be rich soil for planting, if it didn’t flood with every hard rain.”

  “And this being England . . .”

  “Hopeless. Exactly. What with the failed harvests of the recent years, we’re in desperate need of more arable land.” He cocked his head and looked down at his handiwork. “I’ve drawn up plans for a system of drainage canals.” With a stick, he slashed diagonals across the fields he’d sketched in the snow. “Custom hollow bricks are the most durable material. If we can’t manage to finance them, it will have to be pebbles and straw.”

  He abruptly looked up. He gave Louisa a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go on about drainage and property values. I’m boring you.”

  “To the contrary. I found it fascinating.”

  To be truthful, Louisa wasn’t particularly fascinated by drainage, but she was fascinated by the way he talked about the plan. He cared deeply about his little piles of snow—or rather, for the vast sweeps of land they represented.

  Yorkshire was home for him, the way Mayfair was home for her.

  If only James’s efforts to save his home didn’t put Louisa on the brink of losing hers.

  “It’s no small undertaking.” He dusted the snow from his hands as he stood. “I need capital. That’s why I’ve come to Town, you see. There are a few properties I mean to sell as soon as possible. I need to return to Yorkshire by planting season.”

  One of those properties, of course, being her family’s home—once he removed them from it. Her chest tightened.

  “Surely that’s rather sudden,” she said. “For the current occupants of those properties, I mean.”

  “Most of them are storehouses, I gather.”

  “But most isn’t all. Surely some are businesses and homes.”

  He shrugged. “Property is the solicitors’ concern. My concern is for people.”

  “People?” Louisa couldn’t conceal her emotion. “You care about your tenants in Yorkshire—to the degree that you no doubt know every last farmer, wife, and child by name—yet you have given no thought whatsoever to the tenants you may have here in London.”

  “London is full of buildings. Too many buildings. Houses are crammed cheek to jowl on every square. My farmers have nowhere else to go. Would you have me go back to Yorkshire and tell them all, ‘Sorry—I could keep you from starving next winter, but I have to spare a few Londoners the inconvenience of moving house’?”

  “Naturally, you can’t allow people to starve, but that doesn’t rule out compassion for everyone else. Losing one’s home is more than a mere inconvenience. City or country, south or north.”

  He made an impatient gesture at his snowy sculpture. “I just explained what is at stake here, and you seemed to understand. But perhaps you were merely pretending to listen. I know the way young ladies are trained to smile and nod.”

  “You know well that I am no empty-headed, fawning young lady. For that matter, empty-headed, fawning young ladies are not nearly as common as you seem to believe. As for the women who do stifle their opinions to gain a man’s approval—perhaps you should consider they might be compelled to do so by their families, by their poverty, or simply by virtue of their female sex.” She drew a quick breath. “If women were afforded one-tenth the freedoms men enjoy, we would never need to abase ourselves by nodding and smiling while a duke drones on about farmland and drainage.”

  “Drones on?” His eyes caught a sharp glint from the snow. “You called it fascinating.”

  “What fascinates me is your hypocrisy. I thought you preferred a woman who speaks her mind. But you only seem to enjoy it when her opinions mirror yours.”

  He shook his head. “I should never have indulged your suggestion that we walk.”

  “There would not have been any need to walk if you hadn’t drenched me in wine.�
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  “I didn’t drench you in wine. You drenched yourself.”

  “Oh, I wish I’d never danced with you.”

  He threw his hands toward the heavens. “It’s a Christmas miracle. We’ve found something on which we agree.”

  Louisa growled with irritation. The lovingly drawn, painstakingly constructed model of his Yorkshire estate lay at her feet. She lifted her head, caught his eye, and arched one eyebrow.

  His voice dropped a full octave. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” She pointed a single gloved finger toward one lump of snow. “What was this again? Thorndale Hall?”

  “Thorndale Abbey.”

  “Hmm.” She scooped it up, slowly molded and packed the snow with her cupped hands. And then she lobbed the icy missile straight at his head. On impact, it burst into a satisfying firework of sparkling white.

  As he wiped the snow from his face, steam rose up around his ears. “I warn you, I am on the verge of an exceedingly ungentlemanly response. Push me further, and I will not be responsible for the consequences.”

  Louisa bent over, gathered another handful of his ancestral home, crafted it into a second snowball—this one even icier than the first—and threw it.

  He dodged it easily, then bent for his own handful of snow. “Very well. If it’s a fight you want, you shall have it.”

  “You bounder.”

  That was it. The battle was on.

  His aim was sharp, and since Louisa was wearing an evening gown, she couldn’t hope to match him for nimbleness. Just one more unfair advantage belonging to men. He fired off two snowballs with astonishing speed. One caught her on the shoulder, spinning her to the side, and his next shot hit her between the shoulder blades.

  “You shot me in the back!” Louisa ducked and bolted for cover behind a tree. “That’s hardly sporting.”

  “Games are sporting. This is war.”

  They played cat and mouse, circling the tree trunk in wary steps.

  “Surrender,” he demanded.

  “Never.”

  She feigned a lunge to the left, then sprinted right. Apparently, her strategy failed to confuse him, because within ten paces, he’d snagged her by the waist. She shrieked with laughter as he tackled her into the snow.

  He rolled over and plucked her off the ground, arranging her on his lap and drawing his coat around the both of them, like a blanket. “There,” he huffed. “I’ve caught you. Don’t try to escape.”

  Louisa hadn’t the breath or the heart to try. His arms held her captive in a firm embrace. His masculine strength called to some deep, womanly part of her being, and her body responded. Exhilaration coursed through her veins.

  Could this be how it felt to stand on one of those windswept moors he described, looking out over a boundless expanse and facing into the wind? Invincible. Vulnerable. Breathless.

  There was so much she hadn’t experienced of the world. So much she suddenly yearned to explore. And it all started here, with the wildness between them.

  He pushed an icy wisp of hair from her face. “What was it we’re arguing about?”

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  Inevitability coiled between them like a spring. The closer they drew to one another, the more the tension built.

  And then—at last—a kiss.

  Chapter Eleven

  James was no poet. He had no particular talent for expressing tender emotions with words. Kisses, though . . .

  Kisses were a different kind of language.

  He brushed a series of light, tender kisses against her lips, giving her time to warm to the embrace. Only when her mouth softened beneath his, and her breath mingled with his own, did he deepen the kiss, taking her with barely restrained passion.

  She tasted like Christmas. Brandy and plummy pudding and mulled wine and crisp snow. He still didn’t like London, but he liked Louisa.

  Her arms went about his neck, clinging tight.

  Yes, he liked her very well indeed.

  He gathered her close, bringing her against his body. Perhaps he could excuse it away under the guise of keeping her warm. In truth, he wanted to feel her. Needed to feel her. The shape of her body, the quiver of her pulse.

  Their lips parted, and their foreheads met.

  Reluctantly, he said, “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “We’re both doing this.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t ask.”

  “I don’t object.”

  He was running out of excuses. And he needed excuses, or he was going to take this much too far. “We scarcely know one another.”

  “We can remedy that. Dogs or cats?”

  “What?”

  “Do you prefer dogs or cats?”

  “Dogs,” he said. “Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea. Autumn or spring?”

  “Autumn. What’s your favorite color?”

  “Orange.”

  “Orange? No one’s favorite color is orange.”

  “That’s why it’s mine. My siblings claimed all the others, and I was determined to set myself apart.”

  “You’ve succeeded at setting yourself apart.” He caressed her cheek. “Magnificently.”

  He thought she might be blushing at his compliment, but the moonlight didn’t reflect any shades of pink. Her skin, her lips, her eyes, her hair—they were painted in shades of silvery violet.

  Violet was his favorite color. Which was strange, because until this moment, he’d always believed it to be green.

  She bit her lip. “James?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think we know each other well enough now.”

  She pressed her lips to his, and he took the invitation. And then, God forgive him, he began to take more. He trailed kisses down her neck. He let his hands stray, vowing to himself he’d rein them in the moment she stiffened or pulled away.

  She didn’t pull away. As he drew his hand down her spine, her breath caught. Then her breathing resumed—quicker than before, and hot against his lips. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he slid his hand upward, grazing the side of her breast. Then he moved his hand between them, cupping her breast in his palm, warming her flesh and soothing her hardened nipple. Desire had him stiff and aching.

  You are a beast. Like a wolf pouncing on a snow-white hare.

  He hadn’t planned to take so many liberties, but all his thoughts and plans had melted like snowflakes in the warmth between them. They’d built their own little fire, and it licked like flame all over his body. Inside his body, as well.

  There was something between them, and there could be more. So much more. She would fit well, both beneath him and beside him.

  James put his arms around her again, drawing her into a less scandalous embrace—if not exactly a chaste one. They kissed, and kissed, and kissed some more. The way of young sweethearts with time stretched before them and nothing else to do. Exploring.

  “I wish we could freeze time,” she said.

  He chuckled. “There are bits of me sure to freeze if we stay here much longer. And I really do need to take you home.”

  “Yes. But that’s just it. Once you take me home, it’s over.”

  “Why does it have to be over?”

  “I’m leaving for Jersey in a fortnight, and you—”

  Bong. In the distance, a bell tolled. He cursed. “It’s already one—”

  Bong.

  “No, two o’clock.”

  Bong.

  They stared at one another in horror.

  Bong.

  Bong.

  Silence, finally.

  “Oh no.” Louisa pressed her hand to her mouth. “Five o’clock in the morning? My family will be beside themselves.”

  “No doubt. And the gossips will be thrilled.”

  “Are you worried you’ve ruined me? I’m moving to Jersey in a fortnight. My social life is over anyway.”

  Be that as it may, he owed her father some explanations, and—

  Good God. Perhap
s he would owe Louisa the offer of his hand.

  Oh, it was madness. But James began to think that might not be so terrible.

  It just might, in fact, be the best thing to ever happen in his life.

  Chapter Twelve

  The first snow of winter was all well and lovely, until it iced over. Rather than racing home, they were forced to skate over the pavement at a frustratingly slow pace. Louisa’s ballroom slippers—with their soles fashioned to glide over a dance floor—slid out from under her on every third step, forcing James to stop and catch her before she could fall.

  When her foot skidded and slipped for the hundredth time, Louisa cursed under her breath. James tightened his grip on her elbow, preventing what would have been a bruising fall.

  “It’s not far now,” she promised.

  He shook his head. “This is my fault. Somehow I thoroughly lost track of time.”

  “No, it’s my fault. I’m the one who dragged you all over Mayfair.”

  “Well, that was my pleasure.”

  “I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the sights.”

  “Louisa.” He stopped at the corner, and she reeled on her slippers. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he swiveled her to face him. Those hazel eyes, which she’d once thought cold, were warm and caring as they stared into hers. “You know it’s not the sights I enjoyed.”

  Oh.

  Her heart squeezed with bittersweet emotion. Here they stood, a stone’s throw from her house, which was about to become his property.

  After the night they’d spent together—walking, talking, arguing, drinking, caroling, snowball fighting, kissing—she had true reason to hope. It was possible he’d understand their plight and be generous.

  And now she couldn’t go through with it.

  Papa did owe the money, after all. James had every right to collect it. He wasn’t motivated by heartless greed, but by the desire to help his Yorkshire tenants. Ambushing him this morning and prevailing on him to reconsider . . . Well, it wouldn’t be fair. Especially not when Louisa had been hiding the truth.

  And as for Jersey . . . Would it be so terrible to see a bit more of the world?