How the Dukes Stole Christmas Page 8

  The truth was that the Duke of Allryd didn’t have time for drinking. He barely had time for sleeping. He had time for working. He had time for eating and breathing because he could do both while working. While building and rebuilding his vast holdings, while checking and rechecking his vast accounts, while summoning and resummoning his vast array of solicitors and estate managers.

  At least, that was the truth he claimed.

  It wasn’t the actual truth.

  The actual truth was that drinking welcomed memory, and he had no interest in resurrection of memory.

  Or resurrection of ghosts, though the one in his kitchens seemed eager for it.

  It should be said that Eben James, Duke of Allryd, did not believe in ghosts, generally. In fact, there were a dozen other reasons why the sounds that pulled him from his cups should not have been considered ghostly. Foremost, ghosts did not exist. At least, Allryd had never seen indication of such a thing.

  Additionally, any otherworldly spirits lacking in corporeal existence should also lack interest in the culinary arts, which would have certainly occurred to his ordered and logical mind, if not for the influence of half a bottle of Scotland’s best whisky.

  Indeed, on any other night, Allryd might have considered the possibility of ruffians, highwaymen, Bow Street runners, street urchins, or (most likely) his own staff. But in that moment, minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve, Allryd could not conjure a single explanation for the noise in his kitchens save one—a ghost.

  So he did what any self-respecting lord of the manor would do in that same scenario: he went to confront it.

  Halfway down the pitch-black main staircase, it occurred to Allryd that he should arm himself for what might be a battle for the ages, and when he landed in the main foyer, he collected a shield and rusty sword from an exceedingly helpful suit of armor. Properly outfitted, he headed off to banish the spirit.

  The house had been deserted, the dark, silent back hallway to the kitchens reminded him. Lawton had spent weeks convincing him that decent employers allowed their staffs time away for a Christmas holiday and, finally, the duke had succumbed to the guilt—like stone to incessant water. The house was silent as two dozen servants basked in feast and festivity—whatever that might mean—elsewhere for seventy-two hours, leaving Allryd to his own work.

  His work, and the same activity he’d taken up every Christmas Eve for the last twelve years. Drinking himself into oblivion.

  This was better, he thought as he headed for the kitchens, armed with ancient weaponry to battle the ghost who had interrupted his plans to avoid Christmas at all costs.

  Light flickered, warm and tempting, spilling in golden chaos at the end of the hallway, and he edged toward its source, knowing he’d snuffed every candle before he’d taken to his rooms. He lifted his shield and saber—a soldier storming a keep.

  A mighty crash sounded from within the kitchens, followed by a firm “Dammit!”

  This gave Allryd pause. The ghost was foulmouthed. And female.

  He reached the doorway, his attention immediately on the other side of the room, where a figure teetered atop a small wooden stool, reaching for a high shelf. It vaguely occurred to him that a ghost should not require such a feat of balance.

  Nor should a ghost have such vibrancy: not hair that gleamed like dark fire, cascading around her like magic; not skin, brown from the sun; not full, welcome hips, flaring beneath rich green velvet the color of sun-drenched pines.

  Nor should he be instantly attracted to a ghost.

  Ergo, this was not an ordinary ghost.

  The tip of his saber clinked as it dropped to the stones beneath his feet.

  The specter looked over her shoulder at the sound, unsurprised, as though she’d known he was there the whole time. She was nothing like a ghost, all bright eyes and freckled skin and wide, welcoming lips the color of a blush. The color of her blush.

  Then she smiled, that grin that had always won him. The one that had always wrecked him. And he wasn’t a grown man any longer. He was a boy, eighteen and with a single, wild purpose.

  Her.

  She wasn’t specter; she was worse.

  She was memory.

  A shimmering, golden memory that slammed through him on a flood of surprise and knee-weakening desire. But he was a man—a duke, for God’s sake—and he’d be damned if he let her see what she did to him.

  “Oh good, you’re here,” she said, as though it weren’t the dark of night on Christmas Eve, and they weren’t alone in a Mayfair town house, and he weren’t drunk, and she weren’t returned after twelve years away. “I can’t reach the chocolate pot. Do you mind?”

  But Allryd didn’t seem able to forget all those things. So he stood, rooted to the spot, and said the only thing he could. The thing he’d sworn never to say again, because it always felt like a broken promise. “Jack.”

  Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners—barely there proof of the years that had passed. “No one has called me that in a decade.”

  Of course they hadn’t. It had only ever been his name for her. Pulled from a storybook about pirates that had come from Lord knew where. And Lady Jacqueline Mosby, the girl who lived next door—two years younger and thoroughly exasperating—had been a pirate, stealing into Allryd’s life and looting what she wished.

  He’d let her, of course. He’d given her everything she’d wanted—until he couldn’t be what she wanted and she’d left to find someone who could.

  “Did you think to run me through?” He tightened his grip on the saber in his hand as her lips curved. “That thing looks like it hasn’t been sharpened in a century or two. I’m not sure it would do much damage.”

  Nothing like the damage she could do in return.

  “Eben,” she said after his lingering silence, using the name no one had called him in a lifetime. His eyes flew to hers as the past crashed through him. “It shall boil over.”

  Somehow, he understood her meaning, looking instantly to the stove, where flame licked at the bottom of a saucepan of milk.

  He set his saber on the worktable and propped the shield against it, moving toward her before he realized that once he reached her, he would have to be near her. He hesitated, missing a step, setting him off balance for a heartbeat—not long enough for anyone to notice.

  Jack noticed, tilting her head in a tease of movement. Movement no one would notice.

  Allryd noticed.

  It was ridiculous that they noticed each other, of course. It had been twelve years—too many for them to even imagine that they still knew each other. That they had any cause to notice each other. So, he made an effort not to notice her as he approached, even as she remained on the stool, her hands now clasped at her waist as she waited for him to reach her.

  No, not her. It. Reach it.

  What was it he was reaching for?

  The chocolate pot.

  He could fetch a damn chocolate pot without noticing her. And he almost did. But then he was in front of her, extending one long arm up to the shelf. If he hadn’t had to navigate around her, he might not have had to lean so close to her.

  Then he might have been able to not notice her warmth, like sunshine. Or her scent, sunshine and lemons. Or the sound of her breathing, close to his ear, as he struggled to grasp the handle of the damn pot.

  There. Got it.

  He pulled it down from the shelf, intending to back away. To put distance between them and forget all those little things before they resurrected memories best left dead.

  They touched.

  Maybe he’d been careless. Off balance. Maybe he hadn’t left enough space between them. Maybe it was his fault they brushed against each other, the velvet of her bodice scraping against the chambray of his shirt, rough enough to catch the thin fabric. To tug it. To heat it and with it, him.

  Maybe. He might have believed it had been his fault.

  Except, she inhaled. It wasn’t an ordinary intake of oxygen. It was longer than necessary.
Deeper. It made enough sound that he couldn’t stop himself from turning toward the sound.

  Her eyes were closed. Her lips were curved. And she looked . . . pleased. When she exhaled, it was with a little, nearly imperceptible sigh.

  Allryd perceived it. All of it.

  His eyes widened, and he was barely able to restrain his jaw from dropping. He could not restrain the part of him that went hard as steel. He’d never been able to, with her.

  He could restrain the rest of him, however, and he did so with immense personal pride, as though he’d fought a battalion of enemies or saved the Queen from attack. Both actions would have been easier than what he did do: he backed away from Jack as though she were aflame, and tossed the tall silver chocolate pot alongside his orphaned sword. For a brief moment, he considered retrieving the weapon. It seemed his drunken preparedness had not been without purpose—his home was under siege, after all.

  He would have preferred the ghost.

  He placed the table between them and turned back to face her. She had moved, now stirring her pot with a flat-bottomed wooden spoon. He watched the slow, steady motion, imagining the milk swirling under her calm preparation, and for the first time in his life, he resented a liquid.

  Because he was in no way calm, especially when she said, as though discussing the weather, “You smell the same.”

  So did she.

  He shook his head. “What?”

  “I said you smell the same, which seems impossible, honestly. Like sage and cedar. Like you’ve been in the country.” She raised her voice to speak, as though he couldn’t hear everything she said. Every rustle of her skirts. Every scrape of that spoon on the bottom of her pan.

  His pan.

  His kitchen.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Have you been in the country?”

  “No.”

  “No, of course you haven’t.”

  And there it was, the harshest of the memories, like a blow. Her disappointment. A keen awareness that he could never be what she had wanted him to be. But this was worse, in some way. Because there was no disappointment in her words today. Only honesty. Awareness. And acceptance.

  She had been his future once. Then he’d inherited a dukedom and a massive estate deep in debt, and he’d had to make choices based on the responsibility and future of a dukedom and not the mad wishes of a young boy.

  And that was that. But it didn’t change the fact that she was making chocolate in his damn kitchen. Uninvited.

  He repeated himself. “What are you doing here?”

  “Would you believe it’s a Christmas miracle?”

  “No.”

  She watched him for a long moment. “Pity. There was a time when you might have believed it.”

  He shook his head, a futile attempt to clear it. To clear her from view. “That was a long time ago.”

  She turned back to the milk, and they both watched as she stirred. “Surely you missed me?”

  Like cold missed warmth. “Again, what are you doing here?”

  The soft scrape of the wooden spoon whispered between them. “Making my own excitement.”

  She had always been able to make excitement—more than her share. She’d been the one to discover the secret passageway between their houses. Not even a passageway, really. A door, locked from both sides, leading from the far corner of his conservatory into the far corner of the Mosby library. One day, Jack had pulled her father’s vast collection of atlases down to explore the Southern Hemisphere when she’d noticed a handle in the wall behind them.

  Young Allryd had been at his daily practice at the violin when knocking had commenced behind a nearby oil painting of satyrs at play, and his excitement had been entirely of Lady Jacqueline Mosby’s making.

  And then he’d opened the door, and she’d become the entirety of his excitement. Every day. Until the day she’d left.

  The day he’d run her off.

  She lifted the saucepan from the stove and came to the table with a bright smile. “If you must know, I am here because we don’t have any chocolate in our kitchens.”

  “And so home invasion is the next logical step.”

  “Please,” she scoffed. “It’s not invasion if the door isn’t locked.”

  “I haven’t thought about that door in a decade.”

  Lie.

  Her lips twitched. “And besides, you’re well armed. Any intruder would positively cower in the face of your rusty sword and a shield that was certainly the best of its kind in the Dark Ages.”

  He looked down at the shield by his feet and said the only thing that came to him. “I thought you were a ghost.”

  She tilted her head. “Are you soused?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She blinked. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you are soused.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s Christmas.”

  They both froze at the words—the product of a whisky-loosened tongue—and Eben meant to look away, except he couldn’t. So instead he watched as dark brows rose and full lips parted on a little, soundless oh, as though she understood exactly what the words meant.

  The room grew warmer, and Eben rushed to cover the truth. “Must I have a reason? It’s my home. It’s the dead of night. And I thought I was alone. You’re lucky I didn’t find you skulking through the conservatory.”

  “Or what? You might have struck me with an oboe?”

  “I don’t own an oboe, but the bow of a violin might smart.”

  She watched him for a long moment, and he could have sworn she was remembering. And then, a flash of a carefree smile. “Again, Eben, if you don’t wish for intruders, you should lock the door.”

  “You’re the only one who knows that door exists.”

  “Then I shall take it as a personal invitation.” When he scowled, she added, “Somehow, it seems even worse that you’re soused in your own home in the dead of night, alone.”

  “Worse than what?”

  “Worse than being soused with someone else.”

  Had she been afraid of finding him with someone else? No. He wasn’t good at other people. Wasn’t that why she’d left?

  “Are you offering your companionship?”

  She wasn’t, of course. Her companionship hadn’t been available to him for twelve years. Not since he’d refused it one too many times, and she’d been proud enough and strong enough to walk away.

  She didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, she offered him a little smile and said, thoughtfully, “We’ve always been better friends at night, haven’t we?”

  The words unleashed a flood of unwelcome memories, but before he could decide not to speak, she had changed the topic, somehow making him feel even worse. “My milk shall get cold.”

  “How do you know I have chocolate?”

  That soft smile again. “You always have chocolate, Eb.”

  Perhaps it was the diminutive that no one else had ever used with him. Or maybe it was that she remembered how much he enjoyed chocolate. Or maybe it was that smile, that he’d always been willing to do anything for. Or maybe it was the alcohol. Whatever it was, Allryd was already in motion, heading to a nearby shelf to retrieve a small porcelain pot, returning to slide it across the table to her.

  She set the saucepan on the table and opened the pot, peering in. “This is . . .” She sniffed, then looked up at him. “What is this?”

  “Chocolate powder. They make it in Amsterdam. It’s sweetened. Easier to mix.”

  She smiled at him, and something came into her eyes that felt like the past. “You always liked it too sweet.”

  He scowled at the words, as though they were old friends. Weren’t they? He ignored the thought. “No, I didn’t.”

  She ignored him, scooping it into the saucepan and stirring for a bit before lifting the spoon from the mixture and touching it to her tongue, before closing her ey
es and sighing, “Delicious.”

  Allryd sucked in a breath and, desperate to avoid her, the memory of her, the promise of her, he moved to fetch cups, along with a tin of biscuits that he’d been planning to eat for Christmas luncheon. When he placed the tin on the table, he realized that the biscuits would prolong Jack’s midnight visit. Which he shouldn’t wish to do.

  But he’d always wished for her, and it had never been enough. That was the problem.

  “I suppose there’s no need for us to stand on ceremony, after all,” she said, bypassing the silver pot he’d fetched and instead lifting the saucepan toward the cups.

  He nodded his permission, and she poured two cups of chocolate, the steam curling up between them, directing his gaze over the bodice of her dress, the swell of her breasts, the golden locket that lay there like it was home.

  She hadn’t worn that locket when they were younger.

  Ignoring the thought, he reached for a cup as she set the saucepan aside and sat, opening the biscuit tin. “Oooh,” she said, “I’ve missed shortbread.”

  He raised a brow. “Is shortbread a thing to be missed?”

  “Of course, it is,” she said around a mouthful of biscuit. “It’s delicious.”

  He lifted his chocolate to his lips, hiding his smile at her enthusiasm, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t here every day. That this wasn’t their private ritual. “It’s butter and sugar and flour.”

  She waved her hand in a little flourish. “Precisely.”

  Allryd supposed she had a point. He reached for a biscuit. “Where have you been that there’s no shortbread to be had?”

  She swallowed and took a sip of chocolate before she replied. “Everywhere, really. Well, everywhere Aunt Jane wished to go. Every country on the Continent—France, Spain, Italy, Greece. And then all the other places—North Africa. Turkey. Persia. Russia.”

  He knew all of that. He’d followed her travels. Jack had left London twelve years earlier as a companion to Lady Jane, Baroness Danton, a notorious widow who had once been scandalous and was now eccentric—beloved by the scandal sheets. He’d lingered over the gossip columns, waiting for their news, and when he was forced to break bread with the aristocracy, Jack’s name was the only one he cared to listen for.