How the Dukes Stole Christmas Read online

  Not that he’d admit it. Instead he said, “I’ve never been to any of those places.”

  She met his gaze, her brown eyes full of too much past. “Your traveling has been in estates and ledgers.”

  Perhaps he imagined the judgment in the words, but he did not imagine the way he loathed them. The way they shamed him. The way he felt the need to defend himself against them. “I am responsible for hundreds of people.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s what happens when you inherit a dukedom. You inherit the responsibility. You inherit the sins of the past. You inherit the mistakes. And you have to stay and sort them out. You don’t have the choice to see the world. Not at the beginning.”

  What began as defense ended with a keen desire to rile her up. To remind her that she’d left him. That he was still here, in the same house he’d been in on the day they’d met, and she’d been the one to leave. He wanted her to rise to the bait.

  She didn’t, though. Instead, she gave him a small smile and said, “There’s more than one way to see the world.”

  He hated the words, the reminder of their past. Of her leaving and his staying. He hadn’t been enough for her. That had been it, no? She’d wanted more from him. He’d worked to build a home and a title and a life worthy of her, and it had never been enough. And still, here she was, returned and comfortable despite the years and the past.

  And here he was, uncomfortable beyond imagining with the way she shone a light on all the dark places he’d learned to ignore.

  Before he could give voice to that discomfort, she spoke. “In Egypt, they make a kind of candy from boiling mallow plants. It takes two days to make it. It’s fluffy and white, and so sweet you can sweeten chocolate with it. I think you would enjoy it.”

  There was a long silence, during which he did not know what to say. He was half-drunk, and it had been twelve years, and she was back and talking about candy in the dead of night.

  She smiled and said, “You would have enjoyed many of the things we saw.”

  And there it was, the hint of the future he might have had. The one he could have no longer. “Are you back?” he asked, irritation flaring.

  She hesitated, and for a moment he clung to the pause, equal parts hope that she’d returned and desperation for her to leave. “Not for long.”

  He nodded; the words ached in his chest. Why should it matter? He had no right to her time. No right to her. He’d relinquished it years ago, in every arena but the damned papers he couldn’t help but clip. Still, he asked, “For how long? You seem unprepared for Christmas if you haven’t any chocolate in the house.”

  She smiled. “I leave on Sunday.”

  On Boxing Day. It made sense. She’d spent twelve years traveling the globe, and London’s was not the most pleasant of Januaries. But still, two days seemed . . . fleeting. “Leave for where?”

  “We are for Scotland.”

  “Your aunt does not seem the type who wishes to winter in Scotland.” The baroness was rarely in Britain for all the world traveling she did, thanks to the ancient husband she’d buried not three years after their marriage had begun.

  Jack drank deep, and when she set the cup down, it was to reveal a chocolate mustache along her upper lip. She licked at it, long and unladylike, and Allryd felt the movement on every inch of his skin. The temperature in the cool kitchens was suddenly impossibly hot.

  Like the fires of hell, which was surely where he was going for thinking of all the things he might do with that tongue.

  And then she said, “She’s not. In fact, she leaves on Sunday, as well. For Constantinople.”

  “Without you?”

  “With a new companion. A younger one. Someone able to keep pace with her.” The words were weary.

  His brow furrowed. “I don’t believe you cannot keep pace with her. I’ve never met someone so ready for adventure as you.”

  “You always thought that was a fault,” she said, softly.

  “I didn’t,” he said.

  She cut him a disbelieving look.

  “I didn’t,” he insisted. Jack had always leapt into the world feet first, assuming she would land on a soft cloud of opportunity. And she had landed on that cloud. Every time.

  Every time but one.

  He cleared his throat. “If not Aunt Jane, then who is your companion for Scotland?”

  “My . . .” A pause, and then, “. . . husband.”

  Allryd stilled, barely controlling the flinch. “You are married?”

  “Soon to be,” she said, and he heard the hesitation in her voice, as though she didn’t want to tell him. Or perhaps it was his hesitation. Perhaps he didn’t want to hear.

  “I haven’t seen banns.” Not that he went to church, but that wasn’t the point. Jack couldn’t marry another.

  “We shall marry in Scotland,” she said quickly, selecting another biscuit from the tin as though she hadn’t just fired a cannon in his kitchen.

  “Why?”

  She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “We’re back from Greece, and headed to Fergus’s estate there.”

  Fergus.

  It was a silly name. The kind of name one gave a hound. A great, hairy one with a long lolling tongue.

  She couldn’t marry Fergus.

  Nevertheless, she continued to talk as though the deed were, in fact, to be done. “As we will marry there, there is no need to post banns here.”

  “Not why no banns. Why marry?”

  “It is not so uncommon, is it? Unless you reference my advanced years?”

  “Of course not.” She was thirty-two, not eighty-two. Thirty-two and beautiful and sun-soaked in December, which seemed impossible. Eminently marriageable. “I only meant—” He stopped. He did not know what he meant. And still he spoke. “I thought you wanted something other than marriage.”

  Her brows rose. “No. I wanted something other than marriage with a man who cared less for me than he did his estate.”

  The words were ice, sobering him. Anger and frustration and something he did not dare name coursed through him at the clear reference to their past. “I didn’t care more for it.”

  Silence fell for long minutes, until he could no longer bear it. “Fergus would not like you being here in the dead of night.”

  She opened her mouth, and he saw the hesitation as she considered her words. And then, “Fergus knows we are old friends.”

  He met her gaze. “Is that what we are?”

  I know the sound of your sighs when you’re properly kissed.

  I know the sound of your moans when you fall apart in my arms.

  I know you. Every inch of you.

  You were mine before Fergus ever dreamed of you.

  But he couldn’t say any of that. And he couldn’t stay here with her. Not when she was pure past and no hint of future.

  He stood and made for the door. “Clear your mess before you leave. Take the shortbread with you. And the chocolate. With my best wishes on the occasion of your engagement.”

  Chapter Two

  Christmas Eve, fourteen years earlier

  Ladies were not supposed to sneak into gentlemen’s homes in the dead of night.

  That went double for young ladies.

  Triple for young, unmarried ladies.

  It did not matter that it was Christmas Eve. Nor did it matter that the young lady had been sneaking into the gentleman in question’s house for years.

  Jacqueline Mosby, youngest child of the Earl of Darby, had always been more certain of her place in the world than most grown men—and that place had ensured that she never cared much for what she was or was not supposed to do. She’d never been very interested in how things should be. No, Jack had always been more interested in what could be. What might be. And that, of course, was her downfall.

  Because Jack had always been the kind of girl who climbed to the top of a tree to see the view, only worrying about the consequences once she’d reached the canopy and found she couldn’t get down
. Of course, even then, Jack saw the best of a situation, snacking on apples and taking in the wide world from her new vantage point until she sorted out just how to extricate herself from the treetop.

  It was that openness, that optimism, that willingness to tackle any challenge that had made the secret door between the Mosby library and the Allryd conservatory more Jack’s than Eben’s.

  For Jack, the door was freedom—to hide from her governess, to escape her brothers and sisters, to sneak a treat to Eben when she’d had a particularly delicious sweet at luncheon, to curl up with a book on the conservatory settee while he practiced his violin.

  For Eben, however, the door was escape.

  Most nights, his father drank until he could not stand and fell asleep in his study, with only his tears to comfort him. But on the bad nights, the duke either did not drink enough, or his sadness took a turn from melancholy, and he went searching for someone to punish for his misery. Misery for which he blamed Eben, his heir and only child, all that was left of the wife he’d once loved beyond reason.

  On more than one occasion, Eben had sneaked through the secret doorway in the conservatory, to hide alone in the dark Mosby library until day crept into the sky like pale, lavender hope.

  Or, at least, he’d been alone until the night Jack—ten years old—had come to sit next to him, tucking her knees up under her nightgown, her toes peeking out beneath the lace hem. They’d sat in silence for what seemed like hours before she took his hand in hers and bent her head to his shoulder, willing him to feel a fraction of the comfort she had. A hint of the certainty that she, even then, had known was an uncommon privilege.

  They hadn’t spoken, and Jack had fallen asleep, not stirring when Eben put his arm around her, breathing her in, reveling in her peace, until dawn came and he woke her to send her back to bed before they were caught.

  But on the nights that followed, they’d talked. They’d played chess. They’d pored over maps as she’d showed him all the places she planned to visit when she was older. She’d read him stories of the world’s greatest privateers and they’d decided that someday, they would hire a ship and travel the world. She wanted the future, and he wanted to be far from the past.

  They’d become friends.

  Good enough friends for her to miss him when he left for school. Except, missing him soon gave way to something else—something more powerful. Something that made her heart pound when she thought of using the door to see him when he returned for breaks and holidays. Something that made her too eager to wait for him to use it. Something that made her use it herself, sneaking about his silent house to find him.

  The first time she’d knocked on the door of his bedchamber, she was fourteen, and he, sixteen. He’d told her she couldn’t stay. After all, he was a marquess and she was a young lady, and they weren’t babies anymore. Bedchambers were not appropriate settings for their meetings. Certainly not bedchambers in the dark of night, but to be safe—bedchambers in any lighting scheme and at any time of day should likely be avoided.

  It had only taken a heartbeat or two of convincing before Eben had tossed aside those silly rules. They were friends, after all, and he was so rarely home from school—Eton, and soon to be Oxford—and the late-night visits were clandestinely perfect, not because they were scandalous, but because they were theirs.

  After that night, scant seconds passed between her soft knock and his opening of the door. They would take to the chairs by the fireplace in his chambers, and Jack would tuck her knees into her nightgown, her long pink toes peeking out, and he would pour her chocolate and they would whisper in the dark, reliving their months apart. Eben would tell her long and elaborate stories, answering every question she had—even the scandalous ones—and Jack lived vicariously through them, remembering the names of all the other boys in his class and the wild things they did when proctors and instructors and deans weren’t watching. And Eben remembered, too—the minutiae of the books she’d read and the dresses she’d worn and the ridiculous things her older sisters had done to win this earl or that marquess.

  On it went, for years, until his father died, and eighteen-year-old Jack had flown through the dark halls of Allryd House, desperate to reach him. But that night, she’d knocked on the door, and he hadn’t come to open it.

  So she’d opened it herself—knowing, even as the handle turned beneath her grip, that everything had changed.

  Eben was lying on his bed, staring up at the rich, velvet canopy. He didn’t look to the door as she slipped into the room and closed it behind her. Nor did he look to her when she ignored the chairs by the fireplace.

  Nor did he look when she climbed onto the bed with him, fitting herself against him without hesitation, stretching one long arm across his waist. An anchor in the storm.

  His arm came around her, clutching her to him. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I don’t care,” she whispered.

  “Not in my room. Definitely not in my bed.”

  Again. “I don’t care.”

  Silence. Then, barely there, “I don’t want you to leave.”

  She’d never leave him. “Michael wouldn’t let me attend the funeral,” she said. Of course, her brother hadn’t; funerals weren’t a place for girls. “I raged, of course, but no one would listen.”

  “It’s best you weren’t there,” he said, though it didn’t sound like he believed it.

  Jack certainly didn’t believe it. “I wanted to be there. I wanted to be with you.”

  “You wouldn’t have been with me,” he said. “I was at the front. You . . . wouldn’t have been with me.”

  She tightened her grip—enough to pull him from his stupor, eager for his beautiful green gaze. “You would have known I was there. That’s how I would have been with you.” She stopped, unable to look away from him. Wanting to be closer. To touch him. To reach him. “Eben . . . I should have been with you.”

  The words were an ache in her chest. Her own parents had died years earlier, tragedy striking when their carriage careened off course on an icy road in the middle of a winter storm, and Eben had been away at school—too far to return for the funeral. But he’d written. She still had the letter, filled with miles of words, words she now understood beyond measure.

  She repeated them with reverence. “I should have been with you.”

  He did not reply except to tighten his arm around her, which was enough. She put her cheek to his chest, the heavy thrum of his heartbeat beneath her ear. She was with him now. And she’d stay all night if he’d have her, hang what her aunt and her brothers and sisters had to say. Eben needed her.

  She’d stay all night. The next day. And the one after.

  Until he found the words she knew he had to speak.

  They lay in silence for a long time, until the candle at his bedside was barely a stump. Until Eben took a deep, shattering breath and told her his darkest secret. The one she already knew.

  “I’m glad he’s dead.” The confession came on a whisper of fear, as though his father might hear him and take up haunting.

  Jack did not loosen her grip. “As am I.”

  “He was a drunk.”

  “He was broken, unable to be mended.” Eben looked down at her, and she gave a little shrug. “And a bastard.”

  His lips twitched at the forthright assessment. “That he was. Also a bad father. And a bad duke.”

  “You shall be a better one.”

  “You say that like it’s a foregone conclusion.”

  She lifted her head, turning on the bed so she could rest her chin on his chest and tell him the truth. “It is.”

  He let out a long breath and looked up at the velvet canopy once more. “Everything is going to change.”

  “Nothing important.” Not this. Not them, together. Please. Not us, together.

  “I’m a duke now.”

  “I always thought you weren’t impressive enough to be a marquess.”

  He laughed, and joy spread through her at
the sound. That hadn’t changed. She loved his laugh—like a secret between them. “You know dukes are higher than marquesses, don’t you?”

  She matched his smile. “Yes, but marquess has such a stylish ring to it. I’d much rather be a marquess.”

  “Well, I’m both, now.”

  “And there you are, already an insufferable braggart.” She tucked herself closer to him.

  His arm tightened again, and he whispered, “How am I to do this?”

  The question heralded the change he’d foretold. It heralded the fear. The panic. The responsibility. Adulthood. She settled her hand on his chest, over his heart. “I shall help.”

  “Do you have a great deal of expertise in being a duke?”

  She didn’t like the question. Tried for levity. “No, but how difficult can it possibly be? Men bow and scrape to you and women wish to woo you.”

  “That seems a fine assessment of the whole situation.”

  “You shall be eternally grateful that I shall be there to keep you firmly on the ground.” He huffed a little laugh, and Jack worked to keep him there, in freedom, just for a moment. “How shall we begin? Shall I follow you about and remind you that you once struggled to find Constantinople on a map?”

  “I did not. The map was upside down.”

  She smiled at the well-worn argument. Solid ground. Equal footing. “Oh yes, Turkey does move about on the map when viewed in reverse.”

  “You think that my lack of geographical skill will impede my ability to woo women?”

  She stilled at the question, time seeming to slow. “Are you interested in wooing women?”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  What kind of women? She didn’t ask it. It wasn’t her business. Especially not tonight. After all, it wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected there were girls who had caught his eye. It wasn’t like she hadn’t imagined there were girls with whom he wished to . . .

  But she hadn’t liked imagining them. That was all.