Christmas With The Duchess. Tamara Lejeune

some very pressing debts.”

      “You mean he’s gambled away our dowries,” Octavia corrected her.

      “If Augusta don’t want Cousin Nicholas, then I should have him,” said Cornelia, sitting up taller. Like her two elder sisters, she had a long, horsey face and auburn hair, but she lacked Octavia’s intelligence and Augusta’s positive energy. She fancied herself a musician, but she was too lazy to practice. She scratched her head, scattering curl papers to the floor.

      “You! What about me?” demanded Flavia, the fourth daughter.

      “I am the next in line,” Cornelia informed her. “After Augusta, I am the eldest.”

      Lady Anne looked at her third and fourth daughters doubtfully. Cornelia was only tolerable looking, and poor Flavia had been cursed with horrible teeth and greasy, spotted skin. “Oh, I do hope your Aunt Susan has not brought any single ladies with her,” she cried weakly. “What if Nicholas should fall in love with someone else?”

      “She has not,” Octavia said with authority. “I have already made certain of that. My Aunt Bellamy has only invited married ladies.”

      Lady Anne started up as a new, horrifying thought occurred to her. “What if Nicholas should fall in love with one of the governesses? His father had such low taste in women.”

      “Both your brothers had low taste in women,” Octavia said. “At least we were never obliged to meet Cousin Nicholas’s mama. The indignity of having to curtsey to my uncle Camford’s wife was quite the outside of enough.”

      Lady Anne’s hollow chest heaved with righteous indignation. “Haymarket ware!” she said, becoming quite animated. “When I think of that—that woman taking my mother’s place at Camford Park—! How I endured the humiliation, I shall never know. If Nicholas should marry an unsuitable female, I do not know what I shall do!”

      “I will wear my blue muslin at dinner,” Julia announced. “Cousin Nicholas will want something pretty to look at while he eats. If he looks at Flavia, he will lose his appetite.”

      “This will not be a family dinner, Julia,” Octavia told her harshly. “Aunt Bellamy has invited all the officers and their wives. You will have your dinner in the nursery with the other children.”

      “What!” shrieked Julia. “Mama!”

      “I’m afraid your sister is right, my love,” Lady Anne said, cringing. “Your father would never allow it.”

      “Then I will just have to make the most of luncheon and afternoon tea,” Julia huffed. “I’m still allowed to have tea, ain’t I?” With her nose in the air, she swept from the room.

      Cornelia hopped up. “I believe I will write Cousin Nicholas a love letter. If he thinks my heart is breaking, perhaps he will marry me out of pity!”

      “That is an excellent idea, my love,” said Lady Anne.

      “But I was going to write him a love letter!” cried Flavia. “You stole my idea!”

      The two girls bolted from the room, pushing and shoving one another as they went.

      Augusta stood up and quietly left the room. Lady Anne knew the impossible girl was going to sneak off to the stables, but she hadn’t the energy to stop her. Alone with her eldest daughter, she wrung her hands. “Oh, what is to become of us? If only you were not engaged, Octavia! I am certain you would get Nicholas to come to the point. You are so clever.”

      “Yes,” Octavia agreed. “It is a great pity that Cousin Michael was not killed in the war. Then I would be free. He is a duke’s younger son—that is something, I suppose. But I should have liked to be a countess.”

      Lady Anne stared at her, shivering. “Octavia!” she protested weakly. “Y-y-ou cannot mean it.”

      Octavia looked at her scornfully. “Oh, don’t be such a lily-liver, Mama,” she said.

      From the window of her bedroom, Lady Harriet Fitzroy watched Lord Camford disappear into the Lime Walk with the Duchess of Warwick. Emma had donned a dark cloak for the excursion, but it was unmistakably she.

      “Well, well,” Lady Harriet said aloud. “That did not take long.”

      Smiling faintly, the old lady sipped her tea.

      It was half-past two by the time Emma and Nicholas left the greenhouses. The afternoon was as fine as the morning had been, crisp and sunny. Apart from the occasional breeze, Emma had no real need for her cloak. Their bellies were full of raw fruit and vegetables.

      “Shall we go on to the lake?” Emma asked him as they reached the heights of a small hill. “Or shall we go back to the house?”

      Even from two miles away, the huge house dominated the landscape, cold and white as a sepulcher.

      “I suppose we’d better go back,” Nicholas said reluctantly. “My aunt and uncle will be wondering about me. I’m supposed to have tea with them in the main drawing room.”

      They had strolled out to the secession houses in a leisurely manner, keeping up a light conversation as they went, but as they started back the way they had come, Nicholas’s stride was brisk and purposeful. Emma had to struggle to keep up with him as they hurried past the old tennis courts.

      “Do you know the game, Nicholas?” Emma asked, slowing him down. “I’m told it is beneficial exercise. I prefer badminton myself.”

      “Badminton, ma’am?” he said, fidgeting.

      Deliberately, she leaned against the stone wall of the tennis court. An expression of agony flitted across his face. “Are you late for an appointment?” she asked him coolly. “Or just eager to get away from me?”

      “No, ma’am!” he said with reassuring violence. “You have been everything charming.”

      “Then why are we running like jackrabbits?” she wanted to know.

      Nicholas’s face slowly turned crimson.

      “Oh,” Emma murmured, as the light dawned. “You need to answer a call of nature? Why didn’t you say so? You can go behind the hedge,” she told him kindly. “I’ll wait for you here. Go on.”

      “I couldn’t,” he stammered. “What you must think of me!”

      “I think you are flesh and blood,” she said, smiling. “Really, there’s no need to be embarrassed. Besides, what is the alternative?”

      “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, running behind the hedge.

      Emma lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. She had not slept well the night before, and she was tired. She was physically drained, too, having walked more in that one day than she had in weeks. She wondered idly if it was too early in the relationship to ask the gentleman to carry her back to the house on his back.

      Presently, she heard the rustle of branches as he came back to her, but her eyelids felt too heavy to open. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips.

      “Mmmm,” Emma said lazily.

      With both hands at her waist, he drew her close to him. He smelled pleasantly of a light scent, of tobacco, and horses. How odd, she thought, as his lips found hers, that he should smell of horses when he doesn’t ride.

      Her eyes popped open, looking directly into the pale green, oddly tilted eyes of Lord Ian Monteith. “Monty!” she gasped, throwing off his hands and shrinking back against the wall. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

      “I love you, Emma,” Monty announced loudly. “I have come here to make love to you. I burn with desire for you. Take pity on me. I am your slave.”

      “What?” she snarled under her breath. “What about my brother?”

      Monty blinked at her. “It was his idea,” he explained, lowering