Christmas Betrothals: Mistletoe Magic. Amanda McCabe

first birdsong lilted into the new morning Stephen stretched and yawned.

      ‘I have to go to sleep. Goodnight, Luc.’

      ‘Goodnight, Hawk.’

      When his oldest friend simply curled up at the bottom of his bed and was soon snoring, Lucas smiled. There were definitely advantages to being back in England and Stephen was one of them.

      The following morning he left Stephen still asleep in his lodgings and walked along the Thames, the winter whipping the river into grey waves that swelled up the embankment and threatened to engulf the pathway. He didn’t want to go to a club or a tavern or even to the Lindsay town house where he always felt welcome. No, today he simply walked, on past the Chelsea Hospital and down the route that the body of Wellington must had been taken during his state funeral last November. A million people had lined the streets then, it was said, and they would again at the next funeral, the next celebration, the next public function that caught the fancy of a nation.

      Life went on despite a wife who had betrayed him and an uncle who had died well before his time.

      Stuart Clairmont!

      Even now the name was hard to say and he ground his teeth together to try to stop the sorrow that welled up over the thought. A man who had been the father his own never was. A man who had loved and nurtured a lost child newly come from England and given him back the sense of purpose and strength that had been leached away from him under the punitive regime of a father who thought punishment to be the making of character.

      He still bore the scars of such bestial brutality and still hated William Clairmont with all the passion of a young boy who had never stood a chance.

      Where was Lilly? he wondered, the news of her engagement angering him again. She would marry a man who was patently wrong for her, a man who neither kissed her with any skill nor fought with a scrap of dexterity. He remembered the feeble slap Wilcox-Rice had given Paget before he had intervened, the breathless sheen on his face from the effort of doing even that, pointing to a spouse who would not protect a wife from anyone.

      The flaws in his argument pressed in. John Wilcox-Rice was a man who would not have enemies, his life lived in the narrow confines of an untarnished society. Why should he need to be adept at the darker arts of survival, the things that kept a man apart and guarded? As he was!

      The number of differences between Lillian and him spiralled upwards as he ran for the omnibus, and as the conductor inside issued him a ticket for the cramped and smelly space he was certain that the permitted twenty-two passengers was almost twice that number.

       Chapter Eleven

      No one was speaking to Lucas Clairmont, Lillian saw as she walked into the Billinghurst soirée that evening and found it was divided into two distinct camps.

      Oh, granted, the Earl of St Auburn and Lord Hawkhurst leaned against the columns on his side of the room, the smiles on their faces looking remarkably genuine, but nobody else went near him.

      It was the death of Lord Paget, she supposed, and the fact that much was said about the card games Lucas Clairmont was involved with. Gossip that did not quite accuse him of cheating, but not falling much short either.

      ‘Mr Clairmont does seem to inspire strong feelings in people, doesn’t he?’

      Lillian looked around quickly, trying to determine if her friend was including herself in that category.

      Lucas Clairmont looked vividly handsome on the other side of the room, dressed in a formal black evening suit that he looked less than comfortable in.

      ‘If he is here and not languishing in a London gaol, my guess would be the police thought him to have no knowledge of Lord Paget’s death.’

      Anne Weatherby at her side laughed at the summation. ‘You are becoming quite the defender of the man, Lillian. I heard it was your testimony at the St Auburns that had the Pagets fleeing in the first place.’

      ‘And for that I now feel guilty.’

      ‘Well, your husband-to-be seems to have no such thoughts. He looks positively radiant this evening.’

      John crossed the room towards them, Eleanor on his arm, and indeed he did look very pleased with himself.

      ‘I have it on good authority that Golden Boy is set to run a cracking first at Epsom this year and as he is a steed I have a financial stake in the news is more than pleasing. Is your father here, Lillian? I must go and impart the news to him.’

      Eleanor watched as her brother chased off again across the room and entwined her arm through Lillian’s.

      ‘I do believe that John loves your father almost as much as he loves you. He is always telling me that Ernest Davenport says this and Ernest Davenport says that. My own papa must be getting increasingly tired of having the endless comparisons, I fear, though in all honesty John hasn’t seen eye to eye with him for a very long time. The inherent competition, I suspect, between generations so closely bound. I often wonder if a spell in India or in the army might have finished my brother off well? Pity, perhaps, that that avenue is no longer available.’

      Lillian tried to imagine John in the wilds of the Far East and found that she just could not. He was a man who seemed more suited to the ease of the drawing room.

      Lucas Clairmont on the other hand never looked comfortable confined in the small spaces of London society. Oh, granted, he had a sort of languid unconcern written across him here as he conversed with his friends, but he never relaxed, a sense of animated vitality not quite extinguished. He also always stood with his back against the wall, a trait that gave the impression of constant guardedness. The guise of a soldier, perhaps, or something darker. She had read the stories of Colquhoun Grant and there was something in the character of Wellington’s head of intelligence that was familiar in the personality of the man who stood opposite her.

      As if he sensed her looking at him, his eyes turned to meet her own, dark gold glinting with humour. Quickly she looked away and made much of adjusting the pin on her bodice. When she glanced back, he no longer watched her and she squashed the ridiculous feeling of disappointment.

      Turning the ring John had given her on her betrothal finger, she tried to take courage from it as she listened to the conversation between Anne and Eleanor.

      ‘I hear that congratulations are in order,’ he said in a quiet tone as they met an hour later by one of the pillars in a largely deserted supper room. ‘Your groom-to-be must have made great strides in the art of kissing a woman.’

      ‘Indeed, Mr Clairmont,’ Lillian replied, ‘and although you may not credit it, there are, in truth, other things that are of much more importance.’

      ‘There are?’ His surprise made it difficult to maintain her sense of decorum.

      ‘A man’s reputation for one,’ she bit back, ‘is considered by a careful bride to be essential.’