Sophia James: Christmas Betrothals

Lucas shook his head. ‘I barely touched him and he only got in a punch because I wasn’t expecting it. Where does Lillian Davenport live, by the way?’

‘We’re back to her again. My God, she is as dangerous to you as her cousin and many times over more clever. A woman who all men would like to possess and who in the end wants none of them.’

Cassandra bustled into the drawing room, a steaming hot chocolate in hand.

‘Take no notice of my husband, Lucas. He speaks from his own poor experience.’

‘You were lining up, Nat, at one time?’

‘A good seven years back now. Her first coming out it was, and long before I ever set eyes upon my Cassie.’

‘And she refused you?’

‘Unconditionally. She waited until I had sent her the one and only love letter I have ever written and then gave it back.’

‘Better than keeping it, I should imagine.’

He nodded. ‘And those famous manners relegate anything personal to the “never to be discussed again” box, which one must find encouraging.’

‘So she’s not a gossip?’

‘Oh, far from it,’ Cassie took up the conversation. ‘She is the very end word in innate good breeding and perfect bearing. Every young girl who is presented at Court is reminded of her comportment and conduct and encouraged to emulate it.’

‘She sounds formidable.’

Cassandra giggled and Nathaniel interrupted his wife as she went to say more. ‘Lord, Cassie, enough.’ He caught her arm and pulled her down on to his knee. ‘Luc is only here in London until the end of December and we have much to reminisce about.’

‘I’ll drink to that, Nat.’ Raising his glass, Luc swallowed the lot, already planning his second foray into discovering the exact character of Daniel Davenport.

Lillian pulled up the sheets on her bed and lay down with a sigh. She had left her curtains slightly open and the moon shone brightly in the space between. A full moon tonight, and the beams covered her room in silver.

She felt … excited, and could not explain the feeling even to herself, the sleep she would have liked so far, far away. Her hand slid across her stomach beneath the gossamer-thin silk nightdress.

John Wilcox-Rice had been most attentive tonight, but it was another face she sought. A darker, more dangerous countenance with laughing golden eyes and a voice from another land. Her fingers traced across her skin soft and gentle, like the path of a feather.

Bringing her hands together when she realised where they lingered, she closed her eyes and summoned sleep. But the urgency was not dimmed, rather it flared in the silver moon and in the pull of something she had no control over. A single tear ran down her temple and into her hair. Wet. Real. She was twenty-five and waiting for … what?

The stranger had tipped his head to her, night-black hair caught long in the sort of leather strap that a man from past centuries would have worn. Careless of fashion!

His hands had been forceful and brown, work imbued into the very form of them. What must it be like to have a hand like that touch her body? Not soft, not smooth. Fingers that had worked the earth hard or loved a woman well!

She smiled at such a thought, but could not quite dismiss it.

‘Please …’ she whispered into the night, but the entreaty itself made her pause.

‘Let me find someone to love, someone to care for, someone to love me back.’ Not for her money or for her clothes or for the colour of her hair, which men always admired. Not those things, she thought.

‘For me. For just me.’ Words diffusing into the silence of the night as the winds of winter buffeted the house and the almost full moon disappeared behind thick rain-filled clouds.

Her father was at breakfast the next morning, an occurrence that was becoming more and more rare these days with the time he spent at his clubs and his new interest in horseflesh pulling him away from London for longer and longer time-spans.

‘Good morning, Lillian,’ he said with a lilt in his voice and her puzzlement grew. ‘I have it on good authority that you had a splendid time at the Lenningtons’ last night?’

A splendid time? She could not for the life of her quite fathom his meaning.

‘Lord Wilcox-Rice called to see me yesterday afternoon to ask if he might court you with an eye to a betrothal later in the month and I had heard from Patrick that you spent much of the night at his side.’

Lillian grimaced at her youngest cousin’s penchant for telling a tale. ‘I was there as a friend.’

The words were wrung out in anger and her father’s brows lifted in astonishment.

‘Wilcox-Rice has not said anything to you yet? Perhaps the boy is shy or perhaps you did not encourage him as it may have been prudent to.’

‘I do not wish for his advances. I could not even imagine …’

‘All the best marriages begin with just that. A friendship that develops into love and lasts a lifetime.’

The unspoken words hung between them.

Like your marriage did not. Mama. A quick dalliance with an unsuitable man and then her death. Repenting it all, and an absolution never given .

‘Lord Wilcox-Rice wishes for you to become better acquainted. He wants you to spend some time with him at his estate in Kent. Chaperoned, of course, but well away from London and it may give you the chance to—’

‘No, Papa.’

Her father was still. The knife he held in his hand was carefully set down on his plate, the jam upon it as yet to be spread. ‘I think, Lillian, we have come to an impasse, you and I. You are a girl with a strong mind, but your years are mounting and the chances you may have for a family and a home of your own are diminishing with each passing birthday.’

Lillian hated this argument. Twenty-five had pounced upon her with all the weight of expectations and conjecture; an iniquitous year when women were no longer young and could not fall back upon the easy excuse of choice.

‘John Wilcox-Rice is from a good family with all the advantages of upbringing that you yourself have had. He would not wish to change you, and he would make an admirable father, something that you must be now at least thinking about.’

‘But I don’t have any feelings for him. Not ones that would naturally lead to marriage.’

With a quick flick of his fingers her father dismissed the servants gathered behind them. Left alone, Lillian could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room, time marked by mounting seconds of silence.

Finally her father began. ‘I am nearing fifty, Lillian, and my health is not as it once was. I need to know that you are settled before I am too much older. I need grandchildren and the chance of an heir for Fairley Manor.’

‘You speak as if I am over thirty, Father, and I can see little wrong with the state of your health.’ She did not care for the harshness she heard in her voice.

‘Then if you cannot understand the gist of my words, I worry about you even more.’

His tone had risen, no longer the measured evenness of logic and sense, and Lillian walked across to the window to look out over Hyde Park where a few people rode their horses on the pathways. Everything was just as it should be, whereas in here….

‘I will give you till Christmas.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ She turned to face him.

‘I will give you until Christmas to find a man of your choice to marry, and if you have no other candidate by then you must promise me to consider Wilcox-Rice and without prejudice.’

His face was blotched with redness, the weight he had put on since last year somehow more worrying than before. Was he ailing? He had seen the physician last week. Perhaps he had learnt something was not right?