Page 59 of His Wicked Little Christmas
Franny waved the comment away, unaccepting. “I’ll tell my father I’ve been invited to a winter house party at the country estate of a viscount. Through your introduction, of course. The opportunity for encounters with titled men of modest means. Ada will hate it, but shehates everything about England. I can’t change that. In any case, how challenging can one little girl and a cantankerous viscount be?” Franny crossed her fingers in the folds of her skirt, the lie rolling off her tongue like honey. “I’m only suggesting it because I have nothing better to do, and your cousin needs assistance.”
Mrs. Streeter shook her head woefully. “Fine. I’ll arrange it. Your last hurrah before marriage to the scant-statured baron. If your companion sticks to you like glue, and you avoid Remington as often as possible, perhaps nothing will go awry. Our home in Derbyshire is only a twenty-minute carriage ride away, should you need me.”
Franny sat back with a smile, her plan in motion. She might like the country, she decided, future sketches of Chance Allerton swimming through her mind.
An orphan. An outcast. A tortured artist.
What could possibly go awry?
Chapter Two
Where a Fatigued Viscount Ponders Parenthood
Three Days Later at a Viscount’s Shabby Estate
Chance threw his booted feet atop a desk in the Allerton family for two centuries and dropped his head to his hands. His skin smelled of nutmeg and chalk. He had a dab of what he hoped like hell was jam on his sleeve. He’d run circles around the house without a hint of pleasure surrounding the effort.
It was two hours past twilight, and he’d just gotten the girl to bed.
Katherine Elise Brierly, a six-year-old termagant and his problem for the rest of hislife, wasn’t well-mannered as he’d promised Hildy. She was the most talkative creature he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. She had opinions on every topic, many suited to a woman, not a child. How his cravat was tied. His boots polished. The ragged trim on her counterpane. The tattered velvet drapes in her bedchamber. The water stains on the ceiling in the breakfast room.
Chance groaned and massaged his temples.
And thequestions. How old was the estate? How big? Did he have horses? Why was his majordomo, Alfred, so crooked? Was he married? Did he plan to be? Did he have a dog? Perhaps kittens? The girl had stated unequivocally that she wanted kittens.
Chance glanced across the space, considering the drink cart without thought to make that wish happen.
Raising a child was a damned sight harder than it looked.
He’d found himself explaining things he could—his marital state, number of horses and pets—and leaving much of the rest to his housekeeper, Mrs. Walker. Who let him know right off she couldn’t keep up with a child without the assistance of the governess variety. His father had, somewhere along the way, let Rose Hill’s staff go due to dwindling funds, so they had the bare minimum. Although he’d not spent much time in Derbyshire growing up, Chance recalled Mrs. Walker being aroundforever. She was likely as old as this desk.
Despite it all, however, he liked it here. Miserable memories from his childhood weren’t a part of this place.
Lifting his head, he gazed about at what had once been an impressive library. His father had sold off many of the volumes, leaving gaps on dusty shelves. Cobwebs. Streaked windowpanes. Faded carpets. General neglect, which his father had excelled at. With regard to dwellings and children.
But the foundation was solid. Like a sliver of wood that would make a gorgeous piece of furniture once he took it in hand, he knew, with hard work and an infusion of capital, he could restore the estate to some level of its former glory. There was a dowager’s cottage at the edge of the woodland that would make an astounding workshop. He currently leased space in London from Xander Macauley, his shipping partner, which worked out well enough.
But this would behis.
It all came down to blunt he didn’t have. Time he wasn’t sure he could allocate when he had twootherdecaying properties to worry about. A brother in the middle of a dangerous rebellion. A thriving business, his passion. When aside from making furniture, he’d never had a passion. No woman he couldn’t live without, that was certain.
He recalled the smile on Hildy’s face the other day. He wanted whatshe had with Tobias Streeter. He truly did. Society assumed because he played fast and loose that he didn’t wish for a wife, a family. He might be a scoundrel, but he wasnota cad. Of all his affairs, none had ended, except for the one with that fanatical countess, with a vase being thrown at his head. He was friends with each and every chit he’d tupped. His predicament was more, well, he’d never needed anyone enough tofightfor them. Or had never felt he couldlethimself need anyone might be the best way to describe his quandary.
Now this girl. Katherine Elise Brierly. Six-year-old hellion in muslin.
Wasshethe peculiar start to his family?
Chance drifted to sleep dreaming of off-limits governesses and talkative girls who tugged his heartstrings.
Viscount Remington’s eyes were blue.
A piercing, haunting blue. She likened the color to the icy glints shimmering in the snowflakes swirling about. One caught on the bow of his top lip and melted while she watched, setting her knees trembling beneath more layers than she’d ever needed to wear in Philadelphia.
Alas, her shivers were not due to the brutal English winter.
His expression stunned, Remington halted in the entranceway, her portmanteau dangling from his fingers. The coachman who had accompanied her was seeing to the carriage and horses, arranging for her trunk to be delivered to her bedchamber. Her companion, Ada, stood to the side of the corridor in disparaging silence, which was as it should be. Ada was unhappy about arriving four hours late due to the storm and evenmoreunhappy to be plotting a governess farce in this “blasted wreck of a country.”
“You’re American,” Remington said, his gaze racing the length of her as if he searched for a mark to verify his evaluation.