Page 1 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
CHAPTER1
WHERE CHILDHOOD ADVERSARIES ARGUE OVER A SWAN
Longleat Manor, North Yorkshire, England
The Seventh Day of Christmas, 1815
She wasn’t chasing a duke ever again.
Never, ever,ever.
Camille Bellington yanked a dangling thread from her sleeve and blew a breath that anyone who heard it would excuse as refined from her lips.
She couldn’t believe he’d been invited.
She knew preciselywhyhe’d been invited.
Camille sent a penetrating stare down the enormous table dominating her aunt’s formal dining room, her lips pressed hard enough to crack. Lady Isabel Fontaine snickered at something the Earl of Edelman said, refusing to catch her niece’s eye when Camille’s gaze must have scorched. Her aunt loved nothing more than a dash of fun at someone else’s expense.
“You’re wasting those smoldering looks on the hardest head in England, Princess. Lady Fontaine couldn’t care less about your high dander. She wants a spot of entertainment, and we’re it.”
Surprised by his astuteness, Camille glanced at Tristan Tierney, the fifth Duke of Mercer, for the first time all evening. Through a trembling candlelit glimmer, the clack of crystal and silverware a dull chime in her ear, his undeniable, bombastic magnificence flowed through her to lodge quite faithfully in her belly, an unwelcome return. Dressed head to toe in black except for his loosely-tied cravat and pressed linen shirt, eyes glowing, teeth flashing, dark hair mussed just so, he presented a dazzling ducal puzzle every woman in thetonlonged to solve.
More the fool, she found she couldn’t look away.
Even though she loathed him.
Truly. Like a toothache, a hangnail, a shallow cut on the tip of one’s finger that took forever to heal.
Her wound had takenyearsto heal.
As Tristan bestowed his absolute attention on her for the first time in memory, her mind went hazy. Usually, she was an unseen annoyance—his best friend’s much younger sister—but curiously his unblinking gaze fastened her to her chair like an insect caught in amber.
He’d always been handsome, but now it was worse. Time had carved grooves alongside his mouth, hardened his jaw, broadened his shoulders.
Made a man from a boy.
The chattering throng her aunt had invited to a rousing Christmastide dinner didn’t understand the change, but she did. There were no obvious scars from the Battle of Waterloo, and he’d made light of requests for heroic narratives, but Tristan’s eyes, as green as a bearberry leaf, held a thousand teasing secrets that attracted and repelled in turn.
A blatant appeal should one be set on unlocking a gorgeous mystery, which Camille was not.
And hadn’t been for years.
Countess Milburn, seated to his right, gave a breathy sigh and tapped her butter knife on his wrist, which would have been scandalous had she not been thirty years his senior and generally regarded as the grande dame of England. “Mercer, darling, you were going to tell us about your plans for your ancestral estate now that your father has passed on, may he rest in peace.”
Tristan’s smile was a dreamy display of graciousness, believable for anyone who hadn’t assiduously studied it. “Was I?” he murmured, his gaze sliding away and allowing Camille to bring a frankincense-and-roasted-goose breath into her lungs. “I believe I was about to ask Lady Bellington to recount the time she tussled with a swan in the Serpentine. A perfect topic for the season. And apropos. Aren’t they the symbol for the seventh day of Christmas?”
The choice of subject, and the wry amusement in his voice, sent a bolt of fury through Camille. She glanced around the table, realizing the Duke of Mercer had balanced the entire focus of the room atop her head like an ill-fitting bonnet. Bringing her glass to her lips, she took a revitalizing sip of wine before speaking. “That’s a rumor. And an ancient one.”
He laughed around a bite of goose, chewed slowly, smiled wickedly, before lifting his gaze and snaring hers again. Pinned right to her chair, indeed. “Don’t go down that path. I saw the poor beast after the battle if you recall.”
“You bring this up,” she whispered, “to divert attention from yourself.”
“An effective strategy,” he volleyed, “and I’m nothing if not a well-trained soldier. What’s surprising to me is that you’re still upset about an event that happened years ago.” He shrugged a broad shoulder and shared a slice of his devastating charm with the room’s inhabitants as if to say,petty of her, am I right?
“It was partially your fault. You and Edward.” Her brother had hooted when she fell into the pond as if he’d never seen such a thing. Who tried to pet a swan, after all? Then he’d sighed and begun the process of dragging her out, a bold rescue of his reckless sister from the grasp of an enraged fowl.
Tristan tipped his glass toward her with an elegant turn of his wrist. “You’re the one who said swans were nice. We tried to tell you they’re bloody nasty, not to touch. I don’t even know why we brought you along. Your governess begged us to, I suspect.”