Page 11 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses

He swallowed hard and reached up to pull her hands down by her side though he didn’t release her. “You may not know what we’re doing, but I do. Where we’re going with this.” Glancing into the distance, he struggled to compose himself, then glanced back, his fierce gaze igniting a blaze in her belly. He tightened his hold, and his frantic pulse filtered into her consciousness. “Either I kiss you now like we both desperately want and you find it in yourself to tell Ridley something is happening between us, or we agree, right here in a snowy Yorkshire field, to take the safe bet and stop this. Back to being distant family friends, if we can, ending this before it gets away from us.” He pulled her close, into his body, swore, laughed roughly, and released her. “Your confounded expression added to my confusion speaks volumes. And I know it’s a surprise, trust me. I’m shocked, too, but it appears I’m not the cuckolding type. There’s also my best friend to consider, a man I respect above all others, your protective older brother. While you…” He yanked his beaver hat from his head, threading his fingers through his dark strands in a show of pure frustration. “You’re caught in a childish infatuation you don’t know how to back out of. I’m not even sure your attraction is real. When mine is astonishingly genuine.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then realized what she’d been about to say and stumbled back, out of his reach. “I have to save Longleat Manor, and my piddling botany efforts are no longer enough to do it. It’s my home, my aunt’s home, and she’s too old to leave. I owe her, and she’d hate me saying it, for taking me in after my parent’s carriage accident. I’m not fleeing to London to be a burden on Edward should that be your suggestion. In any case, I’d have nowhere in the city to house my plants, do my experiments. My notes, my books. Ridley will allow me to keep my work here, although I may have to insist he do so. You see, he’s offering a solution to my problem, a solution a thousand women in thetonhave taken before me, and I’m offering a solution to his.”

“A loveless solution. On your side, at least. Why you’re choosing him. He doesn’t make you feel anything.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “It’s an admirable strategy. I’m not trying to suggest it isn’t.”

She laughed, shocked he would mention this. “What has love to do with marriage?”

Tristan bounced the ax on his boot, his face a study in bewilderment. “Nothing in my experience. My parents could barely stand to be on the same continent. And when they were, it was wretched. Why I was hiding out here so often if you must know.”

Camille looked away before he witnessed sympathy crossing her face. He wouldn’t welcome the emotion, and she didn’t want to share it. Her heart was open like a tea rose in the spring, and she needed to distance herself until the petals closed.

Countess Milburn’s laughter filtered by on a frigid gust, deciding for them.

Camille stepped around him and started across the field, sure, for some reason absolutelysure, the Duke of Mercer would follow.

* * *

“He left? Just up and left? Before dinner even?”

Camille made a note in her text on plant anatomy and lifted her gaze to her aunt, who stood in the doorway of Longleat’s modest library with a scowl marring her patrician features. “Ridley had to get back to his mother, Aunt Bel. The dowager viscountess isn’t comfortable being alone in the family townhome, although Grosvenor Square is the safest address in the city. And they employ a large staff as well. But who am I to judge? Heisher only child.”

“Men with too close a relationship to their mother are a disaster, love. The reason I turned down my fifth proposal. Lord Birley, I think it was. His mother was a fright. They slept in the same bed until he was twenty-one.”

Camille laid her book and quill aside, realizing this conversation was going to occur, whether she wanted it to or not. Whether her aunt understood what she was talking about or not. Isabel Merchant, Lady Fontaine, daughter of a marquess and a steadfast bluestocking before they were titled as such, had never married, therefore had little practical experience with mother-in-laws.

Or rules.

Or impossibilities.

Strolling to the mahogany sideboard, Bel pulled the stopper off the brandy decanter, splashed a liberal amount in a tumbler, and took a brooding sip. “I’m not talking about Ridley, and you know it.” Glancing over her shoulder, she gestured to her glass. “Would you like one?”

Camille nodded. She may as well get tipsy as the day had gone from bad to worse. Bad being trying to convince herself she didn’t want to kiss Tristan again. Worse being watching him climb into his carriage and race into the night without a backward glance.

Typical of the way he handled conflict.Run.

Conversely, watching Ridley ride away had been painless.

Bel handed Camille a glass and took a precarious perch on the settee as if she expected to flutter off at any moment. The glow from the hearth rolled over her, an amber glimmer off her bone-gray chignon, her pewter eyes. “Did you see him handle that ax? The dainty English fur you selected for our holiday decor had no chance, two blows of the blade, and done. And he carried it back like it weighed nothing! Imagine a duke having such broad shoulders. Such muscles, no need for padding. His tailor must be impressed.” She fanned her cheeks and blew out a honeyed breath. “My, did he grow up brilliantly. Celestial beauty. Simply celestial. While Ridley, poor devil, nearly chopped his toes off. Rather unfortunate, his masculine skills.”

Camille slumped against the settee and rolled her head toward her aunt. “This is where this conversation is going? Talk of broad shoulders and the lack of muscle tone in my intended’s arms?”

“So, you admit Mercer’s attractive?” Bel laughed, a bawdy, booming laugh Camille associated with happiness and independence. Two things she was considering giving up. “What better topics than those, my darling botanist? Except for Ridley’s lack of strength, that is. More interesting than”—she circled Camille’s book into her line of sight, read the title, and visibility shuddered—“plant anatomy.”

Camille traced her tongue over her teeth and took a healthy sip. “Of course, Mercer’s attractive. I’m not blind.”

“I wondered if you still thought so, because at one time you had your eye on him. Anytime he was in the same room, you were like a hawk over a mouse. It was quite captivating to watch.”

“I was twelve years old, Bel. It was annoying.”

Her aunt whistled through her teeth, releasing a refined, one-shouldered shrug. “Children are very wise, I’ve found. They see the truth when others can’t. And a girl’s infatuation compares not to a woman’s. He may no longer be annoyed.” She sipped and smiled, gazing about the room as if her next query wasn’t a zinger. “While we’re on this topic, might it have to do with you, his abrupt departure? The duke was extremely stoic during the tree-killing, those smiles he tosses out like tattered socks nowhere to be found. A foul mood, if I had my guess. He usually makes an effort to contain the darkness. And I used to know the boy well, quite well indeed.”

Camille’s mind, soothed by spirits, drifted. “I’m sure you did. He was here often when we were children.”

Bel rotated the strand of pearls anxiously around her neck. They clinked softly, as only pearls can, gleaming in the candlelight. It was the last piece of jewelry left in the family; they’d sold the rest to keep the estate solvent. “Loneliest boy I’ve ever seen. His parents were unfit tobeparents. A blessing they only had one child to ruin. Mercer’s father was not a pleasant man. And his mother, ah, I wonder if it’s unkind to say she was worse? Even without your parents, you had me. You had Edward. He had no one.”

Camille glanced out the library window and watched snow stick to the glass pane. Tristan didn’t have far to travel. Tierney Hall was less than five miles away. She hoped the roads were passable. Her parent's carriage had overturned no more than two miles from here on a snowy night twenty years ago. “His last mistress was the most famous actress in England,” she murmured. “He’s not lonely, Bel.”

“You think lovers keep someone from being lonely?” Bel patted her hand and sighed as she dropped her head back to the settee. Her aunt’s favored fragrance, jasmine with the lightest touch of lemon, drifted away from her with the movement. “How sweet, how naïve, when nothing is further from the truth. I should know. Lying next to someone you don’t love can be a dreadfully forlorn experience. I’m trying to make you understand, in my delicate way, before it’s too late.”