Page 12 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
Camille cringed and brought her arm over her face. She’d known her aunt had male friends years ago, but to discuss them was a different matter altogether. And thinking about Tristan in bed with another woman made her want to smash her tumbler against the wall. “I’m sure I don’t want to hear this.”
Bel turned to face her niece, grasped her hand, and held on tight. “I won’t allow you to marry Ridley to save Longleat, Camille. Do you hear me? We can go to London. It might even be the best solution. You’ll marry for love or not at all. I hoped if Mercer spent time with you, your infatuation would rise up and knock him in the head, now that you’re old enough to act on it. You’ve both turned out so well, so pleasingly pretty, and he a hero, a difficult but good man. I will say, he couldn’t remove his gaze from you today, though he tried mightily to. I’m surprised Ridley didn’t challenge him, but he knows better. Mercer would thrash him, the pup.”
“Maybe I love Ridley,” Camille muttered after finishing the last of her brandy. Her head and belly were as warm as a lit ember, and she suddenly felt quite talkative. And sleepy.
Bel’s gasp didn’t disappear behind the hand she threw to her lips. “Do you?”
“I’m not chasing a duke. Never, ever,everagain.”
Her aunt groaned and dropped her head. “I know he brought up the swan story, a bit cheeky, the naughty boy, but it’s a fond remembrance among family.”
Camille snorted, switched glasses with Bel and emptied it.
“Oh, darling”—she wrestled the crystal away from Camille—“you’re going to be foxed.”
Camille leaned back, closed her eyes, and imagined what it would be like to do more than kiss a man—when the kisses themselves were so,sogood. Her mind swam with suggestive images that sent hot streaks along her skin. “He kisses like a demon. Horribly addictive, I imagine. Like opium. Absinthe even.”
Bel sputtered a laugh. “Oh, dear, me, youarehalf-sprung. This is the greatest conversation of my life. Do go on.”
“He has an enviable bottom lip I shall cling to next time. I think he’d like that. He didn’t rush it, didn’t force me. It was all my decision. I felt powerful.”
“Oh, this is more than I’d hoped for. Mercer’s not only lovely but a generous lover. So there will be a next time. How could there not when you make a simple kiss sound so glorious?”
Camille twisted her hands together in her lap. Dejected. Guilt-ridden. Ashamed. “No. The war hero doesn’t want to cuckold Ridley, can you believe it? I suppose I was willing to, ye of little moral fiber. My one chance to experience passion before marriage to a man I feel no passion for, and Mercer’s ruining it with his bloodyprinciples.” She said the last in the same tone as she’d say chamber pot. “In any case, he doesn’t know what he wants. It was a kiss to kill, true, but nothing more. I stunned him, I stunned myself, but he still ran off with his tail between his legs. Champion sprinter, our devilish duke.”
“So, only a kiss.” Bel gave her pearls a good spin. “The killing kind, which must be the best.”
Camille made a mark in the air. “Correct.”
“With no proposal attached to it.”
Another mark. “Correct.”
“Then you’ll simply have to compromisehim. While we let him think it’s his decision, since he’s wavering. You’ll force his hand in ways tried and true. Foolproof, feminine chicanery. We only have to devise a plan.”
“Sounds like a devious trick to play on a family friend.”
“I was compromised by multiple wonderful men in my youth, Camille. I highly recommend it. It’s time men got theirs.”
Countess Milburn chose this moment to stagger into the library, her ivory-tipped cane in hand. When it got later in the day, her hip tended to lock up, and she wouldn’t dare use it if men were present. “He left, did he? Ruins my plans, right down the drain with the filthy bathwater.”
Camille groaned low in her throat.
Bel gave her pearls an additional rattling shake. “Ridley had to get back to his mother. You know the dowager viscountess doesn’t like to be alone in the Mayfair residence. As dangerous as a rookery to her mind. Evidently, a thousand servants aren’t enough to comfort her.”
The countess’s limping shuffle sounded as she crossed the room, then Camille heard the decanter clink. So they were all going to get foxed this evening. “I don’t care an owl's hoot about Ridley! My grand celebration just lost all significance. Imagine, a duke at the Milburn winter ball for the first time since Parnell attended in 1801. And he was nothing to look at, nothing likethisone. Mercer’s attendance would have hit the gossip sheets, posthaste. Everyone knows he’s kept a low profile since blasted Waterloo. The rumor is, he’s not even keeping a mistress. The opera singer was years ago, wasn’t she, before he left?”
“Actress,” Camille murmured.
“Well, no matter, because she’s out of the picture. My ball could have served as his reintroduction to society. A chance to snatch up a wildly available man, if only for one night. I have a footman oil all the parlor and sitting room locks before a gathering. Incredibly well-maintained should a couple want to utilize the space for fifteen minutes or so. I don’t mind innuendo but don’t want an outright scandal occurring on the premises.” She thumped her cane on the floor, three hard blows. “Behind bolted doors is best for all.”
“Adelia,” Bel gasped, “not in front of an unmarried girl if you please.”
Camille opened her eyes to find the countess’s belligerent gaze fixed on her. “Balderdash. She’s no girl. Do you see the way she looks at him, like icing atop a biscuit. And don’t go suggesting I’m talking about Ridley! If Mercer ran away with that level of heat licking his skin, my ball is doomed.”
“I don’t look at him like icing atop anything,” Camille whispered from her slump on the settee, though she feared this was exactly how she’d looked at Tristan and always had. She palmed her aching chest, wishing to disappear from the room and this horrid conversation. “I don’t even like him.”Although he kisses like a dream, she thought somewhat distractedly, brandy a lingering influence.
“Like it or not, someday he has to marry and put an heir in place. I mentioned there would be several eligible young ladies in attendance.” The countess threw herself into the chair closest to the fire, hooked her cane on the arm, and drank half her brandy in one gulp. “Not all horse-faced misses, either. Lady Monterey has promised to attend. And the Wellesley chit, she’s quite nice to gaze upon. If only she wouldn’t speak. Find a wife, find a mistress, up to you, I told him. I left it open, after alluding to my pristine locks. Always good to let the randy ones know in advance, is my policy.”