Once Upon a Christmas Kiss (11 page)

Nodding, Winnie took his arm, grateful for the feeling of his strong body beside hers. Especially when she felt so vulnerable.

Chapter Eleven

Lucien had difficulty shaking the sense of rage he’d felt that morning on Winnie’s behalf. He’d never struck a woman, and if Mrs. Green were a man, she’d have been nursing a sore jaw by now.

The Hursts and their guests had left the warmth of the fire once more today, this time to trek into the wooded bit of parkland surrounding Sanditon House in search of greenery with which to decorate for the holiday. To add a bit of interest to the activity, before they set out, Hurst had divided them into two groups who would compete against one another to see who could bring in the most holly, ivy, evergreens, and mistletoe. Within a minute, wagers had been placed and rivalries had been formed.

Lucien and Winnie had struck out on their own a little and were working on separate sections of the same tree.

As he used his pocketknife of cut branches from a young fir, he reflected on his response that morning. There was something primitive about his need to protect Winnie. A new experience for him, but not unwelcome. It merely solidified his confidence that what he felt for her was just as deep as he’d first supposed. Some men might balk at the knowledge of such an attachment, but for some time now he’d felt a growing dissatisfaction with his solitary life. Now he suspected it had been meeting Winnie that prompted his restlessness. His betrothal to the lady gave him license to test the limits of his newfound possessiveness.

It merely remained to be seen whether so independent a lady as Winnie would tolerate such high-handed behavior. She’d certainly seemed to appreciate it that morning, he thought with a certain smugness.

“What are you grinning about?” she asked as she gathered pinecones from the snowy ground. “You look like the cat who got the cream.”

“Who says I need a reason besides being in the company of a lovely lady with the Christmas holiday upon us?” he asked mildly, realizing that he did enjoy that sensation very much.

“I don’t suppose you do,” she conceded. “Though our team might fare better in the competition if you spent more time cutting and less time flirting with me.”

In answer, he shook down a bit of snow from the branch he was cutting.

“You rascal! You did that on purpose.” Winnie untied her hat to shake the snow off.

“An accident, my dear,” he said unrepentant, dropping the branch and then himself to the ground beside her.

“Hmph, a likely story,” she teased, brushing snow from where it also dotted her skirt.

Lucien added his branch to the large basket where they had already amassed a respectable number of pinecones and branches. Then, after glancing around them to ensure no one else was about, he took Winnie, who was still hatless, by the arms and pressed her against the tree trunk.

Her nose was pink from the cold, her blond hair was desperately attempting to escape its pins thanks to the brisk wind, and he’d never thought her more beautiful.

“You are incorrigible,” she said, though it was obvious from the breathless way she spoke that she quite liked “incorrigible.”

“That’s why you like me,” he said, boxing his arms around her and leaning forward to kiss first her eyelids, then her nose, and, finally, with excruciating slowness, her mouth.

Though her lips were cool from the air, when he stroked his tongue into her mouth it was deliciously hot. As always happened when he was with her, his senses were almost immediately overwhelmed with her. From the softness of her skin to the rose-hinted scent of her hair to the feel of her hands slipping over his shoulders and around his neck, every inch of Winnie yielded yet another fascination for him. And when she mimicked his own moves by stroking her tongue against his, Lucien thought he’d lose control of himself right then and there.

Which is why he removed his hands from her hips and, regretfully, ended the kiss and buried his face in the curve of her neck. From the sound of her labored breathing, she was just as affected as he was.

“You are very good at that,” she said shakily.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” he said, drawing back from her a little. “If you get any better, I won’t be able to restrain myself. Or be seen in polite company in a cutaway coat.”

The sound of others tramping through the snow had them leaping apart. Lucien to pick up his abandoned branch, and Winnie the basket. More quickly than either of them could have anticipated, Lord and Lady Fowlkes, Mrs. Cowper, and Lord Stannis entered the clearing.

“We heard there might be some mistletoe round this way,” Stannis said, handing a flask to Lord Fowlkes, who took a long drink.

“I plan to steal kisses from every gentleman here,” Mrs. Cowper said with a laugh.

“Even my own dear Lord Fowlkes?” her sister demanded, affronted.

The widow glanced over at her rotund brother-in-law and all but shuddered. “Perhaps not Fowlkes,” she said, patting her sister on the arm. “I should hate to hurt your tender feelings, my dear.”

“That’s kind of you,” Winnie said wryly. “I’m quite sure your sister will appreciate your forbearance.”

“
I
won’t,” Fowlkes said with a grunt. “The wife ruins all my fun.”

“Mistletoe,” Stannis interjected, clearly bored with the antics of his companions. “Where is it, Sir Lucien?”

Lucien pointed upward, where Winnie saw a large ball of the parasitic plant attached to a fir branch. “Too high for me to climb, I’m afraid,” he said with a shrug.

Intercepting Winnie’s look of exasperation, he winked, which she answered with a glance heavenward.

“I’ll go,” Stannis said, either unaware or unconcerned with their silent conversation. “Here, Fowlkes, hold my flask.”

As he suited words to action, the rest of their team trudged up into their little circle.

“What’s this?” Hurst asked, hefting his own basket full to brimming with greenery.

“Stannis is proposing to climb this tree to cut down its mistletoe,” Lucien informed his cousin, hoping Hurst could read the warning about the younger man’s foolishness embedded in his words.

His cousin must have done, because after frowning up at the mistletoe, which was indeed very far up, he said, “I say, Stannis, don’t be foolish. I know a stand of trees a bit further on with all the mistletoe you can gather. Quite enough to win the competition for us.”

But Stannis was already removing his greatcoat, which he handed to Leaming, who’d followed the Hursts into the little clearing. “Not a problem,” Stannis assured his host. “I’ll nip up there and back in a trice, then we’ll go find the other clump of kissing bough.”

“Seems like a waste of time and effort to me,” Lucien said with studied calm. “Certainly not worth it, old fellow.”

But the young man was already searching for a foothold.

***

Winnie watched helplessly as Lord Stannis attempted to scale the tree. She’d hoped that Lucien and Lord Hurst’s attempts to dissuade the man would work, but he seemed not to have even noticed them.

The sound of an approaching voice, however, did give him pause.

“Lord Stannis,” Lady Emily called, her voice sharp with a maturity Winnie had never seen in her. “Do come down, sir. Surely a bit of mistletoe isn’t worth a broken head?”

Astonishingly the gentleman began shimmying back down. Much to the disgust of Lord Leaming. “Good god, man. You’ll let a bit of skirt talk you from doing as you please? You’re nothing but a—”

“Lord Leaming,” Hurst said in a tone that brooked no argument, “I will remind you that there are ladies present. Pray remember that before you speak, or I shall have to ask you to find somewhere else to stay. Regardless of the dangerous roads.”

Leaming responded with all the good grace Winnie expected from him—that is, very little. “Hmph, don’t know what was so bad about it. But looks like my breath’s wasted on Stannis anyway.”

Which did seem to be the case. As Winnie and the others looked on, Lady Emily and Lord Stannis stood just a little ways away, deep in conversation. Interesting, she thought. If Stannis was amenable to the influence of Lady Emily, then perhaps he was not so bad as his friend Leaming as she’d first suspected.

“Shall we go in search of the other mistletoe?” Lucien asked of the rest of the group. “We don’t have much longer to go until the competition is over.”

Winnie fell back to walk with him. “That was rather dramatic.”

“Not as dramatic as it might have been,” he said with a raised brow. “I’ve known young men to behave foolishly in my day but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a young lady talk one out of it so effectively.”

“There must be some history between them,” Winnie said, remembering the look on Lord Stannis’s face as he spoke to Lady Emily. “He cannot have changed his behavior based solely on a day’s acquaintance.”

“Turning into a romantic, are you?” he asked with a grin. “I daresay becoming engaged will do that to a lady.”

“It’s not that,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I daresay it’s more to do with a hope that Lord Stannis is actually a better man than Leaming is. I should hate to see Emily give her heart to a reckless man.”

“Things have changed between the two of you, haven’t they?” Lucien asked, clearly surprised. “That first evening I thought you and Lady Emily would come to blows. Or at the very least would send veiled insults to one another for the entire week.”

“No one is more shocked than I am,” Winnie responded. “But we came to an understanding, and I discovered that she is not so bad as all that. I suspect her ill humor was the result of overindulgence from her parents and a surfeit of attention from gentlemen. But since I make my living coaxing good behavior from young ladies, I was able to make peace with her.”

“You are far kinder than I’d have been in your situation,” he said with admiration that made Winnie uncomfortable. “I can think of few women who wouldn’t have scratched her eyes out after the way she treated you and your sister in the drawing room that first evening.”

But Winnie had learned long ago not to give in to her emotions that way. “I was angry that evening, make no mistake,” she admitted. “But I am glad I didn’t react or we’d not be friends now. Besides, I think there is much to be admired in Lady Emily. She simply needed some encouragement.”

Lucien looked skeptical, but didn’t argue. “So, there’s another suspect off our list,” he said in an undertone, likely so that no one would overhear them.

“I’m sorry—or I suppose happy?—to say there is,” she agreed. “That leaves us with Leaming, Mrs. Cowper, and Lady Fowlkes.”

By now they’d arrived at the other mistletoe tree. “We’ll figure it out,” he said before he turned from her to assess the evergreen.

Winnie was disappointed at the interruption, but was soon swept up in the quest for greenery herself. Even so, the subject lingered in her mind for the rest of the afternoon.

Chapter Twelve

In the end, despite their surfeit of mistletoe, Lucien and Winnie’s team was, alas, the losing one.

“I lost twenty pounds thanks to you lot,” Lord Hurst grumbled good-naturedly. “I should make you all sleep out in the snow.”

“Do not be such a poor host, my dear,” Lady Helen chided. “It is not their fault that the other team found the clump of low hanging mistletoe before we did.”

As punishment for losing, that team had to sing four carols while watching the winners sip on wassail and hot cider right in front of them. So it was with a sigh of relief that they finished the last note of “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming.”

“There is nothing quite so soothing as a warm drink on a cold day, Sir Lucien, is there?” Cordelia asked from where she stood in a circle with Lucien, Winnie, and Mr. Beesley, just inside the drawing room where servants were dispensing refreshments. “Winnie and I used to come running in from the cold at Christmastime, and cook would have hot cider and gingerbread waiting for us.”

“Were your Christmases more elaborate because your father was in the church?” Lucien asked, curious.

“Father was more a scholar than a vicar,” Winnie answered with a slight shrug. “He was conscientious about his living, of course, but his heart was in his books. He was a don at Oxford before he married Mama. But his preference for study meant that holidays were fairly ordinary for us. Though, of course, he passed down his love of scholarship to my sister and me.”

Lucien wondered if having to leave his position at university had fueled some of the resentment between the Nightingales, which Winnie had talked about earlier. Having to alter one’s course in life would lead to some friction between a couple, he reflected.

“Unusual for young ladies,” he said aloud. “But if she has the aptitude for it, I don’t see the harm in women becoming just as educated as they wish to.”

“That’s not quite how Papa saw things,” Cordelia said wryly. “He didn’t begin teaching us until it became clear that he would not have the son he dreamed of. I believe that was the disappointment of his life. Though once he came to terms with it, he managed to instill all the education he could on us.”

“And thank goodness for it,” Winnie added, “for when he and Mama died, we had little inheritance and it was our studies that gave us the ability to make a living.”

“Well, I, for one, am grateful,” Mr. Beesley spoke up with a smile for Cordelia, “else I’d never have met your sister, Miss Winifred. And I would count that a disappointment.”

“An excellent point, Beesley,” Lucien said, clinking glasses with him. “Mr. Nightingale’s decision to educate his daughters has proved quite advantageous for the two of us, has it not?”

“What are we toasting?” drawled Lord Leaming, who was already showing signs of intoxication at this early hour. Indeed, rather than wassail or cider, Lucien noted that it was brandy that filled his glass. “I hope it’s your betrothal,” Leaming said, leaning forward to speak directly to Winnie. “For you know how happy I am about it, Miss Winnie.”

Lucien fought back the urge to grab the younger man by the cravat and toss him across the room. “I think you should find someone else to talk to now, Leaming. Before this corner becomes inhospitable to you.” He stepped between Leaming and Winnie to emphasize his point.