The storm arrived with a vengeance. It snowed all through the night, and by the time morning came everything was covered in a heavy blanket of white, including the road to London. Standing with his arms crossed and his legs braced apart, Eric scowled out the drawing room window at the stone drive. Or at least where he imagined the drive to be. Given all the snow, it was impossible to tell precisely where anything was. 

He’d already gone out and checked on the horses. They were all tucked safely inside, contentedly eating their hay. But they wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.

None of them would.

“Blast and damn,” he cursed, turning away from the wintry landscape to glare at the hearth. The crackling fire, along with the velvet bows pinned to the curtains and the evergreen boughs draped along the mantle, gave the room a distinctly festive air. His brow creased as he noticed a clump of mistletoe hanging from the door. When the devil had that gotten there?

Stalking over to the doorway, he yanked the mistletoe down and tossed it onto the nearest table. Then he happened to glance out into the foyer and his eyes widened, then narrowed.

Bloody hell.

Mistletoe, holly, and evergreens were everywhere.

Dangling down from every doorway, wrapped around the staircase bannister, in vases on the windowsills. There wasn’t a drape or a doorway that had escaped decoration.

“You there,” he barked at a maid passing by the drawing room. “What’s the meaning of this?”

A flicker of fear crossing her face, the maid stopped short. “The meaning of what, Your Grace?”

He gestured around the room with a vague sweep of his arm. “This. And that. All of it!”

“Oh.” The maid’s nervous frown gave way to a beaming smile. “Isn’t it lovely, Your Grace? Why, I cannot recall a time the manor has ever looked so festive! Have you seen the gingerbread house in the solarium yet?” 

Eric blinked. “The ginger what?”

“It’s absolutely marvelous,” the maid gushed. “Why, Her Grace even made little gingerbread men!”

His jaw tightened. For most people, Christmas was a time of joy and celebration. But the winter holiday had never brought him much joy, and listening to his parents scream at one another had hardly been cause for celebration.

On the rare occasion his mother hadn’t been in the arms of another man and his father had been sober enough to recall what day it was, they’d managed to have breakfast together as a family, but that was always where the revelry ended. There had never been any opening of presents in front of the fireplace, or kissing under the mistletoe, or burning the yuletide log. And there’d certainly never been any gingerbread men.

“Where is she?” he growled.

“I – I believe Her Grace is still in her bedchamber,” the maid squeaked. “Is there anything I can–”

But he was already gone.

 

“Anne, could you leave us please?” Caroline said calmly when her husband stormed into her bedroom, his face as dark as a storm cloud and his steely eyes flashing with temper.

Dropping the comb she’d been using to style Caroline’s hair into a neat chignon, the maid was only too happy to scurry from the room. She closed the door neatly behind her, and in the brittle silence that followed her departure the quiet click of the tumbler falling into place sounded like a gunshot.

Drawing her robe more closely around her shoulders, Caroline met Eric’s hard gaze in the silvery reflection of her dressing mirror. Like Perseus and Medusa, she thought, the corners of her mouth twitching. An apt comparison, given how Gorgonesque her husband had been acting as of late. If only defeating him could be so easy. Cutting off a monster’s head was a straightforward endeavor. Melting a duke’s heart was much more difficult.

Mayhap even impossible.

Picking up the comb Anne had dropped, she began to work it through her long hair, careful not to let the ivory spines catch on any tangles. “I see you have not yet left for London.”

He jerked an irritable shoulder at the window. “We are completely snowed in. I wouldn’t be surprised if the roads were not cleared until well after Christmas.” He paused. “I see you have been decorating.”

Surprised that he had noticed, she inclined her head ever-so-slightly. “There are still the second and third floors to be done, but the first is nearly finished. I’d planned on completing the library this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you decorating?” he asked between gritted teeth. “No one asked you to.”

“Because it is Christmas,” she said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. “I did not realize I needed your permission.”

“You don’t. It’s just…never mind,” he muttered, glancing away from the mirror as a muscle ticked in his jaw.

Caroline frowned. “Do you not like Christmas?”  

“No. Not particularly.”

“But it is the happiest time of the year,” she said, aghast at the idea of someone disliking Christmas. Who didn’t love a house that smelled of fresh evergreens and carolers singing by candlelight and finding the perfect yuletide log to burn in the hearth?  

“For you, perhaps. But not for me.”

“How can you hate Christmas?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “It’s a time of joy and giving. Of celebration and festivity. Of hope and–”

“I get the bloody idea,” he said curtly. “Not everyone was raised in the same fairytale family as yours. For some of us Christmas is simply another day.”

She barely managed not to snort. “I would hardly call my family a fairytale. You’ve met my mother.”

“And you should consider yourself lucky that you’ve never met mine.”

Something in the way he spoke caught her attention. Her winged brows drew together over the bridge of her nose. “I…I am afraid I do not understand. I thought your mother was…”

“Deceased?” he drawled when she hesitated. “Hopped the twig? Popped her clogs? Gone to a sticky end?”

Caroline gasped. “I really don’t think you should speak of the dead in such a manner. Especially your own mother.”

“The old witch isn’t dead.” He rubbed his chin. “Or at least I don’t think she is.”

“You mean you do not know?”

“How would I? We haven’t spoken in nearly ten years after she made it clear that her various lovers were more important than her own sons.” Although he managed to keep his voice steady, he couldn’t quite disguise the flash of pain in his eyes. “Your Christmases may have been spent roasting chestnuts by the fire, but I can assure you I do not have such happy memories.”  

It was the first time Eric had ever revealed anything of a personal nature, and her heart ached for the boy whose mother had been so callously selfish that she had preferred the company of another man to her own children.

No wonder Eric held love in such bitter disregard! Her own mother was hardly perfect, but at least Caroline knew that she was loved. What would it have been like to grow up without that assurance? Terribly lonely, she imagined. No wonder her husband thought himself incapable of love. How could he know what it felt like to love someone if he’d never been loved himself?

As a new sense of understanding for the complicated man she’d married softened the hard edges of her anger, she set her comb aside and gathered her long mane at the nape of her neck. “Would you mind helping me?” she asked softly. “Anne makes it all look so easy, but I fear fashioning a chignon is much more difficult than it appears.” Her lips curved in a self-deprecating grin. “Or perhaps I would simply make a poor lady’s maid.”

Eric crossed the room to stand behind her and she felt her spine tingle with awareness when he gently rested his hands on her shoulders, warm fingers sliding beneath the lace edge of her dressing robe.

“What do you need me to do?” Their eyes met in the mirror, pale gray sinking into deep, dark blue. She saw the arousal in his gaze. Felt it in the heat pulsing from his body. Heard it in the husky velvetiness of his voice. If only she could magically turn his lust into love! There was plenty of it to spare. But of course it wasn’t that simple. Nothing worth having ever was.

“Just hold – hold this pin,” she said, her breath catching when his thumbs slowly traced along the edges of her collarbones.

“There’s only one problem,” he murmured, his breath warming her cheek as he leaned in close. He smelled of brandy and the faintest hint of peppermint. Heat pooled between her thighs and she squirmed on the velvet stool as a wave of desire swept up through her body, threatening to drown out all common sense.    

“What – what is that?” she asked weakly.

“I like your hair down.” He slowly drew her hands away from her hair and it tumbled down her back in a curtain of burnished gold. Sweeping it to the side, he started to kiss his way down her neck, but when his hand slipped between the folds of her dressing robe and cupped her breast she stiffened.

“W-wait,” she gasped as logic pushed against longing. “This will not solve anything.”

“I can think of at least one thing it will solve,” he said meaningfully, capturing her wrist and placing her hand on his hard phallus.

She began to touch him through his breeches, her head falling back on a moan of pleasure as he captured her mouth and boldly slid his tongue between her lips in a series of long, drugging kisses that left her dazed and disoriented.

His hand slid between her thighs and they fell open. She was already damp with need. He growled his approval as he parted her curls and began to stroke the sensitive bud nestled above the heart of her femininity. Six long, sensuous slides of his finger against her quivering flesh and she was completely lost. 

Logic? What was logic when she had passion? This was what she craved, after all. To feel desired above anything or anyone else. To feel needed. Need was a poor substitute for love, but in the moment it was all she had…and she clung to it with the desperation of a drowning sailor trying to keep his head above water.  

Her palms bit into the marble edge of the dressing table when he dragged her to her feet. Drunk on desire, she vaguely heard the crash of the stool as he kicked it aside. She hissed out a breath when he hiked up her robe and the cool air brushed against the back of her legs, but then he plunged himself into her warm, wet sheath and there was only heat.