Читать книгу A Christmas Scandal - Jane Goodger - Страница 7

England, one month later

Edward Hollings was trying, rather desperately, to think of a single reason why he should not bring his step-aunt and her brood of children to visit Bellewood. Finding reasons to avoid his best friend’s estate had not been an issue until he’d received a happily worded note from the duchess gushing about the imminent arrival of one Miss Pierce.

He’d held that note in his hand and crushed it with a curse. Damnation. His life had been wonderfully bland, filled with the normal pleasures, willing married women, balls, gambling, and overseeing his late uncle’s vast and remarkably astute investments. Unlike many of the peerage, Lord Hollings was fortunate to have inherited a title that was once held by a financial genius. The former earl had been unsuccessful in only one aspect of his life: bearing children. So, finding himself a widower rather late in life, he’d married a woman who had more than proved her fertility by bearing six children in quick succession. Step-aunt Matilda’s fertility ground to a halt the moment her first husband died and she married his now-deceased uncle. And so when Edward’s uncle died, without an heir, he inherited the estate, as well as his step-aunt and her children. A few men had wondered aloud why he was continuing to support an entire family when he had no legal responsibility to do so, but what was he to do? Send a poor family packing to live in some moldering estate in the middle of nowhere? No.

And so his step-aunt and her six children had become part of his bachelor family, which already included a sister who refused to marry. Refuse was likely an exaggeration, for no one had actually asked her yet. But Edward was quite convinced no one had asked her because she had purposefully made herself completely unappealing to every male in all of Britain. He’d threatened to ship her off to America if she persisted in being so absolutely obstinate, something she’d enthusiastically agreed to, much to his frustration. The duchess was no help in that regard, insisting that, even though her own forced marriage had ended wonderfully, no woman should be asked to marry someone she wasn’t completely in love with.

What utter rot.

His sister, Amelia, would point out with sharpshooter precision that she should not be asked to be married when her brother was so apparently opposed to that particular life state. She would also point out, rather gleefully, that he needed an heir and so should be required to marry sooner than she. As far as marriage went, he’d only been tempted once, and had found that particular time so horribly trying he’d vowed to avoid any sort of emotion that could be construed as love.

And now she was coming to visit.

Surely, he was being tested by God or played with by the devil.

“So,” his sister Amelia said, waltzing into his study as if she had every right to be there, which she didn’t. It really was as if his sour thoughts had conjured her from nothing. “Are we all going to Bellingham?” she asked, waving a piece of vellum in front of her that looked suspiciously like the one the duchess had sent to him. “It’s always so much fun there. I absolutely adore the duchess and the children do, too.” She lifted the letter up with a flourish and read, “My dearest friend, Maggie Pierce, is arriving within the fortnight, and as Miss Pierce is already well acquainted with your brother, it will be a homecoming of sorts for her.” She lowered the letter, an evil little twinkle in her eye. “You are well acquainted with Miss Pierce?”

Edward pretended to look over his own letter, silently cursing the duchess for also writing to his sister. “Yes. We met in Newport. I thought she mentioned it.”

“How well are you acquainted? I only wonder that Her Grace would mention someone so specifically if it would have little or no meaning to you.” In a flash, she changed tactics and jumped down onto his favorite leather chair, her skirts billowing up in her exuberance. “Oh, do tell. Is she the one?”

“There is no ‘the one,’” he said darkly.

“But I’m quite certain I overheard His Grace and you discuss someone of importance. And you were an absolute ogre when you first returned from America,” she pointed out rather happily. “Everyone thought there could be only one reason for a man to be in such a mood. Love.” She was fairly giddy with her teasing.

Edward let out a beleaguered sigh. “I am so sorry to disappoint you, Amelia, but I have no tragic love story to impart to you. Miss Pierce is Her Grace’s best friend. I am the duke’s best friend. We were thrown together quite a bit, something we both tolerated for the sake of the happy couple.”

Amelia pouted. “And here I was hoping she was something special. You are getting rather old. One never knows when one will meet one’s maker. It’s almost as if you want Frederick to inherit the title.” It was something Amelia often talked about, or threatened, depending on their conversation. His cousin Frederick was, politely put, an idiot, a dandy who spent more money a year on the proper buttons than most gentlemen spent on a good port. Edward had never liked him, something Amelia was well aware of, and so the threat that Frederick would inherit the title should he die prematurely always hit its intended mark—even when Edward pretended it did not.

“Unless you are planning to do me in yourself, I fear I will live a long and healthy life. Certainly long enough to marry and guarantee an heir.”

“As Uncle did?” she asked, suddenly serious.

“Please do not worry about me and my heart, Amelia. We are both doing famously well.”

“I do worry. And I don’t care what you say, you’ve changed since returning from America. If it wasn’t this Miss Pierce, who was it, then?”

“The duties of the earldom weigh heavily,” he said, and nearly chuckled aloud when his sister rolled her eyes. But she accepted his answer, content to wait until he was honest with her, which he would never be. The tragic truth was, he’d very nearly succumbed to Miss Pierce’s charms, finding himself so ridiculously enraptured it was unmanning. He could only congratulate himself that no one, not even Miss Pierce, had ever known quite how far he’d fallen. It would have been a damned embarrassing thing to admit given that their entire relationship had been based on mutual pretense. He had been trying to avoid all those American mamas looking for a title, and she had been trying to avoid marrying a particular someone. Last he’d heard, though, she’d been expecting a proposal any day from the very man she’d said she’d been trying to avoid. Odd, that. Maybe the entire time she’d been pretending to like him merely to make the other gentleman jealous. That thought rankled and he frowned, something Amelia immediately picked up on.

“I am trying to work,” he said, pointedly looking down at a pile of estate papers laid out in front of him.

“You should hire someone to worry about the estate,” she said, becoming bored with him.

“Perhaps I should hire someone to keep you entertained and out of my hair. If you care to stay, I could use someone to look over these rents for me—”

“I’m off,” she said immediately. “I have to help Aunt Matilda get ready for our visit. We are going, are we not?”

Edward let out a sigh. “We are.”

Amelia beamed him a smile, leaving him alone to dread his visit to Bellewood, where he would certainly see Maggie. Perhaps she was traveling to England to gather her trousseau together. Well, good for her. She should find a good man to marry her, someone from her own country. Someone who didn’t find everything she did so completely charming he turned into an absolute fool.

Eyeing the door to make certain his sister was truly gone, he slowly opened the middle drawer of his desk, reaching back so that his fingers touched a small bundle of papers. Usually, it was enough simply to reach inside and touch them. He chose not to think about why he felt the need for this concrete evidence of her. But he didn’t have a photograph or a lock of hair, and for some reason, thinking about the letters, touching them, made her real again. Slowly, he pulled them out, opening one and smiling. Maggie was suddenly there before him, grinning, lively, her brown eyes alight with some secret, probably nonsense.

It is dreadfully boring in New York right now. Poor Elizabeth has been locked in her house since we returned from Newport. Please do not tell the duke, as I believe his tender feelings would be greatly damaged by the knowledge that even at this moment Elizabeth is bound and gagged in their Fifth Avenue home in fear she will somehow escape matrimony.

He chuckled softly, hearing her lilting voice in his head. Without reading further, he refolded the letter and placed it with the others, tying the well-worn ribbon as he had done perhaps a dozen times. With an impatient inward breath, he put them back in the drawer, telling himself he was an idiot.