Jane and Charlotte arrived at that moment, closely followed by Godric and Megs, and for a moment there was a flurry of greetings and the distribution of tea.
When the room had somewhat quieted, Mama looked around. “I’m so glad everyone is here. I have a task for you all. Well, everyone but Megs and Godric.” She glanced fondly at her stepson and his wife. “We plan a Christmas Eve ball, and I’d like to decorate the ballroom with holly branches. There’s some holly bushes along the road and at the edge of the copse. Could you young people go and gather holly for me?”
Jane immediately clapped her hands. “Oh, lovely! We can don cloaks and muffs and wooly mittens and have a tramp. Pat and Harriet will like that.”
“Let’s make it into a game,” Charlotte added. Her green eyes were alight with excitement. “We can divide into groups. The first ones to return to Hedges with the holly will be declared the winners.”
“Do we have a prize?” Jane asked.
“Oh,” Charlotte said. “Maybe a slice of the mince pie Cook is making today?”
“But everyone will be partaking of the pie tonight at dinner,” Jane objected. “That hardly makes a fitting prize.”
Lord d’Arque cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention. The smile playing about his mouth was quite wicked. “A suggestion. Perhaps—with the blessing of our kind hostess—the winners can steal a kiss from whomever of the house party they choose.”
Sarah inhaled, carefully keeping her gaze from Lord d’Arque. Was there a particular lady whom Lord d’Arque wished to kiss?
From the way Godric was glowering at Lord d’Arque, he had a suspicion it was Megs the viscount was interested in. Even if she and Godric were not included in the holly hunt, Lord d’Arque had carefully worded his suggestion so that both Megs and Godric were included in the kissing prize.
Sarah’s heart sank. She remembered now Megs telling her that Lord d’Arque had flirted with her outrageously at a ball when she and Godric had first married.
Sarah bit her lip. She would not become jealous of her sister-in-law.
Meanwhile Jane was clapping with excitement while Charlotte clasped her hands together under her chin.
“Please may we, Mama?” Charlotte begged their mother, being sure to employ her extravagantly lashed eyes. “Oh, please!”
“Very well,” Mama said. Sarah could tell she was trying to look stern, but mostly she looked happy. “Since it is the Christmas season, I’ll allow this game and prize. Mind you,” she added, casting a stern eye about the company, “any kissing to be done will be in front of all of us so that no reputations might be sullied.”
“Huzzah!” Jane cried in what was a rather childish celebration from a lady who often reminded her sisters that she was nearly twenty.
“Hm,” a male voice murmured in Sarah’s ear. “I wonder whom you will pick to kiss should you win, Miss St. John.”
Chapter Five
That night Prince Brad had just begun cutting into his beefsteak when the doors to the royal dining room opened and the frog hopped wearily in.
“Pardon me,” said the frog, “but I do believe you forgot your promise to me.”
There was a short silence from the royal family before the queen turned a gimlet eye upon her son. “Bradley, is this true?”…
—From The Frog Princess
Adam watched as Miss St. John’s eyes widened at his words. They really were rather lovely eyes—a light brown surrounded by thick, dark lashes.
He was playing with fire, he knew. He should’ve walked away from Miss St. John the moment he’d realized his hunger for her.
Instead he’d traded quips with her, badgered her into responding, and, worst of all, inhaled the scent of roses in her hair like a starry-eyed schoolboy who’d just discovered his cock.
Pathetic.
And now, to cap off his insanity, he was making plans to kiss her.
His mouth twisted in self-mockery as he turned away to sip his tea. Why else make the suggestion of a stolen kiss as prize? Surely he knew well enough his own wants and desires by now. After all, he was five and thirty and had lived a life of debauchery. He’d never given an unmarried lady reason to hope for marriage—or anything else—with him.
But the thing was that he enjoyed speaking with Miss St. John. Enjoyed the sting of her barbs and the way she looked so indignantly at him.
Were she already married or widowed…
There was a burst of laughter from the table, and Adam glanced up, realizing he’d missed something as he was musing.
“No, no, the ladies must choose their partners,” Charlotte St. John said. “I think it only reasonable.”
“But there’s four gentlemen to three ladies,” Lady Margaret pointed out. “Someone will have the advantage of an extra person.”
“Actually”—Kirby cleared his throat with a slight grimace—“I wonder if I might be excused due to rather painful chilblains on my feet.”
“Naturally, my lord,” Mrs. St. John said with a sympathetic smile to Kirby. “Perhaps you can help me in planning the placement of the decorations for the ballroom while the others go on their adventure.”
Kirby nodded, looking as if he were having second thoughts about forgoing the holly gathering. If he truly were interested in Miss St. John, he might’ve realized the holly hunt was a perfect opportunity to woo the lady alone.
Adam hid a smile as he took a bite of gammon.
“Youngest first,” Jane St. John proclaimed, either ignoring or not hearing her sisters’ dissents. “Let me see…” She took her time in examining Manning, Sir Hilary, and Adam. “I choose Dr. Manning.”
That gentleman glanced quickly at Charlotte St. John before smiling and bowing to Jane.
Charlotte St. John looked between Adam and Sir Hilary. Adam winked at her and she blushed a deep—and quite becoming—rose.
“Sir Hilary,” Charlotte St. John proclaimed.
“Honored,” her choice intoned.
“Oh dear, Miss St. John,” Adam murmured, turning to her, “it seems you are left with only me.”
She pressed her lips together, looking less than pleased.
Which caused her mother to hastily say, “I’m sure everyone is quite happy with their partners.”
“Let’s leave at once after breakfast,” Jane St. John exclaimed.
Which was how, half an hour later, Adam found himself trudging through calf-deep snow, the eldest Miss St. John stumping along mutinously beside him.
All around, the bare branches of trees and the evergreen boughs bore a thick frosting of snow. The sky was a crisp blue, and the new snowfall was pristine and lovely.
A true Christmas scene, Adam thought cynically.
He threw his head back, inhaling freezing air and exhaling it in a great white cloud. “Ah, how wonderful is the country air.”
Miss St. John glanced at him, her eyebrows so high in disbelief they disappeared into the fur-trimmed hood she wore. “I would never have taken you for a man who enjoys the country, my lord.”
“No? But then you don’t entirely know me, Miss St. John. As it happens I grew up in the country.”
“You did?” she gazed at him with the same amazement she would have worn had he declared he’d been raised on the moon.
“Indeed.” His lips twisted. “My family’s country estate is outside Bath. Close enough to London that I could venture there several times a year, had I the desire—which I most certainly do not.”
She knit her brows. “But…you must not have been on the way there with your grandmother when your carriage wrecked?”
“Oh no,” he replied carelessly. “Our destination was a cousin of my grandmother’s. A lady nearly as old as she and quite bad tempered. Grand-mère enjoys inflicting our presence upon her for Christmas and then arguing in a veiled sort of way for a month or so.”
“That…” She screwed up her lovely red lips. “That doesn’t sound nice at all.”
“It isn’t.” He shot a sideways glance at her, noticing how the lightly falling flakes of snow caught on her eyelashes. Her cheeks were a bright pink and her mouth was wet and red. Dear God, she was beautiful. “I generally hide in the library. The old girl has quite a good library.”
“The library?” she asked, as if he’d confessed to a taste for keeping newts. “I hadn’t thought you a reader, my lord.”
“And yet I am quite literate,” he replied. “Histories and plays, philosophy and the odd scientific tome. Even a novel every now and again. Will wonders never cease?”
The color rose in her cheeks, and she averted her eyes from him. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. I meant no disrespect.”
He was about to brush aside her apology when the snow on a branch directly above her head picked that moment to fall.
Miss St. John’s head and shoulders were covered with cold melting snow.
For a moment she stood frozen in shock, her eyes wide and outraged.
Adam simply couldn’t help it.
He closed his eyes and laughed.
Loud and ringing in the still winter air, he laughed and laughed and laughed—
Wet snow was shoved unceremoniously in his face.
Adam sputtered and opened his eyes to the sight of a sodden harpy with two handfuls of snow lunging at him. He ducked.