A Season For Romance (The Seldon Park Christmas Novella Book 5) Read online

  Now that she had been in his presence for some time, Dinah had come to the conclusion that the man looked more like some of the other residents of the debtor’s prison where her father had died than he did a coachman for a wealthy and prosperous duke.

  In short, Dinah regretted every decision she had made since her beloved Papa had died. She had been a spoiled brat, never thinking for a moment about others and how they might feel or think, what they might desire or wish for. She had made decisions simply by thinking only about what was best for her. Now, she was paying the price and she doubted that any of her decisions could be undone.

  At best, she had to hope that the duke was kind and his children not too unruly. For if she could not control them? Then what? The duke would likely cast her out immediately, that was what. Then what would happen? Dinah didn’t even want to think about that possibility.

  Just then, a particularly strong gust of wind hit the side of the carriage, sending the wheels clattering and skidding wildly over what was likely a patch of ice, given the way everything slid about – including her.

  Dinah heard the terrified whiny of the horses and the brisk snap of something leather. There was a clang of metal followed by the crack of old wood, and she felt the sharp bite from a frigid gust of wind rush into the carriage as the patched door gave way. The worn upholstery she had been seated upon immediately became wet with swirling snow.

  Then, for a brief but blessed moment, everything stopped as the coach came to rest upright many feet down the road from where it had started its wild ride.

  However before she could climb out and assess the situation, another gust of wind hit the now-open coach squarely on its side, and the conveyance took off skittering into the night once more. Dinah could see inky blackness rush past her as the carriage tumbled through the darkness, turning this way and that, tilting on its side before falling back onto four wheels and then tilting once more as it encountered another patch of ice. Snow and wind hit her in the face as she scrabbled desperately to cling to something inside the creaking, groaning coach that was all but falling apart around her. However the straps had been removed long ago and the windows, which likely hadn’t been in good condition to begin with, popped free of the wooden frame with a sickening sort of sucking sound as the coach overturned.

  Dinah felt herself flung free, her body flying through the air as the coach finally began its final slide, two wheels breaking loose in the process. She heard a rather loud splash and she willed herself to keep her wits about her. A splash meant water – likely a river or creek – and with all of the clothing she was wearing, she would surely sink within moments.

  She hit the ground with a hard whump, all of the breath rushing from her body as her chest connected with something solid and unforgiving. Likely the ground. Both of her feet were immediately wet, but her torso was not, indicating that she had landed feet first on the riverbank. However the current was swift, and she could feel the water tugging hard at her boots and skirt, pulling her backward toward certain icy, death.

  Clawing desperately, Dinah’s hands only met piles of soft snow – nothing solid that she might find purchase on, certainly. Then she was in, all of her soaked to the skin. She felt herself go under, her eyes useless in the swirling snow so she was unable to find her bearings – if there were any to be had in the black, rushing water. Somehow, she pushed herself to the surface and gulped down a lungful of air when she was clear of the water. However she was going under again quickly, and she knew that this time it might be her end. Flinging herself in the direction of where she thought the riverbank might be, she missed, only to land face-first in more frigid water, this part deeper than the other.

  Dinah sank like a stone but as her lungs began to burn and her vision started to blacken at the edges, she felt something grab on to her tightly with a hard yank. The unknown force pulled her upward, not downward. Up and out and away from the swirling, icy waters. Grateful, she drew more air into her lungs and tried to speak, but her tongue failed her.

  In fact her entire body was failing her.

  She saw dancing yellow lights in the distance. They swayed and twirled as she imagined fairies might on a warm summer night near Canton Hall. She heard men’s voices, or she thought she did, even though she had no idea what they were saying. Or she might have been imagining them. She might have been dead, for all she knew.

  Then, however, she felt a hand. It was warm and strong and gentle. Caressing. Soft. Caring. It was followed by a second hand that gently scooped her up and placed her in strong, waiting arms. She struggled instinctively at first, but then there was a voice, so lovely and warm and masculine, whispering in her ear.

  Don’t fight, love. I have you.

  Don’t fight. That command went against every instinct that Dinah had within her.

  I can’t carry you if you do. I might drop you.

  Oh. Well then, a part of her brain rationalized, we certainly don’t want that. Do we?

  No, the last of Dinah’s rational mind decided. We don’t. Not at all. We like it precisely where we are, thank you very much.

  For Dinah was now snuggled against something – or rather someone – warm and soft that smelled simply delightful. She was safe. Instinctively she knew that as well.

  She did not know the owner of the arms that held her so gently and yet so securely at the same time, but whoever the man was, he must be a gentleman of the highest order – even if he was the poorest man in the world. For he held her as if she mattered – particularly to him. The feeling was, in one word…Heavenly.

  Angel, she thought she heard him say. My golden angel.

  Or she could have imagined that last bit. For Dinah also thought she saw more fairy lights, though she rather doubted any rational fairy – should they exist – would be outside in the middle of a snowstorm. She must be confused.

  What she was not confused about was that for the first time since her father had been taken away to prison, she felt safe. Cared for. Protected. Sheltered. She felt as if she mattered to someone other than herself.

  And for the first time in her life, Dinah Crestfield swooned.

  Chapter Two

  “How is she?” Lord Beaufort McCandless, better known simply as Beau to his friends and the Marquess of Kingsford to everyone else, asked. Not that he had many friends. Or any friends at all, really, save for a handful.

  “She will recover well, I think.” Dr. Nathaniel Longford – one of the few people who could look at Beau without shuddering, or so it seemed to Beau – replied. “She is young and healthy, and I have every reason to believe that it will only be a day or so before she is up and about.”

  Beau nodded in understanding, though he didn’t much care for what the physician’s words implied. “At which point, I will make myself scarce. It seems I am to have a houseguest for a time. Can’t have her seeing me about the hallways, now can I?”

  Nathaniel made a sound of protest, one tinged with what might have been frustration. “Beau,” he began but the other man clucked in teasing disapproval.

  “Don’t you mean ‘my lord,’ doctor?”

  The physician rolled his eyes in annoyance, just as Beau had hoped he would. Beau excelled at diversionary tactics. “I have not called you ‘my lord’ since we were both in leading strings and my father was tending to your parents. Though I do appreciate your sense of humor.” Nathaniel cleared his throat. “I was going to say that you really don’t need to hide yourself away from her. Not if you don’t wish to, and I know for a fact that you do not wish to, for you are quite enamored of her. I can see it in your eyes. There is attraction, at least on your part.”

  “Look at her!” Beau grumbled, doing his best not to look. “She is obviously a lady and quite lovely as well. Too lovely for the likes of me.”

  “You are not so monstrous as you seem to believe, my friend.” Nathaniel paused. “In fact, I would wager that many a lady would call you handsome. And more still would gladly accept the position as your m
archioness, should you even bother to ask.”

  Beau nodded in the direction of where the golden-haired angel slept in the former marchioness’ wide, comfortable bed. “Not her. I know this, even if you don’t, Nathaniel. She is too fine of a lady for me.” Turning, Beau caught a glimpse of his mismatched eyes in a nearby mirror. Oh, how he cursed that defect of his birth.

  Nathaniel snorted. “Then you are daft as well. You have hidden yourself away here at Grayfield for too long, Beau. Even your old friend Blackthorne says as much and he, of all people, knows of what he speaks. He may be destitute, but he moves within the upper reaches of Society all the time. Those same people inquire about you and your health frequently.”

  Beau raised an eyebrow. “You read my letters?”

  Nathaniel shrugged unapologetically. “When you leave them lying about the manor for all and sundry to stumble upon I do.” He nodded in the direction of the still unconscious woman. “Just be around her once she wakes, even if it is only for an hour or so. You might be surprised at her reaction. After all, you did save her life. Most ladies are exceedingly grateful for such heroics. Especially the pretty ones.”

  “I think that perhaps you are the daft one.” Beau was unmoved on that point.

  “Or perhaps you are merely frightened that someone could come to care for you,” the physician countered. “Heaven forbid if such a tragedy were to occur!”

  “Or perhaps once she discovers that I am the so-called ‘cursed marquess,’ she will wish to flee as soon as possible, unable to tolerate even being in the same manor house as me. They all do.” Given his past experience with society ladies, Beau had endured just such a reaction all too often. He could not even begin to hope this lovely golden creature would be able to tolerate his presence for a few days, let alone ever come to care for him for a lifetime.

  “Any fleeing to be done by the young lady will occur at some point in the distant future, I’m afraid. The storm still rages, and according to Mrs. Smith, the nasty weather will persist for several more days yet.” That came from Beau’s butler slash valet, Harris who had approached the other two men rather silently. Then again, Harris had been trained in the art of self-defense, which was why Beau employed him. To defend – at least to defend when simply a glance at Beau’s own face would not accomplish much the same thing.

  “My housekeeper is mad,” Beau grumbled irritably, “though why she should be any different from any other employee around here is anyone’s guess. Why she remains here when she clearly disagrees with me on so very many subjects, including the weather, I cannot fathom.”

  “You know, of course, that we all stick around for your sunny disposition, don’t you?” Nathaniel asked far too cheerfully for the other man’s liking. “Honestly, Beau. Would it be so terrible not to take everything so seriously? And everyone? Including yourself? Especially when you have just saved a lovely young woman from certain death? Could you not simply enjoy the moment and bask in being a hero for a bit? Try to attempt something close to a smile when she wakes? As I said, I even think that she might be rather appreciative of your efforts on her behalf. If you allow her to be.”

  “Perhaps.” Except that Beau was lying and the others knew it. He could never stop being serious. It was a part of his nature every bit as much as the “curse” was.

  In general, Beau did not believe in curses. After all, as the Marquess of Kingsford, he did not have the luxury of such foolishness and even if he did? He had worked hard to become a man of science, one of dependability and respectability as well. Beau had devoted his entire life to becoming the perfect gentleman, even if no one ever knew the truth. For at least he would know. Then he would glance in the mirror and wonder if the idea of a gypsy curse did have some merit after all.

  Beau hadn’t even been born yet when the small, Romany caravan had been traveling through this far corner of England. He wasn’t even certain how they had come to be in the area at all. What he did know was that the wife of the group’s leader took ill. The outsiders had stopped here at Grayfield, the Kingsford marquisate’s ancestral country seat, in search of help.

  Beau’s mother would likely have offered the little group some sort of assistance had she known they had knocked upon the manor door in search of help. After all, Lady Margaret McCandless was nothing if not kind and compassionate, if only to those less fortunate and outside of her immediate family. However, the housekeeper at the time, a Mrs. Wilson, had not informed Beau’s mother that the caravan was seeking both shelter from the early fall rains that were sweeping across the Suffolk countryside as well as medical help for the leader’s desperately ill wife. If she had, Beau was certain his mother would have, at the very least, offered them all room in the stables, if not simply invited them inside Grayfield, and then summoned Nathaniel’s father to see if he could be of any assistance to the dying woman

  Mrs. Wilson, however, had turned the caravan away without any sort of aid, saying that the likes of them would never step foot on Kingsford land and defile it in any way. As the Gypsy leader had turned away, he had muttered a curse under his breath. He had cursed the first born heir of the Kingsford line, saying that the child would grow up to become a monster few would look at, a man that, with one glance, all of the world would know bore the mark of the gypsy curse. And that the man would never know love or compassion or tenderness. That only the rarest of things, a truly contrite heart, would be able to break the curse.

  At the time, everyone had laughed, thinking the curse a bunch of nonsense. Even now, Beau was inclined to that line of thinking himself.

  When Beau had been born three months after the caravan had passed through, everyone had rejoiced at the birth of the next Kingsford heir. He had been born with ten perfect toes and ten perfect fingers, as well as an excellent set of lungs. He had also been graced with a surprisingly full head of hair and the bluest eyes of any baby born in recent memory.

  In short, Beau had been perfect.

  Until the day he wasn’t any longer.

  Within a few months, it had become clear that something was amiss with the young lord. Beau’s one eye changed to a traditional McCandless family dark brown but the other eye remained steadfastly blue. The blonde hair he had been born with darkened on one side of his head but not the other. As he grew older, that particular difference was more difficult to see, but in the right light, the distinction between Beau’s two sides was rather obvious.

  Even Beau’s skin was uneven, half of him tanning to a golden hue and the other remaining steadfastly pale. Most of the time that wasn’t a problem, though in the summer and fall, there were times as if he looked like two different men had been sewn together to make one, the line of changeable skin going roughly down the center of his body.

  It was then that everyone remembered the gypsies and assumed that the heir to the Marquess of Kingsford was forever cursed. And if Beau was cursed in physical appearance, would he not be cursed in other ways as well? Few people were willing to take the risk and find out.

  As he aged, Beau was kept away from other children, especially the servants’ children, for fear that whatever he had might be “catching.” He was educated mostly by tutors as he aged, for he was exceptionally bright. Everyone agreed upon that. However the headmaster at Eton did not agree that Beau should mingle with the “normal” children and had denied him entrance to the prestigious school, making him the first Kingsford heir not to be educated within those hallowed walls. So Beau continued educating himself on his own, ordering massive numbers of books on every subject imaginable to be delivered to Grayfield month after month year after year. And why not? It wasn’t as if Beau ever left home.

  Even when he was a child, Beau was always left behind in Suffolk while his parents ventured to London for the Season’s entertainments. Though they loved him as best they could, they also could not risk taking him out in public for fear someone would see him. And laugh. Or worse, pity the entire family. And pity was something that Beau neither wanted nor needed.
r />   Indeed, there were days when Beau wondered if he really was a monster at all, even though he felt like one inside most times.

  By all accounts, as he aged, Beau became a handsome man, and in truth, he didn’t think his appearance was truly that hideous. He was simply different. But others did find him a monster, and the opinions of others were the ones that counted – at least in Society’s mind. And in the minds of Beau’s parents who had never quite gotten over the fact that their only child and heir was viewed as flawed by much of the world.

  For Lord and Lady Kingsford had never conceived another child after Beau had been born. And they had tried. Very hard.

  His parents were gone now, taken three years ago by a fever that had swept through the nearby village. Beau, of course, had survived. Which only leant credence to many villagers’ belief that he was cursed. After all, his parents had passed on from the fever. So had roughly half of Grayfield’s staff and nearly a quarter of the village. Why hadn’t Beau died as well?

  Beau’s old friend, Nathaniel, had theories as to the reason why – none of them dealing with Beau being cursed and many of them dealing with the illnesses that Beau had suffered as a child himself. However no one was willing to listen to Nathaniel’s theories. Nor did Beau’s increasingly snappish and snarling attitude toward outsiders help much. Instead, those in the area simply stayed that much farther away from Grayfield. And Beau.

  Except for people like Nathaniel who was also a man of science, and, having grown up with Beau, knew there was nothing truly wrong with him other than perhaps a bad temper and some overly indulgent self-pity. In fact, Nathaniel believed that whatever was the cause of some people having green eyes while others had brown had simply “disconnected” somehow in Beau. He couldn’t explain the reason why and his ideas were merely a theory, anyway, but Beau thought it a good one. Well, Nathaniel’s theories were better than a blasted gypsy curse anyway.