A Count For Christmas (The Seldon Park Christmas Novella Book 6) Read online

  “My darling girl!” Lady Winterset reminded Grace very much of her own aunt. Both women were slim and almost fragile-looking but it was evident upon closer inspection that a backbone of iron lay within. “Welcome! Welcome! I am so thrilled that you finally accepted my invitation!”

  Tears that Grace could not hold back pricked at her eyes. “I should have done so sooner,” she confessed tearily. “I am terribly sorry, your grace. I was remiss in not doing so.”

  She was about to drop into a curtsey – having been pulled into the embrace earlier before she could do so, but the older woman clucked her tongue and shook her head in disapproval.

  “Now, now. None of that,” the dowager admonished.

  “But…” If word got out that Grace had not curtseyed to the dowager duchess, there would be talk. Gossip. Did she care? At one time, particularly when the earl was still alive, Grace would have rather died before she broke any rule, no matter how minor. Now? She wasn’t as certain she still cared.

  “But nothing,” the dowager insisted. “I have never been a proper sort of duchess. Nor will I ever be at my age. I am certain you have heard the stories of my youth from your aunt.”

  That much was true. When Grace had reconnected with her Aunt Martha, the woman had often shared tales of her first Season in London and the fast friends she had made there, including Lady Winterset and the woman who would later become the Countess of Alby, Lady Maria Paxton.

  The three of them had been thick as thieves and Grace had envied that closeness. She had hoped to become close with Richard’s daughters but that had never happened, even though they were not too far apart in age.

  “I still think I should.” Grace felt as if it would only be proper to offer one last protest. It would be the right thing to do, after all.

  “There is no need to stand on ceremony with me, my dear.” Then the old woman winked. “Besides, you are like family to me. And family does not curtsey. Not as long as I am alive!”

  How could Grace contradict this woman? She could not. So instead, she bowed her head in the dowager’s direction. “Thank you, your grace. But family? Truly, I am not.”

  “You are!” the other woman insisted as she looped her arm through Grace’s, turning her back on her other guests and allowing her daughter in law to attend to them. “Martha was like a sister to me and you are her niece. Thus, you are my family.” Her eyes twinkled and Grace found herself liking this woman more and more. “And I shall be offended if you insist otherwise. Oh, and call me Hester. No one calls me ‘your grace,’ if I can help it. That’s my daughter in law, Margaret, now. Not me.”

  Grace laughed, the first time she had done so in longer than she cared to remember. “Very well. Hester.” She glanced around at the grand hall. “I must confess that your home is magnificent. My aunt’s stories did not do it justice. I should have come before. Again, I’m sorry that I didn’t.”

  The dowager patted Grace’s hand. “I know why you didn’t, my darling girl. I know all about you and Colbourne and his wretched son.” She gave a snort of indignation. “Your late aunt kept me well informed about such matters.”

  Suddenly, Grace was filled with an incredible sadness and she could not manage to suppress her sigh.

  Hester eyed her with compassion. “I miss her too, child. So very much. Though she was not of my blood, she understood me better than any of my own family ever did. I had hoped we would have more time together.” She gestured to the grand hall around them, every inch seeming to drip with elegant and tasteful decorations. “That is why I host this ball and house party, you know. So that we can slow down from our busy lives and have time together. To look at the stars for one night and remember that family is precious.” She paused again. “Martha always wanted you to come here with her, you know. You were the last of her family. That is why I invited you and that decrepit husband of yours, may God have mercy on his soul. I did it for her. And for you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Grace felt a blush steal up her cheeks. She hadn’t realized she could blush any longer. “I wanted to come before but Richard, Lord Colbourne? Well, he was too ill to travel.”

  Hester gave a very un-ladylike snort. “Something he knew very well when he wed you, my girl. Or rather, when your father sold you to him like cattle.” She clamped her mouth shut then, as if she had over-stepped. “I should not have said that.”

  “You said nothing that was not true, and that I didn’t already know.” Once more, Grace looked around wistfully, longing for all of the times she had missed here with her beloved aunt.

  “Still, I should not have said that. It was rude and I try never to be rude. Especially to the dead.” The dowager shook her head, though Grace could tell that the older woman had meant every word she had just spoken.

  For they had been true. All of them.

  Christmastide seasons spent here would no doubt have been far more cheerful than the cold ones she had endured in Northumbria nursing a husband who was too ill to leave his bed and tending to a step-son who, while welcoming enough, was also so self-centered that he hadn’t noticed that neither his father nor his father’s new wife had been present while everyone else feasted and celebrated around the family’s holiday table.

  Grace cleared her throat, doing her best to dispel a past that could not be changed. “Well, Hester, I am here now, and I can see for myself how lovely this place is. My aunt so often spoke of the magic she found here at the holiday season.” Then she winced. “I have no idea why I said that.”

  This time it was Hester’s turn to laugh. “I do. That is Highburn working her magic on you already.” The older woman turned in a slow circle, her head tilted back to take in the grandeur of the entrance with its soaring ceiling now covered in festive greenery. “Here at the castle, dreams come true and these walls? The magic within them will draw out the truth of things, whether you are ready to confess it or not.” She smiled indulgently then. “I know you don’t want to believe in the magic, my dear Grace. In her final days, Martha wrote to me frequently and often told me of how she feared for you. How she feared you had lost your faith and how you ceased to believe in the beauty and wonder to be found around you. That was why she wished so very much for you to come here. So that you might find those things again.”

  Walking over to the grand staircase where Highburn became less castle and more manor house, at least on the surface, Grace toyed with the edge of one of the red velvet ribbons that festooned the railing. “There has been precious little magic in my life,” she confessed. “It is easy to lose hope when one dreams of love and romance, only to be cast into the role of nurse in a place so far from home. But I should not complain. Other young women fare worse than I.”

  “And other young women find love and happiness, not to mention a family, with a gentleman who loves them and adores them. Not a man who needs constant care as death approaches.” Once more, Hester shook her head. “Those things should have been yours, my darling. And they still can be. But only if you believe.”

  A part of Grace wanted so very badly to believe in the fantasy world Hester painted with her words, but the more practical side of her hesitated. Grace’s dreams had died long ago. She was older and wiser now, cast into a role she had never wanted but had played to perfection. She had something of a reputation as well, that of a cold and endlessly proper woman who would never dare put a foot wrong.

  But that wasn’t the life Grace had wanted for herself back in her youth. She had desired the life Hester spoke of now. One of love and family and a husband who adored her. Except that it was too late for such foolish nonsense, no matter what Hester said. If nothing else, Grace herself was too old.

  “I am not sure I have any faith left,” Grace confessed softly, a hint of memories best left buried creeping in. “Not in love and magic, anyway.” She sighed again and looked around, determined not to be melancholy during this house party. Else she might never be invited back. “But I will try. I promise.”

  This time, Hester smi
led enigmatically. “If Highburn has her way, you won’t even have to try, my dear. The magic will simply come back to you and you will be powerless to resist.” She reached out and patted one of the old stone walls that was partially hidden by a tapestry. “This castle? Those who came before me swore it was blessed by the fairies, as the original duke allowed them refuge here during a difficult time in their world. In return for the offer of safety, they granted this castle powers. Not the people within it, but the castle itself, so that their magic could continue to bless generations of the Winterset family.”

  “And you believe them?” Grace raised an eyebrow. She knew the dowager was fanciful. Aunt Martha had been as well. But to believe in fairies? Surely not!

  Lady Winterset shrugged. “I believe in this castle. I have lived here long enough to know that magic is real, whether we can see it or not. I believe that something lives here, within Highburn, that I cannot explain, be it a gift from the fairies or something else. That is enough for me to have faith.”

  Once again, Grace wanted to believe. She truly did. She wanted to believe that there was something more in this world for her than the life she had led so far. But after all of this time? After the years spent caring for a dying man as her own life and youth slipped away? She found that rather difficult.

  Instead of saying as much, however, Grace offered the dowager another smile, though her earlier cheer was gone for reasons she could not explain. Perhaps too many memories of the past? “Then I shall try to have that same faith as well, Hester. Though I cannot promise I will succeed.”

  The older woman looped her arm through Grace’s again and began to escort her to the base of a second set of stairs were a maid waited to guide guests to their chambers. “That is all I ask, my dear. Try. Then let Highburn do the rest.” Then the dowager duchess was gone, returning to her daughter in law’s side near the door, ready to greet more guests.

  Grace stood there for a long moment watching the scene play out before her. Hester spoke of faith and love and magic, of Grace one day filling her own home with family and friends. But such a thing was not to be and she knew it. Her time had come and gone. But for now? Well, she could try to pretend that she believed, mostly for Hester’s sake. But that was about the best she could offer.

  For Grace no longer believed in magic or love or faith or anything so fanciful. She did not believe that dreams came true or that every little girl found a prince charming, whether she was a princess or not. She did not believe that women her age could start their lives over, and she certainly didn’t believe in fairies blessing castles with magic.

  Grace did, however, believe in disappointment and shattered dreams, of realities that never lived up to fantasies. Her life had been full enough of those things, so it was rather easy to believe. Unfortunately.

  Perhaps coming here had been a terrible idea, but she could not leave now. Now without insulting her hostess. Therefore, she would just have to make the best of things. Somehow.

  Chapter Two

  “Don’t bother to wait for me, Marc. You go on to the ball by yourself. See if you can find a pretty woman or three to flirt with. Hester and I will be escorting each other to the welcoming ball this evening, as always.” The older woman giggled like a schoolgirl in the first blush of youth. “Even though it seems as if we have been here for an age, she and I still have ever so much to discuss! It’s been months since we’ve had proper time to chat. A full year, I believe! At our age, we don’t get together as often as we once did and not the full month as we did years ago!”

  “Grandmama, please. Consider allowing me to escort you. Just this once.” Lord Marcel Blanchard, Count Aris to those in Society, shook his head. “If I am not here to escort you during this house party, then why am I here at all?”

  It was actually a very good question, one Marc asked himself each year when he and his more-than-still-a-little-youthful grandmother, Lady Maria Paxton, the dowager Countess of Alby, made the journey from her town home in London to the wilds of Yorkshire. Other than his undying love and devotion for his grandmother, Marc had yet to come up with a successful answer.

  Marc had been escorting his grandmother to this ball every year since he had been thirteen and first came home from Eton for the holiday season. Given that he was now in his thirtieth year, that was more time passed than he cared to remember.

  As was their custom, Marc and his grandmother had arrived several days ago so that Lady Alby could spend as much time as possible with her old and dear friend, Lady Winterset, during this festive time. The two young women had some years between them, but over the course of their lives, they had become the best of friends, and they made it a point to see each other as much as possible – which wasn’t nearly as frequently these days as it had once been.

  Unfortunately, Lady Martha Evans, the third member of what his grandmother had referred to as “The Troublesome Trio,” had passed away last year. Though Lady Martha had never wed, she had always been a large part of Lady Winterset’s Christmastide celebrations, and Marc knew it hurt his grandmother as well to know that her old and dear friend was no longer with them.

  Still, the two surviving members of the trio had no shortage of laughter between them and in truth, it did Marc’s heart good to see his grandmother still so alive and vibrant, even though she was now a dowager twice over.

  In the past, Marc’s grandmother and Lady Winterset would have been escorted into the house party’s “welcoming ball” on the arms of their husbands, as Lord and Lady Alby would have been in residence here at Highburn for nearly a month by this point. However, for the last five years, Marc had been his grandmother’s only escort – to the house party at least – as Hester and his grandmother had begun a tradition of escorting each other into the first night’s ball after the passing of their husbands.

  Which usually left Marc free these days to either hide in the billiards room during this first ball or, if he was feeling up for company, find a charming widow to escort about for the evening and perhaps steal a kiss or two from her if he was feeling a bit amorous.

  Tonight, however, there seemed to be a decided lack of charming widows, though there did appear to be an overabundance of flighty young debutantes that had not secured a match during the previous Season.

  Marc didn’t care for debutantes. Despite the dictates of Society, he firmly believed he was too old for them. He had also been too old for them when he had been young, but that couldn’t be helped. According to his grandmother, Marc had simply been born old.

  Perhaps he had been. All he knew was that all of the fluttering of eyelashes and the dropping of fans and the endless tittering laughter that was common amongst debutantes left him cold. Not to mention more than a little annoyed. It had been that way in his youth and it was even worse now.

  And this year? He heard rather a lot of tittering and fan dropping coming from the ballroom.

  “You are here, Marc, because you need a wife. The same reason you are here every year.” His grandmother sniffed indignantly. “I would think you would understand that by now. We have been coming here often enough that I would have thought a smart boy like you would have caught on to my schemes.” She said that last bit with a twinkle in her eyes.

  Marc sighed and ran a hand through his hair, knowing he could do no more damage for it was already mussed – as usual. “I do not want a wife.”

  “Want and need are two very different things, my dear boy.” She reached out and patted him on the cheek soothingly, just as she had when he was a young boy and still reeling from the deaths of his parents back in France. “I look in your eyes, Marcel, and I see the truth. You cannot lie to me. You are lonely. So yes, you need a wife, even if you don’t think you want one.”

  “As you like.” Marc covered his grandmother’s hand with his own, not surprised to find the skin a bit thinner and more paper-like than it had been only a year ago. Despite his grandmother’s pretentions of youth, she was still aging just as they all did.

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; At that thought, something powerful tugged at his heart and Marc pulled his grandmother into a tight embrace.

  “Marc! Whatever are you doing?” His grandmother swatted at his arm, though he could tell she was not as annoyed as she pretended to be. “If you think that showering me with affection will change my mind on the matter of finding you a wife, fear not. It won’t. You need a wife and that is the end of the discussion. I have made my decision on the matter!”

  Marc wanted to argue with this woman, to protest that he would find a wife when he was ready and not when she dictated. But he didn’t argue. He couldn’t. His grandmother was having a wonderful time here at Highburn and he would not take that joy from her. He couldn’t be so cruel. This woman had raised him from the time he was barely a year old and he owed her more than just his loyalty. He owed her his very life.

  For without Lady Maria Paxton, there would be no Lord Marcel Blanchard.

  Born to a notorious but obscenely wealthy French count and a somewhat shy and retiring English mother, Marc had been little more than a babe when he, along with the Blanchard family’s enormous wealth was smuggled out of France, and into the arms of Lady Paxton, his maternal grandmother, who resided firmly back on English soil.

  Back then, the hope had been that the rumblings of revolution across the French countryside would be short-lived and that Marc could return to France in safety one day soon. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be and when his parents had passed away in a carriage accident as they fled the family’s chateau in fear for their lives, any chance Marc had of returning home and reclaiming his birthright died with them.

  Thankfully, his grandmother had not minded taking on the challenge of raising yet another child. She was young, she had told him frequently, having wed when she was only a child of sixteen herself and had become a widow twice over – first to a baron who had been Marc’s grandfather and then to an elderly count – all by the ripe old age of nine and twenty. She had most of her life ahead of her and welcomed a chance to do better by her grandson than she had done by any of her own children, all of whom had made miserable choices in spouses.