Courtney Milan (32 page)

“Show up in the middle of the night with a French letter,” he advised, setting a finger under her chin, “and he’ll likely get the message.”

He tilted her face up. She looked in his eyes, and he smiled.

“No point in being subtle.”

“No,” she breathed. “I suppose not.”

“But just to be sure,” he said, leaning down and setting his forehead against hers, “you’d better try it again tomorrow. And the day after. And every day you can, until we’re married. When do you think that will be, Lydia? Because I’m hoping for soon. Very soon.”

Epilogue

Some weeks later

T
HERE WAS AN UNEARTHLY LIGHT IN THE ROOM
when Lydia woke up that morning—that curious reflected brightness filtering through a gap in the curtains, one that suggested that there was now a foot of snow on the ground.

She sat up, leaned over, and touched her fingers to her husband’s shoulder.

Her
husband.
Now, that was a word that was still new, so new that she bit her lip even thinking it. That word was almost as new as the year.

“Jonas,” she whispered.

He didn’t respond. She could tell he was awake, though, because his eyes screwed shut, and his mouth contorted in a half-grimace.

“Jonas,” she repeated, “it
snowed
last night.”

“Mmm.”

“That means that Minnie and Robert will be trapped here until the trains are running,” Lydia said, “and that we can meet them for breakfast after all.” Her best friend had come into town for the wedding, and had stayed for almost a week. It had been wonderful, even if Minnie had made a few sly comments along the lines of
I told you he fancied you.
Lydia had been too happy to protest. And, well, Minnie
had
told her so.

“Your hands are cold,” Jonas muttered. And before she could say anything in response, he reached out and took her fingers off his shoulder, and then pressed them between his palms. “Let me warm them for you.” He held them for a few moments, rubbing them lightly, before opening his eyes. “That’s scarcely helping. You know what you need?” he asked.

“What do I need?”

“Increased blood flow,” he responded smoothly.

Lydia leaned over and kissed him. “Increased blood flow is my favorite,” she informed him, and then proceeded to show him precisely how much she favored proper circulation. Somewhere, in the middle of a long, lingering kiss, he took off her night rail, and she divested him of the remainder of his clothing.

The rest was a foregone conclusion—the warmth of his skin, the slick desire of her own female liquid, and the hard thrust of his body into hers, slow and steady, his hips claiming hers as he looked into her eyes. He was her husband of just a few days, but he already knew how to drive her to the edge of wildness and beyond.

When he’d finished, he kissed her again. “Did I ever tell you why I wanted to marry?” he asked.

“Because you couldn’t resist me.”

“Because I wanted a source of regular sexual intercourse, one that wouldn’t risk disease,” he responded.

Lydia leaned into his shoulder, smiling against his skin. “Oh, too bad,” she said in mock sympathy. “And instead, you got a wife who loves you.”

A smile spread across his face—a big, golden smile, one that had Lydia smiling in return. “There is no instead,” he said. “Only
in addition.
I got the woman I loved.”

About A Kiss for Midwinter

A Kiss for Midwinter
is a companion novella in the Brothers Sinister series. The other full-length books in the series are
The Duchess War
(the story of Minerva Lane, Lydia’s best friend),
The Heiress Effect
(Oliver’s book),
The Countess Conspiracy
(Sebastian’s story), and
The Mistress Rebellion
(Oliver’s sister’s book).

For He Who Must Not Be Named. No, not Voldemort.

Chapter One

February 1856, Southampton, England

“Y
OU THERE
. W
HERE DO YOU
think you’re off to? And where is your father?”

Miss Mary Chartley came to a stop in the hall, mere steps from escape. The servants’ door was only a few feet away. She silently cursed the board that had let out the telltale creak. Her shoulders ached. Her heart pounded. And behind her eyes, a headache had started, brought on by sleeplessness and unshed— 

No. Not tears. She was done with crying.

She gathered her composure and her wits, and turned.

Her father’s one-time business partners had started to ransack the house early that morning. She had heard them come in; the constable who had accompanied them had even questioned her briefly. But they’d busied themselves downstairs, leaving her free to do what needed to be done. She had hoped to simply steal out the back door, with nobody aware of her departure.

“Mr. Lawson.” She gave the nearest man a quick curtsey. “Mr. Frost.” Another dip of her head. Only one of the partners was missing, and she couldn’t let herself think about Mr. John Mason. “Good morning.”

It was absurd to observe the forms of propriety at a time such as this, but she’d been steeped in proper manners for most of her life. Five years of a very expensive finishing school in Vienna had trained her to smile at these men in pleasant harmony even while they pawed through her father’s things.

Mr. Lawson and Mr. Frost had made a shambles of the office. Her father’s carefully sorted papers had been strewn about the room; books had been pulled from their shelves and left in uneven, teetering piles. They’d wrested the drawers from the desk and splintered the wooden boards into kindling.

Lawson raised his head from the wreckage to contemplate her. “Where is your father?” he asked again.

“She doesn’t know anything,” Frost said after giving her a brief, dismissive glance. He was methodically flipping through books, searching for some hidden secret within their pages. “Look at her—dressed for a stroll in the park, as if nothing had changed.”

How else she was to dress, Mary did not know. She had walking dresses and riding habits, dinner gowns and morning gowns. But nothing in her wardrobe was marked, “Wear me in the event of disaster.” Her hand clenched inside its glove.

Frost tossed the book he held to one side and picked up another. But Mr. Lawson was still looking at her. Staring, really, in a manner that was anything but polite.

Ignore it, and your better manners will soon embarrass him into behaving properly.
That was what the etiquette instructor at her finishing school would have advised her.

Ha. The instructor hadn’t known Mr. Lawson. He set down his papers and stepped toward her.

Her heart pounded faster. His lips were compressed in anger, but his eyes… She didn’t like that unblinking reptilian look in his eyes, nor the slither in his step.

“Where is your father, Mary?”

“Miss Chartley,” she corrected gently. “I think we’ll all be happier if you call me Miss Chartley, and—”

He grabbed her wrist. “You really don’t understand. You stupid creature. ‘Miss Chartley’ is what I’d call a lady, and in case you haven’t discovered it, you no longer fit the description. The sooner you recognize that, the better it will go for you.”

Mary yanked her wrist away. She hadn’t had time for soul-searching. She certainly hadn’t had time to quietly contemplate her new position in the complicated taxonomy of womanhood. All her thoughts since three that morning had been consumed by one thing: getting her trunk and its contents miles away from these men before they discovered the truth.

“No railway receipt, no record of a hired cab,” Frost was saying, shaking his head. “It’s as if Chartley simply vanished. And when I find him—”

No question about it. Mary had to get her trunk away from here, and quickly.

But Lawson took hold of her wrist once more, wrenching her arm around her back as if she were a scullery maid caught stealing the silver. “Where is your bleeding father?”

That twisting motion really hurt, sending stars floating across her vision. Aside from the rap of a ruler across her knuckles, nobody had ever touched her in violence.

But it wasn’t the pinched face of her etiquette instructor that came to mind. It was the round, frowning visage of her piano master.

Weep later,
he would have said in a heavy German accent.
Play now.

She jutted out her chin. “I don’t know.” True in at least one respect. She wanted to believe that Papa, whom she’d loved so dearly, was in heaven. But if there was any truth to what the curate said, he was likely in hell.

“And what message did he leave you?” His grip tightened on her wrist.

“Nothing.” Lying came easier, the more she did it. Her father might have been a cheat and a thief, but he’d loved her and she’d loved him. She would save him this final indignity.

“You’re getting tiresome, Mary.” Lawson yanked her wrist. She took two stumbling steps toward him before she found her balance. “I don’t think you understand what it means that he’s abandoned you. If he’s gone for good, you’re nothing.”

Her skin crawled, but she suppressed all hint of a shiver. “I still don’t know—”

He wrenched her elbow. “You really don’t understand. Why, as your father’s closest associate, I’m practically your guardian. And do you know what I do with wayward girls who won’t speak to me?”

There was nothing he could do to her anymore. She’d been the one to discover her father’s note. She’d found his body. The physical pain was nothing to that. But every second she remained here being manhandled by them was another moment where someone might find the trunk she’d lowered out her window.

Her father was an embezzler and a suicide.
Nobody
would help her—nobody except herself. She shut her mouth and tried once again to free her arm.

Lawson pulled his arm back, made a fist— 

“Lawson,” a new voice said, “what do you think you’re doing?”

Lawson straightened, moving away from Mary so quickly that she gasped in relief.

“Aw,” Lawson said, “I didn’t mean any harm. I was just going to—”