The Risqué Resolution

The Risqué

RESOLUTION

a
holiday novella

By

Jillian Eaton

The Risqué Resolution
is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events

portrayed
in this novel are either products

 
of
the author’s imagination
or

are
used fictitiously.

Copyright © by Jillian Eaton 2013

http://www.jillianeatonbooks.blogspot.com

All Rights Reserved.

Except for use in any review, the

reproduction
or utilization of this work in whole

or
in
part in any form is strictly forbidden.

Other Titles by Jillian Eaton

The Winter Wish

The Runaway Duchess

The Spinster and the
Duke

A Brooding Beauty

A Ravishing Redhead

A Lascivious Lady

A Gentle Grace

Praise for Jillian Eaton

“My first
book from this author and it won’t be the last. Once I got started I couldn’t
put it down.”
A Ravishing Redhead
(Laurie,
Bitten by Paranormal Romance)

“A must read for any historical romance readers who love a
good romp through England.”
The Runaway
Duchess
(My Book Addiction and More)

“Love at its most romantic heights.”
A Brooding Beauty
(Lauren, Amazon Reviewer)

“Jillian Eaton finds the perfect balance between intense
emotions, sizzling chemistry, and light-hearted humor.”
The Runaway Duchess
(Steffi, Swept Away by Romance)

For Aga.

I don’t know what I
would

do
without our
Wednesday vent

sessions
. Thank you for

always
making me

smile
.

CHAPTER ONE

Kincaid Country Residence

Devonshire, England

37 days until Christmas

“Let me make sure I understand you
clearly.” Sucking in a deep breath, Lily Kincaid pinched the bridge of her nose
and fought the urge to scream. “Due to a clause in Father’s will, I must marry
before the year is out or everything we own will be given to Cousin Eustace?”

Mr.
Guthridge
,
the Kincaid’s lawyer for the better part of two decades, bobbed his head and
rattled the paper he held in his hand.

A short, stout man with an impressive
salt and pepper moustache and a propensity for stuttering, he looked as though
he would rather be anywhere else in England than where he currently was:
standing in the middle of the late Lord Kincaid’s study delivering the worst
news imaginable to his eldest daughter. “Y-yes, I am afraid s-so. Your f-father
made it quite clear before his p-passing that in order to receive your
inheritance in full you will need to marry.”

“Before this year’s Christmas,” Lily
clarified, her violet eyes narrowing.

“Yes,”
Guthridge
confirmed miserably. “That does seem to be the case.”

Unable to remain still, Lily began to
pace the length of the narrow study. Her skirts moved in an agitated swirl of
green between her ankles before she abruptly stopped in front of the window,
braced her arms against the sill, and peered out across the back lawn.

Courtesy of a storm that had swept
through two days before, the shrubbery surrounding the Kincaid’s tidily kept
country estate was blanketed in a layer of fresh, powdery snow. Morning light
reflected off the skeletal branches of a towering oak, its limbs heavy in
winter slumber. Icicles, glistening bright as diamonds, clung to the wooden
fence line that wrapped around the edge of the lawn. The very same fence line,
Lily thought absently, that her father had been planning to repair before he
passed away peacefully in his sleep at the not so advanced age of four and
fifty.

For three months
Albus
Kincaid had been promising his wife he would fix the fence, but something or
other had always come up.
A new invention to create.
A new discovery to unearth.
A new recipe
to learn.
Albus
had been a loving father and
husband, but he’d never been a practical man, not in life nor, it seemed, in
death.   

 “Mother is not going to like
this,” she murmured under her breath.

“What was that?”
Guthridge
asked.

Lily turned and leaned against the window,
letting the chill from the glass cool a rising temper that had nothing to do
with the man standing in front of her and everything to do with the one who had
placed her in this rather unfortunate predicament. “Was my father of sound mind
when he dictated the will? Because if he was not of sound mind then—”

But
Guthridge
was already shaking his head before she had even completed her sentence. “I am
afraid, Lady Kincaid, that your father was of
very
sound mind. He even wrote a letter” – the lawyer paused
while he rummaged through his leather satchel before removing a square piece of
parchment – “saying exactly that. Would you like to read it?”

Read one of the last things her father
wrote before he died? Lily, who had not shed a single tear during the funeral
or the three days since while her mother and younger sister wept buckets by the
hour, felt her throat inexplicably tighten. “I… No,” she managed before she
spun around and once again faced the window. “No, Mr.
Guthridge
,
I… I believe you.”

“Very well, Lady Kincaid,” the lawyer
said quietly. “If there is nothing else, I will leave all of the documents on
your father’s desk for you to examine at your leisure. Although, I pray you do
not take much time, for my next visit shall be to your cousin’s house.”

“My cousin?” Lily said blankly.

Guthridge
cleared his throat. “I am afraid so. As he will be the main
benefactor if you do not marry within the time allotted, he must be made privy
to the will’s contents.”

Lily let her forehead fall against the
glass with a dull
thud
. “What is the
date, Mr.
Guthridge
?”

“The eighteenth of November,” the
lawyer answered promptly.

“Thirty seven days,” she whispered.

“What was that?”

“Thirty seven days,” she repeated as
she turned around. “I have thirty seven days to find a suitable match, convince
him to marry me, and save my family from financial ruin.” She smiled weakly.
“You are not in the business of giving out Christmas miracles, are you Mr.
Guthridge
?”

Looking more uncomfortable now than
ever before, the lawyer shook his head. “I am afraid not. But perhaps with the
help of your mother—”

“Oh no.” The very idea was enough to
cause Lily to cringe. “Mr.
Guthridge
, I realize this
is a bit unorthodox, but you must promise not to tell my mother about the
will’s conditions. It will send her into a panic,” she continued hastily when
the lawyer opened his mouth, “and right now she is so distraught I fear more
bad news would be very ill advised. She loved my father very much, you see, and
his death… Well, his death has been hard on all of… on all of us.”

There were those blasted tears again.
They had a habit of sneaking up when she least expected them, no matter how
hard she tried to keep them at bay. It was not that she did not
want
to cry. It was just that once she
started she did not know how she would stop, and with her mother and sister
falling into hysterics at the drop of a hat,
someone
had to remain strong.

Taking a deep breath, she ignored the
burning in her throat, blinked away the stinging in her eyes, and said, “I
appreciate you coming here at such an early hour, Mr.
Guthridge
.
You have been immeasurably helpful.”

Gathering up a few wayward papers, the
lawyer tucked his satchel under one arm and rubbed his mustache. “I am happy to
be of service, Lady Kincaid, especially during this trying time. However, I
really do believe your mother—”

“No.” Lily tempered the sharp command
with her most brilliant smile. “That is to say, I would prefer you kept the
clause to yourself… at least for now. Two weeks,” she said, confidant she could
find a solution in that length of time. “Two weeks and you may tell my mother
whatever you wish.”

She knew the lawyer didn’t like it, but
in the end he gave a nod – albeit a reluctant one – and vowed to
keep the most unfortunate part of the will to himself for the length of
fourteen days.

Lily saw him out, all smiles and bright
assurances that everything would be ‘quite well’, but the moment the door was
closed she slumped against it, the last of her strength draining away as she
closed her eyes. “Oh Father,” she whispered brokenly, “
what
have you done?”     

CHAPTER TWO

Captain James Rigby, formerly of the
second company in the eighth British battalion, was done fighting. Had been
done, if truth be told, for the past two years, but it wasn’t until his arm was
severed from his body that he was officially declared unfit for duty and sent
home to England.

Losing a limb was a funny thing, James
reflected as he sat in his study and stared blindly out the window at the
darkening sky. He’d watched the doctor cut it off himself, watched him hack
away at the rotting flesh and bone with all the finesse of a butcher while he
drifted in and out of consciousness. And yet still he was caught by surprise
every time he glanced down and saw nothing on the left side of his body save a
neatly pinned
shirt sleeve
.

It had taken three men to hold him down
on the table. A fourth to force his jaw open and pour the laudanum down. Even
now, five months removed, he could still taste it, just as he could still feel
his arm.

He closed his eyes, replaying the
bloody memory that still haunted him day and night. A memory he wished he could
cut away as easily as the doctor had cut away his flesh and bone.

James’ remaining hand curled into a
tight fist of frustration that pounded uselessly against the top of his desk,
shaking papers and sending a glass figurine toppling over the edge. He waited
for the figurine to break. Waited for it to break, as he was broken. Waited for
it to shatter, as he was shattered.

But the glass remained intact, and the
irony that such a delicate thing could survive a fall unharmed while he, a
strong, strapping man of only twenty seven had been reduced to little more than
a cripple, did not escape his notice.

He wanted to curse. He wanted to cry.
He wanted to shout to the high heavens about how bloody
unfair
it all was, but he knew once he started he might never stop,
and so he bottled up the self pity and the anger and the emotion and buried it
in a place so dark it could not help but fade into oblivion.

His heart.

A timid knock sounded at the door,
alerting James to who was on the other side even before he heard his sister’s
soft voice through the thick wood.

“James, are you all right?” she asked
hesitantly. “I thought… I thought I heard something.”

“Something fell off my desk. Come in,
Natty.”

The door creaked open a few scant
inches and a pale face, oval in shape and quite pretty in design, peeked
through.

At seventeen Natalie was a girl on the
brink of womanhood, not that James liked to think in such terms although he
supposed he would have to start. An arm, he reflected grimly as his once
bright, vibrant sister darted nervously into the room, was not the only thing
he’d lost during the war.

Time.

The only
thing in life that was given and taken in equal measure.

When he went to France five years ago
he left behind a rambunctious girl with dirt on her knees and pigtails in her
hair. He’d returned to find a somber woman full grown, a woman who knocked
where she once would have rushed in.
A woman who frowned where
she once would have smiled.

They said war changed the men who
fought within it, and James knew that to be true. But he also rather thought it
changed those left behind as well. The ones forced to wait and worry, never
knowing if the next day, the next hour, the next minute would bring good news
or bad. The ones forced to carry on with their lives as though nothing were
amiss. The ones forced to grow up without a father, a son, a brother…

“I do not want to disturb you,” Natalie
said, her blue eyes wide and wary.

“You’re not.” He spoke curtly, adopting
the same brusque tone he’d used to send soldiers into battle.
A tone that had no place in a gentleman’s study.
Natalie
faltered a step, her lips parting in dismay, and James bit back a growl of
frustration. He already garnered enough frightful glances when he walked down
the street – he did not need his own sister to fear him as well. And yet
fear him she did, if the twist of her hands and the worried look upon her
countenance was any indication.

Making a deliberate effort to soften
his voice, he nodded towards the leather chair facing his desk and asked if she
would like to sit. Natalie did so with great caution, perching on the very edge
of the seat as though preparing to flee at a moment’s notice.

A silence rose between them like a
wall, as unfamiliar as it was uncomfortable, and James could not help but
wonder when he’d lost his sister.

Was it the day he left, when she clung
to his side and begged through her tears for him not to go?
The
long months and years that followed?
When their father died and she was
forced to live with their aunt? Or after he returned, more a monster than a
man, with no idea of how to live in polite society?

Frustrated beyond all bearing, James
thrust a hand through his hair, pulling the long, unkempt ends taut. He was in
desperate need of a haircut, a shave, and, he thought with a sardonic twist of
his lips, a new wardrobe with all of the left sleeves removed.

“You look… nice.” Belatedly noting
Natalie was wearing an ivory ball gown trimmed with light blue lace, James
studied her with more attention to detail. Her chestnut brown hair was pulled
back from her face and twisted up into one of those bewildering coiffures that
defied gravity. Pearls – their mother’s, if he was not mistaken –
clung to her ears and wrapped around her neck. “Very nice,” he said, a frown
weighing heavily on his mouth. “What is the occasion?”

For a moment – a moment so quick
if he’d blinked he would have missed it – a flash of irritation flickered
in Natalie’s eyes before she slumped back in her seat, stared up at the
ceiling, and mumbled something under her breath.

“Speak up,” James demanded, then
immediately winced.
You are not on the
bloody battlefield taking a report
, he reminded himself sternly.
Calm yourself, man, before you frighten her
further
.

“I
said
,”
Natalie began, her dark eyebrows pulling together,
“I knew you would forget.”

“Forget?” His frown deepened. “Forget
what?”

“The ball at
Winswood
Estate, hosted by Lord and Lady
Heathcliff
. It is
fine,” she said hastily before James could say a word. “I… I did not want to
go.”

Heathcliff
. The name rang a bell of memory deep within the recesses of
James’ mind. He struggled to recall its origin for a moment, then shrugged and
let it go. He would remember in due time. He always did.

Leaning forward onto his remaining arm,
James did a sweeping glance of Natalie’s attire and said dryly, “Is that why
you are wearing a gown fit for a queen?”

Instantly a deep blush took hold of
Natalie’s cheeks and her hands passed in a nervous flutter across her lap,
smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from the thick folds of her dress. “I told you
about the ball over a month ago but I… I suppose you were otherwise occupied.”

That was one way to put it. Another
– even though he cringed to think of it now – was that he’d been a
raging lunatic, drunk off his
arse
from sunup to
sundown, with nary a coherent word spoken (or retained) in between. The pain in
his arm had driven him to drink. The fact that the pain came from an arm he no
longer had drove him to the brink of lunacy. By sheer will he’d brought himself
back from the edge, but the journey had not been an easy one, and James was not
so foolish to think it was even halfway finished.

How long would it take, he wondered,
until he stopped trying to open a doorknob with a hand that no longer existed?
How long until the phantom aches eased? How long until he woke in a bed not
soaked with his own sweat? How long until he felt a shred of normalcy return?

“I take it the ball is tonight?” he asked
after a long pause. The last thing he wanted to do was feel the weight of a
dozen stares as he played the part of chaperone, but he supposed there was no
getting around it. If he wanted to reacquaint himself into society –
which he did, if only for his sister’s sake – then there really was no
way around it.

Balls were long, tedious affairs filled
with intricate dance steps he had never been able to successfully master and
idle gossip he had no interest in taking part in. Although now, given his
situation, there was
one
upside. No
mothers would be sending their sparkly eyed daughters his way to dance, for who
in their right mind would want to court the attentions of a cripple? He would
be left in peace, Natalie would be able to waltz to her heart’s content, and
hopefully she would begin to treat him as she used to.

That was all he wanted.

Not an enormous mansion, or a fleet of
carriages, or a gorgeous woman on his arm. No, his desires were much simpler
than that. All he wanted, all he
needed
,
was for life to go back to ‘used to’.

“The ball began an hour ago,” Natalie
whispered, still fussing with her skirts, her eyes downcast and her shoulders
rigid.

James stood up. “Then I’d best get
changed.”

“You… You want to attend?”

Someone – a maid, he assumed
– had placed a sprig of holly on the corner of his desk in celebration of
the impending holiday. The leaves were a dark, glossy green and felt like wax
when he picked up the sprig and twirled it absently between his thumb and
forefinger, sending the red berries spinning in circles. “Why don’t you ask
Mrs. Fieldstone to have the carriage brought round,” he said, referring to
their head housekeeper, a plump, pleasant woman who had loyally served the
Rigby household for three generations. “And I will meet you in the foyer in
five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” Natalie said
doubtfully.

For the first time in recent memory,
James’ mouth attempted to form a smile. The muscles stretched and tightened,
pulling at the sides of his face in a way that was both familiar and forgotten.
“Perhaps ten,” he said, acknowledging his disheveled appearance with a wry
shake of his head.

After sleeping day in and day out on
the hard ground, he’d grown accustomed to dirt. Smelling it. Tasting it.
Wearing it. To him, the worn out trousers and tunic he was currently wearing
were luxurious garments, but in reality they were far more suited for a beggar
than a member of the gentry.

He had clothes, of course. More than he
knew what to do with. But after being forced to wear a heavy, cumbersome uniform
for longer than he cared to remember, James now welcomed comfort over quality.
Unfortunately the rest of his peers still favored pomp and circumstance, which
meant his current state of dress was a far cry from suitable for a formal ball.
In all honesty he could give a flying fig what others thought of him, but he
knew his actions and appearance would have a direct effect on Natalie, and so
he would try – ‘try’ being the operative word – to engage in a
manner befitting a man of his station.

The Rigby’s had never been nobility,
but they were gentlemen, their wealth discreetly earned and just as discreetly
spent. Their country estate was modest, their townhouse in London rented
seasonally, but they had never wanted for money nor suffered due to lack of it.

“How is the marriage mart these days?”
James asked as he walked around the side of his desk and out into the hallway.
Candles illuminated the narrow passage, sending flickering spheres of light
dancing up the walls and over the faces of his ancestors that now existed
solely within the confines of silver edged frames. At the end of the hall,
James knew, would be his parents, Harold Rigby on one side and Bernice Rigby on
the other. Staring endlessly at each other in painted memoriam as they had
never stared at each other in life.

James’ memories of his mother were
vague at best, nonexistent at worst. She’d died of complications shortly after
Natalie was born, and their father followed suit eight years later. Still a
young, impressionable girl of nine Natalie had gone to live with an aunt while
he… he had used his new inheritance to purchase an officer’s commission in the
army.

“There is no one I am interested in
currently.” Natalie trailed behind him, quiet as a mouse where she once would
have made enough noise to wake the dead. James paused at the end of the hall
and turned to face his sister. Even in the flickering shadows she seemed pale
and withdrawn; a slim imitation of the laughing, rambunctious girl he
remembered. 

“What happened to you Natty?” he
murmured, drawing on the name he’d used when they were children. His arm ached
to wrap around her shoulders, to pull her close and banish the fear he saw in
her eyes, but she was already so stiff he feared one touch would be enough to
shatter the temporary alliance he’d built between them since his return.

Natalie stared at him, her expression
guarded. “Not all wounds can be seen from the outside,” she said cryptically.

Something churned inside of James’
stomach. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. “Natty, what are you—”