Mischief & Mistletoe (A Christmas Novella) Read Free Page B

stood at once and retreated behind the damask chair. Truth to tell, he’d never trusted snappish misses—and this one particularly less so for she was behaving entirely out of form.
    She wore the most God-awful morning dress. It made her appear ancient and gray, yet something about her intrigued him, nevertheless. The glint in her eyes? Perhaps it was because the cynicism expressed there so mirrored his own. Christ. What had he done to her? The mere thought twisted his gut, for he wasn’t unlike Midas in that way—only instead of the golden touch, he seemed to turn everything bitter in his wake. He had to remind himself that while she was angry now, this was still very much the right thing to do.
    Hell, he could never have truly pleased her, never given her what she deserved. He was just like his own father, a true Morgen—incurably rotten to the bone. He could only expect that, with him as her husband, that sweet smile he remembered so well would turn bitter over time and her tender heart would quickly harden.
    As hard as his own.
    In the end she would have wilted, as did his mother, because he couldn’t reciprocate her feelings. He couldn’t love her. He couldn’t love anyone. Damned if he even knew the meaning of the word.
    No, she was better off without him, and for once in his life he intended to do the proper thing—for her father’s sake—the only one man who had ever believed in him—as much as for Emma’s sake.
    “Ink and paper would have sufficed,” she informed him tightly. “You have no license to intrude here on such a reverent occasion. Have you no concern at all for how this visit might distress my family?”
    “Your family?” he found himself repeating, his tone incredulous.
    Not her?
    “Yes, my family!” she reiterated, her cheeks suffused with an angry blush. She gave him a cool little smile. “Did you think I would care one whit, Your Grace? After all this time? Did you think you would find the same bran-faced pea-goose girl you last beheld?”
    Leaning forward upon the chair, Lucien found himself inspecting the bridge of her nose, looking for those freckles she referred to and found them indeed gone. And pea-goose wasn’t precisely the term he would use for the termagant standing so impudently before him.
    “Well,” she continued in a heated whisper. “If so, you will be delighted to discover otherwise. She took another step forward and set a small silver box down upon the desk. Lucien had a suspicion as to what it might be, though he hadn’t had the balls to ask for it’s return before now.
    He met her gaze, and she actually smiled. “Now I suggest you pack your possessions upon your phaeton—or whatever it is you rogues go about in—and be gone with a free conscience. Neither I nor my brother will trouble you further. You are free to go.” She waved him a way with a flick of her hand.
    Lucien blinked. “ Britschka ,” he corrected. But then he simply stood there, staring at her.
    She glared at him a moment in confusion and then said with conviction, “I really don’t care what you came in. Nor am I particularly concerned with what you depart in—be it by boot, carriage, or sleigh—merely that you go. Now... if you will pardon me, Your Grace —” She lifted those god-awful skirts and marched past him toward the tremendous wall of books at his back. “I shall procure what I came for and be along my merry way.”
    She could have fooled him, Lucien thought ruefully. He was pretty certain what she’d come for was his neck!
    He had a sudden vision of her doing him bodily harm, and he flinched as she reached out to pluck a green cloth book from one of the lower shelves behind him. He half expected her to box him with it, but she merely turned and marched across the room, leaving him staring open-mouthed after her.
    In her wake, the subtle scent of lavender drifted by, and his blood simmered as his gaze lit upon her lovely backside.
    Damn.
    All those years ago, as lovely