To Wed His Christmas Lady (The Heart of a Duke #7)(2)

After effectively burying the thought of her all these years, he let the memories of her slip in. He’d known his mother’s goddaughter, Lady Clarisse Falcot, since she was in the nursery and he’d been a mere boy of ten. He recalled the precise moment he’d known Clarisse was no manner of woman he’d ever wed, despite his father’s clear expectations. On a visit to her family’s properties, he’d stepped into the foyer. She’d been a girl but had the servants lined up. With a frigid tone better reserved for Wellington himself in the heart of battle, she’d ordered them about in search of some bauble or trinket. He’d stood frozen in the entrance of the duke’s country home, alongside his family, and a chill had snaked through him to rival the current storm. This would be the girl my father will someday bind me to?

Their gazes had caught and she’d stared at him through narrowed, angry eyes. And he’d despised her from the start. Cold, icy, and rude to the servants. As a girl of ten, she was the epitome of pompous nobility. His father had ingrained into William early on that a man’s merit came not in his birthright, but in his sense of right and strength of convictions. Yet, still with that, he’d wed William off to that coldhearted, English miss who’d treated servants as though their only purpose was to serve her.

Another gust of wind whipped the steady snow into his face, stinging his cheeks. He strode over to his mount and freed Thunder’s reins from the oak tree. William climbed astride and then nudged his horse forward, onward toward his family’s country seat in Farnham. Through the worsening conditions, he struggled to see into the tempest. He guided his mount onward, along the snow-covered, old, Roman roads, and struggled to see through the curtain of heavy white flakes.

Momentarily blinded, William slowed Thunder to a walk, mindful of the winds gusting small drifts on the rough roads. It was inevitable. Lady Clarisse could not have stayed a girl forever. And by the whispers and gossip he’d heard before he’d begun his journey home from London, she’d grown into a shrewish, foul extension of her younger self and the duke who’d sired her.

He pulled on the reins and stared about at the desolate landscape painted white by nature’s brushstroke. Thunder shifted nervously under him.

Mind in tumult, William looked down the path toward his family’s estate, that family who even now awaited his arrival. Thunder danced beneath him as he contemplated the two paths. One home. The other toward the inn a short distance back that would offer refuge from the storm and a temporary reprieve from his inevitable fate.

William doffed his hat and shook the flakes from the brim. He promptly placed his cap back on and pulled it low to shield his eyes from the snow. Yes, he must return. And yet, his family could not expect him to return in the midst of an increasingly violent storm, even if Christmas was but days away.

He cast a last reluctant look down the road leading to Farnham and his family—and his future—and then, decision made, urged Thunder back toward the Fox and Hare Inn. He shoved aside the needling of guilt. There would be time enough for a reunion after the storm.



A short while later, William dismounted before the modest inn. Wind whipped the large, wood sign back and forth, while the howling wind stretched across the land. He wrapped the horse’s reins around his hand and led him back to the stables. With each step, his boots sank quietly into the thick blanket of snow. He stopped outside the stable and rapped several times.

Silence met his knocking. With a frown, he glanced about and then banged again, this time harder. The door opened and a man nearly one foot smaller than William’s own six-foot four-inch frame looked up at him. The wizened figure squinted through thick lenses. “Do you need something?”

The wind wailed about them. “I am looking for a stable for my horse until the storm lets up.” Or forever, would be preferable if it meant he did not have to return to the responsibilities he’d put off all these years.

The hostler collected the reins and guided his mount into the stables.

“Thank—” The old man slammed the stable door closed in his face. “—you,” he finished wryly, and then ducking his head to shield his face from the specks of icy snow hitting him, he returned down the snowy path to the front of the inn.

Other noblemen might chafe at being treated with such disrespect. William grinned. There was, and always had been, something freeing in traveling about without being hindered by a title or ancestry. To the world at large, he’d been just William.

William reached the old inn he’d passed many times before and shoved the door open. He stepped inside and blinked several times in an attempt to bring the dimly lit space into focus. His boots dripping water on the already stained hardwood floors, William closed the door behind him. The blaring storm warred with the quiet in the empty inn. But for the hiss and crack of the blazing fire, silence raged. He skimmed his gaze about the darkened room.

From the corner of the establishment, a bleating snore rent the stillness of the room. A man sat at the back corner table with his white head buried on his hands.

The quick shuffle of footsteps called his attention to an old woman making her way down the stairs. “There is someone here, Martin,” she shouted.

The white-haired man jerked awake. “What?” He looked frantically about. “Who?”

The old woman stopped at the base of the stairs and eyed William as he shrugged out of his modest cloak. She looked him over. Her gaze lingered on his coarse garments better suited to a man who worked with his hands than an heir to a dukedom and a frown turned her lips. “We have a patron,” she said and then came over to collect his garment.