Her Christmas Earl

Even through the thick door, he should have heard activity in the outer room. But Miss Sanders had so captivated him that he’d paid no whit of attention to anything else.

“Mamma, please hush,” Philippa said urgently, and without effect. “You’ll have everyone in here to see what the fuss is about.”

“How could you? You wicked, wicked girl. How could you?” And a litany of similar complaints about her younger daughter’s character and morals. All at top pitch.

Blast the harridan. Erskine would wager that they’d hear her in London. His grip on Philippa tightened, although it was too late for him to save her from trouble.

Behind the distraught parent’s rotund figure, Amelia stood, hatred glittering in her icy blue eyes as she regarded her sister. Right now, Amelia looked ready to commit murder.

Erskine had always suspected that Amelia’s angelic looks hid a nasty streak. He suppressed a shudder and thanked heaven that the elder Sanders girl had never appealed to him.

Mills, who held the key to the dressing room, raised his candelabra and greeted his master with a cool smile. “Merry Christmas, my lord.”

Nothing shook Mills’s composure, although a faint tightening around his eyes hinted that Mrs. Sanders’ hysterics came close.

“Philippa, how could you do this? How? Oh, I can’t even look at you!” Mrs. Sanders sucked in a noisy breath. “And still you sit there, basking in your sin.”

Guilt punched Erskine in the gut as he realized that he should have released Philippa the instant the door opened. Holding her was purely instinct, some rusty protective urge remaining from a boyhood of rescuing stray dogs and birds fallen from their nests. He thought he’d outgrown his need to shelter small, defenseless creatures. Apparently not. Philippa was a stalwart soul, but one glance at her wan, set face indicated that she needed protection.

Before he could apologize, she struggled free and stumbled to her feet. Feeling absurd on the floor before his accusers, he rose as well. In a futile attempt to shield her, he hovered at her shoulder. She sidled away, bumping into the leather trunk in the corner. Clearly she didn’t appreciate his attempts to play the hero.

Damn it, why should she? He’d acted like a dunderhead.

Kissing Philippa, he’d felt invincible. Right now, facing down a wall of disapproval from his dressing room doorway, he felt like a rat in a trap.

“Mamma, there’s a perfectly innocent explanation—”

“Don’t bother lying, you nasty little cat.” Amelia’s contempt made Philippa recoil. “I should have guessed when you offered to help me that you pursued your own causes. You were so clever to hide your interest in Lord Erskine.”

“Amelia—”

Erskine glanced at Philippa, then wished he hadn’t. She looked utterly overcome. Unfortunately, however wounded and humiliated she appeared, she also appeared delectable and ruffled and thoroughly kissed. Her rich brown hair tumbled around her shoulders, and in her crushed dress, she looked little better than a gypsy. Her intentions may have been pure, whatever her sister thought, but Blind Freddie could see that physical contact had occurred behind that locked door.

Before anything else, he had to put a cork in the mother’s damned caterwauling. “Mrs. Sanders, bringing the house’s attention upon us can’t be your purpose.”

To his surprise, the lady abruptly shut her mouth and turned accusatory blue eyes, eerily similar to her oldest daughter’s, in his direction. Erskine frowned. Those eyes were completely dry and, until she glanced down in what he read as false humility, alight with calculation.

What the deuce was going on? Had he been caught by the oldest trick in the world? Suspicion soured his gut as he stared at Philippa.

He was under no illusions about his appeal to the ton’s rapacious ladies. A single man of great fortune and distinguished lineage always attracted marriage-minded females. Since leaving university and taking his place in society, he’d been on guard. Since before that. The lassies on his Scottish estate were as awake as any English miss to the main chance.

But his doubt over Philippa’s motives vanished almost as soon as it arose. He was the one who had locked them in, and he hadn’t mistaken her dismay at the prospect of a scandal.

A glance at Mrs. Sanders told him that if Philippa hadn’t realized the advantages of tonight’s events, her doting mamma certainly had. Amelia continued to glare poison at her trembling sister.

“Just what are you doing in here, Mamma?” Philippa asked in a small voice.

Her mother regarded her youngest daughter with disfavor. “I couldn’t sleep and I wanted you to read to me. I was horrified to find your room empty. Naturally I went to Amelia and made her tell me where you were. I can hardly believe your brazen behavior.”

Amelia’s mouth pinched at the explanation. Erskine could imagine how unwillingly she’d revealed her sister’s whereabouts. But Mrs. Sanders was a bully to the bootstraps. A self-centered little minx like Amelia would never have withstood her mother’s demands.

Wearing a startling scarlet dressing gown, his host Sir Theodore Liddell appeared at the bedroom door. Only moments behind him, Erskine’s nitwit drinking companions crowded along the corridor, tripping over one another in tipsy eagerness to investigate the brouhaha.

“What’s all this hullabaloo, Erskine? Is this some Christmas prank? Bit early in the morning for hijinks,

don’t you think?” Sir Theodore’s jovial tone abruptly hardened as his eyes fell upon his cringing niece. “Good God, Philippa, what are you doing here?”

Any frail hope Erskine had harbored that he and Philippa might manage to sail through without attracting the world’s notice shriveled. And he became increasingly convinced that Mrs. Sanders had manufactured this impromptu gathering.