Mistletoe Wishes: A Regency Christmas Collection

“There are no grooms. There are no maids,” she said shakily. She tangled nervous fingers in the fringe of her shawl. “I’m completely on my own here.”

Chapter 2

Joss stared appalled at the exquisite creature with the willowy form and delicate, pointed face. This girl belonged in some enchanted realm, not in an empty house in a godforsaken valley. “What the devil do you mean, alone?”

No wonder she hadn’t given him a better welcome. When he turned up on her doorstep, twice as large as life, he must have scared her out of her mind. Not that anyone would know it. She’d been as game as a terrier protecting her domain.

Guilt at his high-handed behavior pricked at him, although he couldn’t entirely regret touching her. That part, he’d enjoyed, although he’d known even at the time that he shouldn’t.

“You know what alone means.” Pink edged the fairy’s slanted cheekbones, and she cast him an annoyed look. The fairy didn’t like him much.

And whose fault was that? He probably shouldn’t have taken matters into his own hands, when it came to shifting her downstairs.

Probably? Definitely. But the girl had been ready to stand on that cold stone floor and quarrel with him, until she turned into a block of ice. Joss had just chosen the commonsense solution.

He gestured around the large and well-appointed room. “This is a blasted manor house.”

“A small manor house.”

“It’s still too big to have only one wisp of a girl rattling around inside it. Won’t Black pay to staff it?”

Miss Carr continued to regard Joss as if he was something nasty eating her daffodils. At least she no longer looked like she turned into an icicle. Although standing as she was in front of the fire, she presented a disturbing picture.

The nightgown wasn’t designed to entice. In fact, he remembered Granny Hale wearing something very similar. But the effect of thick white flannel on Miss Carr was quite different, especially when the fire behind her was kind enough to reveal the shadowy shape of her body under the voluminous folds. The curves of waist and hip. The lissome line of her legs.

When he’d picked her up—something she wasn’t likely to forgive for a century at least—he’d thought there was nothing to her. But the naughty firelight proved him wrong. She might be a mere morsel, but what was there was prime quality.

He realized she was talking, in that precise voice with its husky edge that did nothing to subdue his masculine urges. When he’d pushed his way into the house, he’d felt frozen to the bone. He didn’t feel cold at all now. “What?”

That wasn’t polite. She didn’t have to tell him so. He was a lumbering bear of a man at the best of times. Faced with Miss Carr’s ethereal perfection, he felt like he could out-Caliban Caliban.

Yet this vision proclaimed herself to be something as prosaic as a housekeeper.

The world was going mad.

She started speaking slowly, as though he was deficient in understanding. By God, she might be right. He dragged his gaze from where the flannel draped across her hips and met her eyes. Sky blue. Striking, combined with the rich red hair tied into a thick plait that snaked over her shoulder and across her breast.

A round, luscious breast…

Damn it, not what he needed to think about. But he dared any man with blood in his veins to resist noticing.

That dratted swirly blue and red shawl covered her top half as effectively as modesty could wish. But that didn’t stop him wondering about what lay underneath.

“With six bedrooms,” she said sharply, breaking into his thoughts on whether her nipples were pink or brown. Right now, he leaned toward a lovely creamy brown, like lightly toasted toffee.

She must have been running through the details of the house. Luckily Uncle Thomas had enclosed a rough plan of the manor with his letter, so Joss could sound as if he’d been listening, instead of picturing her naked.

“And usually there’s another woman and an outdoor man to help.”

“So where are they?” He struggled to comprehend that he and this fiery-haired sprite were alone together in the middle of this damned wilderness.

She sighed and for a brief instant, stopped looking like a pocket Boadicea. “Jane’s daughter’s about to have a baby, so she left this afternoon. In the middle of winter, Mr. Welby only comes up from the village if there’s something urgent.”

He frowned. “You’re on your own for Christmas?”

She scowled, as though he’d accused her of purloining his pocket watch. Odd. He didn’t see the question as particularly combative.

“I’m perfectly happy here.”