Mistletoe Wishes: A Regency Christmas Collection

“Thank you. I hoped you’d be pleased.” The sincerity in Bess’s voice warmed his heart almost as much as holding her hand had. “Your brother would be so happy to see the Abbey coming back to life.”

The brother who had proposed to her. The brother with whom he had more in common than he’d suspected, if they’d both been in thrall to the same woman.

Heavy oak chests and chairs and tables ranged around the walls. Some must date from the days when the house had been an actual abbey. “This is exactly right.”

Her smile was approving as she stepped forward to run her hand over the lovely carving on the mantel. The gesture’s inherent sensuality made him long to feel her touch on his naked skin.

“I’m sure you’ll want something cozier for the family rooms, but at least the Abbey is no longer an empty shell.”

He could feel the difference. It was nothing to do with furniture and everything to do with Bess’s vivid presence. “Thanks to you.”

“I hated seeing the place so rundown,” she said. “This house has always been the center of village life.”

“The longer I stay…” The longer he talked to Bess. “…the more I feel I know George. That’s another thing I have to thank you for. At this rate, you’ll earn rights to Daisy into the next century.”

The pink in her cheeks deepened. “I…I prefer kisses to housework.”

Shock and pleasure vied in his mind. “Are you asking me to kiss you again?”

Her eyes flickered down, and she suddenly looked touchingly young. “Would I be so brazen?”

Which wasn’t, he noted with satisfaction, a no. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said mildly, wanton heat swirling through his blood in a way that wasn’t mild at all.

“Not here,” she said quickly, subjecting him to a flash of blue eyes before looking down again. Then she straightened and became the woman who had commandeered his house. “And not now. We need to collect Daisy and head for the village. We’ll be late as it is.”

Not here meant somewhere else. And not now surely meant later.

Rory could hardly wait.

***

Rory’s questions about the vicar found answers on the way to the rehearsal. Penton Wyck included a neat high street with several well-stocked shops, a fine market cross, and rows of attractive half-timbered houses. For a man unused to much fuss for Christmas, a lovely touch was the greenery adorning the houses.

The snow-covered thoroughfare led straight from the gates of his estate through the village to a complex of stone buildings: a Tudor church, he guessed built after the Abbey was requisitioned from the Benedictine monks; a neat rectory dating from last century; various outbuildings; and an impressive and ancient structure with towering doors several stories high.

“It’s a tithe barn,” Bess said. “That’s where we hold our rehearsals.”

“Magnificent,” Rory said, meaning it. The architecture was simple, but the sheer size of the barn took his breath away. He hauled a recalcitrant Daisy forward. The donkey had been playing up all the way from the Abbey. Only a couple of choruses of “Greensleeves” had kept her moving at all. “The monks must have been rich in their day.”

She glanced at him. “They were. That’s why those rapacious Beatons were so determined to claim Penton Abbey when the monasteries were dissolved. That must be where you came by your piratical tendencies.”

“It’s unfair to blame a man for his ancestors,” Rory protested, as a stooped, ramshackle figure in a faded black cassock emerged between the open doors. Only when he came nearer did Rory realize that the man was above average height. The barn’s monumental scale had dwarfed him.

“Good afternoon, my dear. Out for a stroll?” Familiar blue eyes drifted over Rory with no hint of curiosity. Rory guessed the man’s identity before Bess spoke.

“Good afternoon, Papa,” she said. “We’re practicing for the nativity play.”

“Very good, very good.” He smiled vaguely and lifted a thin hand to scratch Daisy behind the ears.

“Lord Channing, may I present my father, John Farrar, vicar of St. Martin’s?”

“What’s that you say?” the old man asked. “Lord Channing? I thought I conducted a memorial service for him last summer. The choir sang the William Byrd anthem. Most touchingly, too. Dear me, I am becoming forgetful.”

“The new Lord Channing, Papa. I told you that the earl’s brother had inherited. He’s a seafaring man. It took them several months to locate him.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” the vicar said, and Rory would lay money that he paid no attention.

At least she hadn’t told her father he was a pirate.