The carpets at Marchingham Hall were in need of replacement. Addy’s gown, however, was in the finest fashion, a Worth creation fresh from Paris. The snow had somehow failed to damage the silk, thanks to the tight fit of Addy’s trunks.
“Excellent plan,” she agreed, starting off with her aunt in the opposite direction of the duke. “I’m so glad you agreed to accompany me here instead of Mama. She wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”
Aunt Pearl grinned. “I know, my dear girl. I know.”
CHAPTER 4
Half a dozen or so.
By God.
The minx had kissed half the men in the tiny mountain village outside the Swiss finishing school, and she had dared to look him in the eye with defiance sparkling in her emerald gaze and admit it with nary a hint of shame.
As Lion stewed in his study, Miss Fox’s words continued to taunt him.
I am astonished that you are thinking about my backside, she had said.
Oh, he was thinking about her backside. And her front as well. His thoughts were bloody well consumed with the minx. What her hair looked like flowing freely over her shoulders. The tight little points of her nipples protruding from her nightgown. The full swells of her breasts. The curve of her hips. Her delicate bare feet.
That mouth of hers, always smiling, uttering mockery and taunts at every turn. What he would give to tame those sultry lips with his. To kiss her until she was breathless, her eyes glazed, and there were no more thoughts of vexing him running wild in her clever brain.
At least the snow had finally stopped.
Lion ran a hand through his hair and paced the length of his study for what must have been the hundredth time that afternoon. He had foregone luncheon to avoid Miss Fox’s maddening presence, and now he was hungry and irritable. He ought to have listened to Stevens and taken a tray whilst he finished reviewing the bills that had been sent up from Hawthorne House in London. The efficient running of households and estates was so damned costly, and thanks to the profligate dukes preceding him—his own father included—Lion was left in a constant state of near-destitution.
If only Lila and Violetta would find proper husbands and marry them.
It would be a great deal of weight off his shoulders.
Their father had died when Lion had been a green lad of eighteen, and their mother had gone not long after, leaving Lion to be father and mother to a pair of young girls who had grown to become wayward hellions. They had spent most of their lives in the country, away from London and town bronze. By the time he’d realized how woefully lacking the tutelage of their governess had been, Lila and Violetta had been eighteen and nineteen and had yet to even have their presentations at court.
He had scraped together every last ha’penny to send them to finishing school in an effort to give them the polish and elegance they would need to land suitable matches in polite society.
And then they had been summarily sent home because of the influence of Miss Adelia Fox, a spoiled American hoyden who didn’t need sophistication or refinement to recommend her when she had her father’s immeasurable fortune. Three years of mounting bills later, and both his sisters still remained unwed.
That was what he needed to remember every time he found himself entranced by Miss Fox’s charming retroussé nose or thesparkle in her eyes. She was the source of a great deal of his present state of penury and misery.
She was?—
The faint strains of music reached him, causing Lion’s strides and his whirling thoughts to both falter. Piano music. Singing.
Miss Fox.
He found himself wandering from his study, following the sound to the music room that had been his mother’s greatest pride at Marchingham Hall. Lion hadn’t played in years, but he kept the instruments tuned for his sisters’ sakes.
Neither Lila nor Violetta sang the way Miss Fox did, however.
“See the blazing Yule before us,” she crooned.
He stood at the threshold, watching her. Miss Fox’s back was to him, her golden hair plaited into an elaborate braid and then woven into a chignon high on her head. Her dainty fingers moved over the ivory keys with ease and skill as she sang.
“Strike the harp and join the chorus,” she continued. “Fa la la la la la la la la.”
It was a Christmas carol. Of course it was.
He had never seen a woman so dismayed to find a lack of Christmas trees and other maudlin decorations hanging about. And Lion couldn’t say why, but he found himself mesmerized by the lilting strains of her husky voice as she reached the final chorus of fa la las.
When she finished, he applauded, and she gave a start at the first clap. Swinging about on the piano bench, she pressed a hand over her heart.
