“Come Monday we’ll be fetching greens from Willowbrook to decorate the old inn. It always adds joy to the place,” he told her one afternoon. “Do you bring in pine along with the holly, Lady Madelyn?”
Holly?“I’m afraid I never considered it, Mr. Benson. We never decorated Clarion Hall.”Of course we didn’t. Mother would have found it vulgar. Do they bring in greenery in the old way at Brynhafan?She suspected they did.
Rob and Lucy, Mr. Benson assured her, would be home soon, and wouldn’t they celebrate then? She hoped so. The Bensons would celebrate joyfully, no doubt, but holidays at Clarion Hall had tended toward dignity and somber formality.
The old man couldn’t help telling her Lucy expected a blessed bundle, though he colored and admitted he wasn’t supposed to share that news but ought to allow the couple their own announcements. It didn’t matter. If he hadn’t told her, Emma, his daughter, was bursting with the news when she appeared. Maddy’s twinge of jealousy passed quickly.
Neither mentioned Brynn Morgan, and Maddy didn’t ask. She knew he had reached London because Lucy had written again, mentioning in passing that they’d had him to dinner. She hadn’t said whether he would travel with them before Christmas or even if he planned to arrive for Twelfth Night. Maddy could only assume he would and hope he came sooner.
She made three more visits to the hall, enlisting Marj’s help planning games to entertain visiting children and generally feeding the flames of her niece’s excitement at the prospect.
Torn between the cold ostentation of the hall, where they would surely be welcome if she asked, and the simple comforts of the Willow, Maddy decided her guests would be more comfortable at the inn and made arrangements with the Bensons for a week or more around Twelfth Night.
Rhys and Gideon would probably prefer it. She had a brief doubt when she considered the children, thinking of Marj and Edward, but they could be brought back and forth to visit easily, couldn’t they? She was less sure about Phillip, who was used to more aristocratic accommodation, but decided he would want to be near Gideon and Rhys.
What of Brynn? He would also stay at the Willow, of course. She could hardly invite him to stay at the dower house as she desired. Her face heated at the thought. Still determined to face her past, to put her fears of intimacy to the test, and to forge a future with Brynn, she knew she needed courage. She would welcome his loving touch. She was certain of it, if only she could banish the past for good. She didn’t have any idea how she would manage it with so much family descending on Ashmead, but she would.
That settled, all she could do was prowl the empty rooms of the dower house, fret about whether she ought to gather holly and pine, and wait. Brynn would come. She had to hope. He would be at The Willow and the Rose. She would have to find ways to get him alone.
*
Brynn rode intothe stable yard of the Willow late on the third of January, weary and hoping for a hot bath and quiet night to prepare himself for the coming revels and the inevitable family tension. He kept under control the urge to fly to the dower house and Madelyn.
Tomorrow. I’ll see her tomorrow, he thought, handing his mount to the young ostler and throwing his saddlebag over one shoulder. He stifled that refrain and recalled his resolution to keep his distance. Everything he said to Rhys at Brynhafan still held. He had nothing to offer her. He had no business pursuing a duchess who deserved so much more.
He entered the inn from the side to be greeted by the sound of revelry from the tavern, expecting to retrieve his key and find his room. He had written ahead, certain Mr. Benson would keep a room for him, but no one came out to greet him.
Assuming the innkeeper had been called into duty in the taproom and couldn’t hear a newcomer over the noise, he followed the sound and found the tavern brimming with revelers. He paused at the door, unnoticed.
As he’d suspected, the Benson patriarch held court at the bar, where a scattering of regulars, locals all, cradled drinks. The room, however, echoed with family and friends. Brynn’s brother had written from the road, alerting him they would arrive a few days before Twelfth Night; he’d beaten Brynn to Ashmead. Rhys and Gideon Kendrick sat a bit to the side, chatting with Eli and Rob Benson. It appeared Glenmoor, decked once again in the full dandified, ducal splendor he had eschewed in Wales, had come earlier as well, for he took his leisure in a wing-backed chair by the hearth, deep in conversation with the Earl of Clarion.
The Kendrick children, Clarion’s daughter, and the Benson grandchildren ran about in one of those games adults never understood. The earl’s daughter seemed to be the ringleader, though the son sat on a stool next to his father in quiet dignity. Lucy Benson and her sister-in-law, Emma Corbin, chuckled together in the snug, ignoring the chaos.
As he watched them all, Brynn’s fatigue seeped away, replaced by warmth and anticipation. He scanned the room for the duchess, the one person he wanted to see, but she was nowhere to be found. Before he could announce his arrival, the door to the kitchen opened, and the woman of his heated dreams entered from it and drew everyone’s attention.
He gaped at her, helplessly enthralled. This was not the glorified duchess he had built up in his mind in her absence. This was Madelyn, the woman he’d found on a bench in the moonlight at Willowbrook, basking in the joy of her brother’s wedding. She carried a rather impressive pudding decked with holly on a platter and smiled broadly at all and sundry. His heart turned over at the sight.
At least she smiled until she caught sight of him. Madelyn’s eyes went wide, and her hands faltered. The pudding started to slip. Gideon, who was closest, lurched toward her, but old Mr. Benson got there first, charging across the room like a man half his age to grip the platter.
“Colonel Morgan, we expected you sooner,” she said, gathering her wits while the innkeeper carried the platter to a table set up in the middle with favors and a stack of plates.
The outbursts of welcome from everyone rescued Brynn from the need to reply. Rhys reached him first with a hug of welcome. Glenmoor startled him by shaking his hand. Obviously, no one was standing on decorum this night. Clarion greeted him with his habitual formality but with warmth nonetheless. Eli Benson grinned from his seat and lifted a mug of the Willow’s excellent ale, raising his eyebrows in question, but Emma Corbin beat him to it, pressing a pint into Brynn’s hands. Rob Benson clapped him on the back and urged him to drink before “these jackanapeses drive you mad.”
Madelyn moved after a few moments to hover around the table where the pudding had been placed. His eyes darted from his crowd of greeters to her continually, so he didn’t miss her hug with Kendrick’s oldest daughter and the tender expression on her face when she addressed the children, who had gathered around like a flock of chickens, eager for pudding, no doubt.
The Benson patriarch boomed greetings, calling the room to order. “You’ve missed dinner, Colonel Morgan, but you can see you arrived on time for the best part. We better be about serving that pudding before the children lose their last hold on manners and attack it.” He glanced at Madelyn, who nodded back.
“Let the man relax, Da. He’s been riding for hours. And leave the bar to Emma for a while.” Benson pulled two extra chairs up to the table he shared with Eli, Rhys, and Gideon. “Drink that ale, Morgan. Let the ladies fuss over the tribe of infants.”
“How was your trip?” Kendrick asked politely.
“Dreary, wet, and long,” Brynn said to knowing nods. “How long have you been here?”
“We arrived yesterday,” Rhys said.
“Not soon enough for your brother. He’d never traveled with children before.” Kendrick sent a sly grin at Rhys.
“How did you leave London? Madelyn invited Rockford to come, and he claimed ‘affairs’ kept him away. Was he working you to the bone? Did you discover anything?” Benson demanded.
