Czytaj książkę: «His Mistletoe Wager»

Chapter One

A London ballroom—St Nicholas’s Day,

6th December 1820

Hal twisted the sprig of mistletoe idly between his fingers and took another cleansing breath of the cold night air. The heat in the tedious Renshaw ballroom was stifling, but then again, as it was quite the crush inside no doubt everyone would laud the evening as a resounding success. There was nothing guaranteed to cause more excitement in town than two hundred sweating aristocrats stuffed into their winter finery and all forcing themselves to be cheerful in deference to the season.

For Hal, it also signalled the start of a month of sheer hell, as now he was the Earl of Redbridge he would be expected to attend every single one of the festive functions between now and Twelfth Night. It was, apparently, a Redbridge tradition, and the only one his mother was determined to continue even though her tyrannical husband was mouldering in the ground, and she had happily ignored all his other edicts since his death last year. In fact, she was so looking forward to it, Hal couldn’t bring himself to complain, even though it culminated in him hosting the final, most opulent and eagerly anticipated ball of all at his Berkeley Square house on the sixth of January. Twelfth Night. The official end of the Christmas season.

In previous years, he had always managed to make a hasty exit from the short but frenetic festive season. He had danced and flirted with a few game girls, then disappeared to his club or to a gaming hell or to the bedchamber of whatever willing widow or wayward wife he happened to be enjoying at that particular time. Now he was stuck. Shackled by an ingrained sense of duty to his mother, who was enjoying life to the full now that she finally had her freedom and her period of mourning was over. Although like him, she hadn’t seemed to mourn much. His father had been a mean-spirited, dictatorial curmudgeon who criticised absolutely everything his wayward children did. But he had made Hal’s gentle mother’s life a misery.

Hal had lost count of the number of times he had heard her crying, all alone in her bedchamber, because of yet another cruel or thoughtless thing his sire had done to her. However, if he went to her when she was crying, she would pretend nothing was amiss. ‘Pay it no mind, Hal. Marriage is meant to be filled with trials and tribulations.’ Something which did not make the prospect of it particularly enticing.

If he went to his father and called him on it, after the tirade of abuse which always accompanied such impertinence, his father would shrug it off as the way of things. A wife was a means of getting heirs. Nothing more. That duty discharged, they were merely doomed to tolerate each other. That was the inevitable way of things. And surely it was long past time Hal stopped sowing wild oats, settled down to do his duty to the house of Stuart and begat some heirs of his own to continue the legacy? And whilst he was about it, he needed to start learning about estate management and how to do proper business, which in his father’s world usually meant ruining people and feasting off their carcasses in order to amass an even larger fortune than he already had.

‘The world runs on coin, Henry, nothing else matters. Or do you intend to be a shocking and scandalous disappointment to me for ever?’

A silly question, seeing as Hal had no appetite for either cruelty or proper business. Instead, he had made it his life’s mission to thoroughly disappoint his father at every given opportunity as a point of principal, and the single most thorough way of doing that was to be creating frequent scandals. Hal enjoyed the spectacle of his livid father’s purple face as much as he did bedding a succession of wholly unsuitable, and gloriously unmarriageable, women. Reckless wagers at the card table came a close second. His father abhorred the careless use of good money on anything so frivolous and unpredictable. Money was for making more money to add to the heaps and heaps they had already, because money meant power and his father adored being powerful above all else. Even if that meant making everybody else miserable or his only son hate everything his father stood for. As the years passed, the gulf between the Earl and his scandalous only son had widened so much there might as well have been a whole ocean between them. A state of affairs which suited Hal just fine. Being scandalous had become so ingrained, such an intrinsic part of his own character, now his father was dead he actually missed misbehaving. It was as if a part of him was missing.

It was not the only thing in his life which had changed since he had inherited the title. He also had to run the enormous estate he now owned, something he never expected to relish, and the vast and varied business investments were a constant source of amusement. Because it turned out Hal had a natural talent for making more money by considering investment opportunities his father would never have dared touch, and without having to resort to those abhorrent proper business tactics his dreadful father had used, Hal had been feeling a trifle odd for months now. Yet could not quite put his finger on why.

The sad truth was simply having fun really wasn’t fun any more. Since he had become the Earl of Redbridge he had found the gaming hells had lost their appeal, as had the bawdy widows and wayward wives. Instead, he found himself wanting to dive into his new ledgers rather than a willing woman’s bed. He enjoyed reading the financial news and, to his utter dismay and total disgust, found the debates in the Lords fascinating. All the things his father had wanted him to take an interest in, the very things he had avoided resolutely for all of his twenty-seven years, now called to him and Hal was uncharacteristically inclined to listen. It was beyond disconcerting.

To begin with, he assumed this odd malaise was a temporary condition, brought about by the lack of need to vex his father and the shock of taking on his mantle, but the odd mood had persisted way beyond those unfamiliar, tentative first months. In fact, he hadn’t been between anyone’s sheets but his own in an age, and apparently out of choice rather than lack of opportunity. The last time he had engaged in a bit of bed sport, Hal had had to force himself and then found the whole interlude wholly unsatisfying. Almost as if something was missing although he could not say what. The widow had been passionate and lustful—two things he had always enjoyed in a woman—yet Hal had not been able to get out of her bed quickly enough and certainly had no intentions of ever going back to it. All in all, his lack of libido was becoming quite worrying. As was his lack of risky, devil-may-care behaviour. If he did not find a way to combat it, Hal was in danger of turning into his cold, dour father and that would never do.

‘Are you hoping to find a willing young lady on this terrace to steal a kiss from?’ His brother-in-law, next-door neighbour and best friend in the world, Aaron Wincanton, Viscount Ardleigh, stared pointedly at the green sprig in Hal’s hand. ‘And if you are, should I make myself scarce? I can happily hide somewhere else if I am interrupting a potential tryst.’ His friend held aloft two generously filled brandy glasses and did a poor job of blending into the background.

‘By all means, join me. There is nobody here I want to kiss.’ Too many seasons spent in too many ballrooms had made him quite jaded. Each crop of new debutantes seemed to become sillier than the previous ones, not one of them could converse on any topics other than the banal and he found their blatant, simpering new interest in him since he acquired his title irritating. Especially when they wouldn’t give him the time of day beforehand. He had been far too scandalous. But now, he was an earl and they all wanted to be the one to give him his father’s longed-for heirs.

‘Oh, dear. Have things got that bad?’

‘It’s all right for you. You are no longer an eligible bachelor. You can breeze in and out of any ballroom unencumbered. I can scarcely make it to the refreshment table without some hungry young miss trying to get her matrimonial claws in me. And do not get me started on the mothers!’

‘You are an earl, tolerably handsome, I am told, and a rich one to boot. I doubt you will need the mistletoe, I dare say most of them will happily kiss you quite enthusiastically without it. Even with your womanising reputation.’ Hal groaned and stared mournfully in to his brandy, something which made his brother-in-law laugh. ‘Is there really no one you find even slightly intriguing?’

‘It is hard to be intrigued when they are all so frightfully eager.’

His friend nearly choked on his brandy. ‘A travesty indeed! Poor you. All these eager women and no inclination to indulge.’ Good grief! Had it become that obvious? Things were clearly direr than Hal had imagined if other people were beginning to notice, and that was beyond embarrassing. ‘I think I know what ails you?’

‘You do?’

‘Yes, indeed. Your lack of interest in the opposite sex can easily be explained. You miss the thrill of the chase. We men are born with the inherent desire to hunt for what we need.’

‘I hate hunting.’ Hal’s father had thoroughly enjoyed it and had forced his reluctant little boy to accompany him on far too many of them. He still recalled the first time he had seen a poor, terrified fox ripped to pieces by a pack of dogs and how frightened and appalled he had been when his father had soaked his handkerchief in the still-warm entrails and smeared the sticky blood all over Hal’s face. A hunting tradition, apparently, and one he still could not understand. ‘You know I hate hunting.’

Aaron rolled his eyes. ‘Not foxes, you fool, women! You cannot deny you are a hunter of women. A lone and fearless predator. When they are all so depressingly eager and happy to fall at your feet, you miss the thrill of seducing them.’

‘Perhaps.’ Without thinking he turned his body to gaze through the windows back into the ballroom and watched the sea of swirling silk-clad young women on the dance floor to see if just one of them stood out to him and inspired him to go seduce them. Then sighed when none did.

‘The trouble is,’ his friend continued, far too cheerfully for Hal’s liking, ‘you grew up with Connie.’

‘And what, pray tell, does my tempestuous sister have to do with this?’

‘She has set a standard you have come to expect from all women.’

‘Are you suggesting I yearn for a foul-tempered, flouncing termagant of a woman? Because really, Aaron, I love my dear sister to distraction, but the idea of being married to someone similar terrifies me.’ Not that he was looking for a wife. Heaven forbid! The idea of being shackled for life in matrimonial disharmony, like his parents, filled him with dread. Besides, he was still too young to sacrifice himself to the parson’s trap. His father had often said all respectable gentlemen had a duty to be married before they were thirty. Hal had another three years to go to thwart that edict and had no immediate desire to become respectable. Not when he still had far too many wild oats to sow. And he would, as soon as he shook off his odd mood. He had every intention of making the man spin in his grave for a considerate amount of time as penance for being so awful. At least another decade.

‘Fear not, it takes a real man to deal with a woman like your sister and you are not in my league, dear fellow. What I mean is merely this. All those eager girls do not present a challenge to you, which is why you are so out of sorts.’ He waved his hand dismissively in the direction of the dancers. ‘Therefore I am prepared to set you an interesting challenge out of family loyalty, to restore some of your missing vigour. A bit of fun to liven up this laboriously festive social season for the both of us, seeing as Connie has decreed we spend it here with your mother, and your mother has such exuberance for society again. Wouldn’t you relish a decent challenge? For our usual stakes, of course.’

‘I suppose...’ It was a sorry state of affairs if a man in his prime was without vigour, yet the plain and simple truth was Hal had not encountered a single woman in well over a year who did not bore him to tears. Even the unsuitable, corruptible ones he favoured were leaving him cold. Although he was prepared to concede fun would be good, if nothing else, as it had been a bit thin on the ground of late. ‘What sort of challenge?’

‘How many berries are on that sprig of parasitic vegetation you are clutching like an amulet?’

‘Five—why?’ Because Aaron had a particular gleam in his eye and as their usual stakes involved the loser mucking out the other’s stables single-handed, or when in town just Hal’s, as Aaron had cheerfully sold his house years before, he was understandably wary. Being bored and being consigned to shovelling excrement for his brother-in-law’s amusement were two very different things entirely.

‘Five berries equal the five separate kisses I challenge you to steal. Each one in a different location and all five before Twelfth Night. Let us call it The Mistletoe Wager, in a nod to the season.’ Their bets always had names and there had been some momentous ones. The North Road Race. The Serpentine Swim. The Fisticuffs Experiment and the ill-conceived and often-lamented Naked Night in Norfolk, when they both nearly froze to death trying to brave the winter weather sitting out in the elements on the exposed beach of Great Yarmouth. They had hastily agreed to end that one early when they simultaneously lost feeling in their gentlemen’s areas. The Mistletoe Wager certainly sounded a lot more pleasant than all its painful predecessors.

Hal felt himself grin at the thought. Five kisses! He could do that in his sleep. ‘To be frank, I think it is only fair to point out I am so confident of my appeal, I believe you will be ensconced in my well-stocked stable tomorrow. Challenge accepted!’

‘Hold your fire, my arrogant young friend. I have not set out my full terms yet. There is one more thing I must insist upon.’

‘Which is?’

‘I get to choose whom you have to kiss.’

Hal felt his eyes narrow suspiciously. ‘No nuns. No dowagers or ladies in their dotage and for pity’s sake spare me Lady Daphne Marsh. I must insist that the ladies selected have teeth! Rumour has it those clattering dentures she wears are made with teeth chiselled out of the corpses on the battlefield at Waterloo.’

‘Really? I had heard they were carved out of a single walrus tusk... Either way, I agree they are distasteful.’ Aaron held up his palm solemnly. ‘You have my word. Only eligible, pretty ladies I would have chased after myself, before I had the great good fortune to be forced into marriage with your sister, qualify. What do you say? Shall we shake on it to seal the wager?’