A Match Made in Mistletoe: A Regency Novella Read online

  But that wasn’t what had made her heart clench with poignant emotion. No, what made her ache was the revelation that beneath his rakish dash, Giles Farraday was lonely.

  * * *

  Giles looked out the window of the bedroom he always used at Torver House and pondered the bleak winter landscape outside. The estate nestled in a pretty valley where a river ran down toward the distant sea.

  But that wasn’t what he saw, as he stood above gardens and fields, hills and coppices, all bare with the season.

  No, his attention was centered on the knot garden directly below, where his best friend walked in the gathering dusk with the only woman Giles had ever wanted. His best friend, who had informed him a week ago that this Christmas, he meant to offer for Serena Talbot and that he had every hope of being accepted.

  Of course he did. He’d be a deuced blockhead if he didn’t.

  The girl had never had eyes for anyone else. And Paul was quite the catch. Rich, handsome, honorable.

  And, Giles admitted grudgingly, a damned nice fellow.

  There were no impediments to the match. The families were close, Serena would make the perfect chatelaine for Paul’s charming Palladian house. After the wedding, she wouldn’t even have to move far from the parents she loved. Paul’s estates were only several miles away from Torver.

  Everyone liked Paul. Damn it, Giles liked Paul. When he didn’t want to shoot the lucky sod for crowning a singularly fortunate life with a happy marriage to lovely, ardent Serena Talbot.

  The outcome seemed inevitable. Paul and his bride would live a glorious life, and rear a brood of golden-haired children, and enjoy a contented, prosperous, useful future.

  Paul was probably suggesting that very future to Serena right now.

  Damn. Blast. Hell. Bugger.

  Giles sighed and told himself that he’d always known this day would come. She’d never been for him. That had been clear from the first.

  When he’d arrived as a grieving, prickly boy, reeling from the loss of his beloved parents, Serena had been wary. As she’d grown up, her patent adoration for Paul meant that in her world, Giles operated as a mere adjunct to his picturesque friend. Nothing much beyond Paul bloody Garside ever registered with her.

  Giles’s one consolation had always been that while Paul was undoubtedly fond of Serena, his feelings hadn’t advanced far past that. It wasn’t much of a consolation. Paul had had more than his share of flirtations, but Giles knew that he always meant to please his family and marry the youngest Talbot girl. In recent months, that plan had changed from a duty to a pleasure.

  Paul was as susceptible to a pretty face as the next man. This last year, Serena had fulfilled the promise of beauty that Giles had always seen beneath the muddy pinafores and untidy braids.

  So this Christmas, the engagement was all set to go forward.

  Except…

  Except something unexpected had happened downstairs when he’d kissed Serena—a treat he always paid for in nights of restless longing.

  Call him an optimistic fool, but he’d swear that for one sizzling moment, she’d looked into his eyes and seen him. Seen him as the man he was, not Paul Garside’s shadow.

  And he’d wondered. Hell, how he’d wondered.

  Then she’d stepped back.

  But that fleeting instant gave him hope. At a time when all hope seemed dead.

  The quest might be futile. But he very much feared, however everything fell out in the end, that he meant to challenge his charming, eligible, handsome friend for the prize they both wanted.

  Although if the best man won, Giles hadn’t a chance in Hades.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  Three days before Christmas, and Serena remained mired in confusion. She should be deliriously happy, and instead, she was more miserable than she’d ever been in her life.

  Which made no sense when at last fate granted her dearest wish, Paul Garside courting her. His attentions since his arrival were unfailing, with the emphasis on unfailing.

  This afternoon, in a desperate attempt to find a moment’s peace from his constant company, she’d slunk away from the house to seek refuge in the cold and empty village church. When just days ago, the idea that she’d want to do anything but bask in his presence would have seemed preposterous.

  But she badly needed time alone to think. To remind herself that all her life she’d wanted Paul to pursue her. She should be ecstatic at his interest.

  Instead of scared to death.

  When the outside door squeaked behind her, she gave a guilty start. Even if she had nothing to feel guilty about. By heaven, she was turning into a bundle of nerves.

  Foreboding in her heart, she glanced back from where she sat in the family pew. Several times Paul had tried to corner her, starting with a chilly stroll in the knot garden the day he arrived. She feared he wanted to get her alone so he could propose. And however unlikely the fact, fear wasn’t too strong a term for her reaction to that prospect. Just now, she was in too much turmoil to make any decision.

  Oh, how she wanted to kick herself.

  The new arrival wasn’t Paul. But he wasn’t much of an improvement. Instead of a tall, fair-haired man, a taller man with dark, sensual features stood in the arched doorway leading through to the vestibule.

  “So this is where you’re skulking,” Giles drawled, sweeping off his hat as he entered the body of the church. He was casually dressed for the country, in a black coat, doeskin breeches and boots. His insolent gait a silent challenge to sanctity, he sauntered up the aisle toward her.

  “I’m not skulking,” she snapped. Although to her shame she was. She slumped back into her seat. “Quiet contemplation is appropriate to the season.”

  “Paul wants to talk to you.” Giles paused beside the pew and regarded her like some curious scientific specimen.

  “Oh,” she said glumly, but when Giles’s eyebrows rose, she straightened and injected false enthusiasm into her manner. “I wonder what he wants.”

  “Who knows?”

  She knew. He wanted her staring up at him with starry-eyed adoration as he outlined the future that she’d planned all her life. “He didn’t say?”

  “I didn’t ask. Last I saw, he was checking the stables. They were your regular haunt before you became the Belle of Torver.”

  “The Belle of…” A blush rose. Which was ridiculous. Giles’s tone was taunting rather than admiring. “I should go and find him.”

  But she didn’t shift.

  Giles did. To her dismay, closer rather than away.

  Her heart somersaulted in a most disconcerting manner. Curling her fingers into her dark green merino skirts, she told herself to settle down. She didn’t like this odd, prickly awareness of her brother’s friend, but she couldn’t control it. She wasn’t lurking in the church only to escape Paul. These days, Giles Farraday was just as troublesome.

  More, curse him.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, make him put in some work to catch you. He’ll savor his victory all the more if he has to make an effort to win it.”

  Appalled, Serena stared at him, while another blush stung her cheeks. “What did you say?”

  “Would you rather play coy?” He opened the gate to the pew and stepped into the small box to sit beside her. Immediately the echoing space of the parish church shrank to suffocating narrowness. Her nincompoop heart performed a drunken jig in her chest.

  She scooped in a shallow breath, sharp with frankincense and old, damp stone and made herself speak. “Why on earth does everyone think I’ve set my cap at Paul Garside?”

  With a mocking smile, Giles set his hat on the seat beside him. “Dear me, I have no idea.”

  His sarcasm made her wince. “Hmm.”

  Blindly she stared toward the altar, decorated for Advent with an embroidered violet cloth and holly wreaths. After a long time—or what felt like a long time—Giles murmured, “There’s no need to be reticent. He’s well and truly reconciled to being ca
ught.”

  She wanted to tell this overweening lout to mind his own business, but to her surprise she responded honestly. “That’s easy for you to say.”

  Giles’s expression was unreadable. She should be used to that by now. “Trust me.”

  Serena told herself not to respond. She’d said enough. More than enough. Giles and she had never been confidantes. In fact, however constant a presence he’d been in her life, they’d never progressed much beyond wary acquaintances.

  But some imp inside her remained determined to pursue this mortifying conversation. “I’d…I’d like to think he might do at least some of the chasing.”

  “Just as a matter of pride.”

  “Exactly.”

  Characteristic irony twisted his lips. “I’m sure a clever girl like you can snare a fellow who’s already set on having you.”

  Self-derision edged her laugh. “Then you have more faith in me than I have. When it comes to feminine wiles, I’m a complete novice. Whereas you two have spent the last few years playing the rake in London.”

  Amusement lit Giles’s dark eyes. “I take umbrage at that.”

  “I can’t see why. It’s true.”

  “And how the devil do you know that?”

  “Frederick is indiscreet in his cups.”

  His laugh brushed across her skin like velvet and made every fine hair stand up. “Damn.”

  “Paul is used to sophisticated women.” As her blush heated to fire, she squared her shoulders. She may as well finish this awful discussion. Retreat no longer seemed like an option. “I’ve never even kissed a man.”

  Giles appeared almost as shocked at her confession as she was that she’d made it. Fleetingly he stopped looking like Lucifer sulking in the underworld, and instead became the boy who was a mere five years older than she was. “Serena…”

  “There. Now you know the dreadful truth.”

  Giles had always been something of a mystery to her—this was the longest time they’d ever spent alone together—but his reaction now was particularly cryptic. His marked eyebrows drew together, more in consideration than disapproval, she thought. “You know, perhaps I could help.”

  Her lips turned down. “How?”

  She had the uncanny feeling that he waged some battle with himself. When he met her eyes, she drowned in the dark depths. “I could show you how to kiss a man.”

  Serena hardly heard. Blood pounded in her ears, and she felt giddy. She had the oddest urge to lean forward and rest her head on that broad chest. Just rest.

  Which was mad, when Giles had always been too disagreeable and difficult to be a comfortable companion.

  “I’m sorry.” Avoiding her eyes, he picked up his hat. “I shouldn’t have suggested it.”

  “Suggested what?” She blinked, forcing herself back to the real world where she wanted Paul, and Giles was just an annoying interloper. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what did you say?”

  When the raffish Lord Hallam turned charmingly sheepish, her heart performed another of those bewildering little skips. “I offered to be your tutor, to help you cultivate the skills to bewitch the gallant Sir Paul.”

  “Tutor?”

  “I offered to kiss you.”

  Her heart slammed to a stop. Good heavens above. Giles was talking about kissing her. How astonishing.

  She should be offended. Or angry. Instead the idea lodged in her mind, and wouldn’t shift.

  The more she thought about it, the more appealing it became. Would it really be so disgraceful to kiss Giles? Serena had long been curious about what a kiss was like. She’d always imagined Paul would be the first man to kiss her. But it might be best to get her clumsy first attempts out of the way with someone whose approval didn’t matter quite so much.

  Perhaps this was the meaning behind that bizarre, unsettling dream. That Giles was to be her path to Paul. If she’d stayed in the dream longer, maybe Paul would have appeared to oust Giles from the central role.

  “Here?” She glanced around the empty church, decorated with green boughs and walls of memorials to long-dead Talbots.

  Wonder lit his face. “You agree?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” she said thoughtfully. “I have a feeling you’re quite good at kissing.”

  A tilt of those expressive eyebrows. “Only quite good?”

  Some hitherto unrecognized female instinct was convinced that if Giles set his mind to the task, his kisses would burn her to ashes. But that same instinct warned against sharing that insight. “Don’t push your luck.”

  With a grunt of laughter, he stood. “Never.”

  She frowned up at him. He was so tall, taller than Paul or Frederick who were both at least six feet. As a boy, he’d been all gangling awkwardness, hands and feet too big for his lanky limbs. A nose too large for his face. And those swarthy, heavy features were too striking for a child’s face to carry with any conviction.

  But somewhere in the last few years, he’d grown into all that character and strength. For the first time, she understood why the London ladies were mad for him. He’d never be classically handsome but, by God, he was interesting and vivid and compelling.

  “Giles, if you were teasing about teaching me how to kiss, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Perish the thought.” Attractive self-mockery twisted those full lips. “How the devil can I resist turning you into another man’s dream lover?”

  Dream lover…

  Memories of that disturbing dream washed over her again. Staring at Giles, Serena had a sudden discomfiting suspicion that, despite knowing him most of her life, she didn’t really know him. And that accepting amorous lessons from him mightn’t be altogether wise.

  The cynical tinge faded from his smile. “Second thoughts?”

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  Serena sucked in a deep breath of cold ecclesiastical air and told herself not to be a ninny. She always responded to a challenge—and the idea of kissing Giles was sinfully appealing. “I’d be a fool not to take advantage of your expertise.”

  Unholy delight lit Giles’s dark face to flashing brilliance. She realized that while he mightn’t be handsome, he was breathtakingly attractive and brimming with potent masculinity more powerful than mere good looks.

  “Consider me at your service, Miss Talbot.” He extended his hand toward her. “Shall we go?”

  She took his hand and started when the contact burned, even through his fine leather gloves. Her heart leaped about like a March hare, and anticipation fizzed in her veins. “Go?”

  He cast a cool eye around the cavernous church. “Your illustrious ancestors are making me deuced self-conscious.”

  She and Giles couldn’t stand in the middle of St. Lawrence’s and do naughty things to one another. What had happened to her brain? “So where?”

  He tipped his chin toward the doorway. “That’s a very fine kissing bough in the vestibule.”

  “Yes, there is,” she said shakily, as the ghost of her dream stirred anew. The mistletoe that had caused all the trouble came from that kissing bough. “The vicar doesn’t altogether approve of a pagan symbol in a Christian domain, but the villagers would throw rocks through his stained glass windows if he banned the tradition.”

  “I’m all for tradition.” Giles drew her down the center aisle and through the doorway to the narrow room marking the boundary between the church and the outdoors. A shadowy domain between the sacred and the profane, where worshippers could pause to remove their coats and gather their thoughts. And at Christmastime, a place for village lads and maidens to steal a kiss or two.

  As Giles positioned her under the pretty ball of ribbons and greenery, Serena shivered with a mixture of dread and tremulous excitement.

  “Are you cold?” he whispered, although there was nobody to overhear them.

  Yes. No. It was colder here than in the body of the church—and that had been like an Eskimo’s kitchen. “I’m…n
ervous.”

  He stepped back and observed her dispassionately, as if checking to see if a painting was straight. “I promise this won’t hurt.”

  She shifted from one foot to the other. It might be lily-livered to confess it, but she felt much braver when he touched her. “That’s not why I’m nervous, and you know it.”

  Unexpected and breathtaking tenderness tinged his smile. “You can change your mind.”

  She straightened and tried to sound nonchalant, but her voice emerged as a croak. “If I deny a kiss under the mistletoe to anyone who requests it, I won’t get married next year.”

  He tugged off his gloves and slid them into his pocket. Something about the deliberate action made her shiver again. “Is that so?”

  “Yes,” she said on a thread of sound. “In Torver, we’re very serious about our superstitions.”

  “Superstitions are dangerous things.”

  After her unacceptable dream, nobody knew that better than Serena. “I know.”

  “In that case, I shouldn’t tempt fate.” He caught her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles. A thrill jolted her, even as he released her and crossed to shut and bolt the door to the outside.

  Good heavens, he looked like he meant business. How daunting. How…intriguing.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Had his walk always been a tiger’s prowl? How had she missed that Giles Farraday oozed sexual confidence?

  “What if someone wants to use the church?” she asked shakily.

  “They can come back later.”

  Serena wanted to ask how much later, but her courage failed. In fact, fears the size of monster frogs performed acrobatics in her stomach. As if observing herself from a distance, she wondered why she didn’t run away shrieking. But however frightened and unsure she was, an army couldn’t drag her away.

  He returned to stand before her, cradling her head between his hands. “Are you ready for your lesson?”

  His hands were warm and gentle against her hair. She gulped for air, but it did nothing to soothe her nervousness. “I…I think so.”