Christmas Delights by Heather Hiestand

Author:Heather Hiestand [Hiestand, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Romance, Adult
ISBN: 9781601832580
Google: 5MCnAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00KM9O6QI
Barnesnoble: B00KM9O6QI
Goodreads: 23509467
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2014-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

In the morning, Victoria found her father in the corridor outside her room. She had been thinking about declining breakfast, since she had indulged quite heavily in pudding the night before. While she had danced, then dueled intimately with Lewis, she was convinced her corset could not be laced quite as tightly as it needed to be this morning.

“Here to escort me downstairs?” she asked him.

He looked startled, as if he hadn’t considered spending time with her, even though he’d been lurking.

“Weren’t you here to speak with me?”

He coughed. “Of course, my dear. Where is your cousin?”

“Already gone to the nursery for breakfast.”

“Are you going to breakfast?”

“I thought I would walk around the lake.”

He hesitated, glancing down the corridor. She wondered if he’d had an assignation . . . but no, this was her father. Authoritarian he might be, but he certainly was not licentious.

“You do not have to attend me,” she said. “I am happy to be alone.”

“No, no, I could stretch my legs. Are you dressed warmly enough?”

She nodded. They stopped in his room so he could outfit himself to face the late December chill. Wind rattled the windows of the house as they exited from the ground floor, but down by the lake the air died to the level of breeze. She took a deep breath of the marine air and relaxed. Her father, however, did not have relaxation in mind.

“Where do you stand with your suitors?” he asked.

“Taking care of Penelope has made it a difficult process,” she said.

“Nonsense.” He took her arm to lead her around a muddy spot. “It is good for men to see you caring for a child.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “When men are courting, I don’t think that is what they want to see.”

“When they are courting you, they had better. You are not some young miss just out of the schoolroom, but a widow.”

“I’m still young,” she protested. A gull cawed, startling her as it came from somewhere behind and flew across the lake.

“Who do you prefer? Parker-Bale or Dandy-Willow?”

“Neither. They are a matched pair of buffoons.”

“The Baron of Alix, then? I’ve seen you speaking.”

They reached the first turn. The Fort was out of sight now. She breathed in the unadulterated landscape, the browns and greens of winter. But her father would not let her commune with the nature spirits. “He is Scottish, father. If you will not let me live in London, surely you won’t want me in Edinburgh.”

“If you can win over the Earl of Bullen, you can live anywhere you like,” he said. “I’ll hire managers for the business.”

She chuckled. “I haven’t seen him so much as look at a woman, unless it is to glare at one of his female relatives.”

“He has a mistress, you know. In Pevensey.”

“Really?” she said tartly. “I wonder when he has time to see her.”

Her father sighed and pulled her out of the way of a puddle. “I am attempting to make you understand that it is possible for him to be tempted, crude though I’m being.

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