“I’m sorry.” Her smile faltered. “I shouldn’t ask you to do so much.”
“I’ll be there,” he blurted out.
What on earth was he saying?
She grinned at him as she guided him over the ice. “It will be the best Christmas dinner you’ve ever had. Or at least, the most memorable.”
“It’ll be the only one I’ve ever had,” he mumbled. “Scots don’t make a big fuss for the Yuletide, and even if they did… For me, there’s never been any cause to celebrate.”
She stared at him as though he’d accidentally spoken in Gaelic. “No reason to celebrate Christmas?”
His throat grew thick.
“It happens to be my birthday, as well.” He was the gift that had ruined lives. “My father was gone long before my birth. Mother believed he would have married her, had she not embarrassed him by becoming pregnant before they could announce the wedding.”
Angelica’s eyes flashed. “I doubt she managed that feat all on her own.”
“He was never going to marry her,” Jonathan agreed. “She was poor and expendable. He was a laird and important. He was already promised to another bride, whose land would double his own.”
Instead, all his mother got was Jonathan.
“The laird sounds dreadful,” Angelica said flatly.
He shrugged. “So I presume.”
“You never met him?” she asked in surprise. “It sounded like you knew who he was.”
“Aye, I knew who he was,” Jonathan agreed. “He was the man who sent my mother into a melancholy from which she never recovered. His man of business was concerned about quashing inconvenient gossip that might impede the wedding. A trust was created in my name to appease any hurt feelings.”
It had done the opposite. He was a problem neither of his parents had wanted.
Most of their money was spent on laudanum to dull her pain. Jonathan was left to raise himself, with no choice but to watch his mother’s slow, inevitable decline, courtesy of his own inheritance. The money was cursed, and perhaps so was he. If he hadn’t been born, if there’d been no inheritance, she would still be alive.
He had lived with that knowledge every day since.
Mother had never been loving, but Yuletide was the worst. She disappeared completely into her laudanum every December and didn’t emerge until January.
For Jonathan, there was no escape at all. He was too young to live on his own. Until the day the choice was taken from him. The Christmas his mother died, the trust became Jonathan’s. There was only one thing to do.
“I was a problem paid to disappear,” he said. “When my mother lost her battle with laudanum, I lost my mother. So I left and never looked back. Not at that place or anywhere else.”
It had taken years after her death for Jonathan to accept that although his conception had caused his mother’s melancholy, Jonathan’s existence was not solely to blame. It was the laird who had provided the cursed inheritance, the laird who had lain with an innocent girl with no intention to marry her.
The laird had destroyed her just as surely as the laudanum.
Happy Christmas.
“You used your inheritance to start a successful investing operation?” Angelica asked.
“I did not.” Each syllable was chipped ice. “I give my sire’s money away freely to anyone who will take it. I forged my own way however I could. No task too menial; no pay too small. I took risks. I got better at choosing them. I invested in myself, and then in others.”
People who were unseen. People whom no one believed in. People who needed someone to say, I see you. You have value. You’re important to the world.
“And you never met him?”
“I did try once.” The words came out scratchy. “I didn’t expect him to recognize my face, but it was worse than that. He didn’t remember my name, or that I had ever existed.”
That was the day Jonathan had decided everyone would know his name. He would become so important and so successful that his father would not be able to avoid hearing Jonathan MacLean this, and Jonathan MacLean that, from every angle.
He would eclipse his father’s fame, without aid of a title, without the trust the laird had set up and forgotten, just like he’d forgotten the son he never wanted and hoped would disappear.
“It’s human to feel hurt,” Angelica said softly. “Even if you wish others didn’t have the power to hurt you.”
How he hated that his father still wielded that much power over his life.
The man had never known him. Jonathan had been disavowed whilst still in the womb. His birth, proof of failure. The reason he had lost his mother, on a day just like today.
“That’s why I don’t like Christmas,” he said, his words thick. “There’s naught to celebrate.”
Not yet, anyway. The day he was finally richer and more successful than his father, he would raise his fist to the sky in satisfaction.
Until then, he would just keep moving.
Chapter 11
The next morning, Jonathan did not go straight to Angelica’s jeweler’s shop, as had become their delightful custom. Just as he was tying his cravat, a handsome coach-and-four bearing an extravagant family crest pulled to a halt in front of the cottage.
The Duke of Nottingvale had arrived. The English aristocrat whose public endorsement would ensure Fit for a Duke’s commercial success. The wealthy nob whose initial investment into the fledgling company would finance materials, wages, tens of thousands of catalogues, and operating expenses for up to a full year. The influential man whose popularity and handsomeness was the bedrock upon which Jonathan’s bright future rested.
He had never been more disappointed to see a carriage in his life.
Nottingvale’s arrival precipitated Jonathan’s departure. Once the presentation was over and the contract signed, it would be time to move on.
Even if it hadn’t been for his visceral aversion to Christmas, which was two days hence, Jonathan’s place was on the road.
Nottingvale’s contributions were his name and his money. Calvin’s contribution was his genius with
