Following him out to the stables that morning was how. But he never had an opportunity to snitch, for in the night, Althea came down with his cough. And breathed her last less than a fortnight later…
Staggered by the unexpected memory—though during the recollection of it, his disobedient lips had curved upward—Frost firmed his frown.
Without conscious thought, his right hand coiled into a fist…the same hand that had gripped her yet had been unable to prevent her escape. The same hand that warmed oddly for such an innocent, brief touch.
Damn and blast all over again! He’d not expected to react to a female here of all places and at this time of year! What else he hadn’t expected was having his overture rebuffed. Shot down like an unwitting bird in the sky. First his excuses, now his invitation. “Good thing I didn’t have this kind of luck in front of the French artillery.”
“What kind of luck?” Ed wanted to know, coming up beside him with a fancy kissing bough hanging from his truncated arm.
“Nothing,” Frost dismissed and then nodded to the berry-filled bough. “Be so good as to inform me where you intend to hang that thing so I may avoid its reach.”
Ed grinned. “’Tis one of many, my friend, so it will do you no good to cast this one into the fire as that scowl tells me you’re wont to do the moment my back is turned. Anne has ordered them strewn about the place. Says I’m to make full use of ’em but only when she’s in reach. She’s had me hanging them the past half hour. Down to my last one.”
“Have you not servants for that sort of task?”
“And miss the enjoyment of surprising her when she learns just how creative my hanging places can be?”
Frost stifled a yawn that was only partially faked. The trip from London had been a tiring one, and of course he’d waited until the last minute to make it, arriving only minutes before dinner. Then imbibing rather too freely during…
“I’m sure tomorrow will come early and be full of merriment,” he somehow managed to say without choking on the last word, his eyes drawn to the door she’d flown through. “Think I’ll make a night of it.”
Ed laughed. “You don’t know the half. Anne has a seeking game planned if the weather proves cooperative. She’s partnered you with—”
“Spare me tonight.” Frost held up a hand, finding the thought of any organized holiday game nauseating. Or maybe it was the cloying scents of pine and fir that were making him nauseous. That or an impertinent curl. “Damn ballroom smells like a forest,” he grumbled. “Not another word about it, Ed. I’ll deal with tomorrow on the morrow. Make my excuses to your dear wife. I promise I’ll be better company after a full night’s rest.”
Hieing off to his room and to bed should have been accomplished in a trice, but Frost was restive. Or so he told himself when instead of heading toward the guest wing where his assigned chamber awaited, he turned in the opposite direction…exploring. Searching.
His cheeks felt peculiar. He reached up to touch one, and that’s when Frost realized he was smiling. Smiling at the audacity of the fresh-faced chit who had left him standing there, rejected.
By Zeus, he finally decides to do his duty and ask a wench to dance and the only one he approaches shows him her backbone in denying him, and then her backside—alluringly curved, he couldn’t help but notice—as she walks away.
Amazing. Both that she turned him down and that he found it humorous.
“Insane.” He checked Ed’s study and the library, declined refreshment when a servant passing in the hall offered such, made quick work investigating the balcony along the second floor, as well as two smaller parlors he chanced across, looked in the drawing room where they’d gathered before dinner, the card room—which was much attended at the moment—and the billiard room.
Though he must’ve encountered every damn guest not on the dance floor and avoided seven of Ed’s blasted kissing boughs, he didn’t catch sight nor sound of the woman he sought.
Where the devil had she gone off to and why the devil did he care?
It wasn’t as though untidy brown ringlets and annoyingly green-as-holly, unusually pale peepers were anything worth obsessing over. Neither was her trim figure sheathed in flowing lavender or her pinkened cheeks. An attractive, wholesome package to be sure, but nothing he hadn’t seen a hundred times over.
Yet obsess he did.
Over that obstinate mouth he craved to taste—almost as much as he craved hearing it spout unexpected retorts.
Breathing deeply after ascending yet another set of stairs—of thinking of her mouth?—Frost consciously subdued his efforts and the sense of inexplicable anticipation surging through him.
He had eleven more days to learn who she was. To convince her to dance with him. To forget why he hated Christmas and wasn’t supposed to be feeling something as unexceptional as excitement over spending it here. With her.
The unnamed nobody he’d yet to garner an introduction to.
The woman who caused him to remember his past with something other than pain.
Miss Isabella Thaws a Frosty Lord, a sweetly spicy Regency romance set during the Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25, 1813 – January 5, 1813), makes for a great read all year long. The winter setting will cool you off while Isabella and Frost’s interactions will warm you up. ☺
Miss Isabella Thaws a Frosty Lord
Dominated by her father’s rigid ways since a twist of fate stole her sight, Isabella uses the magic of Christmas to steal away for an adventure of her own when invited to join friends for
