- Home
- Sophia James
Christmas Cinderellas
Christmas Cinderellas Read online
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on Auckland, New Zealand’s, North Shore, with her husband who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed by reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house. Sophia enjoys getting feedback at facebook.com/sophiajamesauthor.
When VIRGINIA HEATH was a little girl it took her ages to fall asleep—so she made up stories in her head to help pass the time while she was staring at the ceiling. As she got older the stories became more complicated—sometimes taking weeks to get to their happy ending. One day she decided to embrace her insomnia and start writing them down. Virginia lives in Essex with her wonderful husband and two teenagers. It still takes her for ever to fall asleep…
CATHERINE TINLEY has loved reading and writing since childhood, and has a particular fondness for love, romance and happy endings. She lives in Ireland with her husband, children, dog and kitten, and can be reached at catherinetinley.com, as well as through Facebook and @CatherineTinley on Twitter.
Christmas Cinderellas
Christmas with the Earl
Sophia James
Invitation to the Duke’s Ball
Virginia Heath
A Midnight Mistletoe Kiss
Catherine Tinley
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-0-008-90176-9
CHRISTMAS CINDERELLAS
Christmas with the Earl © 2020 Sophia James
Invitation to the Duke’s Ball © 2020 Susan Merritt
A Midnight Mistletoe Kiss © 2020 Catherine Tinley
Published in Great Britain 2020
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Note to Readers
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
Change of font size and line height
Change of background and font colours
Change of font
Change justification
Text to speech
Praise for the authors of
Christmas Cinderellas
SOPHIA JAMES
‘Romantic, full of secrets and simmering passion, this Regency romance is the perfect escape.’
—Jane Hunt, Author and Blogger
on The Cinderella Countess
VIRGINIA HEATH
‘If the front cover says Virginia Heath then you know you’re in for a treat.’
—The Blossom Twins
on Lillian and the Irresistible Duke
CATHERINE TINLEY
‘Catherine Tinley has a wonderful talent for writing Regency romances that sparkle with pathos, emotion and atmosphere.’
—Bookish Jottings
on Rags-to-Riches Wife
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Praise
Christmas with the Earl
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Epilogue
Invitation to the Duke’s Ball
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
A Midnight Mistletoe Kiss
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Extract
About the Publisher
Christmas with the Earl
Sophia James
Chapter One
London, 8th December 1814
A stranger dressed completely in black blocked her in the doorway, his height dimming the light of a crisp early December morning.
‘Please let me pass, sir. I do not know you.’
Her tone was sharp, the shock of his closeness telling, but the man before her only smiled.
‘If you could acknowledge me but for a moment, madam, I would be most grateful.’
Such entreaty held the sort of desperation that Ariana Dalrymple could not fail to hear and she observed him more closely. He had eyes the colour of wet autumn leaves and his face was one of a fighter. There was a scratch that went from one eye to his ear, and a bruise was swelling fast on his cheek.
‘If someone dangerous is after you...’
‘They are not.’
‘Or if you have just had a fight...’
‘Wrong again.’
A group of women were passing them now, and he tipped his head towards her as though to listen more carefully to what she was saying. The thick wool of his cloak effectively blocked all else out. His hat was pulled firmly down and his collar was up, and the small doorway in which they stood sheltered them from any recognition.
‘Are you hiding from those women?’
She suddenly knew that he was, and he had the good grace at least to appear remorseful. For a second Ariana saw in him something she liked a lot.
‘Did she hit you?’ Horror marked her words and he laughed outright.
‘Hardly. I fell off a horse.’
‘Where?’ She looked around for a riderless steed, expecting one to charge through the throng on the crowded city street.
‘Last night. At Stevenage.’
‘The Duke of Horsham’s es
tate?’
‘Yes. You know him?’
‘Vaguely. He seems a stern and sad man. Rumour has it there is an estranged son who has been a trial, so perhaps that is what ails him.’
She glanced at the group of fashionable women who had passed by half a minute ago and were now turning a corner, all chattering together like a clutch of noisy quail.
‘I think you are safe, sir. Your huntswomen have gone. If you leave quickly and in that direction I imagine you would stay unnoticed.’
‘Thank you, Miss...?’
‘Mrs Ariana Dalrymple. But I am more usually called Aria.’
‘Like a song in an opera?’ There was a tone in his voice that was hesitant.
She nodded.
‘I am North.’
‘As in a direction?’
He began to laugh. ‘No one has ever asked me that before. It’s Northwell in truth—Christopher Anthony Stephen Northwell.’
Ariana swallowed back her horror. ‘The Duke’s recently returned and wayward son? The dissolute and unrepentant Earl of Norwich?’
‘I am afraid so.’
She stopped herself from apologising as she sought to remember the details. ‘The stories about you are most specific, my lord. It seems you burnt the family mansion to the ground and left the country soon afterwards. Your father and mother only just escaped from being burnt to a crisp, if I recall it rightly.’
‘Well, that was my mother’s version of things.’
‘There is another one?’
‘Isn’t there always?’
She swallowed. This conversation was one of the oddest she had ever partaken in. ‘I am not certain. Perhaps you should tell me.’
‘I’d rather not. My penance is over and done with and the Christmas season holds hope.’
‘For reconciliation?’
‘Personally I find that word overused.’
The smile hardened in his eyes and a new and far more dangerous lord stood where the charming womaniser had been before. Not an easy man at all. Her heart began to trip a little faster.
‘Failing to take responsibility for one’s faults is hardly something to fun about, my lord?’
‘Hasty judgement is not a flattering trait either, Mrs Dalrymple.’
‘So everyone is wrong and you are right? I had expected more of you.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why had you expected more of me?’
He had her there, and it was seldom people ever turned the tables on her logic.
‘I’d hoped you might be kinder.’ There—it was said, and the frills of good manners dispensed with. Because she had wished it so with all her heart.
Once he might have been kinder—once he might have taken her hand and kissed her fingers whilst apologising. She was, after all, extraordinarily beautiful, this woman before him, with her dark hair and blue eyes and the sort of face that would never go unremarked upon.
But he was tired, and the afternoon was nearly spent, and all he wanted to do was to go home to the rented rooms in St James’s and find a bottle of his very best brandy and drink the lot. A welcome oblivion as he sought solace.
It was becoming more difficult by the day, this façade of easy-going, casual happy-go-luckiness, and if he had erred in his judgement a moment ago, when she had mentioned reconciliation, then it was his own fault entirely. He didn’t quite feel comfortable lying to her and it showed.
That admission had him stepping back. ‘If there is any way that I can repay your good grace in humouring my small and recent difficulty I should be happy to hear of it.’
He watched her take a breath, saw conflict in her glance.
‘Take me to the Shawler ball this Friday as your partner. I do not require more than one dance, a quarter of an hour at most of your time, and then you can be on your way. I shall not hold you to a moment longer.’
‘You have a suitor you wish to...dangle? A lover who requires a push?’
‘You have heard of me, then?’
‘Who has not, Mrs Dalrymple? You are as infamous as I am.’
‘There is no lover, my lord. I merely need to be received.’
‘You were not invited, then?’
‘I am afraid some hosts still cling to the old hopes of cloying submissive womanhood.’
‘Those who marry well and never stray from the path of righteousness?’
‘Not as far as I have, at least—and certainly not those who fail to apologise for doing so.’
‘A questionable strategy in a town where manners are so strictly observed?’
‘Well, sometimes even I am amazed at the things that I am supposed to have done.’
‘The Hartley ball was one such faux pas, I suppose? I remember hearing of it years ago, just before I left England. The Simmons sisters accompanied you to the event and one of them lost her innocence.’
Blue eyes darkened at that, as if a sore spot had been rubbed.
‘When others are hurt I generally feel some sense of remorse. But I am far wiser now, and much less inclined to extremes. Perhaps you are the same, my lord, after your extended jaunt in the Americas?’
‘Perhaps. Who is it who looks out for you when you need help with your reputation? I know you to be a widow, and it is also said that you have lost both your parents.’
‘Lady Sarah Hervey, Viscountess Ludlow, lives with me.’
North had heard of the woman and whistled, the sound piercing in the quiet of the day.
‘A difficult protector—and one who has her own detractors.’
Again darkness surfaced, though this time it was tinged with a certain anger.
‘Friday, then, at half past nine. At my townhouse on Portman Square. I will see you there.’
At that she turned, gesturing to her maid behind to follow, the stellar cut of her unusual cloak shimmering in the thin winter sun. A jaunty hat sat on the top of her head. A shapely bottom was outlined in the breeze and her dark hair lifted in the wind. The scent of some flower lingered where she had stood, and he tipped his head to try and identify it.
Lily of the valley. A beautiful but poisonous plant.
It suited her.
‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’
She said this beneath her breath as she walked, each step punctuated by the word. She had known one day that she would meet a man who might make her heart beat faster, but why did it have to be this one?
She wondered just for a second whether she should turn around and cancel the plans that they had agreed on, but she needed to go to the Shawler ball in order to get inside the house. There seemed no other way to do it, and her aunt was depending on the outcome.
Christopher Anthony Stephen Northwell would not be pleased to be so duped if he found out the reason she’d asked him to partner her, but right at this moment she could not worry about that. She would need to create a new and flattering gown—one that would allow her the confidence she was far from feeling...one that might catch his eye and lead his thoughts away from her true pursuit.
Looking up, she swallowed. Once she had imagined that at twenty-five and a half years old she might be married to a man she loved and have children and a house and a life that was good and real and true.
And instead... She was alone and likely to remain so.
The rumours about her were mostly false. Who could have possibly slept with the number of men she was reported to have slept with? But she had been careless once or twice, soon after her husband had passed away, when she should not have been.
The Hartley ball with the Simmons sisters was one case in point. Susan and Dorothy Simmons had been far wilder than she had imagined them to be, and when the younger sister had crept off during the evening with a lover in tow Ariana had desperately tried to stop her and failed.
It had been a week la
ter when Ariana had heard it mentioned that she was the one to blame, for her lack of care with their personages, and the gossip mill had begun to grind with startling vitriol. Pointing the finger of blame seemed to be what Society did, and she was enough of an outsider to make it easy.
Money had helped her remain in London—of course it had—but she’d heard what was being said of her and felt isolated and different. ‘The Merry Widow’ was one name they called her, and nothing could have been further from the truth. ‘The Fair Philanderer’ was another.
She shook her head. Hard. There was a certain freedom in semi-ruination on top of inheriting a fortune, and right now it was her shelter.
The Christmas festivities and their accompanying joy were already in place. Just over two weeks until the twenty-fifth. Seventeen days of joviality and enforced excitement. She hated the season more and more each year, and wondered if such an innate melancholy would ever be shifted.
Her past had twisted her, she supposed, and her parents’ wanting all the outward trappings of wealth had hidden a darker side that she still recoiled from.
Christopher Northwell reminded her of a pirate, with his dark brown eyes and night-black hair and the sort of face that was unforgettable. No wonder all those women were chasing him.
She tried to remember more about the scandal that had rocked the Horsham Dukedom.
His mother was a fragile woman, from memory—a woman who must have found being planted for years on an unfamiliar baronial estate while the first pile was being repaired difficult, to say the least. She had died just a few months ago from some illness, but Ariana had no recollection as to the malady. No wonder the Duke was sad and out of sorts, with his only child unrepentant and wild and his wife gone.
She frowned. There had been something in the expression of the Earl of Norwich that had not quite rung true, though, for in place of the guilt she might have expected there had been simply plain and unmitigated sorrow.
A shout from across the path brought Mrs Lucy Chambers to her side, all silky blonde curls and sky-blue eyes.
‘I thought it was you, Ariana, but I could not be sure. Who was that man you were speaking with? He looked familiar.’