The Holiday Hussy (When the Wallflowers were Wicked Book 11) Read online

  The Holiday Hussy

  Merry Farmer

  THE HOLIDAY HUSSY

  Copyright ©2019 by Merry Farmer

  Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill (the miracle-worker)

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Somerset, England – December, 1815

  Cold. Lady Alice Marlowe was freezing cold and huddled in the corner of her seat in the hired carriage that bumped and jostled along the frozen lane, heading toward Holly Manor. She could barely feel her fingers, and her toes had long since gone numb. It didn’t matter how tightly she pulled her shawl around her, the threadbare thing simply wasn’t thick enough to provide adequate protection against the chill, December air.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Alice’s father, Lord James Marlowe, the Earl of Stanhope, growled on the seat across from her. “You’re making my head ache.”

  “Y-yes, F-father,” Alice whispered through chattering teeth.

  Her father looked just as cold as she did, but everything Alice knew about him told her he would rather die than admit to it. James Marlowe never admitted to anything. He refused to admit that his lands were in shambles because of his mismanagement. He refused to admit that, with only three daughters to his name, his title was on the verge of passing to his brother, Alice’s delightful Uncle Richard. He refused to admit that the three marriages he’d arranged for his daughters at the house party at Hadnall Heath, home of Lord Rufus and Lady Caroline Herrington, were bad ones. And he most certainly refused to admit that Alice’s younger sister, Imogen, had run off with Lord Thaddeus Herrington to avoid marrying her father’s choice of groom.

  “I said stop fidgeting,” he snapped, grimacing at Alice without a shred of compassion for the cold. “Women should be invisible except when a man needs them to do their duty.”

  Alice gulped. “Yes, Father,” she said, lowering her head.

  “This spate of temper on your part is disgusting,” he went on as though she had protested instead of meekly obeyed. “Count Fabian Camoni is an excellent match. His fame as a designer of gardens is known throughout England and the continent. And as soon as the mess Bonaparte has created in Italy is resolved, he will possess vast lands in Tuscany, which I understand are incredibly profitable.”

  Alice bit her tongue, knowing that anything she said would be taken the wrong way. Her father was desperate for money and the appearance that he was a man of importance and influence. Imogen had failed to help his cause by eloping with Lord Thaddeus, her older sister, Lettuce, had been married off to a wealthy but miserly merchant who had surprised them all by declaring he would take his bride and his fortune off to America without so much as a cent for their father, and so the entire burden of fulfilling their father’s aims had landed squarely on Alice’s shoulders.

  He rubbed his hands together, but whether at the thought of the money he stood to gain through Alice’s marriage or to ward off the cold, Alice didn’t know. “Christmas is the perfect time to solidify this alliance,” he went on. “It’s a time of giving gifts and generosity. Not only will your groom give me the dowry price we agreed on, I’m certain I can squeeze more gold out of him. The fact that his mother remarried the Duke of Bolton is merely icing on the Christmas pudding. Bolton is dripping with money, and I have it on good authority that he’s generous with his friends. This entire Christmas house party proves it.”

  “I thought the party was to celebrate the wedding,” Alice said carefully. The last thing she wanted was to give her father the impression that she was blissfully going along with his plans. In fact, if she could have wrenched open the door and thrown herself out into the cold and barren landscape to avoid the whole thing, she would have.

  Her father glared at her. “Arrogant chit,” he hissed. “This endeavor is not about you.”

  Alice’s eyes widened a fraction. Her own wedding was not about her? But of course, it wasn’t. Her father would have required a heart to understand that marriages were supposed to be about love and companionability. They were supposed to contain passion, or at least mild attraction. And it wasn’t as though she found Count Camoni unattractive. He’d been the prize catch of the house party with his rugged good looks and the aura of fame that surrounded him. Half of the young ladies at the party had flocked to him, gazing with open admiration at his broad shoulders and muscular frame, honed from all of the gardening work he did as part of his designs. They’d sighed over his blue eyes and blonde hair, which was unfashionably long, but glorious all the same. It wasn’t his appearance or even his manners that filled Alice with dread and melancholy, it was the fact that she’d had no choice at all in the match. That and the fact that she hadn’t seen him once since becoming engaged to him and had only had two letters in the five months since then.

  “You will do your duty,” her father went on in a lecturing tone. “After your marriage on Christmas Day, you will spread your legs eagerly for your husband so that he can get you with child as quickly as possible. An heir is the best way to ensure our families are entangled for all time.”

  Alice blushed with embarrassment at the mention of the marriage bed. She wasn’t ignorant of those things, not after the Herrington’s house party and the little souvenir she and her sisters had taken home and split between them. She wasn’t even averse to them either. Part of her was exceptionally curious about matters of intimacy. But the thought of going to bed with Count Camoni because it was her duty, the idea that there was no point to the act but to produce an heir so that her father could sink his claws into Count Camoni’s wealth, left her cold. Or perhaps that was merely the chill in the air.

  Her father crossed his arms tightly and sank back into his seat, staring sullenly out the window at the frosty, Somerset countryside. The deep lines on his face hinted he had lapsed into thought and calculations about how he could increase his own fortunes. Alice waited, holding her breath, until she was relatively certain he wasn’t paying attention to her any longer. Then she reached into the small satchel sitting on the seat beside her and drew out a book.

  It wasn’t a whole book. In fact, it was a third of one. When she and her sisters had discovered The Secrets of Love in a locked chest at the Herrington house party, it had felt as though they’d won a hunt for treasure. The volume contained everything any young woman could ever have wanted to know about the facts and fancies of love. Unlike most of the chaste and sedate books on the subject she had read before, The Secrets of Love contained vivid descriptions of the most sensual acts, interspersed between advice on how to find and keep a lover. Alice and her sisters had read the book so many times immediately after the house party that the spine had cracked. When each of their marriages were arranged and it became evident that the three of them would be split up, possibly never to see each other again, they’d divided the book in three, each of them taking a section.

  Alice’s middle section had no bindings, and it’d been all she could do to keep the pages from being damaged. She took one last peek at her father, and when she was certain he was distracted, she opened it to the chapter where she’d left off reading the night before. She already had most of the words memorized, but there was comfort in reading them again.

  “Love does not come with a sudden burst
, like a man spending himself too soon only to fade and lose interest. It should unfold gradually, like a flower. First comes attraction, then intrigue, then titillation. Just as a lover undresses one article of clothing at a time or a gift is unwrapped bit by bit, the experience should be savored. By drawing out the process of love and reveling in each moment as it comes, passion and pleasure are increased, making the final blossoming all the more enjoyable.”

  Alice sighed, warming from the inside out. She could only imagine what it would be like to undress slowly for a lover, to make love the way she would savor a piece of cake instead of harshly lying back and parting her legs, like her father seemed to think she should do. Whoever the author of The Secrets of Love was, she—and Alice and her sisters were convinced the author was a woman—knew what a woman’s heart longed for. And if there was one thing Alice’s heart longed for, it was—

  “What is that mangy pile of rubbish you’re reading?” Her father snapped her out of her thoughts.

  “It’s nothing,” Alice said with a gulp, slamming the pages closed and pushing the book back into her satchel before her father could read any of it.

  “Don’t you lie to me, you useless girl,” he father growled.

  “It’s an instructional manual.” Alice scrambled for an answer her father would believe and that wouldn’t result in him taking the book from her. “About the duties of marriage. Lettuce, Imogen, and I were all given a copy after our engagements.” It was marginally true, but Alice held her breath all the same.

  “Who gave it to you?” her father asked, suspicion narrowing his eyes.

  Alice had to lie. “Uncle Richard. He said it would improve our immortal souls.”

  Her father continued to glare, but he didn’t comment. If there was anyone in the world that he feared, it was his younger brother. Uncle Richard was an army officer and a commanding presence. Her father didn’t dare say a cross word against him.

  “It’s useless for women to read,” he grumbled. “There’s no point in improving what cannot be improved, and anything else is frivolous waste. But never mind. We’re here.”

  Blessedly, the carriage rolled to a stop in front of an enormous house. Alice hadn’t realized they’d crossed onto the grounds of Holly Manor, but as she looked out when a footman raced down to open the carriage door, she was amazed by what she saw. The house itself was only fifty years old, but it had a gravity to it. At that moment, however, it was decorated for Christmas, with candles in the windows, boughs of pine and the holly that gave the estate its name strewn over the main door and front-facing windows, and cheery red bows adorning all.

  Alice’s father exited the carriage without looking back at her. Alice had to wait for the footman to hand her down. The rush of icy air that swirled around her made her teeth chatter, but the short line of Count Camoni’s family and step-family waiting for them near the front door promised warmth to come.

  “Hurry along, girl,” her father growled, marching up the gravel path that crunched under his feet. He headed straight for the Duke of Bolton himself. “Good day, Your Grace.” He smiled as though the world were filled with sunshine and light, as though he were a man prone to smiling.

  “Lord Stanhope,” the duke greeted him in return. “Welcome to our home. I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

  “It was excellent,” her father lied.

  He continued his conversation with the duke, oblivious to all else, including Alice making her way toward the line of people at the front door, her limbs stiff with cold.

  “This must be Lady Alice,” a matronly woman came forward to greet her with an eager smile. Alice assumed at once that she was the duchess, Count Camoni’s mother. “Oh dear, you look chilled through. Do come inside.”

  “Y-your grace.” Alice managed a painful curtsy as she approached the woman. A second, much younger woman stood behind her, smiling at Alice with eager eyes. Behind her stood Count Camoni himself.

  Alice nearly stumbled at the shock of seeing her betrothed again after so long. He was taller than she remembered, his shoulders broader and the power radiating from him stronger. He smiled at her as though she were a tasty morsel newly arrived for him to devour. Everything The Secrets of Love had taught her about the ways a man looked at a woman he wanted rushed back to her and she quivered on the inside, and not from fear.

  “Georgette and I will have you warm and cozy in no time,” the duchess went on.

  The other young woman, Georgette, rushed to Alice’s side, putting an arm around her and drawing her toward the house. “Goodness, you are cold,” she said, then added, “I’m Lady Georgette Farnsworth. The duke is my father and your fiancé, Count Camoni, is my step-brother.”

  “Oh,” Alice said, too overwhelmed to say more. She blinked at the attractive young woman, her rosy cheeks and her friendly eyes, gaped at the house as they passed through the front door and into an enormous hall decorated with exquisite artwork and suits of armor, and caught her breath as Georgette escorted her into a parlor across the hall where a cheery blaze crackled in a festively-decorated hearth. Everything around her was beautiful and expensive, and the people who flooded into the parlor with them were lofty and well-mannered. Alice knew in an instant that she was in well over her head. And that was before Count Camoni approached her.

  She was every bit as lovely as he remembered her to be. The moment Fabian laid eyes on his bride, he recalled all the reasons he had been so amenable to accepting her father’s suggestion of marriage that summer. Alice was like a breath of fresh, spring air in, well, December. Although, she did look frozen through as his step-sister led her to the fireplace in the Forest Parlor. The cold had brought bright pink to her otherwise pale cheeks, and if he wasn’t mistaken, the buttons standing out under the fabric of her too-thin bodice weren’t buttons at all. He would never understand ladies’ fashion and the inadequacy of the fabrics used these days. Alice should have been wearing a pelisse at the very least.

  It had only begun to dawn on him that perhaps it wasn’t Alice’s intention to dress so scantily and that, in fact, something else was behind the too-light clothing she wore, judging by the way she huddled near the fire, looking as though she might weep with relief, when Lord Stanhope stepped up to his side.

  “Count Camoni,” he said in an irritatingly ingratiating voice. “How nice to see you again.”

  Fabian dragged his attention away from his bride to accept his soon-to-be father-in-law’s outstretched hand. “Lord Stanhope,” he said, the feeling that Lord Stanhope’s outstretched hand was asking for money settling over him. “I’m glad to see you and Lady Alice have arrived safely.”

  “I’ve delivered her into your hands, sir,” Lord Stanhope said with a sly smile. “I trust the wedding will take place soon and we can settle on the bride price.”

  Fabian blinked in shock at the abruptness of Lord Stanhope’s words. If it weren’t for the fact that he truly did find Alice to be everything he wanted in a woman, he never would have entered into any sort of agreement to attach himself to the man. “Everything is in order,” he answered without a smile. “But if you will excuse me, I would like to greet my bride.”

  “Yes, yes. You do that,” Lord Stanhope said, thumping him on the back when he turned toward Alice.

  Fabian frowned over his shoulder as he crossed the room. He caught the eye of his step-brother, Lord Matthew Farnsworth. The two were roughly the same age and had gotten along famously from the moment Fabian’s mother had married Matthew’s father. They exchanged a look of brotherly knowing before Fabian reached the fireside and Alice.

  “Lady Alice,” Fabian greeted his vision of loveliness with a warm smile. “It is a joy and a pleasure to see you again.”

  To Fabian’s disappointment, Alice glanced down, dipping into a short, polite curtsy before saying, “My lord,” with all the disinterest of a child forced to sit through a particularly dull sermon.

  Fabian’s brow twitched as he scrambled to think of something more inviting to say
. “I’m happy to see you looking so well. I thought the summer sun was becoming to you, but the coziness of a winter fire does just as much justice to your beauty.”

  She was silent, not meeting his eyes, shaking slightly, but whether from the cold or from something more sinister, Fabian couldn’t tell. At last, she mumbled, “You are too kind.”

  Fabian’s initial enthusiasm flattened to wary concern. “Are you well?” he asked. “You look a bit cold. Perhaps the journey was too taxing for you?”

  “I am perfectly well, my lord.” She snapped her eyes up to meet his with a look of tight frustration. Her hands clutched the satchel she carried to the point where her knuckles went white.

  Worry took over entirely from the eagerness Fabian had felt while watching her carriage roll up the drive. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t imagine what it was. Unless….

  “Please forgive me for not writing more often,” he said in a quieter, more intimate voice. “I have had quite a few commissions to design winter gardens and greenhouses all across England this autumn. And the business of my father’s family’s estate in Tuscany has preoccupied me to an unforgivable degree. I swear, I will make it up to you by lavishing you with attention during this holiday party, before and after our marriage.” He added a mischievous flicker of his eyebrows on the off chance that a hint of sensuality would thaw her icy demeanor.

  “As you wish, my lord,” she muttered, glancing down.

  Fabian opened his mouth to say more, but he couldn’t think of a blasted thing to say. Ladies usually adored him, though it was awkward to even think it. Apparently, he had a combination of good looks, good fortune, and exoticism that sent female hearts fluttering. Alice’s was the only heart he cared to make flutter since the house party that summer, though. She’d been so free and curious then. Now he wasn’t certain who she was.