The Duke Who Despised Christmas (Christmas Dukes #1)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Q uint returned from his ride sore, muddy, sodden, and cold.

Also, starving. He had ridden for longer than usual, needing the air and the chance to collect his thoughts after the clash with his unwanted housekeeper.

He brushed lingering snowflakes from his coat in the entry hall and handed it off, along with his hat, to the sole footman he employed. Only to belatedly realize the footman wasn’t the same footman. He had red hair instead of brown, and he was taller than Peter.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Your Grace,” the young man said, looking as nervous as he sounded. “I’m Joseph Poole, Your Grace.”

“And where did you come from, Joseph Poole?”

Quint had a suspicion he already knew the answer.

“Mrs. Yorke sent for me, sir. On account of needing help with the Christmas trees, sir. Your Grace. Sir.”

A village lad, and one unaccustomed to service. Not that it mattered if he had ever been a footman before. Quint didn’t stand on ceremony. He had no guests, no expectations, save a warm, reasonably clean house and prompt meals. Enough to exist, nothing more. What did matter, however, was that she had hired the boy.

His eyebrows snapped together. “When did Mrs. Yorke send for you?”

“This morning, Your Grace.”

This morning. By God, had the woman possessed the temerity to meddle with his domestics after he had told her to leave?

“I see.” With a nod to the footman, Quint strode into the great hall.

“Dunreave!” he hollered.

The strange scent was still lingering in the air. The vibrant aroma of freshly cut holly boughs. Only, it was stronger. Disbelief coursing through his veins, Quint stormed toward the drawing room. Gas lamps blazed within. And somehow, impossibly, there was even more greenery. It was everywhere.

“Dunreave!”

Where was the blasted man? More importantly, where was the bloody housekeeper? He had told her to remove the greenery, not to adorn the drawing room with more of it.

Frantic footfalls sounded just before a harried-looking Dunreave arrived, out of breath, his face grim. “Yes, Your Grace?”

“What is the meaning of this?” Quint demanded.

Dunreave winced. “I warned her not to continue with her decorating. I told her that you would be terribly displeased.”

“Displeased doesn’t begin to describe what I’m feeling at the moment.” He flexed his gloved hands at his sides, boiling with impotent fury, the scarred skin on his fingers tingling. “Why would she decorate the drawing room before she left for the train station? I should think that packing her valise would have proven a better use of her time.”

Dunreave cleared his throat. “I’m afraid Mrs. Yorke refused to go to the train station as you requested. She insisted that she remain.”

Quint thought it possible that his head might explode. He might have known that the cunning baggage wouldn’t have obeyed him. She had been far too bold. Bolder than a housekeeper ought to be. And far more beautiful than any domestic he’d ever seen. But that hardly signified.

“After I sacked her?” he demanded.

“Unfortunately, yes, Your Grace.”

“Why?” he growled, annoyed.

His body’s instinctive reaction to the news that she was still beneath his roof was a hated reminder that there remained certain portions of his anatomy that had not been ruined by flames.

Dunreave grimaced. “She said that since she is in the employ of the dowager duchess and not you, Your Grace cannot dismiss her from her post.”

“The devil she did.”

Her daring was beyond the limitations of reason. He should have her tossed out of Blackwell Abbey on her rump.

“Where is she?” he asked, taking another sweeping inventory of the drawing room.

“In the housekeeper’s room, the last I checked, Your Grace.”

If he were a different man, a kinder man, a softer man, a man who had not tried to pull his wife from a burning building and failed, he might have found the decorations pleasant and inviting. Had his life progressed as it should have done, he would have a child by now. Perhaps even another on the way. He and his family would have gathered around those trees. Presents would have been laid beneath them.

But he was not a different man.

And he had no family.

So he left the drawing room without another word, intent upon finding the housekeeper. He would carry her out of his house over his shoulder if necessary. All he wanted was for her to go.

Joceline was inspecting the dishes for cracks when the heavy, booted feet of the duke pounded toward her.

Mary, poor skittish girl that she was, made a squeak of fright when he appeared at the threshold of the housekeeper’s room, thunderclouds in his harsh stare and icy fury in his clenched jaw.

“You,” he said to the maid, his voice clipped and steely as his eyes. “Go.”

Mary didn’t hesitate in fleeing. She rushed from the chamber with such haste she nearly tripped over her hems, forgetting to curtsy, mumbling something unintelligible.

Joceline suppressed a sigh and faced the Duke of Sedgewick alone for the second time that day. If his countenance was any indication, he was even more displeased with her than he had been on the previous occasion.

“Your Grace.” She greeted him with as much kindness as she could summon, dipping in deference as she smiled with false cheer.

The duke did not return her smile. “Why are you still here, madam?”

“Because Her Grace deemed me suitable to fulfill the role of housekeeper here at Blackwell Abbey.”

“Yes, but Her Grace is not the owner of Blackwell Abbey, and she had no right to offer you the situation,” he bit out. “I neither want nor need a housekeeper. Particularly not one who is defiant and refuses to listen to the orders given her.”

As he ventured nearer, Joceline once again caught his scent, mingling with the fresh earthiness of the outdoors from his ride. His long hair was damp, the ends curling. He still wore his mud-splattered riding boots. A sizzle of unexpected awareness coursed through her despite herself. There was something about the Duke of Sedgewick that was deeply compelling, regardless of his truculent disposition.

But she couldn’t concern herself with that. She was a servant in his household—and an unwanted one at that. She had to do battle with him, not swoon over his handsome looks.

“I understand that you believe you don’t require a housekeeper, Your Grace,” she began in soothing tones before he interrupted her.

“It is not a matter of belief, Mrs. Young. It is a matter of fact.”

“Mrs. Yorke,” she reminded him, understanding why the dowager duchess had chosen her to fill the lofty position of housekeeper, and at a tremendously large sum per annum, too. “And I am afraid that I would beg to differ, Your Grace.”

He had stopped before her, emanating a wintry menace that she had no doubt had cowed every poor housekeeper who had preceded her. “Oh? Is that so, madam?”

His voice held a deceptive calm, rather reminiscent of a serpent about to strike. But she refused to be intimidated. He may be a duke, but he was a duke who was sorely in need of some aid at his ailing estate. His mother had known it. She had warned Joceline of the challenge that would be awaiting her here in the north.

“My son has exiled himself, Mrs. Yorke,” the dowager had said. “It is quite as if he died with his wife. He is allowing the estate to go to ruin around him. He has turned away almost all the domestics, including the excellent housekeepers I sent him over the last few months, and I quite fear what will happen in the absence of a suitable domestic’s firm guidance over the household.”

Joceline hadn’t been concerned with the duke’s past at the time. Rather, she had been compelled to accept the situation because of the promised one hundred pounds per annum should she stay the whole year, a fortune compared to the modest fifty pounds she had been earning previously. But more than that, the duchess had promised her an additional fifty pounds if she was able to keep Blackwell Abbey decorated for Christmas, as Her Grace intended to visit her son for the festive season.

Joceline needed this post. Needed the one hundred pounds and the fifty pounds besides. Her younger brother and sisters made use of every shilling she could send back to them and Mama, now that Papa was gone. Many others depended upon her. Here, at last, was her chance to earn funds to keep a roof over her siblings’ heads and enough food in their bellies.

So she kept her face a mask of polite civility and held the duke’s stare. “That is so, Your Grace. Your household is, to be perfectly candid, in a state of ruin. The number of domestics in your employ is woefully insufficient for a manor house of this size. The kitchen maid is cavorting with one of the grooms. Your dishes are cracked and chipped and in need of repair. There is a mouse infestation that needs to be dealt with, your preserve stores are empty, and your cook is tippling the sherry. To say nothing of the carpets that need to be taken up and beaten, the abundant dust that is covering nearly every surface, the loose floorboards on the servants’ stair, and the broken chandelier in the dining room.”

She finished her impassioned speech and was greeted with cold silence and the duke’s impassive countenance. His blue-green gaze remained glacial. He was so stern, so austere. So despicably handsome, even in his cruel indifference.

He quite took her breath, the wretched man.

And then his deep voice rumbled, cutting through the calm.

“With such a dire opinion of my household, madam, I can only wonder at your choice to festoon my drawing room with Christmas trees and gewgaws and holly branches instead of correcting any of the inadequacies you have so helpfully catalogued.”

“Her Grace professed her desire that Blackwell Abbey be decorated for the Christmas season,” she defended. “As Her Grace intends to be present for Yuletide, I was merely making an effort to do her bidding whilst attending to the rest.”

His eyes narrowed. “Present for Yuletide? I issued no such invitation to my mother.”

She forced a tight smile. “I am afraid that is an issue Your Grace will need to address with Her Grace.”

“I begin to think you are colluding with my mother, madam.”

Joceline narrowly avoided gritting her teeth—the man was infuriating. “I can assure you that I am not conspiring in any fashion. I am attempting to do the job I was hired for.”

“At my home.”

“At Your Grace’s home,” she agreed.

“By someone other than myself,” he continued with deceptive calm.

“By Her Grace.”

“Then you agree that you are trespassing.”

She gaped at him. “I agree to no such thing, Your Grace.”

“Whether you concur is immaterial. You cannot argue against plain fact, madam. You are here, in a place where you are not wanted, performing tasks I have not given you leave to perform, and at the behest of someone who is not the owner of this estate. You are, therefore, trespassing. I ought to send for the constable and have you thrown into jail for your temerity.”

The breath fled her lungs at his cool statement. But then she inhaled, telling herself he wasn’t serious about such a threat. That he couldn’t be. That she had done nothing wrong.

“If you truly think to have me arrested for the crime of decorating your drawing room with Christmas greenery, then I suppose you must,” she told him. “Otherwise, I do hope Your Grace will leave me to my work. There are a great deal more dishes to be inspected for damage and only so many hours in the day.”

She kept her tone as sweet as honey, maintaining her poise and calm through the sheer miracle of determination and necessity.

His jaw worked, and she couldn’t tell if he was holding back words or if he was grinding his molars. “I don’t want you here.”

Joceline continued to smile sunnily at him. “Do you like dust, mouse droppings, chipped plates, and a house in disrepair?”

“The fountain in the alcove behind the great hall,” he growled. “Was that you?”

Ah, he had noticed her little triumph. No doubt, it displeased him greatly, just as everything else she had done in her short tenure here.

“It was Joseph Poole, Your Grace. He is a new footman I have taken the liberty of hiring.”

“Footmen are not a part of the housekeeper’s domain.”

“I am aware. However, poor Mr. Dunreave is already burdened with far too many tasks, and since he was reluctant to hire new servants for fear of Your Grace’s displeasure, I took on the task myself.”

Fortunately, she had found the industrious Joseph Poole in the village, along with a handful of others who were willing to work at Blackwell Abbey. Joseph had quite handily repaired the broken fountain.

The duke’s lip curled. “Dunreave is a wise and loyal man.”

“Yes, Your Grace. On that, we are in complete accord.”

“I want you gone tomorrow. Leave on the first train that returns to London. If my mother wishes for you to be a housekeeper so badly, then you may be hers. Good day, Mrs. Yorke.”

Without waiting for her response, the Duke of Sedgewick spun on his heel and stalked from the room. She watched his tall, stately figure retreating, belatedly realizing he had finally called her by the correct name.