Miss Isabella Thaws a Frosty Lord Page 2

  Isabella’s smile widened.

  “That spot is practically at eye level, Mama, when one is seated as we are. I even believe I can see two hairs peeking—”

  Anne gasped to cover a giggle. Her mother squawked and two more women made swooning noises while the rest of them, Isabella included, only laughed out loud.

  “I cannot help but notice,” Harriet protested sincerely. “They are right there.”

  “Up! Up with you, young lady, and straight to bed!”

  Isabella made every attempt to subdue her mirth but failed miserably. Poor Harriet, she didn’t even have the promise of a new kitten to soften the scold that would likely be ringing in her ears the remainder of the night.

  Isabella did a quick calculation. Including the frowning newcomer, most all of the anticipated party had arrived—there were to be eighty-eight guests and she’d met eighty or eighty-one…having lost the exact count somewhere between Lady Fairfax and her daughter Uriana—unfortunate girl had a dreadful case of snuffles—and the Gregory brothers, two young gentlemen who both flattered Isabella with Spanish coin until she knew her face must be as red as the satin ribbons Anne told her graced every available surface.

  “Miss Isabella,” a precise, clipped voice interrupted the feminine chatter, addressing her directly, “may I have the honor of escorting you to dinner?”

  As if conjured by her thoughts, it was one of the Gregory brothers, though she hadn’t made sufficient distinction between them to know which. Concentrating on holding her gaze steady as she and Mama had practiced, Isabella focused on the speaker. “You may indeed, kind sir.”

  She rose and, with her steps lighter and more sure than she’d expected weeks ago, made her way from the room on his arm.

  Dinner was a bore. Everyone in attendance was a bore.

  Hell, he was the bore, Frost realized, noticing the downward turn of his thoughts and forcing his lips into a smile. It felt like a grimace so he tried again, ordering his lips and cheeks to cooperate. He was here after all, he could at least attempt to do the pretty, to act the gentleman.

  He’d been told he had adorable dimples, might as well release them for the holiday. His gift, as it were.

  Adorable, blast and damn, the bane of every male. As a youth, he’d undergone significant practice to eradicate the dreaded indentations, and by the time he needed to scrape whiskers off his jaw, he’d ruthlessly taught himself how to suppress any hint of a damn dimple, adorable or otherwise.

  Draining his wineglass for the seventh time—a number that tended to grow exponentially each year around this particular date—he resolved to ask at least one of the unmarried females to dance that evening. He could do that, could he not—mask his irritation for a single dance during the night’s promised entertainment? Surely he could, he thought with a smile that likely belonged on a hyena. So long as it wasn’t a bloody Christmas song.

  Nicholas Winten, Earl of Frostwood…a chilly nomenclature for such a fiery fellow. Cold and unfeeling he might be perceived, but she saw beneath exteriors. Always had—since the day she lost hers.

  Anger and resentment simmered below his frosty façade. That and a cartload of hurt. Poor chap, he was taking after his termagant of a mother—the most unpleasant creature to dash across her path in the ether, heading south if the disagreeable cackle and hateful remarks were anything to go by.

  But she could sense how his moods were nothing more than contrivances to protect the wounded boy hiding inside. A little boy she suspected Issybelle would know just how to reach—and heal.

  The dangling ringlet upon Isabella’s forehead swayed with the motion of her feet. She’d requested the maid arrange it just so, and every light brush was a reminder of how pleasing it was to have her wishes regarded.

  Spine flush against the wall, Isabella’s toes rose and fell in time with the lively music. Her right hand, snug upon the strap of her fan, tapped against her thigh in tandem with her dancing toes. She itched to be alone. To indulge in her one vulgar pastime—or so Father labeled it, saying the habit made her look no better than a “bingo mort”, a female drunkard—the activity that had earned her more than one bruised shin and worse, Father’s further disdain. But all the same, the obsession beckoned.

  But it was not to be. Not now that the other guests had arrived and she no longer had the privilege of finding herself alone in the great ballroom.

  The beginnings of the third set reached her ears. Everyone not already breathless with exertion rushed onto the dance floor at Anne’s prompting. As mistress of the assembly, Anne presided over the dances and called the steps, just as they’d played and practiced when they were younger. Her friend’s happiness was evident.

  More than ever, Isabella yearned to join in.

  “Dance with me.”

  Her head automatically jerked toward the speaker. Startled by the abrupt command, as well as by the rich voice that pronounced it, she blinked. Was he talking to her? Or someone else nearby?

  Anne had dispensed with the custom of dance cards, instructing her guests to mingle and make merry as they saw fit. This wouldn’t be the first man to take pity on her and offer to escort her around the floor. But he would be the first to do so without at least introducing himself or extending a greeting.

  “Pardon?” Isabella inquired softly, testing her perception.

  He shifted closer. She felt his presence fairly sizzle along her front. “I said, ‘Dance with me’.”

  “That is what I thought you said. Well, sir…” Isabella began with true regret, for she longed to dance and for some odd reason given his inexcusable curtness, she especially longed to dance with the owner of the velvet-voiced commands. She certainly hadn’t entertained such longing when declining the four previous, courteous offers she’d received, but then each of those men had been known to her. “I fear I must decline your less-than-polite dictum.”

  In direct contrast to his abrupt tone, she gave a gracious nod then turned toward the open doors she knew to be on her left, running her corresponding hand lightly along the wall.

  “What?” he snapped the same instant she felt his fingers encircle her opposite wrist, halting her progress. “You reject me?”

  Had not her fan been affixed to her arm she surely would’ve dropped it at the unexpected touch—and her reaction to it.

  “Reject you? Nay,” she said, trying to dismiss the nuance of hurt she detected in his remarkably haughty voice. Just as she tried to dismiss how the fingers above her glove seared her skin. Had she ever felt the touch of a man not family on her flesh before? Why certainly she had! Physicians for one—

  Shaking herself free of his hold and her own disturbing thoughts, Isabella reiterated, “Nay, but I do reject your tone for I dislike intently being ordered about.”

  “Ah…then it is I who must beg your pardon,” he said smoothly—too smoothly. It was a rakeshame she had the misfortune to be bantering with, Isabella feared, feeling how the subtle shift in his demeanor caused her insides to riot. “For though I have been returned from war these two years past, I fear old habits of barking commands have yet to leave my lips. Would you perchance care to dance? Perchance to dance?” he self-mocked. “From commander to pitiful poet, I fear. I only ask because you…”

  “I…what?”

  “You…”

  Why was he still hesitating? Though his unexpected humor distracted her mightily, she heard plainly what he refused to voice. So she said it for him. “I am the only pitiable female not yet engaged?”

  “No! You…you have a curl in your eye,” he accused as though she’d committed a crime and the pillory awaited.

  “Mayhap I like it there.”

  “Well, I do not.”

  Purposefully subduing the urge to twitch her head and dislodge the curl he somehow found so offensive, Isabella wondered why, if she irritated him so, he remained. And why, a foxed pox on her sudden boldness, was conversing with him exhilarating beyond belief?

  This daring side she’d rele
ased was wont to land her in trouble.

  Thanks to her father, she’d learned early and well to hide her love of music and movement. A lesson she’d best not allow a domineering stranger tempt her into forgetting. “Well, sir, as much as I like my curl’s present location, mayhap I wish you gone.”

  She thought he sputtered a protest but didn’t give her ears time to decide. “Because I most certainly do not care to dance, especially not with you,” she lied, for she irrationally wished it above all things. “Good evening, sir.”

  Quickly, she quit the room before he could—shameless rake or gruff commander, she knew not which—blast through her common sense and have her agreeing. To dance with him of all things.

  I am the only pitiable female not yet engaged?

  Damn and blast! That wasn’t what he’d been about to say. Not even close.

  You have a curl in your eye.

  Blast and damn, that wasn’t what he’d meant to say either. She muddled his tongue, this obstinate, enchanting miss.

  An uncommon beauty, at least to him, Frost thought now, recalling her wistful expression as she held up one side of the ballroom. A lone, confident figure who invited and intrigued…

  I only ask because you stare so longingly at the dance floor…with just a hint of sorrow. I thought perhaps you were reliving an earlier time and we might banish our memories together, if only for a song.

  But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to utter such romantic drivel.

  The lack of courage had cost him. Cost the acquaintance of the most promising miss present and there certainly wasn’t a lack, Ed and Lady Redford having invited half the shire from what he could tell. “Little gathering for the holidays” indeed. Had to be close to ninety revelers in his estimation. Might as well have been five hundred for all the maggoty “cheer” such a crush harkened upon his person.

  Hell, he’d only promised himself a single dance as a singular act of charity, little expecting to be captivated and then outright rebuffed, but that’s exactly what happened. Perhaps the saucy baggage did it on purpose, to snare his interest.

  Intentionally or not, she’d succeeded, for though her head was topped with sable brown ringlets instead of ones reminiscent of corn silk, with that primly spoken refusal—not to mention the dreadfully alluring curl—the impudent wench who dared defy him tonight not only tripped up his tongue, she put him in mind of the last female he’d dared to love, harking him back nearly two decades to the oft-heard complaint of another…

  “Nicky, you cannot order me about like one of your soldiers,” his sister Althea had insisted in a familiar refrain. “I will not stand for it!”

  “There’s—” He’d broken off, coughing over his shoulder, that niggling tickle that’d scratched his throat for weeks coming to the fore. When it subsided, he tweaked one of the gold ringlets that was forever falling over her eye. “There’s a fierce puss!”

  She tossed her head, slinging ringlets straight into his face.

  He’d laughed at her eight-year-old antics—so much younger than his own mature eleven—and pointed to the battalion on the floor between them. An entire regiment of new toy soldiers given to him by Papa for Christmas. “Now set up the right flank for the next offensive lest I tell Mama how you tore your dress.”

  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 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 c
onvince 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.

  Chapter Two

  A Festive Search

  Isabella stood beside the open front door, cold air blasting her exposed cheek, telling herself not to be anxious. She trusted Anne, who’d assured her several times over that Isabella could fully participate in the day’s activities.

  The great hall was filled with scarf-and-mitten-bedecked females, with hatted and multi-caped coated gentlemen. Or so Harriet had described before departing to inspect Aylmer’s pantaloons “On the chance today’s have any holes in peculiar places too”.

  Though she wore the requisite bonnet and scarf, Isabella had slipped her unmittened hands into the beautiful white ermine muff Anne had given her for Christmas (both Anne and Harriet had described the gift, but their words hadn’t been necessary—its exquisite texture was sufficient to conjure hazy images in her mind). Feeling the anticipation as much as any other guest yet unable to move about on her own, Isabella repeatedly instructed her restless fingers to stop twitching within the confines of the sumptuous fur.

  Really…she had no cause for being at sixes and sevens, having committed to memory the number of steps needed to exit the great hall and descend the stairs where the carriages would be waiting to convey them into town—the alluded to destination.

  Unfortunately the knot of nervous dread in her stomach refused to cooperate, her anxiety deepening by the second. Of a certainty, her reaction couldn’t have anything to do with hearing each doublet of names Anne called out, pairing the guests, and suspecting after name upon name was announced and mentally checking each off her list that she was about to be partnered with the brash stranger from last night.

  The man whose identity she’d yet to learn or whose scent she’d not yet been successful in eradicating from her nostrils. Wretched nose. It remembered everything! The way he smelled richly of sandalwood, his breath of wine. The way—