To Wed His Christmas Lady (The Heart of a Duke #7)

To Wed His Christmas Lady (The Heart of a Duke #7)

Christi Caldwell




Chapter 1


William James Alexander Winchester Hargrove, I expect you home for the Christmastide Season! Your mother and I (but particularly your mother), have expectations for you.

Post Script

Your mother wanted me to stress that we are expecting you home prior to Christmas.

~Your father

Just outside Farnham, England

December, 1817

William Hargrove, the Marquess of Grafton, should have learned early on to be wary of barters presented by his father, the Duke of Billingsley.

At just six years of age, his father had dangled one of Cook’s Shrewsbury cakes in exchange for William’s beloved toy soldiers. With a boy’s impulsivity, William handed over every last figure from colonel to captain. Only after, when sugar flaked his cheeks and lips and the treat was gone, and his father’s large palm extended out, empty, he’d discovered for the first time—one always came out on the losing end of Father’s deals. William had turned over his toys forever for a bite of cake. It was a permanent loss in exchange for a fleeting pleasure.

That had been the first barter William had made with the clever duke.

The one he’d made as a youth of eighteen had been William’s last. The problem of making a pledge when one was but eighteen years of age was that time seems endless and years were eternal when you’re nothing more than a boy. A black curse ripped from his lips.

But now, he’d run out of time.

With snow falling about him, William leaned against the mighty oak and again skimmed the contents of his father’s missive. The note could not be clearer had the words been written: Your travels are up. It is time to see to your duty. His stomach muscles tightened. For that last deal struck would prove the most final in terms of what he’d sacrificed for eight fleeting years—his freedom.

As boisterous in real life as he was upon the page, the duke fit not at all with rigid Societal expectations of and for a duke. William’s earliest memories of his father included the man’s booming laughter as he’d raced the length of the ballroom with William seated precariously upon his shoulders. Still…for that warmth and affection, his father was a duke in every sense of the word. As such, there was, and always had been, the great expectation that William would do right by the Billingsley line as deemed right by his loving sire.

As a young man of eighteen, in exchange for a pledge to wed the spoiled, cold, and rotten daughter of the Duke of Ravenscourt, his father had granted William eight years of freedom. Freedom to travel. To explore. And to come and go as though the dukedom would not one day pass to him.

Why hadn’t he insisted on more time? His lips twisted with bitterness. Then, a handful more years could never have been enough. Nor did his desires have anything to do with the wanderlust that had filled him in his youth. After years of traveling, the prospect of returning to England and his family was a potent one. Or it should be. Not now. Not when presented with the grim future awaiting him. And where that inevitability was one expected of all noblemen, it was not a matter of giving up his freedom—but rather, whom he’d give his freedom up to. For the woman his parents would bind William to was colder than the snow that even now stung his skin. And while such matches with those frosty, emotionless ladies were commonplace in polite Society, his own parents’ union had stood as testament to the possibility of more—love and warmth and affection.

William clenched his hands reflexively about the page and the vellum crackled noisily in the winter quiet. His mount, Thunder, loosely tied to the opposite tree, picked up his head. The horse flicked his ears and nervously danced about. “Easy,” he soothed, and that seemed to have some kind of calming effect for the black Friesian. Redirecting his attention out once more, William stared into the distant gray-white horizon. He fixed his gaze down the snow-covered, old, Roman road that would inevitably lead him home.

He gritted his teeth, hating his damn foolish younger self who’d sacrificed any hope of a marriage based on anything more than a cold, emotionless, business arrangement between two powerful families.

A gust of wind whipped the steady, winter snow in his eyes and stung his cheeks. Dread pitted his stomach. It was time for him to wed. With a curse that would have burned his mother’s ears, he crumpled the note into a ball, stalked to the edge of the road, and hurled the sheet into the wind.

The growing storm captured that loathsome summons and whipped it up into the air. He stared, numb, as the ivory vellum fell to the earth, and then was carried by the wind, onward—until it disappeared.

If only I could do the same.

But he couldn’t. He’d been wandering for years, away from the world where he would someday ascend to the lofty title of duke. And more, he’d been wandering away from her.

“Lady Clarisse Falcot.” His lip peeled back in a snarl. The ever so proper lady his parents would see him wed. He balled his hands at his sides. His father had, of course, known just what to dangle before his adventure-craving son’s grasp—the ability to travel.

A hungering filled him to turn on his heel, mount Thunder, and ride off in the opposite direction. For the sliver of an instant he allowed himself that possibility, but then thrust it aside. He was a man who, at the very least, honored his word. Where was the comfort in that? William skimmed his gaze over the lightly snow-covered countryside and easily found that loathsome ivory vellum, now a wrinkled ball, tumbling over the white snow. Periodically, the increasing wind carried the page further away. Only, disposing of that missive would not undo the pledge he’d made that would ultimately join him to that miserable brat he’d had the displeasure of knowing as a child.