Christmas at Mulberry Hall

The robe—a flimsy and totally inappropriate garment for a paid companion to wear!—was draped over her nightgown, but not fastened, and revealed the full and deliciously tempting swell of those pert and creamy breasts that had been pressed against Gray’s own chest only minutes ago.

Circumstances being what they were, Gray had not as yet had the pleasure of meeting his young ward, but he could see at a glance that the woman standing before him was too seductively beautiful to be the paid companion of any young and no doubt impressionable girl.

In fact, after having enjoyed the lush curves of her body being pressed intimately against his, Gray believed her to be far more suited to being the paid ‘companion’ of any male member of the ton who might be on the hunt for a new mistress!

Considering that Gray’s older brother Perry had been married but a few months before he died, and by all accounts happily so, Gray could not help but wonder what his brother could have been about, hiring someone so young and so seductively feminine as companion to the young stepdaughter he had acquired upon his short but sweet marriage.

Gray’s mouth thinned as he looked down at the woman from between narrowed lids. ‘You have forgotten to list yourself in that number.’

Those blue eyes widened, before a frown of consternation appeared between those fine eyes. ‘Oh. Yes. I am here, too, of course.’

Gray nodded tersely. ‘Of course.’

Amelia worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she pondered how best to extract herself from this disastrous situation. Especially as the man in front of her did not look like a man capable of losing even one ounce of that arrogant pride that fitted him as perfectly as his impeccably tailored clothing!

An arrogant and wickedly handsome man who had held her in his arms only minutes ago …

Amelia moistened her lips before speaking. ‘I am unsure as to whether your bedchamber is suitable for habitation, My Lord. It is so long since anyone last slept in that particular bedchamber that I am afraid that even if the bed is made the sheets upon it are sure to be damp—’

‘I will see to my own sleeping arrangements shortly, thank you, madam.’ His pale eyes shimmered down at her in the candlelight. ‘At this moment I am more interested in why there should be only yourself and two other servants remaining on the Steadley estate?’

Amelia blinked her surprise at what was surely an unnecessary question. ‘Because they have all departed …’

‘Why?’

‘Because, My Lord, they had not been paid in six months or more …’

‘What?’ Lord Grayson glared down at her ominously.

She shook her head. ‘Mr Sanders had not been able to pay either the household staff or the gardeners and grooms for many months before he was forced to depart for greener pastures himself only days ago.’

Gray recalled that Sanders had been the name of his estate manager he had written to the previous week, informing him of his intention of arriving at Steadley Manor today …

Having deliberately stayed away from Steadley Manor these past two and a half years, Gray had never met the estate manager who had replaced Mr Davies upon the latter’s retirement a year ago. He had, in fact, put all the dealings of the estate, including the hiring of a new estate manager, into the capable hands of Worthington, his lawyer.

Because Gray had not wanted Steadley Manor, nor the estate, nor any of the other responsibilities—such as Perry’s recently acquired stepdaughter—that had been left in his charge when his brother had died. The only thing Gray had wanted was his brother back safe and well from the Battle of Waterloo. Something that was never going to happen now Perry had been left broken and dead on the battlefield.

Steadley Manor, the estate, even Perry’s dratted stepdaughter, were all just reminders to Gray that he would never see his beloved brother again. Easier by far, then, to ignore them all and simply continue to live his own life in London.

Until, that was, Gray had received a letter a fortnight ago, delivered to his London home one morning, from Daniel Wycliffe, the Earl of Stanford. The Earl’s estate was but twenty miles from Steadley Manor, and Daniel had been a childhood friend of Gray’s brother Perry. The fact that the other man had written to Gray at all had been cause for surprise, but the content of the letter had been even more so.

The Earl had heard rumours, he had written, that all was not well at Steadley Manor. That livestock was being sold and not replaced. The fields were left untended. The estate cottages were falling into a state of disrepair. The Earl had concluded with the statement that it was not for him to say whether or not these rumours were true, only that he felt he should bring them to Gray’s attention.

Gray had read through the letter several times, and each time he’d done so his annoyance had deepened at the Earl having had the audacity to write to him at all. He had no doubt as to why the other man had chosen to interfere—as a friend of Perry’s the Earl had decided it was high time that Gray saw to his responsibilities at Steadley Manor. It was an interference that Gray had deeply resented.

So much so that once he had finished his breakfast Gray had sat down and written the other man a terse reply, along the lines that he was perfectly capable of dealing with his own affairs, thank you very much!

Except …

The letter from the Earl of Stanford had arrived at a time when Gray, after years of working secretly as an agent of the crown, had been reflecting on what he should do with the rest of that life, recent events having left him feeling strangely restless and dissatisfied. After a further week of contemplation, of finding no answers to that restlessness, Gray had finally come to the conclusion that perhaps he should travel into Bedfordshire to see if his future lay there after all.

As much as Gray had had no real desire to travel to flat and uninteresting Bedfordshire at this cold and unwelcoming time of year, he’d also known that there was no more perfect a time for him to leave London, now that the majority of the ton had returned to their country estates in anticipation of the Christmas holiday in one week’s time.

He would visit his estate in Bedfordshire, Gray had decided, and see if there really was any basis for the rumours the Earl claimed to have heard, before travelling on to Gloucestershire in response to an invitation he had received from Hawk, Duke of Stourbridge, to spend Christmas there with the St Claire family.

Gray had not realised when he’d made those arrangements quite how serious the problems at Steadley Manor were. Servants not being paid. The departure of almost all those servants, both inside the house and out of it. How his young ward had been living alone here all this time—apart from the company of a woman Gray already considered totally unsuitable as companion to a young and impressionable girl.

All of them were things, Gray was now only too aware, that he would most certainly have known about—might have prevented from happening—if he had taken the slightest bit of interest in the running of his own estate since his brother died …

Gray scowled. Damn it all, he’d had other responsibilities—his duties to the crown to fulfil—without having to worry about something that should have been ably taken care of by the two men he had paid so generously to do it in his stead.

Which begged the question: if the money had not been paid into the hands of the household and the estate workers, then whose purse had it ended up in? Only his lawyer, Worthington, and the estate manager Sanders had handled the money before it was suitably dispersed to the men and women employed on the estate. As Gray had seen and spoken to Worthington only days ago—the older man had been delighted that Gray was at last taking some interest in his estate—it would appear that only Sanders, the man to whom Gray had written a week ago to inform him of his intention of arriving at the estate some time today, was no longer here to answer any of Gray’s questions …

His mouth firmed. ‘You did not feel the same need to absent yourself because of the non-payment of your own wages?’

‘I, My Lord?’ The woman blinked up at him innocently, instantly drawing attention to the long length of the dark lashes that surrounded those huge blue eyes.

Deliberately so?

Gray could not be sure. Nor did he wish to be! From what he had recently learnt he would have more than enough problems to deal with during the next few days, without having to concern himself with the flirtations of a young woman he did not consider fit to take care of one of his horses, let alone the development of his young ward.

He nodded tersely. ‘You, ma’am.’

Amelia looked up at him with a frown. She had to admit that Lord Gideon Grayson, with that stylish dark hair and those enigmatic grey eyes set in a face as masculine and perfect as a sketch she had once seen of one of Michelangelo’s sculptures, was one of the most handsome men she had ever set eyes upon.

Unfortunately, having now met him, Amelia realised he was also the most arrogantly forceful man she had ever encountered, too!

She gave a slight shake of her head. ‘I do not understand, My Lord …?’

He eyed her impatiently. ‘I am asking if you love your work here so much that you have been happy to do it all these months without payment?’

‘No, My Lord …’

Really—was Gray to add stupidity to the list of this woman’s character defects? It would be a pity if that were the case; even a woman as beautiful as she would do better in the world if she possessed at least some intelligence. ‘No, you do not love your work here? Or, no, you have not been happy to do it without receiving payment?’

She gave a tinklingly dismissive laugh, revealing tiny and perfectly straight white teeth between those plump red lips. ‘No, I do not work here at all, My Lord.’

‘You—?’ Gray gave an irritated frown. ‘Explain yourself, if you please!’

‘I am Amelia, My Lord—Amelia Ashford,’ she added lightly as Gray continued to stare down at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Your step-niece and ward.’

Gray was too startled—shocked!—by the revelation to even attempt to hide it, and he openly goggled down at her.

This beautiful and seductively lovely woman—a woman any man would relish taking to his bed—was the daughter of the genteel but impoverished widow his brother Perry had been married to for only months before her death, soon followed by Perry’s own death at Waterloo?

Chapter Three

It could not be!

There had to be an error of some sort. Amelia Ashford was a child—only seventeen years of age—whereas this young woman was—

Perry’s stepdaughter had been ‘only seventeen’ two and a half years ago …

Which would now make her in her twentieth year, not her eighteenth!

Circumstances beyond Gray’s control had meant that he had never met Perry’s wife Celia, nor her daughter Amelia. Perry had written to Gray at the time of his marriage, of course, assuring him of his joy in his wife, and of his delight in becoming stepfather to such a delightful child as Amelia.

There had not been time for Gray—nor opportunity—to visit the new family at their estate in Bedfordshire before Perry had written to Gray a second time, shortly before he’d had to depart for Waterloo, informing him of his complete devastation at the sudden death of his wife from influenza.

When the news had reached Gray, only weeks later, of his brother’s own demise during that last bloody battle he had felt absolutely no desire to visit the estate he had just inherited—to be at or see the place where he would be made aware of his brother’s absence the most.

Instead Gray had put the financial running of the estate into the hands of his lawyer, while concentrating his own energies on his duties in London. His only dealings with Steadley Manor during that time had been the twice-yearly meetings Worthington had insisted upon, so that the lawyer might present Gray with an account of estate business.

Never in all that time, Gray now realised uncomfortably, had he given even a thought to how Amelia Ashford had dealt with the sudden death of her mother, quickly followed by that of her stepfather. Let alone considered the loneliness of the life she must have led all this time, secluded away in rural Bedfordshire.

Gray studied her from between narrowed lids now, as he attempted to reconcile his previous image of a young girl on the brink of womanhood with the reality of the beautiful and seductive young woman who stood before him, wearing only her nightclothes. A young and tempting woman, who conjured up images of bedchambers and lithe and naked bodies intimately entwined amongst tangled sheets—

Damn it, Amelia Ashford was under Gray’s protection, and as such she was the last woman on earth that he should find himself having such intimate imaginings about! The last woman he should have held in his arms.

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