Cynthia busied herself balancing Max upside-down on her lap in order to rub his soft belly and thereby avoid meeting her cousin’s eyes.
Cynthia did not fancy the Duke of Nottingvale.
She didnot.
Gertie depended on Cynthia—the entire family depended upon her—and she was going to deliver. Nottingvale would be smitten with Gertie at first sight. This would be the easiest matchmaking mission of Cynthia’s life.
She just had to survive a fortnight of other people’s flirtations.
“Look!” Cynthia pointed out of the window at a bright red wooden sign rising from the snow.
Welcome to Christmas!
Gertie’s eyes widened. “Is it really Christmastide here all year round?”
Unlike Cynthia, Gertie was not from the northernmost corner of England. Gertie and her family spent half of the year in London, and the other half near Southampton, where Gertie’s father had a seaside manor.
“It really is,” Cynthia said with a grin. “Marlowe Castle sits atop the highest point, overlooking the cheerful little village. Despite its small size, Cressmouth has dozens of entertainments at any moment. What happened to this month’s timetable?”
“Here it is!” Gertie pulled a battered copy of the Cressmouth Gazette out from under Max’s basket, and turned to the long lists of December activities beginning on page four.
Cynthia didn’t need to review the newspaper to know what delights it contained. Accommodations in Cressmouth were expensive, but most of the entertainments were free. Since she lived only an hour’s drive away—an hour and a half, perhaps, in snowy conditions such as these—Cynthia came up to spend the day whenever the Christmas spirit struck her.
In addition to being an absolute paradise for all things Yuletide, Cressmouth’s coziness would be another advantage over the London season.
Cynthia hoped.
Gertie’s come-out earlier that year had been a middling success.
Despite failing to mumble a shy response to any of her many smitten suitors, Gertie’s dance card remained full and her father’s mantel fairly sagged under the weight of so many calling cards.
None of the interested parties was good enough for the daughter of an earl, however. Gertie might not speak to strangers, but Lady Gertrude would be a disappointment to her family if she landed anything less than a wealthy aristocrat.
Cynthia knew exactly what it felt like to be a disappointment to one’s family. Now she did it on purpose, but once upon a time she had tried to fit in and to be chosen.
It hadn’t worked.
Her dance card, like the visitor dish upon her mantel, had remained empty.
Gertie, on the other hand, had a fighting chance. Cynthia considered this a rescue mission as much as a matchmaking one. Despite Gertie being all of eighteen years old, her father was planning to betroth her to one of his ancient, lecherous peers as part of a political alliance. Gertie would be miserable.
CynthialikedNottingvale. Any woman would be lucky to have him.
Cynthia loved her cousin Gertie. She truly believed the duke wouldn’t be able to help falling in love… if Cynthia could convince Gertie to speak in a voice loud enough to be heard, and to show the duke who she really was.
That was the best part of a Christmastide house party. Intimate close quarters where Nottingvale and Gertie would run into each other a dozen times a day. Even for shy Gertie, It would be impossible to avoid the duke.
“Here we are,” Cynthia said briskly as the carriage pulled up in front of the duke’s so-called cottage.
The only larger residence in Cressmouth was the castle itself.
Smart black carriages stretched down the long winding driveway up to Nottingvale’s cheerful brick façade.
Exquisitely dressed young ladies stepped onto the shoveled path, accompanied by equally proper-looking matrons ranging from hired companions to marriage-minded mothers.
Cynthia recognized most of them. Not the debutantes—she’d been out of society far too long for that. Many of the older ladies had either been in London the same time Cynthia was, or lived near enough to this area that they’d crossed paths in Cressmouth before, perhaps even at one of Nottingvale’s previous parties.
“Ready?” she murmured to Gertie.
