O Night Divine A Holiday Collection of Spirited Christmas Tales - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,34

dowager duchess whispered softly. “Second son of a second son who should never have inherited. Alas, the Weston men have suffered a series of terrible misfortunes. And now, we have a man who has lived his entire life in the colonies and will now be in the House of Lords.”

“They don’t really like to be called the colonies anymore. There was a war, if you remember!”

The dowager duchess turned to her with a gaze that could have cut glass it was so sharp. “I’m old, Elizabeth. Not daft!”

Elizabeth managed not to roll her eyes, though only just barely. “I hope no one is unkind to him.”

The dowager duchess cut her eyes once more in Elizabeth’s direction. “And what concern is that of yours?”

“As someone who routinely faces the censure of all these fine people, I can tell you it is a very difficult thing to tolerate,” Elizabeth replied softly. “And I think that he might be a very kind man.”

“Posh! There is no such thing. There are men who want something from you and men who do not. That is all,” the dowager duchess snapped.

A woman in the pew in front of them dared to shush them. Immediately, the dowager duchess lifted the fan she always carried with her and snapped it against the back of the woman’s head. The object of the abuse whirled around, saw who it was she had so unwisely shushed and then immediately dipped a curtsy, turned around and faced forward again.

Elizabeth ducked her head to hide her amusement. But almost against her will, she found herself turning, angling for another glance at the man she’d met the night before. With his close-cropped brown hair and sun-bronzed skin, he had a far more robust appearance than most of the gentlemen in society. But he was not a young man. In fact, she was fairly certain that he was her elder by several years. That did not at all detract from his appeal.

“You’re staring, Elizabeth,” the dowager duchess pointed out. But she didn’t sound annoyed. The cagey, old woman had the audacity to sound intrigued. That was the last thing anyone needed… for the dowager duchess to start matchmaking again.

Elizabeth turned once more, faced forward, and kept her gaze locked on the flustered cleric. Her eyes might have been on the minister, but her mind was firmly on the tardy marquess. It was, quite possibly, the longest church service of her entire life.

Burney was perched high above the congregation, leaning nonchalantly against a column beside the pipe organ. The note had not been easy. It had taken so much energy, as he’d been warned by his mentor, that leaning was really all he could do. He hoped they wouldn’t prove difficult. He’d managed to put them back in the same place once more. They were clearly drawn to one another if all those sidelong glances were any indication.

“Thank goodness,” he muttered on a heavy sigh. It was a strange thing, this new perspective he had on things. When one’s life had ended, it allowed one to see things much more clearly. Elizabeth Burkhart and Lord Oliver Weston, Marquess of Whittendon, simply radiated loneliness. It poured out of them in a way that he recalled quite clearly. It was even more obvious as the two of them stood in a crowd, surrounded by others who had found the thing in life they lacked. Much like Averston. They didn’t have the same obstacles he’d faced in finding love, but it would be remiss of him to deny that the obstacles facing them were just as real and just as difficult to overcome.

Elizabeth Burkhart had quite a storied past. She was notorious amongst the ton, as much for her long ago fall from grace as for her return to society amid her daughter’s triumph in making a match with the future Duke of Templeton. The matrons of high society had long memories and it was those memories that concerned him the most. They loved nothing better than to gossip and if they told Whittendon about Miss Burkhart’s scandalous history before she did, it could go very poorly for them both. If he couldn’t get Elizabeth and Oliver to make a match by Christmas Eve, only two days away, he would lose his one chance to right the wrongs done to his sister and to see her happy and cared for. There was much more riding on his efforts than simply the happiness of the couple in question. And to