O Night Divine A Holiday Collection of Spirited Christmas Tales - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,38

I have been called many things, Whittendon, but I am not gracious. Termagant. Dragon. Vicious and mean! All of those descriptors have been applied to me at one time.”

“Manipulative,” Miss Burkhart supplied in a tone that was less than helpful. “That one has been applied, too. Many times and by many people.”

The dowager duchess’ faded brow spiked upward imperiously. “Miss Burkhart, the more time I spend in your company, the less charming I find you. It’s a good thing we’re practically related.”

Miss Burkhart didn’t reply verbally. She simply sucked in her cheeks to keep from smiling.

“Perhaps it would be best, given that you all are currently in a state of disagreement, Miss Burkhart, if rather than staying for tea, I were to take you for a drive in the park,” Oliver suggested.

“It’s snowed, my lord. Surely the weather is too—”

“Oh, stop being so missish! A bit of snow never bothered anyone,” the dowager duchess said, effectively cutting off her protest. “You’ve a lap robe and it’s an open carriage?”

“Yes, your grace,” Oliver said. “To both. It’s a cabriolet and I have a driver. Every propriety shall be observed.”

“There!” the dowager duchess said triumphantly. “There is no reason that you should not go for a drive with Lord Whittendon and spare me more of your sarcasm that you attempt—and fail—to camouflage as wit.”

“I will go, Lord Whittendon,” Miss Burkhart said as she rose from her spot on the settee. “I have a very particular matter I wish to discuss with you.”

Oliver nodded. “Indeed, I feel we have many things in common. A little voice told me so.”

Her expression changed, becoming guarded rather than simply annoyed with him. “Little voices lead one to Bedlam, Lord Whittendon. I’d be cautious saying such things aloud.”

“Not if you have a title,” Oliver responded. “I find having a title has certainly increased my freedom to be eccentric. Do you find that to be true, your grace?”

The dowager duchess smirked. “I find that caring very little for the opinions of others has increased my freedom to be eccentric. You should try it, Lord Whittendon. It’s incredibly liberating. Perhaps you can convince Miss Burkhart to do so, as well. I fear she lets the poor opinions of others make her a prisoner.”

“I am right here,” Miss Burkhart protested.

“When you should be in a carriage in a park with a handsome man. Do get your cloak, Miss Burkhart,” the dowager duchess insisted. “And stop stalling. No one likes a woman who dawdles.”

Ten minutes later, Elizabeth was in a cabriolet, speeding through the park while seated next to Lord Whittendon. Oliver. It had been such a shock meeting him during her very ill-advised visit to a gaming hell the night before. She honestly couldn’t even say why she had done what she did but for the influence of what surely must have been her own fevered imaginings. Burney was nothing more than a figment, a product of her disturbed mind and even more unsettled emotions. Or so she had told herself. Those explanations held less water when confronted with the fact that apparently Lord Whittendon could hear him as well as she did.

Had he seen him? Elizabeth wondered. Had this apparently non-imaginary phantom made himself visible to the marquess as well? If so, why? And why was it only the two of them? The dowager duchess had not responded to Burney’s exclamation in the drawing room at all. And no one knew better than Elizabeth did just how keen the elderly woman’s hearing was. There was no faculty that would dare fail the dowager duchess, after all. The woman was in supreme command of everything and everyone. It was a quality that was as enviable as it was intimidating. But for the obvious affection the old woman held for those who dared to stand up to her, Elizabeth might never have realized that beneath her formidable manner, the dowager duchess was, in fact, a very tender-hearted soul. But how tender-hearted would she be when she learned that her unpaid companion, a woman who was there only on charity and as a family connection, was either stark raving mad or conversing with the dead?

“Why did you run away last night when you discovered that my home is in Derbyshire? Is beautiful scenery really so offensive to you?”

The question from the Marquess of Whittendon had been asked offhandedly, as if the answer didn’t really matter. But it did. And she knew that. In all the years of her miserable life since she’d