One Night with a Duke (12 Dukes of Christmas #10) - Erica Ridley Page 0,24
to your potential. Even those who meant well. There were plenty of friends and family members who thought her unnatural because she’d chosen to run a jeweler’s shop instead of starting a family.
But she understood what drove him. The wish for status, for unarguable proof of her worth. All the people who thought nothing of asking her when she was going to be a wife wouldn’t think so little of her talent if her jewelry was the talk of England.
As it was, her shop was barely the talk of her village. Wasn’t that why she’d agreed to take on more projects than she had time for? Once her jeweled holly sprigs were the stars of the Christmas festivities, and her name was featured in the Cressmouth Gazette, she too would have something to hold up and point to whenever someone dared question her success.
“You’d never go back to London?” she asked.
“I’ve been there before.”
“Have you been everywhere in London?” she challenged. “What about Fournier Street in Spitalfields?”
Rather than reply, he flipped to a new page in his notebook and sketched long, sweeping lines, followed by a flurry of shorter, lighter strokes. He held up the page when he finished.
Her pulse scattered.
It was her old neighborhood. Exactly as it had looked the year before she’d moved to Cressmouth. The same homes, the same shops. Her family’s awning was right there at the edge of the paper. Her breath caught as a white-hot burst of homesickness shot through her.
“What is it?” he asked, concerned.
“I spent the first twenty years of my life right there.” She pointed with her cross-pein hammer. “I have two communities. Cressmouth is one, and that’s the other.”
She regretted it as soon as she said it. It sounded like bragging. She had two homes, and he had none.
Even if he liked it that way, she could not help but feel sorry for him.
He tucked the notebook in his pocket.
“What are you going to do for Christmas?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said flatly. “Wander to the next town.”
His tone closed the topic. Not that she had more to say. What was she to do, invite him to join her family holiday? She could just imagine the looks on their faces. Besides, Mr. MacLean was standing in the most Christmassy village in all of England. If he hadn’t found anything yet that tempted him, Angelica’s invitation wasn’t going to.
“What about you?” he asked. “Would you go back to London?”
“In a heartbeat. But I don’t know if I’d stay. Ironically, I have more opportunities here.” She adjusted her swage. “When I met Mr. Marlowe, his Christmas castle was already a brilliant success, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted an entire Yuletide village. To do that, Cressmouth needed to offer everything any tourist might desire.”
“Not just practical needs, like a blacksmith, a bakery, a dairy,” Mr. MacLean said slowly. “He wasn’t competing with other villages. He was competing with London. He needed to offer the best of the best, so that people needn’t decide between seasonal destinations. There’d be no choice to make, if Cressmouth was the obvious answer.”
“Which was why it was flattering for Mr. Marlowe to choose me,” Angelica said. The expressions on her family’s faces had been unforgettable. “Of course, no dreams come true for free.”
He raised his brows. “Mr. Marlowe charged you money to move from London to this tiny village?”
“He didn’t, actually. He gave me a private suite in the castle, and free use of this shop. If I left Cressmouth before seven years were through—left for any reason, for even a single night—the arrangement was off, and I would owe rent on both places for every day that I’d been here. But if I stayed the seven years, both the shop and the castle living quarters would be mine outright.”
“That son-of-a...” Mr. MacLean coughed into his fist. “You couldn’t have so much as a holiday. Leaving would beggar you.”
She nodded. “But the cost wasn’t just monetary. I missed the birth of my niece, the death of a childhood friend. My relatives don’t understand. Oh, they comprehend the mechanics of the agreement, and how well it ties my hands. What they don’t understand is why I signed it.”
“Would you have had a shop of your own if you’d stayed in London?”
“Not even a workbench,” she said quietly.
“Then I understand why you signed. You wanted to be yourself. To be self-sufficient. To do something you were passionate about, and proud of.” His eyes were bright. “In your shoes, I would