A Winter Wish (The Read Family Saga #1) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,1

terrified the maids with her no-nonsense attitude, had never managed that feat with her own children.

Diccan scoffed. “They are hardly going to hear us from our cottage.”

“Their cottage,” their mother aptly pointed out. Wiping her hands with the cloth she held, she waved it at her only son. “Furthermore, it doesn’t do to talk unkindly about the one who employs you.” Their mother looked pointedly at Matilda. “And you.” Her gaze landed on Merry, the sole member of the Read family who was not yet employed by the Earl and Countess of Maldavers. “And, well… all of you need to be quiet.”

The trio of Read siblings went silent.

With a satisfied nod, their mother hurried back into the kitchens.

The moment she’d gone, they dissolved into silent laughter. Merry’s form shook with such mirth that she keeled over into her sister’s side. How good this felt. How very wonderful it was simply being home.

“I hear you.” Their mother’s warning came muffled by the kitchen doors.

“Of course she does,” Diccan muttered.

He continued on with his gossip about Lord Luke as though there’d been no interruption. Planting his hands on his legs, he leaned forward. “Now, returning to the Holman scandals.”

Merry’s heart kicked up. Lord Ewan. The one gentleman who’d not yet been spoken of. The kindest, most affable of… well, all the Holmans, really.

“Lord Luke”—she stifled a disappointed sigh as Diccan returned to the heir—“I heard he was seen entering the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge’s.”

“I’d hardly consider that scandalous,” Matilda shot back.

“I must agree with Mattie,” Merry said to her sister’s older-by-seven-minutes twin. Stirring cream into her teacup, Merry paused to take a sip. “In fact, I’d quite expect that visiting a powerful peer and his wife is precisely the manner of thing Lord Luke would do.” Luke, who she’d once predicted had entered the world somber and composed. Whereas Ewan had played children’s games with Merry, Lord Luke had never joined in. Instead, the bookish Lord Luke had peered down at them with a scowl to match those of his equally stern tutors.

With a triumphant flounce of her blond curls, Matilda stole a biscuit from the tray and held it aloft like a confectionary trophy she’d awarded herself.

“I agree it doesn’t seem outrageous for the gentleman to pay a visit to another lord,” Diccan conceded. He looped his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers. “And it wouldn’t be. That is, if he’d been invited.”

Merry flared her eyes. Surely her brother wasn’t saying…

Matilda scrambled to the edge of her seat. “What did he do?” she demanded, her question conceding defeat to her twin.

With a sly half grin, Diccan added, “Apparently, a very inebriated Lord Luke entered his neighbor’s townhouse.” He continued over his sisters’ matching gasps. “He stumbled into their foyer and relieved himself in a plant stand that he’d mistaken for a chamber pot.”

A laugh exploded from Merry at the sheer outrageousness that image painted, even as it could not be true that Lord Luke would do anything so outrageous. She laughed until tears leaked from her eyes.

“It is true,” Diccan insisted defensively, through his sisters’ noisy amusement.

She laughed all the harder, until her sides ached from the force of her own amusement.

When their laughter had ebbed, Matilda curled onto her side and rested her cheek atop Merry’s lap, as she’d done so many times as a girl.

Merry stroked her sister’s curls.

“I’ve missed this,” Matilda said softly.

“I have, too,” Merry murmured. It had been three years since she’d left, and for all the tears she’d cried continually during her first three months gone, in time, she’d found joy in her studies and work. Only to find now just how very much she’d missed all of these moments.

A firm knock landed on the door, splitting the quiet.

They all three went motionless.

Their mother came flying out of the kitchens, her rounded cheeks pale but for the splotches of red from the heat of the fires she worked over.

“Whoever is that?” Matilda whispered when the echo from the hard rap’s wake had abated.

Frowning, Merry stole a glance at the clock.

Nine o’clock. Early on, she and her siblings had learned that only crises at the main household merited after-hours intrusions.

There came another heavy pounding.

Merry was across the room in several quick strides. She yanked the door open, letting in a blast of cold winter air and one unexpected noblewoman.

Oh, bloody hell.

The countess swept inside and gave a flick of her hand.

An unfamiliar-to-Merry-footman hovering on the stone porch hurriedly drew the door shut.

That click managed