Read Online A Kiss At Christmastide: Regency Novella by Christina McKnight - Free Book Online

the cupboard where Cook stored the bread, embarrassed that she hadn’t thought to offer him a meal. After removing a half-loaf, she moved to the box that held ice and the meats and cheeses that were better kept cold. “I did not think to have a meal sent to your room. Please, take this.” She handed him a plate of cold pheasant, cheese, and bread—all left from the previous night’s meal.
    â€œYou need not fuss over me. I have had many years of practice taking care of myself.”
    â€œAnd yet you have never cooked a meal?” Pippa’s brow raised in question.
    â€œVery true, my lady,” he said, inclining his head in thanks.
    â€œI feel awful about your holiday plans going awry. I have spent the last two days feeling sorry for myself, when at least I am in my own home, surrounded by the familiar,” Pippa said. “When you, my lord, are stuck in a strange house without even a single family member present. Yes, my Christmas is not as it has always been, but you, you are alone.”
    He chuckled, deeply, unlike the carefree sound she’d heard from him before. “I can assure you, this holiday is not so different from the many that came before it, my lady.”
    â€œYou are alone at Christmastide often?” she asked before she could stop herself. “I do not mean to pry.”
    â€œYour question is not prying, and is something that all of London knows of me,” he assured her, tearing a piece of bread from the loaf and popping it into his mouth. “My family…we are not close, and have not spent a holiday together since I was sent away to school when I was seven.”
    â€œI’m sorry—“
    â€œDo not be,” he cut her off. “It is best for all concerned.”
    He spoke about his family’s distance as if it were commonplace; families spending special days apart—and a boy far from his family at such a young age. Pippa may be hurting from her parents’ absence right now, but she’d enjoyed every holiday in the past with them.
    â€œDo not look so dire, my lady.” Lucas next selected a hunk of cheese and nibbled as he walked about the room, surveying the many bowls and discarded wrappings. “I was well cared for, the best schools, fine clothes, trips around England during breaks, and when I reached my majority, my own London townhouse. I was far more fortunate than many young lords.”
    Pippa sensed those things did not, indeed, make up for the lack of family, but rather that his insistence his youth was not a dismal time only covered up something far more damaging to him.
    She would not pry—this was a time for celebration, not delving into Lucas’s past—a past he obviously didn’t want to discuss, and something Pippa had no right to know.
    Besides, she had a holiday feast to save, even if the only people present to enjoy it were she and a man who’d been a complete stranger only the day before.
    â€œTell me, why are you so concerned with the villagers? Can they not make their own holiday treats?”
    His lack of compassion for others was something Pippa did not understand. But from the softness in his voice, he didn’t mean his question to be rude or make light of the villagers’ circumstances—he’d obviously never been taught any differently than to treat the lower class as just that—below him. It was something made glaringly obvious to Pippa during her short time in London. Lords often treated the servants at balls as nothing. Those lords didn’t so much as acknowledge their presence beyond taking a flute of champagne from their offered tray.
    â€œMy mother was once a villager here. Her father served my grandfather as a blacksmith,” Pippa shared. Her family’s past had made the gossip rags long before Pippa was born—and had, with time, faded. No one remembered the origins of the Duchess of Midcrest, something her mother disliked, as she