Page 1 of A Christmas Temptation for the Duke
Chapter One
“Alison, where is Winnie?” The Baroness of Pemberton asked her eldest daughter, Lady Alison Collins. “She was supposed to stay close all night. I told you to watch her.”
Alison frowned at the directness of the question, seeing as her mother had certainly not asked her to do such a thing. Not a surprise, as her mother rarely asked anything of Alison. That would require her to act as if her eldest daughter existed.
“Oh…” Alison looked around for her half-sister. “I am not sure. Have you tried –"
“Winnie!” Her mother cut through Alison’s response and then rushed past her to where Winnie stood gawking through the crowd. “What did I tell you about staying by my side?” Alison’s mother scolded Winnie.
“I did!” Winnie was just twelve years old, and of that age where her attention span was as short as her knack for getting into trouble was long.
“You certainly did not.”
“But I saw…. I saw… I saw…” She looked about, her blue eyes wide and eager. “The cutest puppy. I was only trying to pet it. Where did it go?”
“I do not care the reason, Winnie.” The baroness snatched her daughter’s hand. “The last thing I need today is to lose you. What would your father say if I came back without you? I doubt he would be all too impressed.”
“Perhaps he might thank you.” With a smirk on his face, seeming to enjoy the situation unfolding before him was the Honorable Felix Watts, Winnie’s older brother. “One less headache for him to fuss over. In fact, it is still not too late to lose her. Shall we turn around a moment?”
“Wh -- what?” Winnie’s face dropped and her chin began to wobble as she looked from Felix to her stepmother. “Father would not say that. Would he?”
“Of course not,” the baroness assured Winnie before glaring daggers at Felix. “And that is enough from you.”
“I am only jesting,” Felix chuckled.
“In order for it to be a jest, what you say must be funny.” Appearing as if from nowhere came the Honorable Nerissa Watts, Felix’s younger sister by two years, which made her a good eight years older than Winnie. “And I don’t hear anyone laughing, do you?”
“I’m surprised you noticed,” Felix shot back. “I thought you might have caught your reflection in a puddle and become distracted.”
“If I wished to see my reflection, I would have just asked you for a mirror. We all know you carry one with you everywhere you go, Felix. Don’t want stray hair falling out of place. The horror!”
“I most certainly do not!”
“You don’t?” Nerissa looked aghast. “Well, I stand corrected. On the plus side, now I know what to buy you for Christmas. And just in time.”
Felix scoffed. “If you wish to give me a present, I will take a day spent away from you. I can’t imagine a better gift.”
“How about a week?” Nerissa said dryly. “We can count that as your birthday present as well.”
“How about –”
“Enough!” The baroness cried over her bickering children. “If the two of you cannot behave yourselves, we will return homeat once. Is that what you wish for?” One hand on her hip, she widened her eyes threateningly at Felix and Narissa.
“No!” Winnie cried out. “Please, I do not want to go home. The puppy! I want to pet the puppy. Where did it go?”
“No doubt it caught a whiff of Felix’s odor and ran for the hills,” Nerissa said.
“No doubt it caught a sight of that hideous coat you are wearing and jumped off a cliff,” Felix retorted.
“Enough!”
As Felix and Nerissa bickered, Winnie looked around desperately for the puppy, and while the baroness tried to assert her authority and bring some sense of order to her stepchildren, Alison stayed back and watched the scene unfold with a sense of predictability and familiarity that she had become all too accustomed to in recent times.
I have witnessed forest fires that are more orderly and civil. I have heard tell of tavern brawls that are less chaotic. Storms that threaten to tear apart castles surely do so in a more orderly manner than this. Such is the state of my so-called family.
But they were her family, and Alison reminded herself of this fact as she was forced to on so many occasions like this one. Which might sound strange, but not so much when consideringthat Felix and Nerissa and Winnie were Alison’s half-siblings, born of a different father and thus nowhere near as close to Alison as one might expect.
Alison’s father by birth had died when she was still an infant, so long past now that she could not remember him. He was an Earl, while her stepfather was a baron, which she felt added to that distance she felt in her family. As if they suspected that she thought she was better than they were.
