Three Kisses Before Christmas

her laughter like a pirate hunted for jewels at sea.
A hopeless moonstruck fool.
Lonsdale smiled. The sort of half-smile that spoke more than any words and gave Wolfstan gooseflesh. “Perhaps the time has come for you to take a wife as well.”
If you only knew, old chap.
Wolfstan would have married Rebecca in a heartbeat had she fallen in love with him and not Langley. Age, to him, was of little consequence since he had surely been cursed with the sentiment of romance. Fated to love a woman in love with another man.
“Not interested in matrimony?” Lonsdale queried.
“Undecided.”
Lonsdale nodded thoughtfully. “I married young and I’ve been happily married for five years.”
“Five-and-twenty is not all that young and you might sing another melody in another five years.”
“I will forever sing this one.”
Hopeless. The both of them. Plagued by fantasies and starry-eyed dreams. Beyond saving. Lonsdale, at least, had won the woman he loved, so in a sense, while in some ways the same, they were polar opposites.
“Rebecca will miss you if you stay in London.”
Wolfstan inwardly scoffed at that. Miss him? Rebecca? He doubted she would even notice his absence, let alone his presence. Not entirely inspiring for a man such as him—a man conflicted by unrequited love. Sometimes Rebecca made him wonder if he hadn’t fallen into delirium. He wanted to snap out of the spell she had cast over him. Sooner rather than later. His moods, lately, had become fouler, every day worse than the day before. Even the sight of his cousin, blissfully unaware of his feelings, was enough to set off his ire. Poor fellow.
“Have you picked names for the infant yet?” Wolfstan decided to steer the subject to a less maddening topic.
“Caro said she will know once she locks eyes with our son.”
“Son? What a mightily arrogant assumption.”
Lonsdale grinned. “Son,” he said with conviction.
Wolfstan’s lips quirked. He fought the urge to cross and uncross his legs. Failed. Dammit. His brain simply refused to be thwarted by distraction, pounding on one track, and one track only. Will Langley court Rebecca? Will Rebecca’s dreams finally come to fruition? Will his forever be stomped into dust?
“Since you are forgoing festivities this year, I suppose I shall ask Langley to ride out to Westbridge Park and call on the women.”
Wolfstan’s head whipped to Lonsdale.
Damn it all to hell.
“MASON IS GOING TO HAVE a fit of the vapors when he learns you have not been resting as you ought to.” Rebecca Flowerdy assisted her sister-in-law, Caroline onto the bed with her arm wrapped protectively around her waist.
“I tend the flowers with my hands, not my belly,” came Caroline’s tart reply.
“As you are not reclining vertically when you do so, I cannot see how that is relevant.”
“You haven’t said anything about the rumor that Langley is in the market for a wife.”
Because Rebecca’s heart still hadn’t quite settled into a steady rhythm at the news. She had been smitten with Langley ever since he had boldly declared on her ninth birthday “Rebecca Flowerdy, you are as pretty as a peach. Save me your first kiss.”
One, she hadn’t been pretty. Her face had been smeared with mud that day. Second, her hair had fired in all directions after Jim Parsons had cruelly pulled her braided coiffure apart. And third, she hadn’t quite grasped what he meant by saving him her first kiss, but he had declared her pretty as a peach.
And that had been everything.
She looked away from Caroline’s sharp gaze when a flush stole over her cheeks. She had never forgotten Langley’s words and the butterflies they had provoked in her nine-year-old self. A sense of abundant hopefulness, that she was not as ugly as the Parsons boy had claimed.
If it hadn’t been for Langley’s words, and Wolfstan who had defended her, Rebecca might have lost all confidence that day. Too many times had she been teased and mocked for her hair and freckles. He had given her a precious gift all those years ago—the right to be herself—and she had never shed a tear over a boy’s teasing again.
What’s more, Langley’s words had morphed into hopes and dreams beyond her imagination. Her perfect hero had been born, and Rebecca had never stopped dreaming. Like a princess waiting for her knight in shining armor, her hopeful, romantic-self had saved her first kiss for Langley.
It ought to also be noted that she was no longer that nine-year-old girl. Rebecca had grown into a woman, and while she did not mind saving her first kiss for Langley, and she dearly wished to be kissed, she had no desire to enter the arena as a potential wife. For any man.
Her heart lay elsewhere.
Knightley’s.
A gambling hell she secretly owned and ran with the help of Mr. Alexander Lance, the manager of her club. Speaking of which, she had received a letter from him, one that burned a hole in her pocket or rather, her sketchbook that she had placed it in.
“He is of the age to do so, I suppose,” Rebecca said.
“That is your opinion?”
“I cannot see how I should have an opinion at all,” Rebecca noted and inwardly grimaced at Caroline’s look. Her sister-in-law was no fool. She had swindled many a man out of a pretty penny back in the day before she met and fell in love with Mason.
“Then you do not care if another woman snatches him up?”
The question brought a flutter of wings to her belly. Did she care? Rebecca wasn’t sure. So much of what she felt was rooted in the words of a thirteen-year-old boy and the dreams of her first kiss she had fantasized over growing up.
“Langley must have an idea in mind as to his potential bride.”
Caroline scoffed. “I heard nothing to that effect. Rumor has it he will pick a bride at the Stapleton festivities.”
So soon? If Rebecca wanted to part with her first kiss, it would seem she would have to do so fast. A shiver trickled down her spine.
“This is the year, Rebecca,” Caroline