Free A Christmas Charade by Karla Hocker Page B

before.”
    “I dearly love a wager,” Juliette cut in. “I’ll take you on if Elizabeth won’t.”
    “Done.” Nicholas shook hands with Juliette, then turned to Elizabeth. “And you? Will you place your bet, Miss Gore-Langton?”
    “You’re out of your mind!” she said indignantly. “Both of you.”
    “Pooh!” Juliette gave her a sidelong look. “Don’t be so stodgy, Elizabeth. This is the most diverting thing that’s happened since I arrived at Stenton. I shall not back down from the wager, and if you won’t join in—”
    “I will tell Stenton myself who I am before I enter into such a harebrained wager.”
    Juliette gasped, but Nicholas shook his head and grinned.
    “No, you won’t. Because it would spoil my wager with Juliette, and I remember the occasion when you very kindly explained to me that a wager once made cannot be undone.”
    “That was different!” she protested. “You and I had agreed to race.”
    “And I offered you a bet that your mare could not beat my mount. You agreed and lost. And when I did not want to claim my prize—those striking peacock feathers off your hat—you reminded me that our wager was as valid as if it had been entered in the betting book at White’s. Now don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that you rode home with a sadly denuded hat.”
    “I haven’t forgotten, but—”
    “But nothing. Juliette and I have shaken hands on a bet. You must realize that you cannot spoil sport now.”
    Elizabeth protested no more. Everything her father had ever told her about the strict code governing bets bore out what Lord Nicholas had said.
    Juliette tugged at Nicholas’s sleeve. “We must set the time limit. Shall we say Christmas Eve, midnight?”
    “Christmas Eve, midnight, it is. Three days from now.” His eyes laughed at Elizabeth. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”
    Elizabeth threw her hands up in disgust. “You’re impossible! I wish there were a way to make you both lose.”
    But, strangely, as reprehensible as she considered the wager, she no longer suffered from the blue devils. She was in no mood, however, to discover why.
    Her heart beat a little faster than usual when she entered the Crimson Drawing Room with Juliette and Nicholas. It had nothing to do with the Duke of Stenton, who saw them and immediately crossed the room to greet them. No, she blamed the erratic beat on the overwhelming splendor of the vast chamber.
    Crimson velvet covered chairs and couches and draped the row of windows along one wall, bright splashes of color against champagne-colored carpets. Four gold-and-crystal chandeliers ablaze with light hung from the ceiling, where nymphs and satyrs chased each other in a sea of bluebells, and the wall opposite the windows was hung with paintings, one of which Elizabeth believed to be a Raphael.
    She had no time to fully appreciate the magnificence of the chamber before Stenton addressed her.
    “Miss Gore-Langton, allow me to introduce you to my other guests. My friend Lord Nicholas Mackay, I take it, has already made himself known to you?”
    Again, her heartbeat quickened. Carefully avoiding Nicholas’s and Juliette’s eye, she said, “We met in the hall, your grace.”
    Nicholas grinned widely. “Indeed. You’d be wasting your breath on a formal introduction, Clive, old boy.”
    Clive looked from one to the other. Miss Gore-Langton looked as shy and confused as she had this morning. But Nicholas—dash it! He was too familiar with Nick’s grin not to recognize that some mischief was afoot. But what mischief? It was more than he could tell.
    He bore Miss Gore-Langton off to meet the rest of the company. As they crossed the room to a group of chairs and couches near the fireplace, it occurred to him that he might have made her acquaintance at one of the many parties his sister had arranged to introduce him to eligible young ladies.
    But neither his sister nor his brother-in-law gave any sign of having met Miss Gore-Langton before. Of