Page 69 of Mistletoe Mistake
Roger's brow furrowed into deeper confusion. “Leaving? Without speaking to His Lordship?”
Speaking to him? Did that mean my father was actually there at the house too? I had hoped that Roger was just travelling in advance of him, but apparently not.
“I'm sure he's very busy,” I demurred as smoothly as I could. “I just came to see the Christmas opening. I don't need to disturb him.”
“On the contrary. I have a feeling he would like to see you and your... friend.”
I couldn't stop myself from glancing back into the room to see if he could actually see Cole, but I quickly realized that he couldn’t. He only knew I had company because of whatever noises he had just heard. Despite my best efforts to control it, a blush crept up my cheeks as I turned back.
“We actually have another engagement in London this evening, so we really can't stay.” That was a lie, but he didn't need to know that. I simply had no desire to see my father.
“It won't take long. I insist, Lady Gemma.” Roger's eyes had grown harder, a look that I was all too familiar with from childhood admonishments whenever I did anything wrong. Arguing wouldn’t get me anywhere. “Please go to the blue drawing room when you're... presentable. I'll let His Lordship know that you're there.”
He turned on his heel before I could argue.
Closing the door behind me, I leaned back against it and looked over at Cole. He had almost finished dressing, just putting his tie on, still as unhurried as always. “So, how would you like to meet my father?”
“It doesn't sound like I have much choice,” Cole observed, smirking at me in his casual, confident way. How did he always manage to look so calm and collected? I really needed him to give me lessons. “Should I be worried?”
That was not a simple question to answer. “He probably won't be directly rude. He'll just insult you in that underhanded way that really posh British people do.”
“You say that like you're not one of them. You don't consider yourself a ‘really posh British person’?” Cole asked, still looking completely unruffled.
I turned the question back on him. “Doyouconsider me a really posh British person?”
He smiled. “Sometimes. And other times...” He reached down and adjusted the belt around his waist. “Not at all.”
Heat rushed through me at the simple reminder of what we had just done together. For no earthly reason that I could think of, I liked him hitting me with the belt.Reallyliked it. My orgasms had been even more intense than they usually were with him, and I knew Cole wouldn't ask me to explain, or make me feel strange that I enjoyed it. He simply accepted it and gave me what I needed. What I'd never known I needed.
While he finished straightening himself out, I went to the ensuite bathroom to clean myself up and quickly fix my hair and clothes so that I looked 'presentable', as Roger said. Having done as much as I could, I led Cole out of the bedroom and down the hall to the blue drawing room, the less formal of the two reception rooms in the private part of the house.
The family pictures in that room were much more recent ones than the oil portraits downstairs, and Cole took his time walking around the room, looking at them all curiously.
“Is this you?” he asked, picking up a picture of me and my brother on the lawn outside the house. In it, Tom was about seven, which would make me four.
“Yes. That one too.” I pointed at the one next to it which showed the four of us: me and Tom with our parents, photographed in the formal drawing room downstairs.
Cole picked that one up and looked at it more closely. “You look like your mom, or at least how she used to look. Do you still look like her now?”
“She died ten years ago.”
Cole looked up at me in surprise, a rare moment where I’d caught him off guard. “I'm sorry, Gemma. I had no idea.”
I knew he didn't. He hadn't looked up any information about my family, the same way I hadn't looked up anything about his. I liked that about spending time with him, and I suspected he felt the same. People so often knew things about me that I hadn’t told them, and finding someone who only wanted to learn things directly from me felt incredibly refreshing.
Cole had just put the framed photo back down on the table when my father walked in, and out of sheer force of habit, I pulled my shoulders back, straightening my spine, as if preparing myself for inspection.
My father had never been an affectionate man, and things only got worse after my mother died. He viewed my brother and I as chess pieces to direct as he pleased, to serve his larger strategy, rather than as people in our own right. My brother didn't seem to mind, so long as he inherited the title and the houses and the businesses and everything else that went along with being the Earl's heir, but I had let my father down hugely when I went into business for myself. He had ranted and raved about how no woman of my position should take on a ‘trade’. He insisted that his name not be associated with it in any way, which was why I had taken my mother's maiden name, Sudlow, as my professional name.
And then, even worse in his eyes, I had completely humiliated him earlier that year when Edwin broke off our engagement. In my father's opinion, the entire thing had been my fault. If I had simply been a more satisfactory partner, it would have never happened. Edwin's father, my dad's closest business partner, hated Edwin’s involvement with Annabel, considering her crass and fame-hungry, and he also blamed me for the whole thing. The two of them were completely put out that their long-term plan to marry Edwin and I off to each other hadn't worked out.
My father and I had barely spoken to each other since the whole thing went public, so to say that I was less than enthusiastic to see him would be a bit of an understatement.
“Gemma.” My name almost sounded like an insult from his mouth. “I trust you have a reason for showing your face here today.”
Showing my face? That was surprisingly direct. As I'd mentioned to Cole, my father was usually much more obliquely insulting than that. He must really be angry.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I replied, doing my best to appear unbothered. “I came to show Mr Stamer the property. This is Cole Stamer, a new friend and business associate of mine. Cole, my father, the Earl of Totnes.”
