The Heart Of Christmas: A Handful Of Gold / The Season for Suitors / This Wicked Gift

TWO COACHMEN, one footman, one groom, a cook, Mr. Hollander’s valet and four others who might in a more orderly establishment have been dubbed a butler, a housekeeper and two maids were in the middle of their breakfast belowstairs. A few of them scrambled awkwardly to their feet when Verity appeared in their midst. A few did not. Clearly it was not established in any of their minds whether they should treat her as a lady or not. The cook looked as if she might be the leader of the latter faction.

Verity smiled. “Please do not get up,” she said. “Do carry on with your breakfast. Doubtless you all have a busy day ahead.”

If they did, their expressions told Verity, this was the first they had heard of it.

“Preparing for Christmas,” she added.

They might have been devout Hindus for all the interest they showed in preparing for Christmas.

“Mr. Hollander don’t want no fuss,” the woman who might have been the housekeeper said.

“He said we might do as we please provided he has his victuals when he is ready for them and provided the fires are kept burning.” The possible-butler was the speaker this time.

“Oh, splendid,” Verity said cheerfully. “May I have some breakfast with you, by the way? No, please do not get up.” No one had made any particular move to do so. “I shall just help myself, shall I?” She did so. “If you have been given permission to please yourselves, then, you may be pleased to celebrate Christmas. In the traditional way, with Christmas foods and wassail, with carol singing and gift giving and decorating the house with holly and pine boughs and whatever else we can devise with only a day’s warning. Everyone can have a wonderful time.”

“When I cook a goose,” the cook announced, “nobody needs a knife to cut it. Even the edge of a fork is too sharp. It melts apart.”

“Ooh, I do love a goose,” one of the maids said wistfully. “My ma used to cook one as a treat for Christmas whenever we could catch one. But it weren’t never cooked tender enough to cut with a fork, Mrs. Lyons,” she added hastily.

“And when I make mince pies,” the cook continued as if she had not been interrupted, “no one can stop eating after just one of them. No one.”

“Mmm.” Verity sighed. “You make my mouth water, Mrs. Lyons. How I would love to taste just one of those pies.”

“Well, I can’t make them,” Mrs. Lyons said, a note of finality in her voice. “Because I don’t have the stuff.”

“Could the supplies be bought in the village?” Verity suggested. “I noticed a village as I passed through it yesterday. There appeared to be a few shops there.”

“There is nobody to go for them,” Mrs. Lyons said. “Not in all this snow.”

Verity smiled at the groom and the two coachmen, all of whom were trying unsuccessfully to blend into the furniture. “Nobody?” she said. “Not for the sake of goose tomorrow and mince pies and probably a dozen other Christmas specialties, too? Not for Mrs. Lyons’s sake when it sounds to me as if she is the most skilled cook in all of Norfolkshire?”

“Well, I am quite skilled,” the cook said modestly.

“There are pine trees and holly bushes in the park, are there not?” Verity asked of no one in particular. “Is there mistletoe anywhere?” She turned her eyes on the younger of the two maids. “What is Christmas without a few sprigs of mistletoe appearing in the most unlikely places and just over the heads of the most elusive people?”

The maid turned pink and the valet looked interested.

“There used to be some on the old oaks,” the butler said. “But I don’t know about this year, mind.”

“The archway leading from the kitchen to the back stairs looks a likely place to me for one sprig,” Verity said, looking critically at the spot as she bit into a piece of toast.

Both maids giggled and the valet cleared his throat.

After that the hard work seemed to be behind her, Verity found. The idea had caught hold. Mr. Hollander had given his staff carte blanche even if he had not done so consciously. And the staff had awakened to the realization that it was Christmas and that they might celebrate it in as grand a manner as they chose. All lethargy magically disappeared, and Verity was able to eat her eggs and toast and drink down two cups of coffee while warming herself at the kitchen fire and listening to the servants make their animated plans. There were even two volunteers to go into the village.

“You cannot all be everywhere at once, though,” Verity said, speaking up again at last, “much as I can see you would like to be. You may leave the gathering of the greenery and just come to help drag it all indoors. Mr. Hollander, Lord Folingsby, Miss, er, Debbie and I will do the gathering.”

Silence and blank stares met this announcement until someone sniggered—the groom.

“I don’t think so, miss,” he said. “You won’t drag them gents out of doors to spoil the shine on their boots nor ’er to spoil ’er complexion. You can forget that one right enough.”

The valet cleared his throat again, with considerably more dignity than before. “You will speak with greater respect of Mr. Hollander, Bloggs,” he told the groom, who looked quite uncowed by the reprimand.

Verity smiled. “You may safely leave Mr. Hollander and the others to me,” she said. “We are all going to enjoy Christmas. It would be unfair to exclude them, would it not?”

Her words caused a burst of merriment about the table, and Verity tried to imagine Julian pricking his aristocratic fingers in the cause of gathering holly. He would probably sleep until noon. But she had done him an injustice. He appeared in the archway that was not yet adorned with mistletoe only a moment later, as if her thoughts had summoned him. He was dressed immaculately despite the fact that he had not brought his valet with him.

“Ah,” Julian said languidly, fingering the handle of his quizzing glass, “here you are, Blanche. I began to think you had sprouted wings and flown since there are no footprints in the snow leading from the door.”

“We have been planning the Christmas festivities,” she told him with a bright smile. “Everything is organized. Later you and I will be going out into the park with Mr. Hollander and Debbie to gather greenery with which to decorate the house.”

Suddenly that part of the plan seemed quite preposterous. His lordship raised his quizzing glass all the way to his eye and moved it about the table, the better to observe all the conspirators seated there. It came to rest finally on her.

“Indeed?” he said faintly. “What a delightful treat for us.”

JULIAN WAS SITTING awkwardly on the branch of an ancient oak tree, not quite sure how he had got up there and even less sure how he was to get down again without breaking a leg or two or even his neck. Blanche was standing below, her face upturned, her arms spread as if to catch him should he fall. Just a short distance beyond his grasp was a promising clump of mistletoe. Several yards away from the oak, Bertie was standing almost knee-deep in snow, one glove on, the other discarded on the ground beside him, complaining about a holly prick on one finger with all the loud woe of a man who had just been run through with a sword. Debbie was kissing it better.

A little closer to the house, in a spot sheltered by trees and therefore not as deeply covered with snow, lay a pathetically small pile of pine boughs and holly branches. Pathetic, at least, considering the fact that they had been outdoors and hard at work for longer than an hour, subjected to frigid temperatures, buffeting winds and swirling flakes of thick snow. The heavy clouds had still not finished emptying their load.

“Oh, do be careful,” Blanche implored as Julian leaned out gingerly to reach the mistletoe. “Don’t fall.”

He paused and looked down at her. Her cheeks were charmingly rosy. So was her nose. “Did I imagine it, Blanche,” he asked, using his best bored voice, “or did the drill sergeant who marched us out here and ordered me up here really wear your face?”

She laughed. No, she did not—she giggled. “If you kill yourself,” she said, “I shall have them write on your epitaph—He Died In The Execution Of A Noble Deed.”

By dint of shifting his position on the branch until he hung even more precariously over space and scraping his boot beyond redemption to get something of a toehold against the gnarled trunk, he finally succeeded in his mission. He had dislodged a handful of mistletoe. There was no easy way down to the ground. Indeed, there was no possible way down. He did what he had always done as a boy in a similar situation. He jumped.

He landed on all fours and got a faceful of soft snow for his pains.

“Oh, dear,” Blanche said. “Did you hurt yourself?” He looked up at her and she giggled again. “You look like a snowman, a snowman whose dignity has been bruised. Do you have the mistletoe?”

He got to his feet and brushed himself off with one hand as best he could. His valet, when he got back to London, was going to take one look at his boots and resign.

“Voilà!” He held up his snow-bedraggled prize. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said when she reached for it. He swept it up out of her reach. “Certain acts have certain consequences, you know. I risked my life for this at your instigation. I deserve my reward, you deserve your punishment.”

She grinned at him as he backed her against the tree and held her there with the weight of his body. He was still holding the mistletoe aloft.

“Yes, my lord,” she said meekly.

His mind was not really on the night before, but if it had been, he might have reflected with some satisfaction that she had learned well her first lesson in kissing. Her lips were softly parted when he touched them with his own, and when he teased them wider and licked them and the soft flesh behind them with his tongue, she made quiet sounds of enjoyment. The contrast between chilled flesh and hot mouths was heady stuff, he decided as he slid his tongue deep. She sucked gently on it. Through all the layers of their clothing he could feel the tautly muscled slenderness of her dancer’s body. Total femininity.

Someone was whistling. Bertie. And someone was telling him to be quiet and not be silly, love, and come away to look at this holly.

“Well,” Julian said, lifting his head and feeling a little dazed and more than a little aroused. He had not anticipated just such a kiss. “The mistletoe was your idea, Blanche.”

“Yes.” Her nose was shining like a beacon. She looked healthy and girlish and slightly disheveled and utterly beautiful. “And so it was.”

He was cold and wet, from the snow that had slipped down inside his collar and was melting in trickles down his back, and utterly happy. Or for the moment anyway, he thought more cautiously when he remembered the situation.

Someone was clearing his throat from behind Julian’s back—Bertie’s groom, Julian saw when he looked. The man was looking for Bertie, who stuck his head out from behind the holly bushes at the mention of his name.

“What is it, Bloggs?” he asked.

Bloggs told his tale of a carriage half turned over into the ditch just beyond the front gates with no hope of its being hauled out again until the snow stopped falling and the air warmed up enough to melt some of it. And the snow was so deep everywhere, he added gloomily, that there was no going anywhere on foot, either, any longer, even as far as the village. He should know. He and Harkiss had had the devil’s own time of it wading home from there all of two hours since, and the snowfall had not abated for a single second since that time.

“A carriage?” Bertie frowned. “Any occupants, Bloggs?” A foolish question if ever Julian had heard one.

“A gentleman and his wife, sir,” Bloggs reported. “And two nippers. Inside the house now, sir.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Bertie said, grimacing in Julian’s direction. “It looks as if we have unexpected guests for Christmas.”

“The devil!” Julian muttered.

“Oh, the poor things!” Blanche exclaimed, pushing away from the tree and striding houseward through the snow. “What has been done for their comfort, Mr. Bloggs? Two children, did you say? Are they very young? Was anyone hurt? Have you…”

Her voice faded into the distance. Strange, Julian thought before following her with Bertie and Debbie. Most women who had had elocution lessons spoke well except when they were not concentrating. Then they tended to lapse into regionalism and worse. Why did the opposite seem to happen with Blanche? Bloggs was trotting after her like a well-trained henchman, just as if she were some grand duchess ruling over her undisputed domain.

Funnily enough, she had just sounded rather like a duchess.

Chapter Five

THE REVEREND HENRY MOFFATT had been given unexpected leave from the parish at which he was a curate in order to spend Christmas at the home of his wife’s family thirty miles distant. Rashly—by his own admission—he had made the decision to begin the journey that morning despite the fact that the snow had already begun to fall and he had the safety of two young children to concern himself with, not to mention that of his wife, who was in imminent expectation of another interesting event.

He was contrite over his own foolishness. He was distressed over the near disaster to which he had brought his family when his carriage had almost overturned into the ditch. He was apologetic about foisting himself and his family upon strangers on Christmas Eve of all days. Perhaps there was an inn close by?

“In the village three miles away,” Verity told him. “But you would not get there in this weather, sir. You must, of course, stay here. Mr. Hollander will insist upon it, you may be sure.”

“Mr. Hollander is your husband, ma’am?” the Reverend Moffatt asked.

“No.” She smiled. “I am a guest here, too, sir. Mrs. Moffatt, do come into the sitting room so that you may warm yourself by the fire and take the weight off your feet. Mr. Bloggs, would you be so kind as to go down to the kitchen and request that a tea tray be sent up? Oh, and something for the children, as well. And something to eat.” She smiled at the two little boys, who were gazing about with open curiosity. The younger one, a mere infant of three or four years, was unwinding a long scarf from his neck. She reached out a hand to each of them. “Are you hungry? But that is a foolish question, I know. In my experience little boys are always hungry. Come into the sitting room with your mama and we will see what Cook sends up.”

It was at that moment that Mr. Hollander came inside the house with Debbie and Viscount Folingsby close behind him. The Reverend Moffatt introduced himself again and made his explanations and his apologies once more.

“Bertrand Hollander,” that young gentleman said, extending his right hand to his unexpected guest. “And, er, my wife, Mrs. Hollander. And Viscount Folingsby.”

Verity was leading Mrs. Moffatt and the children in the direction of the sitting room, but she stopped so that the curate could introduce them to his host.

“You have met my wife, the viscountess?” Julian asked, his eyes locking with Verity’s.

“Yes, indeed.” The Reverend Moffatt made her a bow. “Her ladyship has been most kind.”

One more lie to add to all the others, Verity thought. Her new husband, having divested himself of his outdoor garments, followed her into the sitting room, where she directed the very pregnant Mrs. Moffatt and the little boys to chairs close to the fire. The viscount stood beside Verity, one hand against the back of her waist. But during the bustle of the next few minutes, she felt her left hand being taken in a firm grasp and bent up behind her back. While Julian smiled genially about him as the tea tray arrived and cups and plates were passed around and everyone made small talk, he slid something onto Verity’s ring finger.

It was the signet ring he normally wore on the little finger of his right hand, she saw when she withdrew the hand from her back and looked down at it. The ring was a little loose on her, but with some care she would be able to see that it did not fall off. It was a very tolerable substitute for a wedding ring. A glance across the room at Debbie assured her that that young woman’s left hand was similarly adorned.

One could only conclude that Viscount Folingsby and Mr. Hollander were born conspirators and had had a great deal of practice at being devious.

“I will hear no more protests, sir, if you please,” Mr. Hollander was saying with all his customary good humor and one raised hand. “Mrs. Hollander and I will be delighted to have your company over Christmas. Much as we have been enjoying that of our two friends, we have been regretting, have we not, my love, that we did not invite more guests for the holiday. Especially those with children. Christmas does not seem quite Christmas without them.”

“How kind of you to say so, sir,” Mrs. Moffatt said, one hand resting over the mound of her pregnancy.

“Ee,” Debbie said, “it is going to be right good fun to hear the patter of little feet about the house and the chatter of little voices. You sit down, too, Rev, and make yourself at home. Set your cup and saucer down on that table there. It must have been a right nasty fright to land in the ditch like that.”

“We tipped up like this,” the older of the little boys said, listing over sharply to one side, his arms outspread. “I thought we were going to turn over and over in a tumble-toss. It was ever so exciting.”

“I was not scared,” the younger boy said, gazing up at Verity before depositing his thumb in his mouth and then snatching it determinedly out again. “I am not scared of anything.”

“That will do, Rupert,” their father said. “And, David. You will speak when spoken to, if you please.”

But Rupert was pulling at his father’s sleeve. “May we go out to play?” he whispered.

“Children!” Mrs. Moffatt laughed. “One would think they would be glad enough to be safe indoors after that narrow escape, would you not? And on such a cold, stormy day. But they love the outdoors.”

“Then I have just the answer for them,” Julian said, raising his eyebrows and fingering the handle of his quizzing glass. “There is a pile of Christmas greenery out behind the house in dire need of hands and arms to carry it inside. We will never be able to celebrate Christmas with it if it remains out there, will we?” He leveled his glass at each of the boys in turn, a frown on his face. “I wonder if those hands and arms are strong enough, though. What do you think, Bertie?”

Two pairs of eyes turned anxiously Mr. Hollander’s way. Please yes, please yes, those eyes begged while both children sat with buttoned lips in obedience to their father’s command.

“What do I think, Jule?” Mr. Hollander pursed his lips. “I think—But wait a minute. Is that a muscle I spy bulging out your coat sleeve, lad?”

The elder boy looked down with desperate hope at his arm.

“It is a muscle,” Mr. Hollander decided.

“And have you ever seen more capable fingers than this other lad’s, Bertie?” Julian asked, magnifying them with the aid of his glass. “I believe these brothers have been sent us for a purpose. You will need to put your scarves and hats and gloves back on, of course, and secure your mama’s permission. But once that has been accomplished, you may follow me.”

Verity watched in wonder as two rather bored and jaded rakes were transformed into kindly, indulgent uncles before her eyes. The two boys were jumping up and down before their mother’s chair in an agony of suspense lest she withhold her permission.

“You are too kind, my lord,” she said with a weary smile. “They will wear you out.”

“Not at all, ma’am,” he assured her. “It is a sizable pile.”

“Oh,” Verity said, beaming down at the children, “and after you have it all inside and dried off, you may help decorate the house with it. There are mistletoe and holly and pine boughs. And Mrs. Simpkins has found ribbons and bows and bells in the attic. Deb—Mrs. Hollander and I will sort through them and decide what can be used. Before Christmas comes tomorrow, this house is going to be bursting at the seams with good cheer. I daresay we will have one of the best Christmases anyone ever had.”

Her eyes met Viscount Folingsby’s as she spoke. He regarded her with one raised eyebrow and a slightly mocking smile. But she was no longer fooled by such an expression. She had seen him without his mask of bored cynicism. Not just here with the two little boys. She had seen him climb a tree like a schoolboy, not just because she had asked him to do so, but because the tree was there and therefore to be climbed. She had seen him with a twinkle in his eye and a laugh on his lips.

And she had—oh, dear, yes—she had felt his kiss. It was not one she could censure even if it had occurred to her to do so. He had earned it, not with five hundred pounds, but with the acquisition of mistletoe. The mistletoe had sanctified the kiss, deep and carnal as it had been.

“It seems,” the Reverend Moffatt said as the other two gentlemen left the room with the exuberant children, “that we are to be guests here at least until tomorrow. It warms my heart to have been stranded at a place where we have already been made to feel welcome. Sometimes it seems almost as if a divine hand is at play in guiding our movements, taking us where we had no intention of going to meet people we had no thought of meeting. How wonderful that you are all preparing with such enthusiasm to celebrate the birth of our Lord.”

“I am going to make a kissing bough,” Debbie announced, looking almost animated. “We had kissing boughs to half fill the kitchen ceiling when I was a girl. Nobody escaped a few good bussings in our house. I had almost forgotten. Christmas was always a right grand time.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hollander,” Mrs. Moffatt said with a smile. “It is always a grand time, even when we are forced to spend it away from part of our families as I assume we are all doing this year. Your husband is being very kind to our boys. And yours, too, my lady.” She turned her smile on Verity. “They have been in the carriage all day and have a great deal of excess energy.”

“There will be no going into the village tonight or tomorrow morning if what you said is true, Lady Folingsby,” the Reverend Moffatt said. “You will be unable to attend church as I daresay you intended to do. I shall repay a small part of my debt to you, then. I shall conduct the Christmas service here. We will all take communion here together. With Mr. Hollander’s permission, of course.”

“What a splendid idea, Henry,” his wife said.

“Ee,” Debbie said, awed into near-silence.

Verity clasped her hands to her bosom and closed her eyes. She had a sudden image of the church at home on the evening before Christmas, the bells pealing out the news of the Christ child’s birth, the candles all ablaze, the carved Nativity scene carefully arranged before the altar, her father in his best vestments smiling down at the congregation. Christmas had always been his favorite time of the liturgical year.

“Oh, sir,” she said, opening her eyes again, “it is we who will be in your debt. Deeply in your debt.” She blinked away tears. “I would like it of all things. I am sure Mr. Hollander and Vi—and my husband will agree.”

“It is going to be a grand Christmas, Blanche,” Debbie said. “I did not expect it, lass. Not in this way, any road.”

“Sometimes we come to grace by unexpected paths,” the Reverend Moffatt commented.

“DO YOU EVER have the impression that events have galloped along somewhat out of your control, Jule?” Bertie asked his friend just before dinner was served and they stood together in the sitting room waiting for everyone else to join them. They were surrounded by the sights and smells of Christmas. There was greenery everywhere, artfully draped and colorfully decorated with red bows and streamers and silver bells. There was a huge and elaborate kissing bough suspended over the alcove to one side of the fireplace. There was a strong smell of pine, more powerful for the moment than the tantalizing aromas wafting up from the kitchen.