Praise for

NICOLA CORNICK

“A rising star of the Regency arena.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Nicola Cornick creates a glittering, sensual world

of historical romance that I never want to leave.”

—Anna Campbell, author of Untouched

“Cornick masterfully blends misconceptions,

vengeance, powerful emotions and the realisation

of great love into a touching story.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews, 4½ stars, on Deceived

Praise for

MARY BALOGH

“Noted for romances that stretch the boundaries, Balogh is

one of the premier writers of Regency-set historicals.”

—Library Journal

“Romance queen Balogh delivers a savoury and

passionate Regency to launch a series featuring

three small-town sisters.”

—Publishers Weekly on First Comes Marriage

Praise for

COURTNEY MILAN

“Smart, funny and sexy. I wish I’d written this book myself!”

—New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James on Proof by Seduction

“One of the finest historical romances I’ve read in years. I am

now officially a Courtney Milan fangirl.”

—New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn on Proof by Seduction

The Heart of Christmas
Nicola Cornick
Mary Balogh
Courtney Milan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Handful of Gold

Chapter One

THE GENTLEMAN sprawled before the dying fire in the sitting room of his London lodgings was looking somewhat the worse for a night’s wear. His gray knee breeches and white stockings were of the finest silk, but the latter were wrinkled and he had long before kicked off his shoes. His long-tailed evening coat, which had molded his frame like a second skin when he had donned it earlier in the evening, had now been discarded and tossed carelessly onto another chair.

His finely embroidered waistcoat was unbuttoned. His neck cloth, on the arrangement of which his valet had spent longer than half an hour of loving artistry, had been pulled open and hung unsymmetrically against his left shoulder. His dark hair, expertly cut to look fashionably disheveled, now looked unfashionably untidy from having had his fingers pass through it one too many times. His eyes were half-closed—and somewhat bloodshot. An empty glass dangled from one hand over the arm of the chair.

Julian Dare, Viscount Folingsby, was indisputably foxed.

He was also scowling. Drinking to excess was not among his usual vices. Gaming was. So was womanizing. And so was reckless living. But not drinking. He had always been careful to exclude from habit anything that might prove to also be addictive. He had every intention of one day “settling down,” as his father phrased it, of being done with his “wild oats,” another of the Earl of Grantham’s clichés. It would be just too inconvenient to have to deal with an addiction when the time came. Gambling was not an addiction with him. Neither were women. Though he was exceedingly fond of both.

He yawned and wondered what time it was. Daylight had not yet dawned, a small comfort when this was December and daylight did not deign to show itself until well on into the morning. Certainly it was well past midnight. Well past. He had left his sister’s soirée before midnight, but since then he had been to White’s club and to one or two—was it one or two?—card parties at which the play had been deep and the drinking deeper.

He should get himself up from his chair and go to bed, but he did not have the energy. He should ring for his valet, then, and have the man drag him off to bed. But he did not have even the energy to get up and ring the bell. Doubtless he would not sleep anyway. He knew from experience that when he was three sheets to the wind, an approximately vertical position was preferable to a horizontal one.

Why the devil had he drunk so deep?

But drunkenness had not brought oblivion. He remembered very well why. That heiress. Miss Plunkett. No, Lady Sarah Plunkett. What a name! And unfortunately the chit had the face and disposition to match it. She was going to be at Conway for Christmas with her mama and papa. Emma, his youngest sister, had mentioned the fact in the letter that had reached him this morning—no, yesterday morning. He had put two and two together without further ado and had come up with the inevitable total of four. But he had not needed to use any arithmetical or deductive skills.

His father’s letter, which he had read next, had been far more explicit. Not only were the Plunkett chit and the Plunkett parents to join their family gathering for Christmas, but also Julian would oblige his father by paying court to the girl and fixing his interest with her. He was nine-and-twenty years old, after all, and had shown no sign of choosing anyone for himself. His father had been extremely patient with him. But it was high time he finished with his wild oats and settled down. As the only son among five sisters, three of them still unmarried and therefore still unsettled, it was his duty…

Viscount Folingsby passed the fingers of his free hand through his hair again, unconsciously restoring it almost to simple dishevelment, and eyed the brandy decanter a short distance away. An impossible distance away.

He was not going to do it—marry the girl, that was. It was as simple as that. No one could make him, not even his stern but annoyingly affectionate father. Not even his fond mama and doting sisters. He grimaced. Why had he been blessed with a singularly close and loving family? And why had his mother produced nothing but daughters after the initial triumph of his birth as heir to an earldom and vast properties and fortune—almost every last half penny of which was entailed and would pass to a rather distant cousin if he failed to produce at least one heir of his own?

His lordship eyed the brandy decanter again with some determination, but he could not somehow force resolution downward far enough to set his legs in motion.

There had been another letter in the morning’s post. From Bertie. Bertrand Hollander had been his close friend and coconspirator all through school and university. They were still close even though Bertie spent most of his time now overseeing his estates in the north of England. But Bertie had a hunting box in Norfolkshire and a mistress in Yorkshire and intended to introduce the two to each other over Christmas. He was avoiding his own family with the excuse that he was going to go shooting with friends over the holiday. He intended instead to spend a week with his Debbie away from prying eyes and the need for propriety. He wanted Julian to join him there with his own mistress.

Julian did not currently have a resident mistress. He had dismissed the last one several months before on the grounds that evenings spent in her company had become even more predictable and every bit as tedious as evenings spent at the insipid weekly balls at Almack’s. Since then he had had a mutually satisfactory arrangement with a widow of his acquaintance. But she was a respectable woman of good ton, hardly the sort he might invite to spend a cozy week of sin in Norfolkshire with Bertie and his Debbie.

Damn! He was more foxed than he knew, Julian thought suddenly. He had gone somewhere tonight even before attending Elinor’s soirée. He had gone to the opera. Not that he was particularly fond of music—not opera at least. He had gone to see the subject of the newest male gossip at White’s. There was a new dancer of considerable charms, so it was said. But in the few weeks since she had made her first onstage appearance, she had not also made her first appearance in any of the beds of those who had attempted to entice her there. She was either waiting for the highest bidder or she was waiting for someone she fancied or she was a virtuous woman.

Julian, his father’s summons and Bertie’s invitation fresh in his mind, had gone to the opera to see what the fuss was all about.

The fuss was all about long, shapely legs, a slender, lithe body and long titian hair. Not red, nothing so vulgar. Titian. And emerald eyes. Not that he had been able to see their color from the box he had occupied during the performance. But he had seen it through his quizzing glass as he had stood in the doorway of the greenroom afterward.

Miss Blanche Heyward had been surrounded by a court of appropriately languishing admirers. His lordship had looked her over unhurriedly through his glass and inclined his head to her when her eyes had met his across the room. And then he had joined the even larger crowd of gentlemen gathered about Hannah Dove, the singer who sang like her name, or so one of her court had assured her. For which piece of gross flattery he had been rewarded with a gracious smile and a hand to kiss.

Julian had left the greenroom after a few minutes and taken himself off to his married sister’s drawing room.

It might be interesting to try his own hand at assaulting the citadel of dubious virtue that was Blanche Heyward. It might be even more interesting to carry her off to Bertie’s for Christmas and a weeklong hot affair. If he went to Conway, all he would have was the usual crowded, noisy, enjoyable Christmas, and the Plunkett chit. If he went to Norfolkshire…

Well, the mind boggled.

What he could do, he decided, was make her decision his, too. He would ask her. If she said yes, then he would go to Norfolkshire. For a final fling. As a swan song to freedom and wild oats and all the rest of it. In the spring, when the season brought the fashionable world to town, the Plunkett girl among them, he would do his duty. He would have her big with child by next Christmas. The very thought had him holding his aching head with the hand that had been holding his glass a minute before. What the devil had he done with it? Dropped it? Had there been any brandy left in it? Couldn’t have been or he would have drunk it instead of sitting here conspiring how he might reach the decanter, on legs that refused to obey his brain.

If she said no—Blanche, that was, not the heiress—then he would go down to Conway and embrace his fate. That way he would probably have a child in the nursery by next Christmas.

Julian lowered his hand from his head to his throat with the intention of loosening his neck cloth. But someone had already done it for him.

Dammit, but she was gorgeous. Not the heiress. Who the devil was gorgeous, then? Someone he had met at Elinor’s?

There was a quiet scratching at the sitting room door, and it opened to reveal the cautious, respectful face of his lordship’s valet.

“About time,” Julian told him. “Someone took all the bones out of my legs when I was not looking. Deuced inconvenient.”

“Yes, my lord,” his man said, coming purposefully toward him. “You will be wishing someone took them from your head before many more hours have passed. Come along then, sir. Put your arm about my neck.”

“Deuced impertinence,” his lordship muttered. “Remind me to dismiss you when I am sober.”

“Yes, my lord,” the valet said cheerfully.

SEVERAL HOURS before Viscount Folingsby found himself sprawled before the fire in his sitting room with boneless legs and aching head, Miss Verity Ewing let herself into a darkened house on an unfashionable street in London, using her latchkey and a considerable amount of stealth. She had no wish to waken anyone. She would tiptoe upstairs without lighting a candle, she decided, careful to avoid the eighth stair, which creaked. She would undress in the darkness and hope not to disturb Chastity. Her sister was, unfortunately, a light sleeper.

But luck was against her. Before she could so much as set foot on the bottom stair, the door to the downstairs living room opened and a shaft of candlelight beamed out into the hall.

“Verity?”

“Yes, Mama.” Verity sighed inwardly even as she put a cheerful smile on her face. “You ought not to have waited up.”

“I could not sleep,” her mother told her as Verity followed her into the sitting room. She set down the candle and pulled her shawl more closely about her shoulders. There was no fire burning in the hearth. “You know I worry until you come home.”

“Lady Coleman was invited to a late supper after the opera,” Verity explained, “and wanted me to accompany her.”

“It was very inconsiderate of her, I am sure,” Mrs. Ewing said rather plaintively. “It is thoughtless to keep a gentleman’s daughter out late almost every night of the week and send her home in a hackney cab instead of in her ladyship’s own carriage.”

“It is kind of her even to hire the hackney,” Verity said. “But it is chilly and you are cold.” She did not need to ask why there was no fire. A fire after ten o’clock at night was an impossible extravagance in their household. “Let us go up to bed. How was Chastity this evening?”

“She did not cough above three or four times all evening,” Mrs. Ewing said. “And not once did she have a prolonged bout. The new medicine seems really to be working.”

“I hoped it would.” Verity smiled and picked up the candle. “Come, Mama.”

But she could not entirely avoid the usual questions about the opera, what Lady Coleman had worn, who else had made up their party, who had invited them for supper, what they had eaten, what topics of conversation had been pursued. Verity answered as briefly as she could, though she did, for her mother’s sake, give a detailed description of the costly and fashionable gown her employer had worn.

“All I can say,” Mrs. Ewing said in a hushed voice as they stood outside the door of her bedchamber, “is that Lady Coleman is a strange sort of lady, Verity. Most ladies hire companions to live in and run and fetch for them during the day when time hangs heavy on their hands. They do not allow them to live at home, and they do not require their services mostly during the evenings when they go out into society.”

“How fortunate I am to have discovered such a lady, then,” Verity said, “and to have won her approval. I could not bear to have to live in and see you and Chastity only on half days off. Lady Coleman is a widow, Mama, and needs company for respectability when she goes out. I could scarcely ask for more pleasant employment. It pays reasonably well, too, and will get better. Only this evening Lady Coleman declared that she is pleased with me and is considering raising my salary quite substantially.”

But her mother did not look as pleased as Verity had hoped. She shook her head as she took the candle. “Ah, my love,” she said, “I never thought to see the day when a daughter of mine would have to seek employment. The Reverend Ewing, your papa, left us little, it is true, but we might have scraped by quite comfortably if it had not been for Chastity’s illness. And if General Sir Hector Ewing were not unfortunately in Vienna for the peace talks, he would have helped us, I am certain. You and Chastity are his own brother’s children, after all.”

“Pray do not vex yourself, Mama.” Verity kissed her mother’s cheek. “We are together, the three of us, and Chastity is recovering her health after seeing a reputable physician and being prescribed the right medicine. Really, those are the only things that matter. Good night.”

A minute later she had reached her own room and had entered it and closed the door. She stood for a moment against it, her eyes closed, her hands gripping the knob behind her back. But there was no sound apart from quiet, even breathing from her sister’s bed. Verity undressed quickly and quietly, shivering in the frigid cold. After she had climbed into bed, she lay on her side, her knees drawn up, and pulled the covers up over her ears. Her teeth were chattering, though not just with the cold.

It was a dangerous game she played.

Except that it was no game.

How soon would it be, she wondered, before Mama discovered that there was no Lady Coleman, that there was no genteel and easy employment? Fortunately they had moved to London from the country so recently and under such straitened circumstances that they had few friends and none at all who moved in fashionable circles. They had moved because Chastity’s chill, contracted last winter not long after their father’s death, had stubbornly refused to go away. It had become painfully clear to them that they might well lose her if they did not consult a physician more knowledgeable than the local doctor. They had feared she had consumption, but the London physician had said no, that she merely had a weak chest and might hope to recover her full health with the correct medicines and diet.

But his fees and the medicines had been exorbitantly expensive and the need for his services was not yet at an end. The rent of even so unfashionable a house as theirs was high. And the bills for coal, candles, food and other sundries seemed always to be piling in.

Verity had searched and searched for genteel employment, assuring her mother that it would be only temporary, until her uncle returned to England and was apprised of their plight. Verity placed little faith in the wealthy uncle who had had nothing to do with them during her father’s life. Her grandfather had held aloof from his youngest son after the latter had refused an advantageous match and had married instead Verity’s mother, the daughter of a gentleman of no particular fortune or consequence.

In Verity’s opinion, the care of her mother and sister fell squarely on her own shoulders and always would. And so when she had been unable to find employment as a governess or companion or even as a shop assistant or seamstress or housemaid, she had taken up the unlikely offer of an audition as an opera dancer. She was quite fit, after all, and she had always adored dancing, both in a ballroom and in the privacy of a shrubbery or empty room at the rectory. To her intense surprise she had been offered the job.

Performing on a public stage in any capacity—as an actress, singer or dancer—was not genteel employment for a lady. Indeed, Verity had been well aware even before accepting the employment that, in the popular mind, dancers and actresses were synonymous with whores.

But what choice had she?

And so had begun her double life, her secret life. By day, except when she was at rehearsals, she was Verity Ewing, impoverished daughter of a gently born clergyman, niece of the influential General Sir Hector Ewing. By night she was Blanche Heyward, opera dancer, someone who was ogled by half the fashionable gentlemen in town, many of whom attended the opera for no other purpose.

But it was a dangerous game. At any time she might be recognized by someone she knew, though no one from her neighborhood in the country was in the habit of staying in London and sampling its entertainments. More important, perhaps, she was making it impossible to mingle with polite society in the future if the general should ever decide to help them. But she did not anticipate that particular problem.

There were more immediate problems to deal with.

But what she earned as a dancer was just not enough.

Verity huddled deeper beneath the bedcovers and set her hands between her thighs for greater warmth.

“Verity?” a sleepy voice asked.

Verity pushed back the covers from her face again. “Yes, love,” she said softly, “I am home.”

“I must have fallen asleep,” Chastity said. “I always worry so until you are home. I wish you did not have to go out alone at night.”

“But if I did not,” Verity said, “I would not be able to tell you about all the splendid parties and theater performances I attend. I shall describe the opera to you in the morning or, more to the point, the people who were in the audience. Go back to sleep now.” She kept her voice warm and cheerful.

“Verity,” Chastity said, “you must not think that I am not grateful, that I do not know the sacrifice you are making for my sake. One day I will make it all up to you. I promise.”

Verity blinked back tears from her eyes. “Oh yes, you will, love,” she said. “In the springtime you are going to dance among the primroses and daffodils, unseasonable roses in your cheeks. Then you will have repaid me double—no, ten times over—for the little I am able to do now. Go to sleep, you goose.”

“Good night.” Chastity yawned hugely and only a minute or two later was breathing deeply and evenly again.

There was one way in which a dancer might augment her income. Indeed she was almost expected to do so. Verity hid her head beneath the covers once more and tried not to develop the thought. But it had been nagging at her for a week or more. And she had said those words to Mama earlier, almost as if she were preparing the way. Lady Coleman declared that she is pleased with me and is considering raising my salary quite substantially.

She had acquired quite a regular court of admirers in the greenroom following each performance. Two of the gentlemen had already made blatant offers to her. One had mentioned a sum that she had found quite dizzying. She had told herself repeatedly that she was not even tempted. Nor was she. But it was not a matter of temptation. It was a matter for cold decision.

The only possible reason she would do such a thing was her mother’s and Chastity’s security. A great deal more money was going to have to be found if Chass was to continue to have the treatment she needed. It was a matter of her virtue in exchange for Chastity’s life, then.

Phrased that way, there was really no decision to make.

And then she thought of the advent of temptation that had presented itself to her just that evening in the form of the gentleman who had stood in the doorway of the greenroom, looking at her insolently through his quizzing glass for a minute or so before joining the crowd of gentlemen gathered about Hannah Dove. His actions had suggested that he was not after all interested in her, Verity—or rather in Blanche—and yet she had been left with the strange notion that he had watched her all the time he was in the greenroom.

He was Viscount Folingsby, a notorious rake, another dancer had told her later. Verity would likely have guessed it anyway. Apart from being almost incredibly handsome—tall, well formed, very dark, with eyes that were both penetrating and slumberous—there was an air of self-assurance and arrogance about him that proclaimed him to be a man accustomed to having his own way. There was also something almost unbearably sensual about him. A rake, yes. Without a doubt.

Yet she had been horribly tempted for that minute. If he had approached her, if he had made her an offer…

Thank heaven he had not done either.

But soon, very soon, she was going to have to consider and accept someone’s offer. There! Finally she was calling a spade a spade. She was going to have to become someone’s mistress. No, that was calling a spade a utensil. She was going to have to become someone’s whore.

For a dizzying minute the room spun about her, closed eyes notwithstanding.

For Chastity, she told herself determinedly. For Chastity’s life.

Chapter Two

JULIAN VISITED the greenroom at the opera house two evenings after his previous appearance there. There were a few men talking with Blanche Heyward. Hannah Dove was invisible amidst her court of admirers. His lordship joined them and chatted amiably for a while. It was not part of his plan to appear overeager. Several minutes passed before he strolled over to make his bow to the titian-haired dancer.

“Miss Heyward,” he said languidly, holding her eyes with his own, “your servant. May I commend you on your performance this evening?”

“Thank you, my lord.” Her voice was low, melodic. Seductive, and deliberately schooled to sound that way, he guessed. Her eyes looked candidly—and shrewdly?—back into his. He did not for a moment believe she was a virtuous woman. Or that what little virtue she had was not for hire.

“I have just been commending Miss Heyward on her talent and grace, Folingsby,” Netherford said. “Damme, but if she were in a ballroom, she would put every other lady to shame. No gentleman would wish to dance with anyone but her, eh? Eh?” He dug one elbow into his lordship’s ribs.

There were appreciative titters from the other gentlemen gathered about her.

“Dear me,” his lordship murmured. “I wonder if Miss Heyward would wish to court such—ah, fame.”

“Or such notoriety,” she said with a fleeting smile.

“Damme,” Netherford continued, “but one would love to watch you waltz, Miss Heyward. Trouble is, every other man present would want to stand and watch, too, and there would be no one to dance with all the other chits.” There was a general gust of laughter at his words.

Julian raised his quizzing glass to his eye and caught a suggestion of scorn in the dancer’s smile.

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “You are flatteringly kind. But I am weary, gentlemen. It has been a long evening.”

And thus bluntly she dismissed her court. They went meekly, after making their bows and bidding her good-night—three of them out the door, one to join the crowd still clustered about Hannah Dove. Julian remained.

Blanche Heyward looked up at him inquiringly. “My lord?” she said, a suggestion of a challenge in her voice.

“Sometimes I find,” he said, dropping his glass and clasping his hands at his back, “that weariness can be treated as effectively with a quiet and leisurely meal as with sleep. Would you care to join me for supper?”

She opened her mouth to refuse—he read the intent in her expression—hesitated, and closed her mouth again.

“For supper, my lord?” She raised her eyebrows.

“I have reserved a private parlor in a tavern not far from here,” he told her. “I would as soon have company as eat alone.” And yet, he told her with his nonchalant expression and the language of his body, he would almost as soon eat alone. It mattered little to him whether she accepted or not.

She broke eye contact with him and looked down at her hands. She was clearly working up a refusal again. Equally clearly she was tempted. Or—and he rather suspected that this was the true interpretation of her behavior—she was as practiced as he in sending the message she wished to send. A reluctance and a certain indifference, in this case. But a fixed intention, nevertheless, of accepting in the end. He made it easier for her, or rather he took the game back into his own hands.

“Miss Heyward.” He leaned slightly toward her and lowered his voice. “I am inviting you to supper, not to bed.”

Her eyes snapped back to his and he read in them the startled knowledge that she had been bested. She half smiled.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “I am rather hungry. Will you wait while I fetch my cloak?”

He gave a slight inclination of his head, and she stood up. He was surprised by her height now that he was standing close to her. He was a tall man and dwarfed most women. She was scarcely more than half a head shorter than he.

Well, he thought with satisfaction, the first move had been made and he had emerged the winner. She had agreed only to supper, it was true, but if he could not turn that minor triumph into a week of pleasure in Norfolkshire, then he deserved the fate awaiting him at Conway in the form of the ferret-faced Lady Sarah Plunkett.

He did not expect to lose the game.

And he did not believe, moreover, that she intended he should.

IT WAS a square, spacious room with timbered ceiling and large fireplace, in which a cheerful fire crackled. In the center of the room was one table set for two, with fine china and crystal laid out on a crisply starched white cloth. Two long candles burned in pewter holders.

Viscount Folingsby must have been confident, Verity concluded, that she would say yes. He took her cloak in silence. Without looking at him, she crossed the room to the fire and held out her hands to the blaze. She felt more nervous than she had ever felt before, she believed, even counting her audition and her first onstage performance. Or perhaps it was a different kind of nervousness.

“It is a cold night,” he said.

“Yes.” Not that there had been much chance to notice the chill. A sumptuous private carriage had brought them the short distance from the theater. They had not spoken during the journey.

She did not believe it was an invitation just to supper. But she still did not know what her answer would be to the inevitable question. Perhaps it was understood in the demimonde that when one accepted such an invitation as this, one was committing oneself to giving thanks in the obvious way.

Could it possibly be that before this night was over she would have taken the irrevocable step? What would it feel like? she wondered suddenly. And how would she feel in the morning?

“Green suits you,” Lord Folingsby said, and Verity despised the way she jerked with alarm to find that he was close behind her. “Not all women have the wisdom and taste to choose clothes that suit their coloring.”

She was wearing her dark green silk, which she had always liked though it was woefully outmoded and almost shabby. But its simple high-waisted, straightsleeved design gave it a sort of timeless elegance that did not date itself as quickly as more fussy, more modish styles.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I fancy,” he said, “that some artist must once have mixed his paints with care and used a fine brush in order to produce the particular color of your eyes. It is unusual, if not unique.”

She smiled into the dancing flames. Men were always lavish in their compliments on her eyes, though no one had ever said it quite like this before.

“I have some Irish blood in me, my lord,” she said.

“Ah. The Emerald Isle,” he said softly. “Land of redhaired, fiery-tempered beauties. Do you have a fiery temper, Miss Heyward?”

“I also have a great deal of English blood,” she told him.

“Ah, we mundane and phlegmatic English.” He sighed. “You disappoint me. Come to the table.”

“You like hot-tempered women, then, my lord?” she asked him as he seated her and took his place opposite.

“That depends entirely on the woman,” he said. “If I believe there is pleasure to be derived from the taming of her, yes, indeed.” He picked up the bottle of wine that stood on the table, uncorked it and proceeded to fill her glass and then his own.

While he was so occupied, Verity looked fully at him for the first time since they had left the theater. He was almost frighteningly handsome, though why there should be anything fearsome about good looks she would have found difficult to explain. Perhaps it was his confidence, his arrogance more than his looks that had her wishing she could go back to the greenroom and change her answer. They seemed very much alone together, though two waiters were bringing food and setting it silently on the table. Or perhaps it was his sensual appeal and the certain knowledge that he wanted her.

He held his glass aloft and extended his hand halfway across the table. “To new acquaintances,” he said, looking very directly into her eyes in the flickering light of the candles. “May they prosper.”

She smiled, touched the rim of her glass to his and drank. Her hand was steady, she was relieved to find, but she felt almost as if a decision had been made, a pact sealed.

“Shall we eat?” he suggested after the waiters had withdrawn and closed the door behind them. He indicated the plates of cold meats and steaming vegetables, the basket of fresh breads, the bowl of fruit.

She was hungry, she realized suddenly, but she was not at all sure she would be able to eat. She helped herself to a modest portion.

“Tell me, Miss Heyward,” the viscount said, watching her butter a bread roll, “are you always this talkative?”

She paused and looked unwillingly up at him again. She was adept at making social conversation, as were most ladies of her class. But she had no idea what topics were suited to an occasion of this nature. She had never before dined tête-à-tête with a man, or been alone with one under any circumstances for longer than half an hour at a time or beyond a place where she could be easily observed by a chaperone.

“What do you wish me to talk about, my lord?” she asked him.

He regarded her for a few moments, a look of amusement on his face. “Bonnets?” he said. “Jewels? The latest shopping expedition?”

He did not, then, have a high regard for women’s intelligence. Or perhaps it was just her type of woman. Her type.

“But what do you wish to talk about, my lord?” she asked him, taking a bite out of her roll.

He looked even more amused. “You,” he said without hesitation. “Tell me about yourself, Miss Heyward. Begin with your accent. I cannot quite place its origin. Where are you from?”

She had not done at all well with the accent she had assumed during her working hours, except perhaps to disguise the fact that she had been gently born and raised.

“I pick up accents very easily,” she lied. “And I have lived in many different places. I suppose there is a trace of all those places in my speech.”

“And someone,” he said, “to complicate the issue, has given you elocution lessons.”

“Of course.” She smiled. “Even as a dancer one must learn not to murder the English language with every word one speaks, my lord. If one expects to advance in one’s career, that is.”

He gazed silently at her for a few moments, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth. Verity felt herself flushing. What career was he imagining she wished to advance?

“Quite so,” he said softly, his voice like velvet. He carried his fork the rest of the way to his mouth. “But what are some of these places? Tell me where you have lived. Tell me about your family. Come, we cannot munch on our food in silence, you know. There is nothing better designed to shake a person’s composure.”

Her life seemed to have become nothing but lies. In each of her worlds she had to withhold the truth about the other. And withholding the truth sometimes became more than a passive thing. It involved the invention of lie upon lie. She had some knowledge of two places—the village in Somersetshire where she had lived for two-and-twenty years, and London, where she had lived for two months. But she spoke of Ireland, drawing on the stories she could remember her maternal grandmother telling her when she was a child, and more riskily, of the city of York, where a neighborhood friend had lived with his uncle for a while, and about a few other places of which she had read.

She hoped fervently that the viscount had no intimate knowledge of any of the places she chose to describe. She invented a mythical family—a father who was a blacksmith, a warmhearted mother who had died five years before, three brothers and three sisters, all considerably younger than herself.

“You came to London to seek your fortune?” he asked. “You have not danced anywhere else?”

She hesitated. But she did not want him to think her inexperienced, easy to manipulate. “Oh, of course,” she said. “For several years, my lord.” She smiled into his eyes as she reached for a pear from the dish of fruit. “But all roads lead eventually to London, you know.”

She was startled by the look of naked desire that flared in his eyes for a moment as he followed the movement of her hand. But it was soon veiled behind his lazy eyelids and slightly mocking smile.

“Of course,” he said softly. “And those of us who spend most of our time here are only too delighted to benefit from the experience in the various arts such persons as yourself have acquired elsewhere.”

Verity kept her eyes on the pear she was peeling. It was unusually juicy, she was dismayed to find. Her hands were soon wet with juice. And her heart was thumping. Suddenly, and quite inexplicably, she felt as if she had waded into deep waters indeed. The air fairly bristled between them. She licked her lips and could think of no reply to make.

His voice sounded amused when he spoke again. “Having peeled it, Miss Heyward,” he said, “you are now obliged to eat it, you know. It would be a crime to waste good food.”

She lifted one half of the pear to her mouth and bit into it. Juice cascaded to her plate below, and some of it trickled down her chin. She reached for her napkin in some embarrassment, knowing that he was watching her. But before she could pick it up, he had reached across the table and one long finger had scooped up the droplet of juice that was about to drip onto her gown. She raised her eyes, startled, to watch him carry the finger to his mouth and touch it to his tongue. His eyes remained on her all the while.

Verity felt a sharp stabbing of sensation down through her abdomen and between her thighs. She felt a rush of color to her cheeks. She felt as if she had been running for a mile uphill.

“Sweet,” he murmured.

She jumped to her feet, pushing at her chair with the backs of her knees. Then she wished she had not done so. Her legs felt decidedly unsteady. She crossed to the fireplace again and reached out her hands as if to warm them, though she felt as if the fire might better be able to take warmth from her.

She drew a few steadying breaths in the silence that followed. And then she could see from the corner of one eye that he had come to stand at the other side of the hearth. He rested one arm along the high mantel. He was watching her. The time had come, she thought. She had precipitated it herself. Within moments the question would be asked and must be answered. She still did not know what that answer would be, or perhaps she did. Perhaps she was just fooling herself to believe that there was still a choice. She had made her decision back in the greenroom—no, even before that. This was a tavern, part of an inn. No doubt he had bespoken a bedchamber here, as well as a private dining room. Within minutes, then…

How would it feel? She did not even know exactly what she was to expect. The basic facts, of course…

“Miss Heyward,” he asked her, making her jump again, “what are your plans for Christmas?”

She turned her head to look at him. Christmas? It was a week and a half away. She would spend it with her family, of course. It would be their first Christmas away from home, their first without the friends and neighbors they had known all their lives. But at least they still had one another and were still together. They had decided that they would indulge in the extravagance of a goose and make something special of the day with inexpensive gifts that they would make for one another. Christmas had always been Verity’s favorite time of the year. Somehow it restored hope and reminded her of the truly important things in life—family and love and selfless giving.

Selfless giving.

“Do you have any plans?” he asked.

She could hardly claim to be going home to that large family at the smithy in Somersetshire. She shook her head.

“I will be spending a quiet week in Norfolkshire with a friend and his, ah, lady,” he said. “Will you come with me?”

A quiet week. A friend and his lady. She understood, of course, exactly what he meant, exactly to what she was being invited. If she agreed now, Verity thought, the die would be cast. She would have stepped irrevocably into that world from which it would be impossible to return. Once a fallen woman, she would never be able to retrieve either her virtue or her honor.

If she agreed?

She would be away from home at Christmas of all times. Away from Mama and Chastity. For a whole week. Could anything be worth such a sacrifice, not to mention the sacrifice of her very self?

It was as if he read her mind. “Five hundred pounds, Miss Heyward,” he said softly. “For one week.”

Five hundred pounds? Her mouth went dry. It was a colossal sum. Did he know what five hundred pounds meant to someone like her? But of course he knew. It meant irresistible temptation.

In exchange for one week of service. Seven nights. Seven, when even the thought of one was insupportable. But once the first had been endured, the other six would hardly matter.

Chastity needed to see the physician again. She needed more medicine. If she were to die merely because they could not afford the proper treatment for her illness, how would she feel, Verity asked herself, when it had been within her power to see to it that they could afford the treatment? What had she just been telling herself about Christmas?

Selfless giving.

She smiled into the fire. “That would be very pleasant, my lord,” she said, and then listened in some astonishment to the other words that came unplanned from her mouth, “provided you pay me in advance.”

She turned her head to look at him when he did not immediately reply. His elbow was still on the mantel, his closed fist resting against his mouth. Above it his eyes showed amusement.

“We will, of course, agree to a compromise,” he told her. “Half before we leave and half after we return?”

She nodded. Two hundred and fifty pounds before she even left London. Once she had accepted the payment, she would have backed herself into a corner. She could not then refuse to carry out her part of the agreement. She tried to swallow, but the dryness of her mouth made it well nigh impossible to do.

“Splendid,” he said briskly. “Come, it is late. I will escort you home.”

She was to escape for tonight, then? Part of her felt a knee-weakening relief. Part of her was strangely disappointed. The worst of it might have been over within the hour if, as she had expected, he had reserved a room and had invited her there. She felt a deep dread of the first time. She imagined, perhaps naively, that after that, once it was an accomplished fact, once she was a fallen woman, once she knew how it felt, it would be easier to repeat. But now it seemed that she would have to wait until they left for Norfolkshire before the deed was done.

He had fetched her cloak and was setting it about her shoulders. She came to attention suddenly, realizing what he had just said.

“Thank you, no, my lord,” she said. “I shall see myself home. Perhaps you would be so kind as to call a hackney cab?”

He turned her and his hands brushed her own aside and did up her cloak buttons for her. He looked up into her eyes, the task completed. “Playing the elusive game until the end, Miss Heyward?” he asked. “Or is there someone at home you would rather did not see me?”

His implication was obvious. But he was, of course, right though not in quite the way he meant. She smiled back at him.

“I have promised you a week, my lord,” she said. “That week does not begin with tonight, as I understand it?”

“Quite right,” he said. “You shall have your hackney, then, and keep your secrets. I do believe Christmas is going to be more…interesting than usual.”

“I trust you may be right, my lord,” she said with all the coolness she could muster, preceding him to the door.

Chapter Three

JULIAN WAS FEELING weary, cold and irritable by the time Bertrand Hollander’s hunting box hove into view at dusk on a particularly gray and cheerless afternoon, two days before Christmas. He would feel far more cheerful, he told himself, once he was indoors, basking before a blazing fire, imbibing some of Bertie’s brandy and contemplating the delights of the night ahead. But at the moment he could not quite convince himself that this Christmas was going to be one of unalloyed pleasure.

He had ridden all the way from London despite the fact that his comfortable, well-sprung traveling carriage held only one passenger. During the morning, he had thought it a clever idea—she would be intrigued to watch him ride just within sight beyond the carriage windows; he would comfort himself with the anticipation of joining her within during the afternoon. But during the noon stop for dinner and a change of horses, Miss Blanche Heyward had upset him quite considerably. No, that was refining too much on a trifle. She had annoyed him quite considerably.

And all over a mere bauble, a paltry handful of gold.

He had been planning to give it to her for Christmas. A gift was perhaps unnecessary since she was being paid handsomely enough for her services. But Christmas had always been a time of gift giving with him, and he knew he was going to miss Conway and all its usual warm celebrations. And so he had bought her a gift, spending far more time in the choosing of it than he usually did for his mistresses and instinctively avoiding the gaudy flash of precious stones.

On impulse he had decided to give it to her in the rather charming setting of the inn parlor in which they dined on their journey, rather than wait for Christmas Day. But she had merely looked at the box in his outstretched hand and had made no move to grab it.

“What is it?” she had asked with the quiet dignity he was beginning to recognize as characteristic of her.

“Why do you not look and see?” he had suggested. “It is an early Christmas gift.”

“There is no need of it.” She had looked into his eyes. “You are paying me well, my lord, for what I will give in return.”

Her words had sent an uncomfortable rush of tightness to his groin, though he was not at all sure she had intended them so. He had also felt the first stirring of annoyance. Was she going to keep him with his hand outstretched, feeling foolish, until his dinner grew cold? But she had reached out a hand slowly, taken the box and opened it. He had watched her almost anxiously. Had he made a mistake in not choosing diamonds or rubies, or emeralds, perhaps?

She had looked down for a long time, saying nothing, making no move to touch the contents of the box.

“It is the Star of Bethlehem,” she had said finally.

It was a star, yes, a gold star on a gold chain. He had not thought of it as the Christmas star. But the description seemed apt enough.

“Yes,” he had agreed. He had despised himself for his next words, but they had been out before he could stop them. “Do you like it?”

“It belongs in the heavens,” she had said after a lengthy pause during which she had gazed at the pendant and appeared as if she had forgotten about both him and her surroundings. “As a symbol of hope. As a sign to all who are in search of the meaning of their lives. As a goal in the pursuit of wisdom.”

Good Lord! He had been rendered speechless.

She had looked up then and regarded him very directly with those magnificent emerald eyes. “Money ought not to be able to buy it, my lord,” she had said. “It is not appropriate as a gift from such as you to such as I.”

He had gazed back, one eyebrow raised, containing his fury. Such as he? What the devil was she implying?

“Do I understand, Miss Heyward,” he had asked, injecting as much boredom into his voice as he could summon, “that you do not like the gift? Dear me, I ought to have had my man pick up a diamond bracelet instead. I shall inform him that you agree with my opinion that he has execrable taste.”

She had looked into his eyes for several moments longer, no discernible anger there at his insult.

“I am sorry,” she had surprised him by saying then. “I have hurt you. It is very beautiful, my lord, and shows that you have impeccable taste. Thank you.” She had closed the box and placed it in her reticule.

They had continued with their meal in silence, and suddenly, he had discovered, he was eating straw, not food.

He had mounted his horse when they resumed their journey and left her to her righteous solitude in his carriage. And for the rest of the journey he had nursed his irritation with her. What the devil did she mean it is not appropriate as a gift from such as you? How dared she! And why was it inappropriate, even assuming that the gold star was intended to be the Star of Bethlehem? The star was a symbol of hope, she had said, a sign to those who pursued wisdom and the meaning of their own lives.

What utter balderdash!

Those three wise men of the Christmas story—if they had existed, and if they had been wise, and if there had really been three of them—had they gone lurching off across the desert on their camels, clutching their offerings, in hopeful pursuit of wisdom and meaning? More likely they had been escaping overly affectionate relatives who were attempting to marry them off to the biblical-era equivalent of the Plunkett chit. Or hoping to find something that would gratify their jaded senses.

They must all have been despicably rich, after all, to be able to head off on a mad journey without fear of running out of money. It was purely by chance that they had discovered something worth more than gold, or those other two commodities they had had with them. What the deuce were frankincense and myrrh anyway?

Well, he was no wise man even though he had set out on his journey with his pathetic handful of gold. And even though he was hoping to find gratification of his senses at the end of the journey. That was all he did want—a few congenial days with Bertie, and a few energetic nights in bed with Blanche. To hell with hope and wisdom and meaning. He knew where his life was headed after this week. He was going to marry Lady Sarah Plunkett and have babies with her until his nursery was furnished with an heir and a spare, to use the old cliché. And he was going to live respectably ever after.

It was going to snow, he thought, glancing up at the heavy clouds. They were going to have a white Christmas. The prospect brought with it none of the elation he would normally feel. At Conway there would be children of all ages from two to eighty gazing at the sky and making their plans for toboggan rides and snowball fights and snowman-building contests and skating parties. He felt an unwelcome wave of nostalgia.

But they had arrived at Bertie’s hunting box, which looked more like a small manor than the modest lodge Julian had been expecting. There were the welcome signs of candlelight from within and of smoke curling up from the chimneys. He swung down from his horse, wincing at the stiffness in his limbs, and waved aside the footman who would have opened the carriage door and set down the steps. His lordship did it himself and reached up a hand to help down his mistress.

And that was another thing, he thought as she placed a gloved hand in his and stepped out of the carriage. She was not looking at all like the bird of paradise he had pictured himself bringing into the country. She was dressed demurely in a gray wool dress with a long gray cloak, black gloves and black half boots. Her hair—all those glorious titian tresses—had been swept back ruthlessly from her face and was almost invisible beneath a plain and serviceable bonnet. There was not a trace of cosmetics on her face, which admittedly was quite lovely enough without. But she looked more like a lady than a whore.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, glancing up at the house.

“I trust,” he said, “you were warm enough under the lap robes?”

“Indeed.” She smiled at him.

One thing at least was clear to him as he turned with her toward Bertie, who was standing in the open doorway, rubbing his hands together, a welcoming grin on his face. He was still anticipating the night ahead with a great deal of pleasure, perhaps more so than ever. There was something unusually intriguing about Miss Blanche Heyward, opera dancer and authority on the Star of Bethlehem.

VERITY FELT embarrassment more than any other emotion for the first hour or so of her stay at Bertrand Hollander’s hunting box, and what a misnomer that was, she thought, looking about at the well-sized, cozy, expensively furnished house that a gentleman used only during the shooting season. And, of course, for clandestine holidays with his mistress.

It was that idea that caused the embarrassment. Mr. Hollander appeared to be a pleasant gentleman. He had a good-looking, amiable face and was dressed with neat elegance. He greeted them with a hearty welcome and assured them that they must make themselves at home for the coming week and not even think of standing on ceremony.

He greeted her, Verity, with gallantry, taking her hand and raising it to his lips before tucking it beneath his arm and leading her into the house while begging her to call upon him at any time if he might be of service in increasing her comfort.

And yet there was something in his manner—a certain familiarity—that showed he was a gentleman talking, not with a lady, but with a woman of another class entirely. There was the frank way, for example, that he looked her over from head to toe before grinning at Viscount Folingsby. It was not quite an insolent look. Indeed, there was a good deal of appreciation in it. But he would not have looked at a lady so, not at least while she was observing him doing it. Nor would he have called a lady by her first name. But Mr. Hollander used hers.

“Come into the parlor where there is a fire, Blanche,” he said. “We will soon have you warmed up. Come and meet Debbie.”

Debbie was the other woman, Mr. Hollander’s mistress. She was blond and pretty and plump and placid. She spoke with a decided Yorkshire accent. She did not rise from the chair in which she lounged beside the fire, but smiled genially and lazily at the new arrivals.

“Sit down there, Blanche,” she said, pointing to the chair at the other side of the fire. “Bertie will send for tea, won’t you, love? Ee, you look frozen, Jule. You’d better pull a chair closer to the fire unless you want to sit with Blanche on your lap.”

She was addressing Viscount Folingsby, Verity realized in some shock as she took the offered chair and removed her gloves and bonnet, since no servant had offered to take them in the hall. She directed a very straight look at her new protector, but he was bowing over Debbie’s outstretched hand and taking it to his lips.

“Charmed,” he said. “I do hope you are not planning to order tea for me, too, Bertie?”

His friend barked with laughter and crossed the room to a sideboard on which there was an array of decanters and glasses. The viscount pulled up a chair for himself, Verity was relieved to find, but Mr. Hollander, when he returned with glasses of liquor for his friend and himself, raised his eyebrows at Debbie. She sighed, hoisted herself out of the chair, and then settled herself on his lap after he had sat down.

Verity refused to feel outrage. She refused to show disapproval by even the smallest gesture. These were two gentlemen with their mistresses. She was one of the latter, by her own choice. There was already more than two hundred pounds safely stowed away in a drawer at home. The rest of the advance payment had been spent on another visit to the physician for Chastity and more medicine. A small sum was in her purse inside her reticule. It was too late to go back even if she wanted to. The money was not intact to be returned.

And so she resigned herself to what must be. But she had made one decision during the days since she had accepted Viscount Folingsby’s proposition. She was not going to act a part besides what she had already committed herself to. She spoke with some sort of accent to disguise the refinement of her lady’s voice. She had invented a family at a smithy in Somersetshire. But beyond those things she was not going to go. She was not going to try to be deliberately vulgar or stupid or anything else she imagined a mistress would be.

She had brought with her the clothes she usually wore at home. She had dressed her hair as she usually wore it there. She had kept her end of the bargain by coming here. She would keep it by staying over Christmas and allowing Viscount Folingsby to do that to her. Her mind still shied away from the details and from the alarming fact that she was ignorant of many of them. She had hardly been in a position to ask her mother, as she would have done had she been getting married and facing a wedding night.

She had told Mama and Chastity that Lady Coleman was going into the country for Christmas and required her presence. She had told them that she was being paid a very generous bonus for going, though she had not mentioned the incredible sum of five hundred pounds. They had both been upset at the prospect of her absence over Christmas, and she had shed a few tears with them, but they had consoled themselves with the belief that as a member of a house party she would have a wonderful time.

“Are you warmer now?” Viscount Folingsby asked suddenly, bringing Verity’s mind back to Mr. Hollander’s sitting room, into which a servant was just carrying a tea tray. He leaned forward and took one of her hands in both of his. His were warm; hers was not. “Perhaps I should have cuddled you on my lap after all.”

“I believe the fire and the tea between them will do the trick nicely for now, my lord,” she said before turning her attention to Mr. Hollander, who was smiling genially at them. “I have never before been into this part of the world, sir. Do tell me about it. What beauties of nature characterize it? And what history and buildings of note are there here?”

She would no longer be mute, wondering what topics of conversation were appropriate for an opera dancer and a gentleman’s mistress.

“Ee, Bertie, love,” Debbie said, “there is a right pretty garden out back. Tell Blanche about it. Tell her about the tree swing.”

It was not tree swings exactly that Verity had had in mind, but she settled back in her chair with a smile as the servant handed her her tea. Viscount Folingsby relinquished her hand.

“For now,” he murmured. “But later, Blanche, I beg leave to do service in place of the fire and the tea.”

It took her a moment to realize he was referring to her earlier words. When she did so, she wished she were sitting a little farther back from the fire. Her face felt as if it were being scorched.

It did not seem, she thought suddenly, as if Christmas was close. Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. For a few moments there was the ache of tears in her throat.

THERE MUST have been a goodly number of bedchambers in the house, Julian guessed later that night as he ascended the staircase with Blanche on his arm. But Bertie, of course, had assigned them only one. It was a large room overlooking the small wooded park at the back of the house. It was warmed by a log fire in a large hearth and lit by a single branch of candles. Heavy velvet curtains had been drawn back from the large canopied bed and the covers had been turned down.

He was glad he had not had her before, he decided as he closed the door behind them and extinguished the single candle that had lit their way upstairs. Pleasurable anticipation had been building in him for over a week. It had reached a crescendo of desire this evening. She had been looking almost demure in the green silk dress she had worn the evening they first supped together, her hair dressed severely but not unattractively.

And she had been acting the part of a lady, keeping the conversation going during dinner and in the sitting room afterward with observations about their journey, about the Christmas decorations and carol singers in London, and about—of all things—the peace talks that were proceeding in Vienna now that Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated and was imprisoned on the island of Elba. She had asked Bertie what plans had been made for their own celebration of Christmas. Bertie had looked surprised and then blank. He obviously had no plans at all beyond enjoying himself with his pretty, buxom Debbie.

Paradoxically Julian had found Blanche’s demure appearance and ladylike behavior arousing. He considered both erotic. She had too many charms to hide effectively.

“Come here,” he said now.

She had gone to stand in front of the fire. She was holding out her hands to the blaze. But she turned her head, smiled at him and came to stand in front of him. She was clever, he thought. She must know that an overeagerness on her part would somehow dampen his own. Though there was just a chance she was not quite as eager as he. This was a job to her, after all. He would soon change that. He set his hands on either side of her waist and drew her against him, fitting her body against his own from the waist down. He could feel the slimness of her long legs, the flatness of her abdomen. His breath quickened. She looked back into his eyes, a half smile on her lips.

“At last,” he said.

“Yes.” Her smile did not waver. Neither did her eyes.

He bent his head and kissed her. She kept her lips closed. He teased them with his own and touched his tongue lightly to the seam, moving it slowly across in order to part her lips and gain entrance. Her head jerked back.

“What are you doing?” She sounded breathless.

He stared blankly at her. But before he could frame an answer to such a nonsensical question, her look of shock disappeared, she smiled again and her hands came up to rest on his shoulders.

“Pardon me,” she said. “You moved just a little too fast for me. I am ready now.” She brought her mouth back to his, her lips softly parted this time, and trembling against his own.

What the devil?

His mind turned cold with suspicion. He closed his arms about her and thrust his tongue deep into her mouth without any attempt at subtlety. She made no move to pull away, but she went rigid in every limb for a few moments before relaxing almost to limpness. He moved his hands forward quite deliberately and cupped her breasts with them, his thumbs seeking and pressing against her nipples. Again there was the momentary tensing followed by relaxation.

He was looking down at her a moment later, his eyes half-closed, his hands again on either side of her waist.

“Well, Miss Heyward,” he asked softly, “how have you enjoyed your first kiss?”

“My first…” She gazed blankly at him.

“I suppose it would be strange indeed,” he said, “if I were to discover in a few minutes’ time on that bed that you are not also a virgin?”

She had nothing to say this time.

“Well?” he asked her. “Shall I put the matter to the test?” He watched her swallow.

“Even the most hardened of whores,” she said at last, “was a virgin once, my lord. For each there is a first time. I will not flinch or weep or deny you your will, if that is what you fear. You are paying me well. I will do all that is required of me.”

“Will you indeed?” he said, releasing her and crossing the room to the hearth to push a log farther into the blaze with his foot. He watched the resulting shower of sparks. “I am not paying for the pleasure of observing martyrdom.”

“I was not acting the martyr,” she protested. “You took me by surprise. I did not know…I am perfectly willing to do whatever you wish me to do. I am sorry that I will be awkward at first. But I will learn tonight, and tomorrow night I will know better what it is you expect of me. I hope I…Perhaps under the circumstances you will decide that you have already paid me handsomely enough. I believe you have. I will try to earn it.”

Did she realize, he wondered in some amazement, that she was throwing a pail of cold water over his desire with every sentence she uttered? Anger was replacing it—no, fury. Not so much against her. She had told him no lies about her experience, had she? His fury was all against himself and his own cleverness. He would keep her for Bertie’s, would he? He would savor his anticipation, would he, until it was too late to change his mind, to go to Conway as he ought to have done? He would have one last fling, would he, before he did his duty by his family and name? Well, he had been justly served.

In the middle of the desert, far from home, had the wise men ever called themselves all kinds of fool?

“I do not deal in virgins, Miss Heyward,” he said curtly.

“Ah,” she said, “you do not like to face what it is you are purchasing, then, my lord?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and regarded her over his shoulder in silence for a few moments. This woman had sharp weapons and did not scruple to wield them. “Is your need for the money a personal one?” he asked her, turning from the fire. “Or is it your family that is in need?” He did not want to know, he realized after the questions were out. He had no wish to know Blanche Heyward as a person. All he had wanted was one last sensual fling with a beautiful and experienced and willing partner.

“I do not have to answer that,” she said. “I will pay back all I can when we have returned to London. But I am still willing to earn my salary.”

“As I remember,” he said, “our agreement was for a week of your company in exchange for a certain sum, Blanche. There was no mention of your warming my bed during that week, was there? We will spend the week here. It is too late now for either of us to make other arrangements for Christmas. Besides, those were snow clouds this afternoon if ever I have seen any. We will salvage what we can of the holiday, then. It might be the dreariest Christmas either of us has ever spent, but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe I will decide to give you lessons in kissing so that your next, ah, employer will make his discovery rather later in the process than I did. Undress and go to bed. There is a dressing room for your modesty.”

“Where will you sleep?” she asked him.

He looked down at the floor, which was fortunately carpeted. “Here,” he said. “Perhaps you will understand that I have no wish for Bertie to know that we are not spending the night in sensual bliss together.”

“You have the bed,” she said. “I will sleep on the floor.”

He felt an unexpected stirring of amusement. “But I have already told you, Blanche,” he said, “that I have no wish to gaze on martyrdom. Go to bed before I change my mind.”

By the time she came back from the dressing room a few minutes later, dressed in a virginal white flannel nightgown, her head held high, her cheeks flushed and her titian hair all down her back, he had made up some sort of bed for himself on the floor close to the fire with blankets he had found in a drawer and a pillow he had taken from the bed. He did not look at her beyond one cursory glance. He waited for her to climb into the bed and pull the covers up over her ears, and then extinguished the candles.

“Good night,” he said, finding his way back to his bed by the light of the fire.

“Good night,” she said.

What a marvelously just punishment for his sins, he thought as he lay down and his body registered the hardness of the floor. But why the devil was he doing this? She had been willing and he was paying her handsomely. Heaven knows, he had wanted her badly enough, and still did.

It was not any real reluctance to violate innocence, he decided, or any unwillingness to deal with awkwardness or the inevitable blood. It was exactly what he had said it was. He had no desire to watch martyrdom or to inflict it.

I will not flinch or weep or deny you your will.

If there were less erotic words in the English language, he could not imagine what they might be. Sheer martyrdom! If only she had wanted it, wanted him just a little bit, even if she had been nervous…

Miss Blanche Heyward, he was discovering to his cost, was not the average, typical opera dancer. In fact she was turning out to be a royal pain.

A fine Christmas this was going to be. He thought glumly of Conway and of what he would be missing there tomorrow and the day after. Even the Plunkett chit was looking mildly appealing at this particular moment.

“What would you have done for Christmas,” a soft voice asked him as if she had read his thoughts, “if you had not come here with me?”

He breathed deeply and evenly and audibly.

Perhaps tomorrow he would teach her to see a night spent in bed with him as fitting a different category of experience from Christians being prodded into the arena with slavering lions. But unlike his usual confident self, he did not hold out a great deal of hope of succeeding.

Surprisingly he slept.

Chapter Four

VERITY DID NOT sleep well during the night. But as she lay staring at the window and the suggestion of daylight beyond the curtains, she was surprised that she had slept at all.

There were sounds of deep, even breathing coming from the direction of the fireplace. She listened carefully. There were no sounds from beyond the door. Did that mean no one was up yet? Of course, Mr. Hollander and Debbie had probably been busy all night and perhaps intended to be busy for part of the morning, too.

It should have been all over by this morning, she thought. She should be a fallen woman beyond all dispute by now. And he had been wrong. It would not have felt like martyrdom. Even in the privacy of her own mind she was a little embarrassed to remember how exciting his hard man’s body had felt against her own and how shockingly pleasurable his open mouth had felt against her lips. All her insides had performed some sort of vigorous dance when he had put his tongue into her mouth. What an alarmingly intimate thing to do. It should have been disgusting but had not been.

Well, she thought with determined honesty, she had actually wanted to experience the whole of it. And deny it as she would, she had to confess to herself that there had been some disappointment in his refusal to continue once he had realized the truth about her.

And so here they were in this ridiculous predicament with all of Christmas ahead of them. How could she possibly earn five hundred pounds when one night was already past and he had slept on the floor?

All of Christmas was ahead of them. What a depressing thought!

And then something in the quality of the light beyond the window drew her attention. She threw back the bedcovers, ignored her shivering reaction to the frigid air beyond their shelter and padded across the room on bare feet. She drew aside the curtain.

Oh!

“Oh!” she exclaimed aloud. She turned her head and looked eagerly at the sleeping man. “Oh, do come and look.”

His head reared up from his pillow. He looked deliciously tousled and unshaven. He was also scowling.

“What?” he barked. “What the devil time is it?”

“Look,” she said, turning back to the window. “Oh, look.”

He was beside her then, clad only in his shirt and last night’s knee breeches and stockings. “For this you have dragged me from my bed?” he asked her. “I told you last night that it would snow today.”

“But look!” she begged him. “It is sheer magic.”

When she turned her head, she found him looking at her instead of at the snow beyond the window, blanketing the ground and decking out the bare branches of the trees.

“Do you always glow like this in the morning?” he asked her. “How disgusting!”

She laughed. “Only when Christmas is coming and there is a fresh fall of snow,” she said. “Can you imagine two more wonderful events happening simultaneously?”

“Finding a soft warm bed when I am more than halfasleep and stiff in every limb,” he said.

“Then have my bed,” she said, laughing again. “I am getting up.”

“A fine impression Bertie is going to have of my power to keep you amused and confined to your room,” he said.

“Mr. Hollander,” she told him, “will doubtless keep to his room until noon and will be none the wiser. Go to bed and go to sleep.”

He did both. By the time she emerged from the dressing room, clad in the warmest of her wool dresses, her hair brushed and decently confined, he was lying in the place on the bed where she had lain all night, fast asleep. She stood gazing down at him for a few moments, imagining that if she had not been so gauche last night…

She shook her head and straightened her shoulders. Mr. Hollander had made no preparations for Christmas. Doubtless he thought that spending a few days in bed with the placid Debbie would constitute enough merrymaking. Well, they would see about that. She was not being allowed to earn her salary in the expected way. The least she could do, then, was make herself useful in other ways.

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.

“And do you ever have the impression,” Julian asked without answering the question, which was doubtless rhetorical anyway, “that you ought not to simply label a woman as a certain type and expect her to behave accordingly?” Blanche, changing for dinner a few minutes before in the dressing room while he made do with the bedchamber, had informed him with bright enthusiasm that the Reverend Moffatt was planning to conduct a Christmas service in this very room sometime after dinner. And that the servants had asked to attend. And that they were going to have to see to it on the morrow that the little boys had a wonderful Christmas. If there was still plenty of snow, they could…

He had not listened to all the details. But Miss Blanche Heyward, opera dancer, would have made a superlative drill sergeant if she had just been a man, he had thought. Consider as a point in fact the way she had organized them all—all of them—over the decorations. They had rushed about and climbed and teetered and adjusted angles at her every bidding. She had been flushed and bright-eyed and beautiful.

On the whole, he concluded as an afterthought, he was glad she was not a man.

“And have you ever had a cook for all of three or four years, Jule,” Bertie continued, “and suddenly discovered that she could cook? Not that I have tasted any of the things that go with those smells yet, but if smell is anything to judge by…well, I ask you.”

The staff, it seemed, had been as busy belowstairs as all of them had been above. But their busyness had had the same instigator—Miss Blanche Heyward. Julian even wondered if somehow she had conjured up the clergyman and his family out of the blizzard. What a ghastly turn of events that had been.

“Do you suppose,” he asked, “anyone noticed the sudden appearance of rings on our women’s fingers, Bertie?”

But the door opened at that moment to admit their mistresses, who had come down together. Debbie clucked her tongue.

“Now did I do all that work on the kissing bough just to see it hang over there and you men stand here?” she asked. “Go and get yourself under it, Bertie, love, and be bussed.”

“Again?” he said, grinning and waggling his eyebrows and instantly obeying.

They had all sampled the pleasures of the kissing bough after it had been hung. Even the Reverend Moffatt had kissed his wife with hearty good humor and had pecked Debbie and Blanche respectfully on the cheek.

“Well, Blanche.” Julian looked her up and down. She was dressed in the dark green silk again. Her hair was neatly confined at the back of her head. She should have looked drably dreary but did not. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

Some of the sparkle that had been in her eyes faded as she looked back at him. “Only when I forget my purpose in being here,” she said. “I have already taken a great deal of money from you and have done nothing yet to earn it.”

“Perhaps I should be the judge of that,” he said.

“Perhaps tonight I can make some amends,” she said. “I have had a day in which to grow more accustomed to you. I may still be awkward—I daresay I will be because I am very ignorant of what happens, you know—but I will not be afraid and I will not act the martyr. Indeed, I believe I might even enjoy it. And it will be a relief to know that at last I have done something to earn my salary.”

If Bertie and Debbie, now laughing like a pair of children and making merry beneath the kissing bough, had been the only other occupants of the house apart from the servants, Julian thought he might have excused Blanche and himself from dinner and taken her up to bed without further ado. Despite the reference to earning salaries, he found her words arousing. He found her arousing. But there were other guests. Besides, he was not sure he would have done it anyway.

If this stay in Norfolkshire had proceeded according to plan, he would have enjoyed a largely sleepless night with Blanche last night. They would have stayed in bed until noon or later this morning. They would have returned to bed for much of the afternoon. By now he would have been wondering how long into the coming night his energies would sustain him. But there would have been all day tomorrow to look forward to—in bed.

The prospect had seemed appealing to him all last week and up until just last night. Longer than that. He had felt disgruntled and cheated all through the night and when he had woken this morning. Or when she had awoken him, rather, with her excited discovery that it had snowed during the night.

But surprisingly he had enjoyed the day just as it had turned out. And the kiss against the oak tree had seemed in some strange way as satisfying as a bedding might have been. There had been laughter as well as desire involved in that kiss. He had never before thought of laughter as a desirable component of a sexual experience.

“You are disappointed in me,” Blanche said now. “I am so sorry.”

“Not at all,” he told her, clasping his hands at his back. “How could I possibly be disappointed? Let me see. A night spent on the floor, an early wake-up call in the frigid dawn to watch snow falling, an expedition out into the storm in order to climb trees, murder my boots and risk my neck. The arrival of a clergyman as a houseguest, an hour spent finding occupation for two energetic infants, another hour of climbing on furniture and pinning up boughs only to move them again when it was discovered that they were half an inch out of place, a church service in the sitting room to look forward to. My dear Miss Heyward, what more could I have asked of Christmas?”

She was laughing. “I have the strangest feeling,” she said, “that you have enjoyed today.”

He raised his quizzing glass to his eye and regarded her through it. “And you believe that you might enjoy tonight,” he said. “We will see, Blanche, when tonight comes. But first of all, Bertie’s guests. I believe I hear the patter of little feet and the chatter of little voices approaching, as Debbie so poetically phrased it. I suppose we are to be subjected to their company as well as that of their mama and papa since there is no nursery and no nurse.”

“For all your expression and tone of voice,” Blanche said, “I do believe, my lord, you have an affection for those little boys. You do not deceive me.”

“Dear me,” Julian said faintly as the sitting room door opened again.

THERE WAS a spinet in one corner of the sitting room. Verity had eyed it a few times during the day with some longing, but its lid was locked, she had discovered. While the Reverend Moffatt was setting up the room after dinner for the Christmas service, his wife asked about the instrument. Mr. Hollander looked at it in some surprise, as if he were noticing it for the first time. He had no idea where the key was. It hardly mattered anyway unless someone was able to play it.

There was a short silence.

“I can play,” Verity said.

“Splendid!” The Reverend Moffatt beamed at her. “Then we may have music with the service, Lady Folingsby. I would lead the singing if I had to, but I have a lamentably poor ear for pitch, do I not, Edie? We would be likely to end a hymn several tones lower than we started it.” He laughed heartily.

Mr. Hollander went in search of the key. Or rather, he went in search of a servant who might know where it was.

“Where did you learn to play, Blanche?” Debbie asked.

“At the rectory.” Verity smiled and then wished she could bite out her tongue. “The rector’s wife taught me,” she added hastily. That was the truth, at least.

Mr. Hollander came back in triumph, a key held aloft. The spinet was sadly out of tune, Verity discovered, but not impossibly so. There was no music, but she did not need any. All her favorite hymns, as well as some other favorite pieces, had been committed to memory when she was still a girl.

A table had been converted into an altar with the aid of a crisp white cloth one of the maids had ironed carefully, candles in silver holders and a fancy cup and plate the housekeeper had found somewhere in the nether regions of the house and the other maid had polished to serve as a paten and chalice. The butler had dusted off a bottle of Mr. Hollander’s best wine. The cook had found time and space in her oven to bake a round loaf of unleavened bread. The Reverend Moffatt had clad himself in vestments he had brought with him and suddenly looked very young and dignified and holy.

The sitting room, Verity thought, gazing about her, had become a holy place, a church. Everyone, even the children, sat hushed as they would in a church, waiting for the service to begin. Verity did not wait. She began to play quietly some of her favorite Christmas hymns.

It was Christmas, she thought, swallowing and blinking her eyes. She had not thought it would come for her this year except in the form of an ugly selfsacrifice. But for all the lies and deceptions—with every glance down at her hands she saw the false wedding ring—Christmas had come. Christmas, she reminded herself, and the reminder had never been more apt, was for sinners, and they were all sinners: Mr. Hollander, Debbie, Viscount Folingsby and her. But Christmas had found them out, despite themselves, in the form of the clergyman and his family, stranded by a snowstorm. And Christmas was offering all its boundless love and forgiveness to them in the form of the bread and the wine, which were still at this moment just those two commodities.

A child had been born on this night more than eighteen hundred years ago, and he was about to be born again as he had been each year since then and would be each year in the future. Constant birth. Constant hope. Constant love.

“My dear friends.” The clergyman’s voice was quiet, serene, imposing, unlike the voice of the Reverend Moffatt who had conversed with them over tea and dinner. He smiled about at each one of them in turn, bathing them—or so it seemed—in the warmth and peace and wonder of the season.

And so the service began.

It ended more than an hour later with the joyful singing of one last hymn. They all sang lustily, Verity noticed, herself included. Even one of the coachmen, who was noticeably tone-deaf, and the housekeeper, who sang with pronounced vibrato. Mr. Hollander had a strong tenor voice. Debbie sang with a Yorkshire accent. David Moffatt sang his heart out to a tune of his own devising. They would not have made a reputable choir. But it did not matter. They made a joyful noise. They were celebrating Christmas.

And then Mrs. Moffatt spoke up, a mere few seconds after her husband had said the final words of the service and wished them all the compliments of the season.

“I do apologize, Mr. and Mrs. Hollander,” she said, “for all the inconvenience I am about to cause you. Henry, my dear, I do believe we are going to have a Christmas child.”

Chapter Six

HENRY MOFFATT was pacing as he had been doing almost constantly for the past several hours.

“One would expect to become accustomed to it,” he said, pausing for only a moment to stare, pale faced and anxious eyed, at Julian and Bertie, who were sitting at either side of the hearth, hardly any less pale themselves, “after two previous confinements. But one does not. One thinks of a new child—one’s own—making the perilous passage into this world. And one thinks of one’s mate, flesh of one’s own flesh, heart of one’s heart, enduring the pain, facing all the danger alone. One feels helpless and humble and dreadfully responsible. And guilty that one does not have more trust in the plans of the Almighty. It seems trivial to recall that we have hoped for a daughter this time.”

He resumed his journey to nowhere, back and forth from one corner of the room to the other. “Will it never end?”

Julian had never before shared a house with a woman in labor. When he thought about it, about what was going on abovestairs—and how could he not think about it?—he felt a buzzing in his ears and a coldness in his nostrils and imagined in some horror the ignominy of fainting when he was not even the prospective father. He remembered how glibly just a few days before he had planned to have a child of his own in the nursery by next Christmas or very soon after.

It must hurt like hell, he thought, and that was probably the understatement of the decade.

There was no doctor in the village. There was a midwife, but she lived, according to the housekeeper, a mile or so on the other side of the village. It would have been impossible to reach her, not to mention persuading her to make the return journey, in time to deliver the child who was definitely on its way.

Fortunately, Mrs. Moffatt had announced with a calm smile—surely it had been merely a brave facade—she had already given birth to two children, as well as attending the births of a few others. She could manage very well alone, provided the housekeeper would prepare a few items for her. It was getting late. She invited everyone else to retire to bed and promised not to disturb them with any loud noises.

Julian had immediately formed mental images of someone screaming in agony.

Debbie had looked at Bertie with eyes almost as big as her face.

“If you are quite sure, ma’am,” Bertie had said, as white as his shirt points.

“Come, Henry,” Mrs. Moffatt had said, “we will put the children to bed first. Perhaps I can see you in here for a few minutes afterward, Mrs. Simpkins.”

Mrs. Simpkins had been looking a delicate shade of green.

That was when Blanche had spoken up.

“You certainly will not manage alone,” she had assured the guest. “It will be quite enough for you to endure the pain of labor. You will leave the rest to us, Mrs. Moffatt. Sir,” she said, addressing the clergyman, “perhaps you can put the children to bed yourself tonight? Boys, give your mama a kiss. Doubtless there will be more than one wonderful surprise awaiting you in the morning. The sooner you fall asleep, the sooner you will find out what. Mrs. Lyons, will you see that a large pot of water is heated and kept ready? Mrs. Simpkins, will you gather together as many clean cloths as you can find? Debbie—”

“Ee, Blanche,” Debbie had protested, “no, love.”

“I am going to need you,” Blanche had said with a smile. “Merely to wield a cool, damp cloth to wipe Mrs. Moffatt’s face when she gets very hot, as she will. You can do that, can you not? I will be there to do everything else.”

Everything else. Like delivering the baby. Julian had stared, fascinated, at his opera dancer.

“Have you done this before, Blanche?” he had asked.

“Of course,” she had said briskly. “At the rectory—ah. I used to accompany the rector’s wife on occasion. I know exactly what to do. No one need fear.”

They had all been gazing at her, Julian remembered now. They had all hung on her every word, her every command. They had leaned on her strength and her confidence in a collective body.

Who the hell was she? What had a blacksmith’s daughter been doing hanging around a rectory so much? Apart from learning to play the spinet without music, that was. And apart from delivering babies.

Everyone had run to do her bidding. Soon only the three men—the three useless ones—had been left in the sitting room to fight terror and nausea and fits of the vapors.

The door opened. Three pale, terrified faces turned toward it.

Debbie was flushed and untidy and swathed in an apron made for a giant. One hank of blond hair hung to her shoulder and looked damp with perspiration. She was beaming and looking very pretty indeed.

“It is all over, sir,” she announced, addressing herself to the Reverend Moffatt. “You have a new…baby. I am not to say what. Your wife is ready and waiting for you.”

The new father stood very still for a few moments and then strode from the room without a word.

“Bertie.” Debbie turned tear-filled eyes toward him. “You should have been there, love. It came out all of a rush into Blanche’s hands, the dearest little slippery thing, all cross and crying and—and human. Ee, Bertie, love.” She cast herself into his arms and bawled noisily.

Bertie made soothing noises and raised his eyebrows at Julian. “I was never more relieved in my life,” he said. “But I am quite thankful I was not there, Deb. We had better get you to bed. You are not needed any longer?”

“Blanche told me I could go to bed,” Debbie said. “She will finish off all that needs doing. No midwife could have done better. She talked quietly the whole time to calm my jitters and Mrs. Simpkins’s. Mrs. Moffatt didn’t have the jitters. She just kept saying she was sorry to keep us up, the daft woman. I have never felt so—so honored, Bertie, love. Me, Debbie Markle, just a simple, honest whore to be allowed to see that.”

“Come on, Deb.” Bertie tucked her into the crook of his arm and bore her off to bed.

Julian followed them up a few minutes later. He had no idea what time it was. Some unholy hour of the morning, he supposed. He did not carry a candle up with him and no one had lit the branch in his room. Someone from belowstairs had been kept working late, though. There was a freshly made-up fire burning in the hearth. He went to stand at the window and looked out.

The snow had stopped falling, he saw, and the sky had cleared off. He looked upward and saw in that single glance that he had been wrong. It was not an unholy hour of the morning at all.

He was still standing there several minutes later when the door of the bedchamber opened. He turned his head to look over his shoulder.

She looked as Debbie had looked but worse. She was bedraggled, weary and beautiful.

“You should not have waited up,” she said.

“Come.” He beckoned to her.

She came and slumped tiredly against him when he wrapped an arm about her. She sighed deeply.

“Look.” He pointed.

She did not say anything for a long while. Neither did he. Words were unnecessary. The Christmas star beamed down at them, symbol of hope, a sign for all who sought wisdom and the meaning of their lives. He was not sure what either of them had learned about Christmas this year, but there was something. It was beyond words at the moment and even beyond coherent thought. But something had been learned. Something had been gained.

“It is Christmas,” she said softly at last. Her words held a wealth of meaning beyond themselves.

“Yes,” he said, turning his face and kissing the untidy titian hair on top of her head. “Yes, it is Christmas. Did they have their daughter?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I have never seen two people so happy, my lord. On Christmas morning. Could there be a more precious gift?”

“I doubt it,” he said, closing his eyes briefly.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.