Читать книгу The Heart Of Christmas: A Handful Of Gold / The Season for Suitors / This Wicked Gift - Nicola Cornick, Courtney Milan - Страница 8

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.