Mary Balogh - Under the Mistletoe

“You are my little Christmas treasure,” he said, drying her eyes and her cheeks. “The best gift I ever had. I love you, dear.”

She reached up to set one soft little hand against his lips. He held it there and kissed it and smiled at her. She yawned hugely and noisily.

“Is Miss Jane going to stay, too?” she asked.

He felt Jane shift position behind him.

“Yes,” he said, “if I can persuade her to. Would you like that?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

And in the way of children she was asleep. Asleep and safe and loved in her father’s arms. He held her there for a few minutes until he was quite sure she would not wake and then stood to set her down carefully in her bed. Jane held the bedclothes back for him and then stepped aside again.

By the time he had tucked the blankets snugly about his daughter and bent to kiss her little mouth, Jane had disappeared.

It had been agreed that the young people could stay at Cosway until midnight. It was no surprise to anyone, then, when they did not actually leave until thirty minutes after the hour. After all, there had to be just one more dance to follow the last and then one more to follow that.

It was the best, the very best Christmas she had ever known, Deborah declared, dancing before her uncle and Jane in the hall after everyone had finally gone.

“But do not tell Mama and Papa,” she said to the viscount, giggling, “or they will be hurt.”

“It will be our secret,” he said dryly. “Upstairs with you, now. It is long past your bedtime.”

She pulled a face at him before kissing his cheek and dancing in the direction of the stairs. But she came back again and kissed Jane’s cheek, too, a little self-consciously. “I am glad you came here with me, Miss Craggs,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Good night.” Jane smiled at her. And then, when the girl was only halfway up the stairs, Jane turned, fixed her eyes on the diamond pin Viscount Buckley wore in his neckcloth, and wished him a hasty good-night too.

She was already on her way to the stairs when she felt her hand caught in his.

“Coward!” he said. “You really are a coward, Jane.”

“I am tired,” she said.

“And a liar,” he said.

She looked at him indignantly. He was smiling.

“Into the library,” he said, giving her no chance to protest. He was leading her there by the hand. “I have a job to offer you.”

As Veronica’s nurse? She was too afraid to hope for it, though he had assured his daughter that he would try to persuade her to stay. Oh, would he offer her the job? Could life have such wonder in store for her? After the child no longer needed a nurse, perhaps he would keep her on as a governess. But it was too soon to dream of the future when she was not even sure of the present.

“Jane.” He closed the library door behind him and leaned against it. He was still holding her hand. Someone had lit the branch of candles in there.

“You really do not have to persuade me to stay,” she said breathlessly.

“Veronica will not even remember in the morning that you promised to do so. If you think me unsuitable for the job of nurse, I will understand.

I have had no experience with young children. But I do love her, and I would do my very best if you would consider hiring me. But you must not feel obliged to do so.” She stopped talking abruptly and looked down in some confusion.

“A nurse,” he said. “I do indeed consider you unsuitable for the job, Jane. It was not what I had in mind at all.”

She bit her upper lip, chagrined and shamed. Why, oh, why had she not kept her mouth shut?

“I was hoping you would take on the job of mother,” he said. “Mother of Veronica and mother of my other children. My future children, that is.”

She looked up at him sharply.

“And wife,” he added. “My wife, Jane.”

Oh. She gaped at him. “Me?” she said foolishly. “You want me to be your wife? But you cannot marry me. You know who and what I am.”

“You and my daughter both,” he said, smiling. “Two treasures. I love you, Jane. I have Veronica, thanks to your words of admonition and advice, and she is a priceless possession. But you can make my happiness complete by marrying me. Will you? I cannot blame you if you do not trust me. I am new to love. I have not trusted it for a long time. But I-”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes wide, her heart beating wildly. “You love me?

You love me? How can that be?”

“Because,” he said, still smiling, “I have been playing hide-and-seek, Jane. I have not yet discovered all of you there is to discover. You have done an admirable job over the years of hiding yourself. But what I have seen dazzles me. You are beautiful, inside and out, and I want you for myself. Yes, I love you. Could you ever feel anything for me?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, my lord. I love you with all my heart.”

Somehow his arms were clasped behind her waist and hers behind his neck.

Only a part of her mind had grasped what he was saying to her and what he was asking of her. She knew that it would take a long time before the rest of her brain caught up to the knowledge.

“It is going to have to be Warren,” he said. “Say it before I kiss you.”

“Warren,” she said.

It was a kiss that lasted a scandalous length of time. Before it was over she had allowed him to bend the whole of her body against his and she had responded to the coaxing of his lips and softened her own and even parted them. Before it was over she had allowed his tongue into her mouth and his hands on parts of her body she would have thought horrifyingly embarrassing to have touched. Before it was over she was weak with unfamiliar aches of desire.

“My love,” he was saying against her mouth, “forgive me. I would not have you for the first time on the library floor. It will be on my bed upstairs on our wedding night. If…” He drew his head back and gazed at her with eyes that were heavy with passion and love-for her. “If there is to be a wedding night. Is there? Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, stunned. Had she not already said it? “Warren-”

But whatever she was about to say was soon forgotten as his mouth covered hers again and they moved perilously close after all to anticipating their wedding night.

After all, it was Christmas and they had both just discovered love and joy and romance. And the treasure of a child to love and nurture together.

It was Christmas. Christmas after a long, long time for him.The first Christmas ever for her.

It was Christmas.

The logs in the fireplace were crackling and shooting sparks up into the chimney. The fire’s warmth felt good to the young lady who had just come in from the cold and the wind and rain. She held her hands out to the blaze.

But she could not draw a great deal of comfort from the fire. She caught sight of the hem of her wool dress. It was heavy with wetness and streaked with mud. Her half-boots looked no better. And she wished she had not removed her bonnet and handed it to the footman with her cloak.

Her hair was hopelessly damp and flattened to her head. And she knew that her nose as well as her cheeks must be glowing red.

It was cold outside, and the mile-and-a-half walk across the park to Bedford Hall had been taken into the teeth of the wind and into the driving force of the rain and had seemed more like five miles.

Lilias lowered her hands from the blaze and brushed nervously at her dress. The darned patch near the hem was more noticeable now that the fabric was wet. She looked down at her right wrist and twisted her sleeve so that the darn there would be out of sight.

She should not have come. She had known that as soon as the footman had opened the front doors and asked her, after she stepped inside, if he could take her to Mrs. Morgan. But no, she had replied with a firmness that had been fast deserting her, she was not calling on the housekeeper today. She wished to speak with his lordship, if it was convenient.

She should not have come, a single lady, alone, to speak with a single gentleman. She knew she would never have dared to do so if she were in London or some other fashionable center. Even here in the country it was not at all the thing. She should have brought someone with her, though there was no one to bring except the children. And she did not want them to know she was paying this call.

And who was she, even if she had had a respectable companion, to be paying a call on the Marquess of Bedford? She was wearing her best day dress, yet it was patched in three places. She had had to walk from the village because she owned no conveyance or even a horse or pony. In two weeks’ time she was to be a servant.

She should have come to the kitchen entrance, not to the main doors.

Lilias took one step back from the fireplace, suddenly feeling uncomfortably warm. If she hurried, she could grab her cloak and bonnet from the hallway and be outside and on her way home before any more harm was done. The rain and wind would be at her back on the return journey.

But she was too late. The door to the salon in which she had been asked to wait opened even before she could take one more step toward it, and he stepped inside. Someone closed the door quietly behind him.

The Marquess of Bedford.

Lilias swallowed and unconsciously raised her chin. She clasped her hands before her and dropped into a curtsy. She would scarcely have known him. He looked taller, and he was certainly broader. He bore himself very straight, like a soldier, though he had never been one. He was immaculately and fashionably dressed. His hair was as thick as it had ever been, but its darkness was highlighted now by the suggestion of silver at the temples. But he was not thirty yet.