“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “That would be very pleasant.”

Very pleasant indeed, the Marquess of Bedford was thinking the following afternoon as the five of them descended the steps of his house and set off past the formal gardens and the lawns and orchards to the trees and the lake and the hill and eventually the holly bushes.

She was wearing a cloak that looked altogether too thin for the weather.

And beneath it he could see the same wool dress she had worn for her first interview with him. Except that he had realized the day before that it could not, after all, be her oldest gown. The cotton dress she had worn when he and Dora had called upon her was so faded that it was difficult to tell exactly what its original color had been.

The children were striding along ahead, one Angove on each side of Dora, Megan holding her hand. Dora had had a hard time getting to sleep the night before. He had sat with her, as he had each night since their coming into the country, until she fell asleep. He had sat there for almost an hour.

“We won’t forget the mistletoe, Papa?” she had asked after he had tucked her comfortably into her bed.

“No,” he had assured her, “we won’t forget the mistletoe.”

“Will you kiss me, Papa?” she had asked.

He had leaned over her again and kissed her.

“Under the mistletoe, silly,” she had said, chuckling uncontrollably for all of two minutes.

“Yes, I will kiss you, poppet,” he had said. “Go to sleep now.”

But she had opened her eyes several minutes later. “Do you think Andrew will remember the shepherd, Papa?” she had asked.

“I expect so,” he had said.

He had thought her asleep ten minutes after that. He had been considering getting up from his chair, tiptoeing out of the room, and leaving her to the care of her nurse.

“Papa,” she had said suddenly, frowning up at him, “what is a Nativity scene?”

“A Nativity scene,” he had said. “I’ll tell you some other time. It is time to sleep now.”

“It won’t rain tomorrow, Papa, will it?” she had asked plaintively.

She had been excited about the promised outing with the Angoves. More excited than he had seen her since taking her from Lorraine’s parents early the previous spring, a thin and listless and bad-tempered child.

Damnation! he thought now, and offered his arm to Lilias. Events could not have turned more to her advantage if she really had planned them.

The afternoon before he had thought she had, but he had been forced to admit to himself later that she could not have done so. Too much had depended upon chance. She had not even known that he and Dora were going to call on her.

But she would take full advantage of the cozy family outing. He supposed he would be forced to listen to patient cheerfulness about the prospective post as governess and tender lamentations on the fact that the family was about to be broken up. Doubtless she would confide again her intention of reuniting them when she had made her fortune as a governess.

Lilias. He had not expected her to come to this. He looked down at her as she walked silently at his side. She had not grown since the age of sixteen. Her head still barely passed his shoulder. Her hair was still smooth and fair beneath her bonnet. But she was thinner. Her hand, even inside its glove, was too slender on his arm. Her face was thin and pale. Her dark-lashed gray eyes seemed larger in contrast. She really did look as if she were half-starved.

Damnation!

“I wanted Christmas for my daughter,” he told her, realizing with a jolt as he heard his own words that that was exactly what she had said to him four days before about her brother and sister. “Christmas as I remembered it. I thought I would find it here. But I chose just the year when there is no snow. Only this infernal cold and damp.”

“But it did not always snow,” she said, looking up at him. “Just very rarely, I think. It was especially lovely when it did. But Christmas was always wonderful anyway.”

“Was it?” He frowned.

She drew breath as if to speak, but she seemed to change her mind.

“Yes,” she said.

“I have your watch,” he said. “It is at the house. I shall see that you have it before you leave after tea.”

She looked up at him again, bright-eyed. “Thank you,” she said.

Here we go, he thought. He had supplied her with the perfect opportunity to heap upon his head reflections on how happy the boy would be during the coming years and how he would be able to remember his sisters and their life together every time he pulled the watch from his pocket. He clamped his teeth together and felt his jaw tighten.

He felt guilty suddenly. She so obviously was very poor, and it was so obviously true that the three of them were to be separated after Christmas. He just wished she had not decided to use the pathos of her situation to win herself a rich and gullible husband.

Except that he was not gullible. Not any longer.

She half-smiled at him and shifted her gaze to the three children, who were now quite a distance ahead of them. She said nothing.

Dora was skipping along, he was surprised to notice when he followed the direction of Lilias’s eyes.

“This is where we got the holly yesterday,” Megan announced a while later when they came up to the thicket. And then she looked at Lilias, a hand over her mouth, and giggled.

Andrew was laughing too. “We were not supposed to say,” he said, darting a mischievous look at the marquess. “We were trespassing.”

Lilias was blushing very rosily, Bedford saw when he glanced at her. She looked far more as she had looked as a girl.

“But these ones don’t have as many berries as yours,” Dora complained.

“All the good branches are high up,” Andrew said. “We could not reach them yesterday. Even Lilias.”

“It seems that I am elected,” the marquess said. “Thank goodness for leather gloves. This looks like certain self-destruction.”

Megan giggled as he stepped forward and his coat caught on the lower branches of holly. He had to disengage himself several times before he could reach up to cut the branches that were loaded with berries. His upturned face was showered with water. Dora was giggling too.

Lilias had stepped in behind him to take the holly as he handed it down.

Her gloves and cloak were not heavy enough to protect her from hurt, he thought, and clamped his lips together as he was about to voice the thought.

“Ouch,” Dora cried excitedly, and giggled even more loudly. “I have almost as big an armful as you, Andrew. I have more than Megan. Oh, ouch!”

“You must not clutch them,” Andrew said. “Just hold them enough that they do not drop.”

“Well,” the Marquess of Bedford said when he paused and looked behind him. “You look like four walking holly bushes. Do you think you can stagger back to the house with that load? Only now does it strike me that we should have had a wagon sent after us.”

“Oh, no,” Andrew said. “That would spoil the fun.”

“This is such fun, Papa,” Dora said.

“Let me take some of this load,” Bedford said, reaching out to take some from Lilias’s arms, “before you disappear entirely behind it.”

Her eyes were sparkling up at him.

“But, Papa,” Dora wailed. “The mistletoe.”

“Oh, Lord,” he said, “the mistletoe. I shall go and get some. You all start back to the house.” But she was loaded down. She would never get back without being scratched to death. “Better still, drop your load, Lilias, and show me where this mistletoe is. You children, on your way.

We will catch up to you.”

God, he thought, turning cold as she did what she had been told-considering her load, she had had little choice-he had called her Lilias. The witch! Her wiles were working themselves beneath his guard despite himself. His jaw hardened again.

She led him around past the thicket of holly bushes, past the old oaks, to the mistletoe, which he had forgotten about. The old oaks! He had climbed them with her, to sit in the lower branches, staring at the sky and dreaming aloud with her. He could remember lifting her down from the lowest branch of one-he could not remember which-and kissing her, her body pressed against the great old trunk, her hands spread on either side of her head, palm to palm against his. He could remember laughing at her confusion because he had traced the line of her lips with his tongue.

“It was all a long time ago,” he said abruptly, and felt remarkably foolish as soon as the words were spoken. As if he had expected her to follow his train of thought.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

He gave her the mistletoe to carry, being very careful not to lift it above the level of her head as he handed it to her. And on the way back he took the large bundle of holly into his own arms, against her protests, to carry to the house.

“My coat and my gloves are heavier than yours,” he said.

She brushed her face against the mistletoe as they walked.

“I suppose,” he said harshly after a few silent minutes, “you do not get enough to eat.”

She looked up at him, startled. “My lord?” she said.

“Your brother and sister do not look undernourished,” he said. “I suppose you give all your food to them.”

Her flush was noticeable even beneath the rosiness that the wind and cold had whipped into her cheeks.

“What a ridiculous notion,” she said. “I would have starved to death.”

“And have been doing almost that, by the look of you,” he said, appalled at his own lack of breeding and good manners.

“What I do is my own business, I thank you, my lord,” she said. Her voice was as chill as his own, he realized. “I do not choose to discuss either my appetite or my means with you.”

“You were quite willing to do so a few days ago,” he said.