A Regency Christmas VI

by Mary Balogh, Jo Beverley, Sandra Heath, Edith Layton, Laura Matthews

  He could not expect Lady Carlyle to put herself out. It had not escaped his notice that she had avoided answering his question about her willingness to expose her fingers and toes and nose to the cold of the outdoors. Doubtless she would remain indoors, smiling encouragement through the windows. Perhaps even that would be too far from the fire for her.

  He scowled and his fingers drummed harder. He should have let her know that he was coming down here himself. She could have stayed in London. But, damn it, that would not have been fair. It was as much her responsibility as his to arrange for the future of their orphaned nephew and nieces. More hers than his—she was a woman, after all, and children were a woman’s domain. Though he had the grace to admit—irritably—to himself that there was little justice in that argument either.

  But he wished she had stayed away or that she had given him notice of her intention to come here so that he could have stayed away. It was not a large cottage. Their bedchambers were next to each other. He turned his head to glance at the wall between his chamber and hers. He had looked at the wall several times during a restless and almost sleepless night. He had even found himself idly calculating how many feet there must be between his bed and hers.

  And he had found himself remembering unwillingly the lithe, vividly beautiful, smiling, intelligent, witty girl she had been during her first season. And his own deep infatuation with her. And hers with him. They had been betrothed after two months, even though she was from an untitled family and had almost nothing for a dowry. For a month after that they had planned and dreamed and loved—innocently. The only real embrace they had shared was that one at Vauxhall.

  He had known many restless, almost sleepless nights in those days.

  And then her brother, whose unsavory reputation he had ignored because he loved her, had started paying attention to his sister, who at the age of seventeen had not even been brought out yet. And the two of them, who had been meeting behind his back, had soon declared their intention of marrying. They had driven Ursula and him apart. They had quarreled bitterly, each defending a brother or sister that each cast off just a short while later. But not soon enough to save their own betrothal.

  The viscount drummed his fingers faster yet. He had had a narrow escape. Before he had been able to gather together the shreds of his pride in order to go to her and apologize and patch things up, she had announced her betrothal to Carlyle and had married him almost immediately after. Such had been the depth of her feelings for him.

  He turned resolutely from the window and crossed the room to the door. He did not normally go without breakfast, but he did not feel like any this morning. He did not feel like being sociable or a prey to her sharp tongue. Not that she was likely to be up yet. Most ladies of his acquaintance, and even more so those who were not ladies, did not emerge from their boudoirs until close to noon. But he was not willing to take the risk. He turned his steps in the direction of the nursery. At least taking the children outside would give him a chance to escape from her altogether for a few hours.

  He turned the handle of the door quietly and opened the door slowly. Perhaps even the children were not up yet. But they were, and predictably they were clustered in front of the window with their nurse. No—their nurse was not slender. Neither did she have red hair.

  Damnation! His mind reached for—and found—a few far more satisfactory words with which to describe his feelings as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. The children’s nurse was curtsying deeply somewhere off to his right. He turned his head and nodded to her before giving his attention to the group by the window.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, Uncle.”

  A frosty inclination of a proud head.

  Big brown eyes staring silently upward from beneath soft brown curls.

  The way I spent my Christmas, he thought ruefully, returning the greetings and strolling across the room toward them.

  “An empty, white world,” he said, looking out over their heads. “I believe your snow snakes have been buried, Caroline.”

  She shook her head and pointed. When he looked down, he could see that sure enough, there were snakes—far longer ones—blowing across the top of the snow cover.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “They are going to the ice palace,” the child said. “Where the prince lives.”

  “I see. They are going to tell him so that he can go and rescue the princess,” he said. He had almost forgotten the magic wonderland of a child’s imagination, the world in which anything could be something else and nothing was impossible. He felt a sudden and quite unexpected wave of nostalgia.

  “Patricia is going to paint, sir,” Rupert said. “She is a good painter. I am going to practice my penmanship. I make too many blots when I write and my letters are different sizes.”

  “But he tries, Uncle,” Patricia said. “And he is getting better.”

  The viscount looked down at them, at the brave little eight-year-old boy who was trying valiantly to be a man and to ignore the snow beyond the window, and at the loyal little seven-year-old redhead, who would defend her brother in any way she could from an uncle’s possible wrath over a blot or a malformed letter.

  Something that felt very like his heart turned inside him.

  His eyes met Lady Carlyle’s and held them. She looked steadily back.

  “I left it for you,” she said. “Men are generally the rule-makers.”

  He looked down at the upturned faces of his nephew and nieces, faces without any hope, but with only a quiet acceptance of the way things were and must be.

  He clasped his hands at his back. “Do painting and penmanship sound more inviting than going outside into the snow to play and build snowmen and make snow angels and throw snowballs?” he asked. “If they do, we will forget about going outside. But I for one will be sorry.”

  The little one gazed up at him without a noticeable change of expression. An almost painful hope came alive in the eyes of the other two.

  “My lord—” The nurse sounded almost panic-stricken.

  He turned to look at her, his eyebrows raised. He shamelessly used his haughtiest, most aristocratic manner. “Yes, Mrs. Chambers?”

  “My lord,” she said. “The vicar. The Misses Hickman-Pugh. There would be a scandal.”

  He would have verbally consigned the vicar and the Misses Hickman-Pugh, whoever they were, to the devil, but he remembered the presence of the children and the two reprimands for his language he had received the evening before. “We will use the back garden so that no one will see and be scandalized, Mrs. Chambers,” he said. “If, that is”—he turned back to the children—“anyone wishes to accompany me outside. If not, I shall stay inside too. It is no fun playing in the snow alone.”

  “I’ll come, sir,” Rupert said hastily. “If it is not improper and disrespectful to Mama and Papa.”

  “It is not, sweetheart,” Lady Carlyle said quietly. Lord Morsey’s eyes flew to hers. She had called him that—twice—during the month of their betrothal. But she was smiling down at their nephew, something like tenderness in her eyes.

  “I’ll come too.” Hope sounded almost like agony in Patricia’s voice. “May we, Nurse? Please, please?”

  “With respect to Mrs. Chambers, Patricia,” Lady Carlyle said firmly, “it must be said that your uncle Timothy now stands in place of your papa, since your papa is—has passed on. If Uncle Timothy says you may play outside in the snow, then you may do so.”

  “Oh,” Patricia said, her eyes widening with longing.

  “I am going to make a snowman eight feet tall,” Rupert cried, his eyes beginning to sparkle, his voice sounding like an exuberant child’s. “And six feet broad.”

  Someone was patting one leg of the viscount’s pantaloons, just above the knee. Big brown eyes were gazing up at him. “Are you our Uncle Timothy?” Caroline asked.

  “The one and only.” He smiled at her. “And this is your Aunt Ursula.” He realized
that the children had not even known their names. He should not have turned his back completely on Marjorie, he realized. He should have tolerated her, and the intolerable Parr, if only for the sake of the children. Children needed uncles and aunts. And cousins. He thought briefly of the four cousins—two boys and two girls—he and Ursula might have been able to present them with by now.

  “Nurse will bundle you all up warmly,” he said. “We will meet downstairs in ten minutes’ time. Are you coming too, Caroline?”

  She nodded. Her face was still tilted up sharply to him. How could any parents with three such children look for treasure elsewhere? he wondered, setting a hand lightly on her soft curls.

  “Can Aunt Ursula come too?” she asked him.

  “I believe your aunt would prefer the comfort of the indoors,” he said. “Grown ladies usually do.”

  “What?” He heard the indignation in Lady Carlyle’s voice before he looked up to see her nostrils flaring, her eyes flashing, and her hair glowing—he could remember teasing her that her hair seemed to take on more vivid color when she was angry about something. “I have never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. I am to be denied the fun of romping outdoors after a rare snowstorm merely because I am a grown lady and ladies usually are milksops? This one is not, my lord.” She turned in the direction of the door. “I shall see you all downstairs, suitably attired for the outdoors, in nine minutes.” The door closed none too gently behind her.

  “I think Aunt Ursula wants to go out to play,” Caroline whispered.

  The other two children whooped and squealed and snorted with glee at the idea of a grown lady wanting to go out to play, and Caroline giggled at the reaction her words had provoked. It was the first time the three of them had really looked or sounded like children since his arrival, Viscount Morsey thought.

  “She was bristling like a hedgehog when I suggested she might want to stay indoors, was she not?” he said. “Grown ladies have to be handled with kid gloves, you know.”

  His words threw the children into spasms of renewed hilarity.

  Viscount Morsey, deliberately avoiding looking at their nurse and her reaction, smirked and left the room.

  It was wonderful. It was the most wonderful time she had ever had in her life. There was no doubt about it in Caroline’s mind. There was nothing else to compare to it—even the picnic the Misses Hickman-Pugh had taken them on last summer when they had got to ride in a landau and when she had got to hold Miss Olga Hickman-Pugh’s parasol and even to twirl it above her head until Miss Iola Hickman-Pugh had remarked that she might break it and Miss Olga had taken it back and kissed her on the cheek and called her a dear child.

  Even that had not been nearly as wonderful as the morning playing in the snow turned out to be.

  It started disastrously. Or what seemed to be disastrously. Caroline ran out the back door after Rupert into the deep white snow, skidded before she had taken three steps, and landed flat on her back. She did not hurt herself—there was too much snow and she was wearing too many clothes. But there was the shock of falling so suddenly and the coldness of snow under her collar and up her cuffs and on her cheeks and in her mouth. And there was the humiliation. Everyone laughed.

  Caroline might have cried, though she rarely did so. But no sooner had she fallen and everyone had started laughing than Uncle Timothy skidded quite clumsily and bellowed quite deafeningly and landed with a great thud on his back and roared with fury when the laughter was suddenly turned on him. Until Rupert took a step closer to see if Uncle Timothy was really hurt and their uncle caught him by his ankle and tumbled him down too. And when Patricia ran to help him up, Uncle Timothy reached up with both hands to catch her by the waist and roll her in the snow.

  And then they were all laughing, Caroline too. Except for Aunt Ursula, who stood with her hands on her hips and told them that she had never in her life seen four people make such spectacles of themselves. But Caroline noticed that her eyes were twinkling as she said it, so she did not mean it. And then Uncle Timothy stretched out one long leg and hooked his boot around one of her ankles, and she toppled down too.

  And they all laughed again. Aunt Ursula too this time. Though she threatened to get Uncle Timothy back. And she did too. After they had all got up and brushed themselves off and were wading away into the garden to find a good spot for building snowmen, Aunt Ursula lagged behind with Caroline, stooped down to pick up a handful of snow, molded it into a ball, winked at Caroline, and hurled it at Uncle Timothy’s back. It hit him on the neck, where the snow was bound to drip down inside his collar.

  Caroline giggled. She giggled even harder when Uncle Timothy whirled around and, faster than anyone could blink, formed a ball of snow of his own and threw it right into Aunt Ursula’s face. Which meant, of course, that Aunt Ursula had to get him back again. Soon there were snowballs zooming through the air, even though Uncle Timothy was roaring out that it was unfair they were all throwing theirs at him.

  “Children know how to defend a lady’s honor,” Aunt Ursula yelled back at him. “And this lady knows how to defend her own, my dear lord.”

  But Caroline knew that it was all in fun. That was what made it so wonderful. And Uncle Timothy only threw the littlest snowballs at her. He hit her every time until she was so helpless with giggles that she could not throw back.

  They finally made the snowmen. Or rather, Rupert and Uncle Timothy made a snowman, fat and round and tall. Caroline preferred to make a dragon and Aunt Ursula and Patricia helped her, even though Aunt Ursula at first declared that she had no idea what a dragon looked like or how they were to build one. Rupert said the dragon they built looked like a tired cow, but Uncle Timothy disagreed and said that their dragon definitely looked the type to run off with a beautiful princess. And then he disappeared into the house and came back with carrots and a few pieces of coal. He had left Cook with her jaw hanging, he told them, but no self-respecting snowman or snow dragon was complete without a nose and eyes and a few buttons.

  “Does a dragon have a nose?” he asked Aunt Ursula after he had finished with Rupert’s fat man. He was holding the remaining carrot in his hand.

  “Without a doubt,” Aunt Ursula said. “But not buttons, I suppose. Does our dragon have buttons, Caroline?”

  “He has fangs,” Caroline said. And she was allowed to put on the carrot fangs before they all stood back and laughed at their creations. Caroline thought that her dragon looked too lovable to kidnap a princess, but she did not say so. She did not want to hurt Aunt Ursula’s feelings or Patricia’s. She loved her dragon.

  “And now Patricia’s snow angels,” Aunt Ursula said. “Unless everyone’s fingers and toes are ready to fall off and everyone would prefer to go inside by the fire to drink chocolate.”

  “Coward,” Uncle Timothy said, which was a rude thing to say, but Caroline could tell that he was only teasing. “Shall we let Aunt Ursula go inside for her chocolate, children? Ladies are such delicate creatures, you know.”

  Aunt Ursula was the first to make a snow angel.

  Uncle Timothy and Rupert did not make any at first. They merely watched.

  “What is the matter?” Aunt Ursula asked. “Is the snow too cold for you, my lord?”

  “Snow angels always look distinctly feminine,” Uncle Timothy said. “I do believe making them is beneath our dignity, is it not, Rupert? Of course, we could make Lucifer angels. What do you say, my lad?” Lucifer angels did not look very different from real snow angels to Caroline, except that they were made with a great deal less care so that snow went flying and blurred some of the outlines.

  “Now,” Uncle Timothy said at last, slapping snow off his greatcoat, “what was it someone said a while ago about chocolate and a nice warm fire?”

  Caroline realized suddenly how cold she was. And how tired she was. She yawned without putting a hand over her mouth or silencing the sound. Nurse would have reproved her if she had seen and heard. Aunt Ursula merely smiled and stooped down to pick
her up.

  “Tired, sweetheart?” she asked. “We have played hard. We will have you warm and dry in no time at all.”

  But Uncle Timothy was there beside them before Caroline could snuggle her head against Aunt Ursula’s shoulder. “Here,” he said, “I will take her. She is too heavy for you.”

  He reached out his arms and set them about Caroline, but before he lifted her against him and right inside his greatcoat where she could feel his warmth and smell that pleasant snuffy smell again, he looked into Aunt Ursula’s face and she looked back. They must have been cross-eyed, they were so close, Caroline thought. She did not know why they stared at each other so quietly or why both their arms went stiff about her. They did not say anything or smile or laugh. Caroline yawned once more.

  And then she was up high once more with Uncle Timothy and feeling thoroughly safe again. And warmer. And they were going inside for cups of chocolate.

  It was wonderful. It was the most wonderful time in all her life.

  She was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. Because she was feeling altogether too cozy and comfortable. A bewildering paradox.

  It was time to dress for dinner, but she had not made a move yet. Neither had he. And she felt the treacherous desire to prolong the moment and either be late for dinner—something she was never ill-bred enough to be—or else go down without changing, something she had never done, even when dining alone in her own home.

  She was sitting in a deep chair in the nursery on one side of the fire, Caroline cuddled in her lap. He was sitting in a matching chair at the other side of the fire, his arm about the waist of Patricia, who was sitting on the arm beside him, and his free hand on Rupert’s head as the boy sat on the floor in front of him, leaning back against his legs.