by Mary Balogh
“Which you assuredly are not,” he said, looking at the snow caked all over her back.
She giggled at him. “I dare you to try it, Uncle Warren,” she said.
“It certainly does not behoove my dignity to be making snow angels,” he said.
But he did it anyway because it had never been his way to resist a dare.
And then they were all doing it until they had a whole army of angels fast disappearing beneath the still-falling snow. Like a parcel of children, he thought in some disgust, instead of two adults, one young person, and one child.
“This must be the multitude of the heavenly host that sang with the angel Gabriel to Mary,” he said. “I do not know about the rest of you, but I have snow trickling down my neck and turning to water. It does not feel comfortable at all. I think hot drinks at the house are called for.”
“Veronica has made the best angels,” Deborah said generously. “Look how dainty they are.”
It was the first time she had mentioned his daughter by name, the viscount thought.
“That is because she is a real little angel,” he said, stooping down impulsively and sweeping the child up into his arms. “Are you cold, Veronica?”
“A little, Papa,” she admitted.
She weighed almost nothing at all. He tightened his hold on her and realized something suddenly. He was going to miss her when she went away. He was always going to be wondering if she were happy, if she were being loved properly, if she were hiding inside herself.
“Snuggle close,” he said. “I shall have you inside where it is warm before you know it.”
Miss Craggs, he noticed, was watching him with shining eyes-and shining red nose. She looked more beautiful than ever. Which was a strange thought to have when, really, she was not beautiful at all.
At first she was going to go to church alone. It was something she had always done on Christmas Eve and something she wanted to do more than ever here. She had seen the picturesque stone church on her journeys to the village. And the thought of trudging through snow in order to reach it was somehow appealing. It would bring another part of her dream to life.
She asked Veronica at dinner-the child still ate in the dining room with the adults-if she would mind not being sat with tonight until she slept.
Jane explained her reason.
“I promise to look in on you as soon as I return,” she said.
But Veronica looked at her rather wistfully. “May I come too, Miss Jane?” she asked.
It would be very late for a child to be up, but Viscount Buckley immediately gave his permission and announced his intention of attending church, too. And then Deborah wondered aloud if Mr. George Oxenden would be at church, blushed, and declared that anyway she always enjoyed a Christmas service.
And so they walked together the mile to the church, the snow being rather too deep for the carriage wheels, Veronica between Jane and the viscount, holding to a hand of each, while Deborah half tripped along beside them. And they sat together in church, Veronica once again between the two adults until after a series of yawns she climbed onto Jane’s lap and snuggled close. Jane was unable to stand for the final hymn, but she sat holding the child, thinking about the birth of the Christ child and understanding for the first time the ecstasy Mary must have felt to have her baby even though she had had to give birth far from home and inside a stable.
Christmas, Jane thought, was the most wonderful, wonderful time of the year.
They walked home after the viscount had greeted his neighbors and Deborah had chatted with her new friends, the Oxenden sisters, and had been rewarded with a nod and a smile and a Christmas greeting from their elder brother. Jane sat holding the sleeping child on her lap while she waited for them.
And then Viscount Buckley was bending over her in the pew and opening his greatcoat and lifting his daughter into his own arms and wrapping the coat about her. Jane smiled at him. Oh, he felt it too. What a tender paternal gesture! He loved the child and would keep her with him.
Of course he would. It was something she, Jane, would be able to console herself with when she was back at Miss Phillpotts’s. Though she would not think of that. Not yet. She was going to have her one wonderful Christmas first.
And wonderful it was, too, she thought as they approached the house in a night that was curiously bright despite the fact that there were clouds overhead-more snow clouds. It was her dream come true, even though not every window in the house blazed with light. But close enough to her dream to make her believe for once in her life in miracles.
Deborah was yawning and ready for bed by the time they reached the house. She went straight to her room. Veronica stirred and grumbled in her father’s arms as he carried her upstairs. Jane followed him and undressed the child in her bedchamber while he waited in the nursery. He came to stand in the doorway as he always did after Jane had tucked her up in bed. She was only half-awake.
“Good night, Mama,” she said.
Jane could hardly speak past the ache in her throat. “Good night, sweetheart,” she said softly.
“Good night, Papa.”
“Good night, Veronica,” he said.
Jane sat for a few minutes on the side of the bed, though it was obvious that the child had slipped back into sleep. She was too embarrassed to face the viscount. But when she rose and turned to leave the room, she found that he was still standing in the doorway.
“I ordered hot cider sent to the library,” he said. “Come with me there?”
She longed to be able to escape to her room. Or a part of her did, anyway-that part that was flustered and even frightened at the thought of being alone with him. But the other part of herself, the part that was living and enjoying this Christmas to the full, leaped with gladness. She was going to sit and talk with him again? She only hoped that she would be able to think of something to say, that her mind would not turn blank.
When they reached the library, he motioned her to the chair she had occupied once before. He ladled hot cider into two glasses and handed her one before seating himself at the other side of the fire.
She had never drunk cider before. It was hot and tasted of cinnamon and other unidentified spices. It was delicious. She looked into the glass and concentrated her attention on it. She could not think of anything to say. She wished she had made some excuse after all and gone to bed.
“You were going to spend Christmas alone at the school?” he asked her.
“Yes.” She looked up at him unwillingly.
“Where does your family live?” he asked. “Was it too far for you to travel?”
She had never talked about herself. There was nothing to talk about. She could be of no possible interest to anyone except herself.
“I have no family,” she said. She was not particularly given to self-pity, either. But the words sounded horribly forlorn. She looked down into her drink again.
“Ah,” he said, “I am sorry. Have they been long deceased?”
“I believe,” she said after rejecting her first impulse, which was to invent a mythical warm and loving family, “I was the product of a union much like yours and Veronica’s mother’s. I do not know who my mother was. I believe she must have died when I was very young. Or perhaps she merely did not want to be burdened with me. I do not know my father, either. He put me into an orphanage until I was old enough to go to Miss Phillpotts’s school. He supported me there until I was seventeen. I have earned my way there since.”
He said nothing for a long time. She kept her eyes on her drink, but she did not lift it to her mouth. She knew her hand would shake if she tried it.
“You have never known a family,” he said very quietly at last.
“No.” But she did not want him to think that she was trying to enlist his pity. “The orphanage was a good one. The school is an expensive one.
He cared enough to make sure that my material needs were catered to and that I had a good enough education to make my way in the world.”
&
nbsp; “But you stayed at the school,” he said. “Why?”
How could she explain that, cold and cheerless as it was, the school was the only home she had known, that it was the only anchor in her existence? How could she explain how the thought of being cast adrift in unfamiliar surroundings, without even the illusion of home and family, terrified her?
“I suppose,” she said, “I drifted into staying there.”
“In an environment that is wholly female,” he said. “Have you never wanted to find yourself a husband and have a family of your own, Miss Craggs?”
Oh, it was a cruel question. How could she find a husband for herself?
Even if she left Miss Phillpotts’s, what could she hope to do except teach somewhere else or perhaps be someone’s governess? There was no hope of matrimony for someone like her. And a family of her own? How could she even dream of a family when there was no possibility of a husband?
To her annoyance, she could think of no answer to make. And in her attempt to cover up her confusion, she lifted her glass to her lips, forgetting that her hand would shake. It did so and she had to lower the glass, the cider untasted. She wondered if he had noticed.
“How did you know,” he asked, seeming to change the subject, “that Veronica hides inside herself? I begin to think you must be right, but how did you realize it?”
“She is too quiet, too docile, too obedient for a child,” she said.
“Did you know it from experience?” he asked.
“I…” She swallowed. “Is this an interrogation, my lord? I am not accustomed to talking about myself.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Does no one ever ask you about yourself? Does Miss Phillpotts believe she does you a favor by keeping you on at the school?
And do the teachers and pupils take their cue from her? Do they all call you Craggs, as Deborah did until recently? Does no one call you Jane?”
For some reason she felt as if she had been stabbed to the heart. There was intense pain.
“Teachers are not usually called by their first names,” she said.
“But teachers should have identities apart from their career,” he said.
“Should they not, Jane? For how long have you been in hiding?”
“Please.” She set her hardly tasted cider on the small table beside her and got to her feet. “It is late, my lord. It is time for me to say good-night.”
“Have I been very impertinent, Jane?” He, too, stood, and somehow he possessed himself of both her hands. “No, you do not need to answer. I have been impertinent and it has been unpardonable of me when you are a guest in my home and when you have been very kind to both Deborah and my daughter and when you have brought Christmas to this house for the first time in years. Forgive me?”
“Of course,” she said, trying to draw her hands free of his without jerking on them. She felt again as if she were suffocating. His closeness and his maleness were overpowering her. “It is nothing, my lord.”
“It is something,” he said. “It is just that you have intrigued me during the past few days, Jane. You are like two people. Much of the time you are a disciplined, prim and-forgive me-plain teacher. But sometimes you are eager and warm and quite incredibly beautiful. I have been given the impression that the latter person has come bubbling up from very deep within. Is she the real person, the one you hide from the world, the one you have never had a chance to share with anyone else?”
“Please.” She dragged at her hands but was unable to free them. Her voice, she noticed in some dismay, sounded thin and distressed. She sounded on the verge of tears.
“He was a fool, your father,” he said. “He had you to love and let opportunity pass him by.”
She forgot herself instantly. She looked up into his face, her eyes wide. “And are you going to make the same mistake?” she asked. “You too have a daughter to love.”
“But the situation is different,” he said. “I am not going to abandon her to an orphanage or a school. I am going to find her the very best parents I can.”
“But she is four years old,” Jane said. “Do you not think she will remember, however hazily? She will remember that her mother disappeared mysteriously and she will try to persuade herself that she died and did not merely abandon her. You need to tell her the truth. However cruel it seems now, she needs to know. And she will remember that her father was titled and wealthy and that he cared enough to provide for her physical needs but did not care enough to provide for the only need that mattered.”
“And that is?” He was frowning and she thought that perhaps he was angry. But so was she. She would answer his question.
“The need for love,” she said. “The need to know that to someone she means more than anything else in the world.”
“But she is illegitimate.” He was almost whispering. “She is the daughter I fathered on a mistress. Do you understand, Jane? Do you know anything about what is acceptable and what is not in polite society?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, I know, my lord. I am such a daughter too, remember. No one in my memory has ever wanted to know me as a person. No one has ever hugged me. Or kissed me. No one has ever loved me. I am three-and-twenty now, old enough to bear the burdens of life alone, but I would not want another child to have to live the life I have lived.
Not Veronica. I hope she will remember that you have kissed her cheek and rubbed your hand in her hair and carried her home from church inside your greatcoat. I am not sure it will help a great deal, but I hope she remembers even so. I wish I had such memories.”
“Jane,” he said, his voice shaken. “Oh, my poor Jane.”
And before she knew what was to happen or could do anything to prevent it, his hands had released hers and grasped her by the shoulders instead, and he had pulled her against him. And before her mind could cope with the shock of feeling a man’s warm and firmly muscled body against her own, his mouth was on hers, warm and firm, his lips slightly parted.
For a moment-for a fleeting moment after her mind had recovered from its first shock-she surrendered to the heady physical sensation of being embraced by a man and to the realization that she was experiencing her first real kiss. And then she got her palms against her chest and pushed firmly away from him.
“No,” she said. “No, my lord, it is not poor Jane. It is poor Veronica.
She has a father who could love her, I believe, but who feels that the conventions of society are of greater importance than love.”
She did not give him a chance to reply though he reached for her again.
She whisked herself about and out of the room and fled upstairs to her bedchamber as if being pursued by a thousand devils.
It had snowed a little more during the night. The viscount stood at his window, eager to go downstairs to begin the day, yet wanting at the same time to stay where he was until he could safely escape to the Oxendens’ house. He wanted to go downstairs because he had told her the truth last night. She had brought Christmas to his home for the first time in many years, and he found himself hungry for it. And yet he dreaded seeing her this morning after his unpardonable indiscretion of the night before.
And he dreaded seeing Veronica. He dreaded being confronted with love.
He had decided six years ago to the day that he must be incapable of loving enough to satisfy another person. He had confined his feelings since then to friendships and to lust.
She was wrong. It was not that he put the conventions of society before love as much as that he did not believe he could love his daughter as well as a carefully chosen couple would. He wanted Veronica to have a happy childhood. Because he loved her. He tested the thought in his mind, but he could not find fault with it. He did love her. The thought of giving her up to another couple was not a pleasant one. And that was an understatement.
He was the first one downstairs. Before going to the breakfast room he went into the drawing room to take the parcels he had bought in a visit to a nearby town two days before and a f
ew he had brought home with him and to set them down beside the rudely carved but curiously lovely Nativity scene with its Mary and Joseph and babe in a manger and a single shepherd and lamb. They had been set up last night. He was seeing them for the first time.
He looked about the room. And he thought of his irritation at finding himself saddled with his niece for Christmas and of her sullenness at being abandoned by her parents and left to his care. And of the terrible aloneness of Veronica as she had sat in his hall, like a labeled parcel abandoned until someone could find time to open it.
Yes, Jane had transformed his home and the three of them who lived in it with her. Under the most unpromising of circumstances she had brought the warmth and joy of Christmas. He wondered if it was something she was accustomed to doing. But he knew even as he thought it that that was not it at all. If she had been about to spend Christmas alone at the school this year, then surely she must have spent it alone there last year and the year before. His heart chilled. Had she ever spent Christmas in company with others? Had she always been alone?
Was all the love of her heart, all the love of her life being poured out on this one Christmas she was spending with strangers? With three other waifs like herself? But she was so much stronger than they. Without her, he felt, the rest of them would have wallowed in gloom.
But his thoughts were interrupted. Deborah burst into the room, parcels in her hands. She set them beside his and turned to smile at him.
“Happy Christmas, Uncle Warren,” she said. “Veronica is up.
Craggs-Miss Craggs-is dressing her and brushing her hair. They will be down soon. I wish they would hurry. I have presents for everyone. I bought them in the village shop. And you have presents too. Is there one for me?”
“Yes.” He grinned at her. “Happy Christmas, Deborah.”
And then they came into the room, hand in hand, Jane and Veronica, and his heart constricted at sight of them. His two ladies. Jane was carrying two parcels. Veronica was saucer-eyed.
And finally it was there again, full-grown-the glorious wonder of Christmas in a young child’s eyes, which were fixed on the Nativity scene and on the parcels beside it. He hurried across the room to her and stooped down without thought to lift her into his arms.
