Christmas Gifts

by Mary Balogh

  Was he mad?

  Very probably, he decided. Because that was exactly what he was planning to do unless he could talk himself out of it within the next two hours.

  He had threatened to beat Charlie for spying on a lady. And what was to be his punishment for attempting to do the exact same thing? Except that he did not mean to follow her home. Did he?

  Good Lord, he thought, he should go down to Buckland Abbey now, this very minute, before it was too late. He could still be part of the wassailing and the caroling and the gift-giving. No, anything but that. Not again. Better to slink about in the shadows of Bond Street shops spying on shabby ladies with emerald eyes. Better to amuse himself again with the image of the perfect spirit of Christmas—a shabby, impoverished lady with a heart of gold.

  If she passed along Bond Street again that day. The odds, he supposed, were very much against her doing so. But he would go along anyway and see. There was not much else to do with his time until Christmas was over.

  She did come, but surely a little later than the day before. The Earl of Kevern had sauntered up and down that particular stretch of the street three times, examining the contents of every shop window on both sides, keeping an eye out for her so that he could duck out of sight if and when she appeared, and generally trying not to look conspicuous.

  He touched his hat twice to Lady Goodborough, once on one side of the street as he walked in one direction, and again on the other side of the street going the other way. Well, he thought, she would merely assume that he was having particular trouble selecting a gift for an aunt or a sister. Which was perhaps exactly what was happening to her.

  There was Christmas all around him again, but it made him uneasy and irritable today. He could not view it with the satirical detachment he had felt the afternoon before. For it was Christmas that had brought him back out again. What else? Christmas always brought the delusion that the impossible might happen and that one might be happy and remain happy. Though what that idea had to do with a shabby stranger he did not know.

  He saw her finally and stepped into the doorway of a bootmaker’s. She was walking in the same direction as the day before and dressed the same—a small, slender, drearily clad young lady, who should not even have caught his eye. She certainly ought not to have held it. There was nothing there to attract.

  Except that ridiculous and affecting spectacle she had made of herself, staring in through a jeweler’s shop window on Bond Street. Though that had not been attractive, but merely pathetic. And those eyes, of course, which he had not even seen until he had committed himself to crossing the street and rescuing her from a little street thief. So he could not say that they were what had attracted him.

  He held his breath without realizing that he did so until she stopped almost opposite where he was standing and looked in the jeweler’s shop window. She would not be disappointed. The Madonna and child were still there, an elegant group in painted porcelain. Though there was something more than mere elegance, he had conceded earlier when he himself had stared in at it. It had been shaped by a feeling hand, by someone who knew something about mother love or father love. Or perhaps merely by someone who had an eye to the purse of a sentimental lady who would view it in a shop window. Only that this lady viewer’s purse was doubtless far too light to oblige.

  The Earl of Kevern lounged in the doorway trying to look as if he was not lurking. What was he to do? Merely stand there and watch until she moved away homeward, as she must do soon? Follow her when she did so? The thought was highly distasteful. Or cross the road to speak to her? But what to say? Merely to touch his hat and wish her a good day? Make some comment on the Madonna? Inquire after her health? Ask her to kindly not haunt his dreams tonight?

  But as he stood there undecided, someone else was far more bold. Denbridge’s son Colley, the young jackanapes. He had been sent down from Oxford the year before for some unknown crime and had proceeded to sow his wild oats in London. And wild his oats were too by all accounts. Having a wealthy and indulgent father and possessing the looks of a blond god ensured that he had not yet reaped the harvest of those oats. But he probably would in time.

  He had stopped and was talking to Julie Bevan. The earl could see his practiced smile in profile. She took one step sideways away from him and continued to stare in at the window. Colley took one step after her. And then she turned to face him, as if to step past, but he touched her arm and she stopped.

  By God, the earl thought, grasping his cane and taking one step out of the doorway in which he stood, there was going to be one crushed beaver hat and one cracked skull when he got himself across the street. And one set of bruised knuckles for himself and a shower of teeth from the mouth of Denbridge’s brat.

  She was looking up at Colley and speaking, and he was smiling back at her. To give her her due, she did not look panic-stricken. She was not falling into a fit of maidenly vapors.

  And then the earl stopped, one foot on the pavement and one on the road. Good Lord. Oh, good Lord. Was he in his dotage already and soft in the brain? She was a working lady. Of course. A working lady. Shabby and genteel and working probably for only half the price she might have commanded if she could have dressed herself in more expensive clothes.

  He clamped his teeth together and returned his forward foot to the pavement.

  And then she turned so that he could see her face, and there was distress in it. She was clearly trying to draw free of the hand that held her arm without drawing undue attention to herself.

  Before the earl could get halfway across the street to her, a little ragged missile launched itself headfirst at the gentleman’s middle, and two thin fists pounded against the expensive capes of a greatcoat, and two ill-shod feet kicked at well-booted thighs. There was a high-pitched roar of rage.

  By the time Lord Kevern arrived on the scene, the Honorable Mr. Cuthbert Colley was shaking a foully cursing little urchin like a rat by the scruff of the neck and Julie Bevan was watching, her hands to her bosom, making no attempt to effect her escape while it was possible. Even some of the polite shoppers on Bond Street had stopped to witness the outburst.

  “Let him go, Colley,” the earl said in the bored tones that characterized him. “It does not look good, my dear fellow, to be brawling with a mere infant.”

  “Not until I have given the little varmint a lesson in good manners,” Mr. Colley said, his voice tight with fury.

  “After you, then,” Lord Kevern said. “I shall await my turn.”

  “He has offended you too, Kevern?” Mr. Colley asked, shaking Charlie Cobban once more and listening with distaste to the stream of unrepeatable language that issued from the child’s mouth.

  “No, no,” the earl said. “Not this afternoon, anyway. It is a big varmint I am waiting to chastise. Though given the very public setting, you may prefer to apologize to the lady and be on your way, Colley. In which case we will forget about the incident, provided it is never repeated.”

  “Lady?” Mr. Colley looked at Julie Bevan incredulously, appeared somewhat embarrassed by what he saw, and released his hold on Charlie, who kicked him once more on the shin. “My apologies, ma’am. I mistook you for, er, someone I know.” He touched his hat, turned on his heel, and was gone without a backward glance.

  “What took you so long, guv?” Charlie asked, wriggling his threadbare clothes back into their proper position. “I might of got the stuffing shook out of me.”

  “Oh, Charlie,” Julie said, “how incredibly brave of you to come to my rescue. I do thank you.” She turned to the earl. “And you, my lord. I am very much afraid that Charlie would have been hurt if you had not been here.”

  “Charlie would have been hurt,” he said. “Are you all right, ma’am? May I offer you my arm? Would you like to sit down at the pastry cook’s again and have some tea?”

  “No.” She smiled. “Though it is very kind of you to offer, my lord. But thank you.” She took his offered arm and her voice wavered a little. “Perhaps I
will lean on you for a few steps if you are walking my way.”

  She was small and fragile and trembling—all the things he most despised in women because they knew so well how to exploit their weaknesses. And yet Julie Bevan did not press her advantage as he fully expected her to do and willed her not to do. She turned her head aside instead and beckoned Charlie to walk on her other side.

  “Did he hurt you, Charlie?” she asked. “Oh, you poor brave boy.” And her hand continued to tremble on the earl’s arm, and her voice continued to shake. “Will you walk home with me? There are some cakes being baked for Christmas today, and you shall take some home for yourself and your family.”

  All the boy needed, Lord Kevern thought, was another evening of cakes to stuff into himself and he would be ill in good earnest.

  “Do give him instructions not to eat them all at once,” he said, “or he will spend Christmas with a sore stomach.”

  She smiled up at him. “Not if he shares,” she said. She stopped walking and withdrew her arm from his. “Thank you for your support, my lord. I am better now. I shall bid you a good day.”

  He should do the same for her, he thought. He should hurry home and shut himself away from Christmas before he was further infected by it. Before he was caught up more fully in the hypocrisy and the artificiality and the sheer unreality of it.

  “I shall see you to your door, ma’am,” he said, “with Charlie as your chaperon. I shall see to it that you are not accosted again.”

  Her smile was a little sad, he thought. “It was my fault for stopping,” she said. “I should know from experience that that only invites unwelcome advances. But I always avoid them when I keep my head down and walk briskly. I shall be quite safe, my lord. And there is quite a distance yet to walk. I would not take you out of your way.”

  “If you will not take my arm and let me accompany you,” he said, “then I shall follow along behind like a watchdog. Which would you have?”

  Her smile showed some amusement. “Your arm, then,” she said. “I must confess it will be a rare treat to feel thoroughly safe. But what a strange coincidence that you should be there again today, my lord, at the same place.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A strange coincidence.”

  “And Charlie too,” she said with a laugh.

  Charlie, the earl noticed when he looked, was engaged in his usual bobbing motion along the curb, one foot on and one foot off, and was glaring back at him accusingly. His lordship raised his eyebrows.

  She lived on a street of shabby, down-at-heel gentility. It was not exactly a slum, but it would be before too many years had passed. She stopped before a terraced house and withdrew her hand from the earl’s arm.

  “This is home,” she said, “and you have brought me safely, my lord. Will you come in so that I may present my grandfather to you? He sees so little company. And offer you some tea?”

  Oh Lord, no. He had no desire to be drawn into the lives of people who had fallen on hard times. He had no wish to view genteel despair at close quarters. His heart strings did not need to be tugged upon. He was quite satisfied with the state of his heart as it was. It had taken him almost two years to deaden it, and that was the state he liked it to be in.

  “I understand,” she said, bobbing him a sudden curtsy, her eyes fallen away from his. “Good day, my lord, and thank you again for your great kindness. Charlie? Come along, dear.”

  She understood what? That he was too high in the instep to pass beyond the door of the house behind her and to drink tea with her grandfather?

  “I would like to meet your grandfather, Miss Bevan,” he said, “and to drink some hot tea.” Though her eyes, which turned back to him and smiled, could warm his blood quite as effectively as a hot or even intoxicating beverage, he thought. And frowned at the thought.

  An ancient servant with a back bent into the shape of a bow shuffled into the narrow hallway as Julie opened the front door with a latchkey. He must be ninety if he were a day, the earl thought.

  “Oh, Mr. Stebbins,” she said, “you should be in the kitchen where it is warm. I can let myself in and see to my cloak and bonnet, as you know. Mm, wonderful.” She breathed in deeply. “Mrs. Stebbins has been baking. Her legs are better today, then?”

  “No, missy,” the servant said. “But you know my Martha.”

  “I do indeed,” she said. “This is Charlie Cobban, Mr. Stebbins.” The earl watched, fascinated, as she set an arm about the boy’s thin shoulders and hugged him to her side. “He rescued me today from someone who was being discourteous. Take him back to the kitchen, if you please, and let him eat his fill of lemon tarts and mince pies. Let Mrs. Stebbins know that he is my champion.” And to his lordship’s amazement, she bent her head and kissed the boy on the cheek before releasing him to the ancient servant’s care.

  “Charlie,” the servant said in the quavering voice that suited his appearance to perfection, “come along, my good boy. Mrs. Stebbins will feed you to the brim.” He laughed at his own little joke.

  “And tell Mrs. Stebbins that she is not to climb the stairs with the tea tray,” Julie said firmly. “I shall come for it myself in a few minutes.”

  She turned back to the earl and smiled. “Will you come this way, my lord?” she asked, turning to the closed door at her left and opening it.

  It was not the dark and gloomy room Lord Kevern had expected, though it might have been. A cheerful fire burned in the grate and candles had been lit already. The rather shabby chairs were strewn with gaily embroidered cushions, and the old gentleman dozing in a chair beside the fire was covered by a brightly colored rug from the waist down.

  And there was Christmas again, even in this shabby house of old age and poverty. Boughs of red-berried holly liberally decorated the room, and a sprig of mistletoe hung from the ceiling a little forward of the fireplace.

  “Grandpapa,” Julie was saying, bent over the old gentleman and smoothing back a lock of thin white hair that had fallen over his forehead. “I am home. And I have brought someone with me.”

  “Eh?” The old gentleman woke with a start and gazed upward with fierce eyes from beneath bushy white eyebrows. And then his eyes softened with warmth and with love. “It is you, Julie, is it? Home again? And home to stay until after Christmas?”

  “No, Grandpapa.” She spoke loudly and distinctly. “I have to go in tomorrow again, but only to play the pianoforte so that the young people can practice their dance steps, not to give a lesson. I have brought someone with me.”

  “Eh?” the old gentleman said, and she straightened up and stood to one side of the chair.

  “My lord,” she said, “may I present my grandfather, Sir Richard Bevan?” She raised her voice again. “This is the Earl of Kevern, Grandpapa. He was kind enough to escort me home after someone was rude to me.”

  “Eh?” he said. “Someone being disrespectful, Julie? The Earl of Kevern?” The old gentleman set his hands on the arms of the chair and made as if to get to his feet.

  “No, no,” the earl said, stepping forward, one hand outstretched. “No need to get up, sir. I would say you are in the best place today. It is chilly outside.”

  Julie offered him the chair opposite her grandfather’s and next to the fire, and she left the room in order to fetch the tea tray. The earl watched her go and resisted the unfamiliar urge to jump to his feet to offer his assistance.

  Sir Richard was inclined to talk, the earl found, and spoke of former days and better days when he had lived on his own property in the country and had had friends that extended over the whole county. And of his son, the Reverend Peter Bevan, who might have been a bishop if only he had had some ambition and accepted patronage when it was offered. Instead of which he had died of a fever with his wife and not a penny to his name.

  “But Papa was a happy man, Grandpapa,” Julie said. She had returned to the room long since and had poured the tea and handed around a plate of cakes and tarts and mince pies. “And well loved.”

  “A
nd left you without a penny for a dowry,” the old gentleman said. “And me to burden you after everything was lost.”

  “You are not a burden, Grandpapa,” she said, setting aside her own plate and crossing the room in order to adjust the rug, which had slipped down to his knees. “You are my family. My only family.”

  He touched her smooth golden hair with a gnarled hand before she straightened up and sat down again. “You should have your own family by now, Julie,” he said. “You should have married young what’s-his-name when you had a chance and be hanged to me. I had had my life. You should have children of your own.”

  “Well, I do not,” she said briskly, and she looked acutely embarrassed, the earl saw. “We moved to London, my lord, so that I might take employment. I could not take a governess’s post because that would have meant leaving Grandfather and Mr. and Mrs. Stebbins, who were too old to get other positions. I teach music and sometimes French.”

  “And she has to go out alone every day,” Sir Richard said, “without a maid or chaperon. And no carriage. It is not right, Kevern, for the granddaughter of a baronet. Now, is it?”

  “Oh, grandfather,” she said.

  The earl declined a second cup of tea and got to his feet. She was clearly uncomfortable, and he was uncomfortable. Good Lord. She had made a home and a life out of such an appalling situation. And there was love in her eyes for the old codger who had held her back from either taking regular employment or marrying. And yet she was prepared to enter into the spirit of Christmas, he thought, looking about again at the holly, just as if it could really bring some joy into her life.

  He shook hands with the old gentleman and followed Julie into the hall.

  “You said that you have learned from experience,” he said to her, staring down at her broodingly when she had closed the door of the sitting room behind her. “Does that mean you have been accosted before this afternoon?”

  “When a lady who looks as I do,” she said, looking down at her plain gray dress, “is standing still on a street, gentlemen draw their own conclusions. Even a clergyman’s daughter from the country learns that lesson fast, my lord. And when one works in the homes of the wealthy, there are always gentlemen who assume that one wishes to augment one’s income. I have learned to look after myself.”