Christmas Gifts

by Mary Balogh

  She bit her lip once more.

  “Well?” he said, closing the gap between them again. “Julie, I cannot tell you all you mean to me. There are not words meaningful enough. I saw you gazing at the Madonna and had to cross the street to you. And then Charlie, bless his heart, chose that moment to attempt his quite inexpert theft and gave me the chance of a lifetime to speak to you. I have thought of you every waking moment since and dreamed of you every sleeping moment. I think you are the spirit of Christmas sent to release me from bondage. But I am greedy and want Christmas every moment of every day for the rest of my life. Don’t cry.”

  “I c-can’t help it,” she said, tipping her head forward to rest her forehead against his neckcloth. “I turned from that window and saw you holding Charlie and raising your cane to hit him, and I was horrified. And then I looked into your eyes—those lovely blue eyes—and I knew you were not cruel. And I think my heart turned over inside me at that moment. I thought I would never see you again after we came out of the pastry cook’s, but I knew I would dream of you for the rest of my life. And then the next day you were there again and coming to my rescue and insisting on walking all the way home with me.”

  “I think it is settled, then,” he said. “I would accept no for an answer, you see, Julie, only if you did not care for me. But you do.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, lifting her head again and staring up at him in wonder.

  “The mistletoe must have been difficult to hang,” he said.

  “It was.” She looked up at it. “I had to balance a chair on a table. And grandfather and Mr. Stebbins kept giving me advice and declaring that they were the ones who should have gone up there. And Mrs. Stebbins had her apron up over her head and was calling on the blessed Lord to keep me safe. Which he did.” She laughed merrily.

  “Well, then,” he said, “it would be a shame for all that work to result in only one kiss, would it not?”

  She looked into his eyes and blushed rosily again. “Yes, Darcy,” she said, “it would.”

  He took his hands away from her face finally and set one arm about her shoulders and the other about her waist in order to draw her against him.

  “We had better put it to good and thorough use,” he said. “Do you think ten minutes, or even fifteen, would be sufficient to count for thorough use?”

  “Yes,” she said and laughed breathlessly. “I think ten. Or perhaps even fifteen.”

  He smiled at her, and the outer rim of his vision took in the mistletoe above her head and the log fire burning cheerfully at her back and the sprigs of holly decorating the pictures beside the fireplace and her grandfather nodding in his chair.

  Christmas! There was no time quite like it to make a person believe in eternal peace on earth and everlasting goodwill among men.

  “I love you,” he said, and he lowered his head and opened his mouth over hers before she could reply. But she did not need to say the words. He saw them in her eyes and felt them in her body and tasted them in her mouth. Her arms came about him and held him close.

  The old gentleman in his chair snored gently on and opened only one eye—and even that only partly and only for a moment—to satisfy himself that the silence meant what he thought—and hoped—it meant.

  Julie was having her happy Christmas, bless her dear loving heart.

  The Surprise Party

  Mary Balogh

  It was snowing halfheartedly. Not enough to make a picturesque scene of the garden below the nursery window. Not even enough to whiten the ground. Only enough to dust the edges of the lawns with white powder and to blow in thin white streaks across the path. Only enough to make the sky heavy and leaden so that it seemed more like early evening than midafternoon.

  It was not exactly the type of Christmas scene one dreamed of. But then Christmas was still three days away. Perhaps it would snow properly before then.

  “Enough to build a snowman with,” Rupert Parr said, frowning speculatively up at the sky through the window.

  “Enough to make snow angels with,” Patricia Parr, his sister, added, contemplating rather glumly the few thin flakes that were drifting slowly downward.

  Caroline Parr was kneeling on the floor, her elbows on the window ledge, her chin in her hands, gazing outward. “Will Christmas come soon, Rupert?” she asked wistfully. “Will it snow?”

  She remembered Christmas last year, when there had been goose and plum pudding to eat. But it had not been quite the happy day she had been led to expect. Nurse had been cross and Rupert and Patricia had been peevish. It had not snowed—Caroline could not really remember what snow was like. And Mama and Papa had not come home. They had had to go to an unexpected but very important meeting, Nurse had explained to Rupert, and would come home as soon as they could. They sent presents which arrived a week late.

  “Tell me about Christmas,” Caroline said now, addressing herself to her eight-year-old brother, whom she considered omniscient, though she did not turn her gaze from the outside world. “Tell me about snow.”

  But it was their nurse who answered. Caroline loved Nurse dearly, but she had been cross and sharp-tongued lately—even worse than she had been last Christmas.

  “There will be no talk of Christmas this year,” she said firmly. “And no talk of snowmen and snow angels either, Master Rupert and Miss Patricia. The two of you are old enough to know better. For shame, filling Miss Caroline’s head with ideas that are not proper. There will be other years and other Christmases to enjoy.”

  “I beg your pardon, Nurse,” Rupert said in the voice that always made Caroline want to hold his hand and rub her cheek against his arm for reassurance. It was his grown-up voice, not his real voice.

  “You must understand, Master Rupert . . . ,” Nurse said.

  But Caroline stopped listening and watched the snow snakes slithering diagonally across the path, all going the same way. She watched for one going the other way, but there were none. They were all fleeing from a fierce dragon, she decided. The dragon was holding a beautiful princess captive. It was a bad dragon. Soon one of the snow snakes would turn back to fight the dragon and rescue the maiden and become a great hero. He would marry her and they would live happily ever after. She watched intently for the hero snake to slither back across the path, into the teeth of the wind.

  She only half heard Nurse, who was reminding Rupert and Patricia that with Mama and Papa so recently passed on—Caroline sometimes wondered where it was they had passed on to, but when she had asked, Nurse had said it was heaven with angels singing around the throne of God and she was not to ask so many questions—they must not even think about presents or mince pies or caroling or anything else that would make them forget they were in mourning.

  Patricia hated her black dresses, but Nurse would not let her wear anything else. Caroline did not mind hers. She never minded what Nurse put on her provided she was warm and comfortable.

  “What is to become of us?” Rupert was asking Nurse behind Caroline’s back. He was still using his grown-up voice. “Everything will be taken away, will it not? And the house sold. To pay Papa’s debts. And you will not be able to stay with us because there will be no money to pay you. We will be sent to the orphanage, Nurse, will we not? I don’t mind. I will look after Patricia and Caroline until they are grown up and married. I will go out and seek my fortune.”

  “And I will come with you, Rupert,” Patricia said eagerly. “We will leave Caroline in the orphanage because she is too little and come back for her when we have made our fortune. I am seven. I can cook for you and mend for you.”

  “Don’t talk silly,” Nurse said sharply. “You will frighten Miss Caroline. Of course you will not be sent to the orphanage. Your aunt or your uncle will come for you and give you all a home. They were notified. They will come for you any day. Now, I want you two to get out your books and read. Come, Miss Caroline.” Her voice softened somewhat. “Come and sit on Nurse’s lap, dearie, and I will read you a story.”

  Carol
ine did as she was told and listened to the story of a little girl to whom very good things happened because she was always a very good little girl. But Caroline would have preferred to stay at the window, weaving stories about the snow snakes and the hidden dragon and the beautiful princess. Or she would have preferred hearing from Rupert about Christmas or about snow.

  She wondered why they wore black and why there was to be no Christmas and no snowmen or snow angels and why they must go to the orphanage just because Mama and Papa had passed on. Mama and Papa had never come home anyway. She could not remember them much more clearly than she could remember snow.

  Who were her aunt and uncle? she wondered, pillowing her head on Nurse’s ample bosom and yawning loudly. She could not remember them either. Why were they coming?

  Lady Carlyle moved her head closer to the carriage window and peered anxiously up at the sky. Snow had been threatening for the past few hours. Was it about to fall in earnest? She shivered despite the fact that she was dressed warmly and her legs were covered with a heavy rug and the brick at her feet was still almost warm, even though it was two hours since they had stopped at an inn for luncheon and had it heated again.

  She hoped that at least she would reach her destination before it snowed. Not that she was traveling toward it with any great eagerness. She had never been very close to Adrian. She had been even less so in recent years. His children were strangers to her. All children were strangers to her. She had never had a child of her own despite seven years of marriage before her widowhood began two years ago. Not that there had been many opportunities . . .

  Her lips thinned for a moment and she buried her hands deeper inside her muff.

  She had no idea what she was going to do with three young children. The time had been when she had wanted a family of her own, but the desire had died during the first year of her marriage, and now she was quite content with her childless state. And with her widowhood. She liked being alone and independent. She liked being one of London’s most respected hostesses. She enjoyed the knowledge that invitations to her weekly drawing rooms were coveted among members of both the ton and the intelligentsia. She did not even mind the occasional label of bluestocking.

  What, in heaven’s name, was she going to do with three children? She could not possibly have them live with her. They would turn her home and her life upside down. They would drive her insane. She had earned her present very pleasant and peaceful life through seven years of a dull marriage.

  Adrian and Marjorie had led lives of selfish irresponsibility—and that was an understatement. They had lived almost all their married life in London, spending lavishly on expensive lodgings and fashionable clothes and costly jewels and amusing themselves by gambling away money they did not have. Even without the gambling they would have always been deeply in debt. Adrian’s small fortune and the property he had inherited from their father had been gone within the first year. But the most selfish thing they had ever done was to bring three children into the world, only to neglect them almost totally. They had died, the two of them, in a gamehell brawl. Lady Carlyle suspected that their deaths might have been arranged by the moneylenders to whom they were helplessly indebted.

  She felt a flash of the old anger against them, even though one was not supposed to harbor negative feelings against the dead. How dared they live so carelessly when they had had children to care for. And how dared they leave the responsibility of those children to her. Her anger was irritated by an accompanying guilt. She had been unable to grieve deeply for the death of her only brother. And she was unable to feel much sympathy for his innocent children who had been left behind. She was too aware of the fact that they had complicated her life, and selfishly—perhaps she was not so unlike Adrian after all—she did not want it complicated. And she resented the guilt that the knowledge brought with it.

  Poor children. They were her nieces and nephew. But she could feel no kinship, no love for them. She had never seen them. She and Adrian had been estranged since soon after his marriage.

  And why should she be the one on whom the children were to be foisted? Marjorie had had a brother—Viscount Morsey. He was a wealthy and influential man. He had more than one home. It would be easy enough for him to take the children and never really feel the burden of having them. But she would wager a fortune that he would ignore any appeal that had been made to him.

  Her lips compressed again. Yes, it would be just like him to do that, to assume that someone else would look after them. He was an arrogant, cynical, hardhearted man. She had learned that years ago. For years now she had avoided him, an easy enough task even though they were both frequently in London. He seemed just as eager to avoid her.

  Well, she would see to it that he did not shirk all responsibility for the children. She would confront him. She would demand that he do his part.

  But it was her Christmas that was going to be ruined, not his. She always enjoyed Christmas in town and its busy round of social pleasures. The chances were slim that she would be back in town in time for any of the celebrations. Especially if it snowed in earnest. Perhaps she would be incarcerated in the country for a week or more. She could think of no worse fate.

  Yes, she could—incarceration in the country for a week or more with three children, aged eight, seven, and four. The very real possibility was unthinkable.

  What on earth would she do with them? Apart from going insane?

  For the last several miles the carriage had been stopping and starting as her coachman asked directions. But finally, it seemed, they had arrived. Lady Carlyle peered out of the window and grimaced. Adrian had bought this cottage with a night’s winnings soon after losing his own property, her girlhood home. She had never seen the cottage before. It was no mansion. It was no hovel, either, but it had seen better days. There was an air of shabby gentility about it and to the garden before it. Clearly no more winnings had ever been spent on the upkeep of the property or on the hiring of servants to care for it.

  She drew a deep breath. “Well, this is it, Netty,” she said to her maid, who was beginning to stir from a lengthy nap in the far corner of the carriage. “A Christmas to remember.”

  But her carriage had not stopped at the garden gate, she realized suddenly, but some distance to one side of it. When she pressed the side of her face to the window and peered ahead, she could see the reason. Another carriage was blocking the way, and someone was descending from it—a tall, well-formed gentleman, whose already broad shoulders were made more so by the many capes of his fashionable greatcoat and whose hat hid thick hair of a rich brown, she knew though she could not at present see it. And whose handsome face was marred by its usual arrogant expression.

  Now her day, her Christmas, was complete, she thought irritably as he turned to look at her carriage. She drew her head away from the window in some haste. She would not have him believe that she craned her neck merely to catch a glimpse of him.

  A moment later the door opened.

  “Ah,” Viscount Morsey said in the well-remembered voice she hated. He always sounded almost too bored to draw breath. “I see that I would have lost my wager had I been unwise enough to make it with anyone. You came.”

  He had felt grief at the news. Perhaps not as intense a grief as one would expect to feel for a sister who had died violently before reaching the age of thirty, but grief nevertheless. His grief had stemmed from his memories of her as a child and young girl. Before she had met and become besotted with Adrian Parr. Before she had defied him and married the wastrel. Before love, or whatever it was she felt for him, had made her so blindly devoted to him that she followed him through all the follies of his short life. Before she had given birth to children she neither wanted nor cared for.

  Perhaps his grief lacked intensity because she had become a person he disliked, a person he had turned his back upon years ago after discovering that the money she had begged from him to feed her children with had all been gambled away.

  And it was all
his fault. Unwilling guilt had weighed heavily on him after her death. If it were not for him and his early infatuation with a woman he now hated, Marjorie would never have met Parr. But he had shaken off the guilt. She had always been a silly, weak girl and difficult to handle. Perhaps she would have met Parr anyway or someone just like him. She had been immune to advice and even to commands. She had eloped with Adrian Parr when her brother had withheld his consent to the marriage.

  Well, it was all history now. Though not quite all of it. There were the three children. The viscount had seen the boy as a baby. He had not seen either of the girls. But they existed, the three of them—a millstone about his neck. He knew nothing about children. He did not want to know anything about children. He had no wish to get himself involved with these three. But they were his nephew and nieces and he was their closest relative, with the exception of Lady Carlyle, their paternal aunt.

  His nostrils flared at the very thought of the woman. Fortune hunter. Imposter—setting herself up as one of London’s most fashionable hostesses after scheming and elbowing her way to the top. Bluestocking. His lips formed into an unbecoming sneer.

  No, he certainly could not expect that Lady Carlyle would have the maternal instincts to cause her to rush to the assistance of three orphaned children. He would wager against it, in fact.

  Christmas, of course, had been ruined. There was the necessity, for very decency’s sake, of putting on mourning and of curtailing his social involvements. But he might have accepted the invitation to spend the holidays on Hinckley’s estate. There was to be congenial company there, including Hinckley’s daughter. . . .

  But no. He was doomed to spend Christmas trying to settle the future for three children who were strangers to him. And from the look of the weather as his carriage drove closer to the cottage where they lived, he might well be trapped there with them for a number of days. What a delightful prospect!

  What the devil would he do with three children?