’Twas the Night After Christmas

by Sabrina Jeffries

  Camilla choked down the sudden raw pain in her throat. Her ladyship would never dismiss her. Would she? No, Camilla couldn’t believe it. But the fact that she would even threaten such a thing showed how desperate she was.

  It also showed that Camilla had gone as far as she dared. It was one thing to defy the earl. But defying the woman who’d been good enough to bring Jasper here would be madness. She couldn’t afford to behave irrationally; she had her son to think of.

  “As you wish,” Camilla said quietly. “We won’t speak of it again.”

  But that didn’t mean she would stop trying to learn more another way.

  As soon as the countess gave a tight nod and disappeared into her bedchamber, Camilla turned on her heel and headed for the earl’s room. She was tired of seeing two people she’d begun to care about hitting their heads against the brick wall of the past.

  Part of her understood. There were things about her own past that she’d rather not have revealed. But this was carrying “privacy” too far. At least when she had briefly given her son over to relatives to be raised, she’d told him why. He’d never doubted that his mother loved him.

  Clearly Pierce doubted that very deeply. Something inside her chest twisted at the thought. She hadn’t known her own parents, which was why she realized how precious it was to have ones you could trust and believe in.

  She knocked on the door. His voice bade her enter. Drumming up her courage, she opened the door, only to find the room completely dark. The fire had burned out, and there were no candles lit except the one in her hand.

  Sweet heaven, he must already have retired for the night.

  “I beg your pardon,” she mumbled, and began to ease the door shut.

  “Don’t go,” he said, his voice low but commanding. It certainly wasn’t the voice of someone just roused from sleep.

  She hesitated. “I think I must.”

  “I’m not in bed. I’m just sitting here in the dark.” A hint of sarcasm laced his tone. “I’m fully dressed, and I promise not to pounce.” When she still stood uncertain, he said, more softly, “Please come in and keep me company awhile.”

  Please. It was a word he rarely used—a word that men of his rank had no need to use. But something in the tenor of his voice, in the way he asked for her company so humbly, made tears start in her eyes. No doubt he’d asked for his mother’s company many times in his childhood and never got it.

  She slipped inside, shutting the door behind her. As her eyes adjusted to the dim room, she saw him in his favorite armchair, which he’d apparently dragged over to face the window. “Do you often sit in the dark?” she asked as she headed toward him.

  “Only when there’s a full moon and snow on the ground.” He gestured before him. “Look at that.”

  She had to blow out the candle to be able to see beyond her reflection in the glass, but when she did, she was treated to a rapturous view. Spread out below them was the snow-draped lawn, turned magical by moonlight. The bushes were like frosted cakes served up on a blanket of marzipan, and footsteps in the snow looked like almonds dotting the pastry of a tart. Only the black, leafless beeches skirting the edge of the gardens struck a somber note.

  “I used to love this view.” His voice was a rumble in the dark. “During the day, you can see the dairy, the trout stream, even a few tenants’ cottages. When I sat here as a boy, I imagined what it would be like once I inherited. I had grand plans for the estate. I was going to be the benevolent ruler of all from this very room, even though it wasn’t the master bedchamber.”

  A choked laugh escaped him. “Of course, Father, in his infinite idiocy, decided to build a bigger, grander palace next door. He never liked this house. He said it was too dilapidated to be worthy of an earl. So now when I come to Hertfordshire, I spend my days in a soulless mausoleum that doesn’t have one tenth of the charm and beauty of this old place.”

  He shook his head. “Meanwhile, Mother lives in the place I love. And all because I thought to punish her. I assumed she hated it as much as Father did. That she must have been the one to press him into building Montcliff Manor.” His voice turned distant. “Instead, she settled in here and made it her own, as cozy and warm as I remember from my childhood. I thought my fond memories of that time were an illusion. Now I just don’t know.”

  Her heart leaped into her throat. So that was why he’d said this was his favorite room. And why he’d said that first day that it wasn’t his. If the countess were to be believed, he’d never had a room in this house, except the nursery.

  But he’d mentioned something that had happened when he reached his majority. Had he lived here briefly? She had to find out.

  “I asked your mother those questions you told me to,” she ventured.

  When she heard his sharp intake of breath, she wondered if she should have left the subject alone. But he had started this, and surely he had expected a report once she’d done as he commanded.

  A long moment passed before he rasped, “Did she answer you?”

  “Somewhat. From what she said, I gather that you left home to go to school at eight and weren’t brought back here for years. You spent holidays with your cousins?”

  He gave a terse nod.

  “Did anyone ever say why?”

  “The Waverlys gave different reasons each time.” His voice grew taut, thick. “They told me my parents were in Brighton or they’d gone to a house party in York. Or they were in London for the season.” He fisted his hands in his lap. “There was always some excuse. But it all came down to one thing—Mother and Father were flitting about the country to anywhere that I wasn’t.”

  “Oh, Pierce,” she murmured, trying to imagine what that must have been like. It seemed almost worse to have parents who willfully abandoned you than to have no parents at all.

  She wanted to tell him what his mother had said about not being allowed to see him, but he seemed willing to speak of the past here in the dark. She was loath to say anything that might stop the flow of words—genuine words—about himself and his childhood.

  “At first I wrote to Mother,” he went on. “Once a week, faithfully. But she didn’t write back, and after a couple of years I stopped. By then the Waverlys had also stopped making excuses for why my parents—” He muttered a curse under his breath, then went on in a harder tone. “Why they didn’t want to see me anymore. My cousins simply adopted me into their family.”

  “That was very laudable.” She might not like Kenneth’s brother very much, but he’d been kind to add Jasper to his responsibilities.

  She considered telling Pierce about Jasper. It had begun to feel wrong somehow to hide her son from him, but she simply couldn’t risk it without being sure how he would react. “Anyone who takes in someone else’s child to raise has a core of good in them.”

  “Yes. They’re good people, the Waverlys.” He gazed out the window. “They did their best to hide the painful truth from me, but when my parents didn’t even bother to show up for my matriculation, I figured out that Mother and Father really didn’t want anything to do with me. That they never intended to bring me home.”

  His voice had grown more choked by the moment, and it made her heart lurch in her chest. “It sounds awful,” she whispered.

  With a shrug that looked forced, he shot her a quick glance. “Not as awful as growing up in an orphanage, I’d imagine.”

  “It’s not the same, but no less awful. I never knew my parents, so I didn’t feel I’d had them snatched from me, the way you must have. The orphanage was all I ever knew.”

  “Your parents must have died very young then,” he said.

  They hadn’t spoken of her parents before. She’d managed to avoid the subject whenever their conversation headed in that direction. But she couldn’t avoid it now.

  So she searched for a way not to lie to him. “I went to the orphanage as an infant.” That was the truth. But she’d left out so much. “Fortunately, it was a good place—not one of those dreadful ones
where they mistreat the children.”

  He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “You must think me spoiled, to be complaining about not having my parents around when I had so many more advantages than you. I went to Harrow and spent my holidays with fine people like the Waverlys. I even had a sort of parent. My great-uncle Isaac was—still is—like a father to me.”

  His attempt to put a good face on things made her heart break for him even more. “Not spoiled in the least,” she said softly. “It must have been very painful, not knowing why your parents didn’t . . . ”

  “Want me?” he clipped out. “Yes, that was the hardest part. I was always a difficult child, but if they would have told me what I’d done to deserve such banishment—”

  “You did nothing to deserve it!” she said hotly. “No child deserves that.”

  “Then why did they do it?”

  She sighed. “Your mother said that your father wouldn’t allow her to see you.”

  He dragged in a heavy breath. “And do you believe her?”

  “I do. She was very upset over it.” She stared down at his dark head, wishing she dared to stroke his silky hair, to soothe him somehow. “Would your father have done such a thing? She never speaks of him, and none of the servants seem to know what kind of man he was.”

  “He was an arse most of the time. He never liked having me around. So yes, it’s possible.”

  “Even though you were his heir?”

  “That never seemed to matter to him. I honestly don’t know what did.” After a moment’s hesitation, his tone turned speculative. “Although now that I think of it, he was always very possessive of Mother. If he cared about anything, it was her.” He glanced up at Camilla. “Did Mother happen to say why he kept her from me? Or is that something she put in those letters I didn’t read?”

  “No.” She debated telling him the rest of it, but it might hurt him more to hear that his mother knew the truth and still wouldn’t tell him. “I . . . I . . . we did not talk long. She said she would prefer that I . . . stayed out of the matter.”

  He uttered a harsh laugh. “Clearly she doesn’t know you very well.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had no idea when I summoned you here—”

  “I realize that you meant well,” he said coolly.

  “Honestly, I didn’t expect all of this.” When he said nothing, she realized that she still hadn’t gotten answers to some of her questions. And as long as he was in a talkative mood . . . “So you were away from home for ten years? You didn’t see them in all that time?”

  “More like thirteen years. Until I reached my majority.” He glanced up at her again, the moonlight glinting off his dark eyes. “Did she tell you about that, too?”

  “No. That was one question she refused to answer. She said I’d hate her if she did, and she couldn’t bear to have us both hating her.” Camilla hesitated, then laid her hand on his shoulder. “So you will have to be the one to tell me what happened.”

  He stiffened. Then, to her disappointment, he shrugged off her hand and rose to pad across the room on stocking feet to the hearth. He bent to start the fire.

  When he still didn’t say anything, she imagined all sorts of awful scenarios. “Your father didn’t . . . I mean, he wasn’t the sort of man to knock you around or anything, was he?”

  “No, nothing like that,” he ground out.

  Thank heaven. If his father had abused him somehow, Pierce and his mother might both be reluctant to speak of it. And she supposed that even at twenty-one, Pierce could still have been thrashed by his father.

  Or even by—“And . . . what about your mother? She didn’t . . . I mean, I can’t imagine that she would, but—”

  “Neither of them ever laid a hand on me,” he assured her. He continued to feed kindling into the burgeoning flame. Then he let out a ragged breath. “But she’s right, you know. If you heard the whole story, you might very well hate her. You might even tender your resignation. And I can’t have that.”

  “Why not?”

  He rose to face her, his eyes glittering in the firelight. “Because I don’t want you to leave.”

  Her heart thumped madly in her chest. The very air changed, sparking with meaning. His gaze locked with hers—intense, fathomless . . . hungry.

  Then his usual mask shuttered his face, and he shrugged. “After all, I can’t afford to lose a good companion for my mother. She needs someone to keep her occupied so she won’t meddle in estate business. And you seem to do that admirably.”

  She stood there, stunned, as he strode for the brandy decanter. Once more, Devil May Care Devonmont had reappeared, and it hurt. His words, so casually spoken, hurt.

  Then her common sense reasserted itself. Sweet heaven, she had quite the imagination. Had she thought that he might actually care about her? That he might even miss her if she left?

  She was losing all sense of proportion. They’d had a handful of kisses one night, which probably meant nothing to a rogue like him. He may have confided in her, but that was only because she was handy. And no matter how many evenings they spent together, he was still an earl, and she still had no connections. Earls did not develop deep feelings for penniless vicars’ widows of no consequence. If he wanted her here at all, it was for his mother.

  Shoving up her spectacles, she said with determined cheer, “If you are to have any entertainment from me tonight, I suppose we ought to begin. What are you in the mood for?”

  He concentrated on pouring brandy and didn’t look at her. “Since I didn’t dine with Mother, you don’t need to stay.”

  His dismissive tone made it clear that he preferred to be alone. “Of course.” She fought to keep the disappointment out of her voice. She’d begun to look forward to their evenings together, but she would die before she let him know it. No doubt he was already growing bored with them.

  “Besides,” he added, his voice softening, “you haven’t had any dinner, I expect. Bad enough that you’re having to play the arbiter between me and my mother. Our nonsense shouldn’t be the cause of your wasting away.”

  “I hardly think I’m going to waste away from missing one dinner,” she said dryly. “But I do appreciate your concern. And I am a bit hungry, now that you mention it.”

  Feeling only slightly less disappointed, she headed for the door.

  “Camilla,” he called out as she reached it.

  “Yes?” She turned to look at him.

  “Thank you for asking her those questions.” He stared down into his glass. “And thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt when you first found out I hadn’t read her letters. I suppose I should have, but—”

  “I understand. You were justifiably angry. Sometimes anger provokes a person to do things they might not otherwise. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think she revealed anything of consequence in them.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If she won’t talk to you about it, and she won’t say anything to me, I can’t imagine she would put it in a letter.” She measured her words, not wanting to wound him more. “Besides, she acted as if she . . . er . . . wasn’t ready to talk about it.”

  He sipped his brandy. “All the same, I’d like to read them, find out what’s in them.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  “And just so you won’t think me a complete arse, in the past I did demand answers of her. At Father’s funeral, I asked her why the two of them sent me away. She wouldn’t say. She just told me she wanted to keep the past in the past.”

  “She said much the same to me tonight. I told her that it wouldn’t work—that she couldn’t leave you wondering like that.” She shook her head. “She ordered me to stay out of it, so I’m afraid I didn’t do much good.”

  “You did enough,” he said enigmatically. He gulped the rest of his brandy, and when he spoke again, he was back to being Devil May Care Devonmont. “Now go have your dinner, before I drag out some naughty books for you to read.”
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  She wanted to ask if he meant to stay, but she had some pride, after all. So she left, wishing she hadn’t learned so much about him tonight. Before that, she’d been able to keep from caring too deeply for him by reminding herself of how awful he’d been to his mother.

  But now, with everything a muddle and her ladyship’s hands seeming dirtier by the moment, she was finding it far more difficult to protect her heart.

  12

  After Camilla left, Pierce poured another glass of brandy. He didn’t know what to think. He could see Father wanting to keep Mother to himself, but why had Mother gone along with it? She’d always stood up to Father before. What had changed when Pierce turned eight?

  Perhaps she really had just been waiting until he was old enough to be packed off to school. But if she hadn’t wanted to send him away, why not write to him? Why not try to see him? By that point, Mother’s parents had long been dead, so what hold could Father have possibly had over her that would keep her from a son she truly loved?

  Unless she didn’t truly love you, came the insidious voice that had plagued him ever since that day at Harrow. Unless she’s just working on you another way, for her own ends.

  He gulped down some brandy, wishing it could wash away his suspicions. But too much had happened between him and Mother; too many questions were left unanswered. Father was dead—she had no reason to keep his secrets anymore. So why was she?

  Damn it all!

  He threw the glass into the fireplace, feeling only a cursory satisfaction from the sound of it shattering and the sight of the brandy flaring as it caught fire. This madness of incessant questions and uncertainties was precisely what he’d been trying to avoid. He had been better off in London, believing that Mother hated him, believing she merely wanted more of Father’s money.

  But then you wouldn’t have met Camilla.