’Twas the Night After Christmas

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “This woman has got them convinced that hanging Christmas stockings will become all the rage,” he went on in a faintly condescending tone. “An absurd notion that will never catch on.”

  Her ladyship’s eyes narrowed on him. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because it’s silly.” Mr. Fowler cut his ham. “If people start hanging stockings, what will we have next—handkerchiefs hung by the staircase? Caps hung by the windows?”

  “Mr. Fowler—” Camilla began.

  Her ladyship cut her off. “It’s no more silly than hanging dead tree branches in a hall, or dangling mistletoe from a ribbon and expecting people to kiss each other when they pass under it.”

  The oblivious Mr. Fowler lifted an eyebrow. “On the contrary, my lady, those are all time-honored ways to celebrate the season. But hanging a stocking is just doing laundry. Hardly festive, I should think.”

  Lady Devonmont blinked, then gave a rueful laugh. “You do have a point, Mr. Fowler. Though in truth, if you read the poem yourself, you might understand what a charming idea it is.” Her eyes gleamed at him. “And why the woman in question is producing such stockings to raise money for refurbishing the church’s organ.”

  “Wait, I thought that’s what your booth—” Though he paled a little as the truth dawned on him, he fixed her with a steady gaze. “Forgive me, my lady. I see that I have inadvertently insulted you.”

  Her ladyship flushed at his gentlemanly apology. “On the contrary, sir. I confess to having a bit of fun at your expense, and it was very wrong of me.” She flashed him a tentative smile. “But truly, I should read the poem for you later. You might find the custom of hanging stockings not quite so silly after hearing it described properly.”

  Beneath the warmth of her smile, he relaxed. “While that sounds enticing, I should much rather hear you play the pianoforte. You do it so well.”

  This time when the countess flushed, it was with pleasure. Camilla narrowed her gaze on Mr. Fowler. He’d asked her ladyship to play the last time he’d been here, too. And the time before. Her suspicions about how the man felt toward the countess grew stronger by the minute.

  “I’m not the only one who plays the pianoforte,” the countess pointed out.

  “My playing is wretched and you know it,” Camilla put in.

  “Actually, I was speaking of Pierce. He used to play as a boy.”

  Pierce stiffened. “That was a long time ago, Mother. I’m sure we would all rather hear you play.”

  Lady Devonmont gazed softly at him. “You used to enjoy hearing the Sussex Waltz.”

  “I’d forgotten about that.” Pierce sipped some wine. “And as I recall, you played a livelier version of it than most.”

  “Your mother plays a livelier version of everything,” Mr. Fowler put in. “She likes lively music. As do I.”

  “Is that why you always request that she play?” Camilla asked.

  After a furtive glance at her ladyship, Mr. Fowler met Camilla’s question with a smile. “I request that she play because then I know I will get to hear you sing, Mrs. Stuart.”

  “Oh, yes,” Lady Devonmont chimed in. “You must sing, my dear.”

  “You must indeed.” Mr. Fowler turned to Pierce. “You may not have discovered this yet, my lord, but Mrs. Stuart has the voice of a nightingale.”

  Pierce pinned her with his dark gaze. “I had no idea. Then we should definitely have a performance later.”

  Camilla stared at him, perplexed by the edge in his voice. “I’m always happy to entertain you, my lord. And Mr. Fowler, too, of course.”

  “Of course,” Pierce echoed, his eyes boring into her. “I’m merely surprised I hadn’t heard of this talent of yours before. But perhaps you save it for special guests, like Mr. Fowler.”

  What was that supposed to mean? “I save it for when I have accompaniment. You’re always in such a hurry to leave us for your cigars in the evening that I never have the chance to offer.”

  “Well, then, I’ll have to put off my cigar smoking tonight,” he said tersely. “I don’t want to miss hearing you sing.”

  “Oh, and Mr. Fowler, you must sing, too!” the countess exclaimed. She cast Pierce a bright smile. “Your estate manager is quite the fine tenor.”

  “Is he, indeed?” Pierce said, shooting Camilla another of those shuttered glances he kept throwing her way.

  “He certainly is,” his mother went on blithely. “When he and Camilla do duets, you’d think you were listening to paid opera singers in London.”

  “You would certainly know, Mother,” Pierce snapped. “You went to opera houses plenty enough when I was in school. I was always reading about it in the papers.”

  As the countess paled, Camilla tensed, wondering if he was going to drag poor Mr. Fowler into his fight with his mother now. Then Pierce forced a smile and added, “My parents used to be such gadabouts, Mr. Fowler. I never knew when their escapades would turn up in the Times.”

  “I didn’t have to worry about that with my parents,” Mr. Fowler said amiably. “My mother was best known for her figgy pudding. It’s hardly something to make the papers.”

  “Depends on what she did with her figgy pudding,” Pierce said dryly. “If she shot it out of a cannon, I can guarantee it would make the papers.”

  They all laughed, breaking the tension. From there, the conversation drifted to a discussion of what was worthy of being mentioned in the papers.

  With a relieved sigh, Camilla turned her attention to her dinner, hoping there would be no more crises. It was hard enough playing arbiter of the dispute between the countess and Pierce. She didn’t think she could handle it if the estate manager jumped in, too.

  • • •

  Once again, Pierce felt like an intruder. Clearly Camilla, Mother, and Fowler had spent plenty of time in one another’s company. They shared jokes he didn’t understand, told tales about the servants that he’d never heard, and seemed quite at ease together. In the midst of so much camaraderie, how was he supposed to tell exactly how Camilla felt for Fowler?

  She’d certainly dressed sumptuously for the man. Her dinner gown of rose satin was bedecked with puffy things around the skirt, and it had smaller puffy things at the bodice that drew attention to her ample bosom. So did the necklace of paste gems nestled between her lightly freckled breasts. She’d never worn that before. Or the gown, for that matter. Had she been saving it for Fowler?

  If so, she’d made a good choice. Pierce couldn’t stop looking at her, wondering what it would be like to lick his way down the smooth hollow between her breasts to find one taut nipple with his mouth—

  Bloody hell. This was maddening.

  He cast a furtive glance at Fowler, but the man was too polite to stare at Camilla’s bosom. Fowler did glance at her a great deal, but he glanced at Mother a great deal, too. That proved nothing except that he was enjoying their “female companionship.”

  As for Camilla, Pierce could tell that she liked Fowler. She’d obviously tried to head the man off when he was blundering into insulting Mother. But was that just the act of a kind woman? Or a woman taking the side of a man she hoped to marry one day? She didn’t seem to smile at Fowler with any particular regard, but could he trust that?

  After all, Camilla was good at hiding her feelings. She had never once let on to Mother that she and Pierce were spending time together in secret every night.

  So Camilla might be madly in love with Fowler and just being discreet. Though it was odd that she would choose discretion for something like that when she was never discreet about other things. Like her championing of Mother.

  “What do you think, my lord?” Fowler asked, breaking into his tangled thoughts. “Shall we forget about our brandy and cigars for one night, and go right to the music?”

  “Certainly,” Pierce said.

  He rose to help Camilla from her chair, but Fowler beat him there, damn his eyes. Pierce watched her face—she didn’t blush as Fowler offered her his arm, but she did flash
the man a soft glance as she clasped it. Something very disquieting settled in Pierce’s chest.

  Then belatedly he realized that he’d been left to accompany Mother into the drawing room. Bloody hell.

  With a tightness in his throat, he offered her his arm. Only after she took it did he remember the last time he’d done so—at Father’s funeral. With so many eyes on him, he’d been unable to avoid it. He’d been angry about it, since the last thing he’d wanted was to escort the woman who’d abandoned him.

  But now that his heart had thawed a little toward her, he realized how hard it must have been for her to lose her husband of nearly thirty years. Had she cried at the funeral? He didn’t know. He hadn’t been able to see beneath her veil.

  She’d trembled, though. He remembered that. And she was trembling now, too, her small hand gripping his arm as if she never wanted to let go.

  Trying to ignore the childhood memories that her touch roused, he stared ahead to Fowler and Camilla, who was laughing at something Fowler said, her pretty face animated as she stared up at him.

  Pierce scowled. “Is Mrs. Stuart sweet on Fowler?” he asked Mother in a low voice, unable to help himself. She was the only person who might know.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Mother said. “Why?”

  He swiftly invented a reason. “Because if she marries him, he’ll expect her to bear him a passel of children, which means she won’t be around to keep you company anymore.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she surprised him by saying. “I want her to be happy. I’d be thrilled to see her find a man who loves her and wants to marry her. She deserves better than to be sitting around playing cards with a middle-aged woman.”

  She did; he just didn’t want it to be Fowler. Because then he would have to see her on the man’s arm at social affairs and be forced to endure them cooing at each other.

  He snorted. Since he came here only when necessary, he would never see Fowler at social affairs. And somehow he couldn’t imagine either of them “cooing.” Though that didn’t make the thought of Fowler with her any less disturbing.

  Mother narrowed her eyes on the pair as they walked into the drawing room ahead of them. “But I think Mr. Fowler would be wrong for her.”

  So did Pierce, though he doubted his reasons would match Mother’s. “Why? Because he’s too old?”

  She eyed him askance. “He’s not too old—he’s younger than I am.”

  Not by much. No, he’d better not say that.

  “He’s too cautious,” she continued. “Not that Camilla is reckless, mind you, but she doesn’t always follow society’s dictates.”

  That was certainly an understatement.

  She went on. “Mr. Fowler would hate that. He’s always so circumspect.”

  “Not always,” Pierce pointed out. “You certainly had him going there for a while tonight.”

  To his surprise, Mother looked ashamed. “I know. It was very bad of me. I just get annoyed when men are so firm in their opinions.”

  “I remember,” he said softly, thinking of the fierce arguments between her and his father.

  Her gaze darted to him, then returned to Camilla and Fowler. “But Mr. Fowler deserves better from me. He’s generally a nice man.” Mother’s voice grew curiously taut. “Even if he is overly aware of what’s appropriate for his station.”

  They’d reached the drawing room. It was only after Mother left Pierce’s side to go to the pianoforte that he realized he’d just had a fairly normal conversation with her without Camilla acting as a guide and buffer.

  How had that happened?

  “All right,” Mother said to Fowler as she sat down before the instrument and took out a piece of music. “I know how you scoff at it, sir, but the two of you must sing ‘The Gallant Hussar.’ Otherwise, I shall be very disappointed.”

  Camilla laughed, then released Fowler’s arm to begin hunting through the music atop the pianoforte. “You’ll have your wish, madam, but only if I get mine. We must sing a few Christmas carols.” She smiled at Pierce. “That way his lordship can join in.”

  “Not me.” Pierce dropped into a chair. “I make a better audience than I do performer.”

  “Come now, my lord.” Camilla shoved up her spectacles. “It doesn’t matter how well you sing. It’s all in good fun.”

  Fowler shot Pierce a quick, apologetic glance. “I think his lordship isn’t fond of Christmas carols.”

  “Oh,” Camilla said, awareness dawning on her face. Obviously she was remembering that he’d spent all his holidays without his parents. “Well, then, in that case—”

  “It’s fine,” Pierce ground out, chafing at being the object of her pity. “I enjoy hearing a carol as well as the next person. I just don’t want to sing any.” He glanced at Mother. “Besides, it’s been a while since I heard Mother play, and I can’t enjoy it if I’m up there caterwauling.”

  Surprisingly, he really was looking forward to it. Now that he knew he’d misread so much of his parents’ relationship, he was finding a sort of pleasurable pain in reliving the past and trying to make out what he might have misunderstood. And part of that past had included Mother playing carols on the pianoforte.

  Once the music started, however, it wasn’t Mother’s playing that he noticed but Camilla’s singing. Fowler had been wrong. She wasn’t a nightingale at all, a comparison often used for those preening sopranos at the opera house. No, Camilla was a siren . . . with a contralto so rich and sultry that it made those sopranos’ voices sound like screeching.

  And expressive! She swept him up in the tale of a woman who begs her soldier love to let her go off to war with him. Fowler took the part of the Hussar and Camilla took the part of Jane, the maiden, and for the length of the song, Pierce could easily believe they were lovers.

  Too easily. When Fowler gazed down into Camilla’s face as he sang of “her beautiful features,” Pierce wanted to throttle him. Nor did the song end tragically, as so many of the broadside ballads did—this one had Jane and her gallant Hussar heading off to the war “united forever.”

  It was churlish, but he wished Jane and her Hussar to the devil, especially when Camilla and Fowler blended their voices so splendidly for the final verse that anyone, even a man as jaded as himself, would want to weep from the beauty of it. Despite Mother’s opinion, it appeared to him that Fowler and Camilla made a perfect pair, damn them.

  As the last notes died, he forced himself to applaud. They deserved it, even if he resented the fact that Fowler had gained so much enjoyment from joining his voice to hers.

  Then Camilla smiled warmly at Pierce in response, and somehow that calmed his agitation. For the moment, anyway.

  “So tell me, Fowler,” Pierce said, “why does my mother say you scoff at this particular song?”

  “I don’t scoff at it,” Fowler protested. “I just think any soldier who contemplates taking his true love off to war with him is a fool. Don’t you agree?”

  Pierce shrugged. “Depends on which war. If they’re just going to be marching up and down some Belgian town, he might do well having a woman to cook and clean for him.”

  As Fowler laughed, Camilla frowned at Pierce. “Is that the only thing you think a woman is good for—cooking and cleaning?”

  “And providing entertainment,” he drawled, thinking ahead to when she would come to his room later. If she would come, with Fowler hanging about. When she blushed, he added, in a tone of pure innocence, “As you’re doing here . . . with the singing.”

  Camilla eyed him askance. “And where does love come in? Can’t the Hussar just want Jane with him because he loves her?”

  Pierce snorted. “Love is for children and fools. No grown man with an ounce of sense makes monumental decisions based on some half-baked sentiment he read on a St. Valentine’s Day card.” He certainly didn’t give up everything for it.

  “I’m a grown man,” Fowler put in solemnly. “And I spent many happy years in love with my wife.” He cast a furtive gla
nce over to where Camilla stood beside Mother. “That’s why I would do almost anything for another chance at love.”

  The bottom dropped out of Pierce’s stomach. At least now he had his answer from Fowler. “What about you, Mrs. Stuart?” he asked, fighting to ignore his visceral reaction. “You were married. Do you want another chance at love?”

  Though she flinched at his veiled reference to her loveless marriage, she answered with great gravity. “Of course, my lord. A life without love is like a voice without a tune to sing. No grown woman with an ounce of sense wants to go on without love. Not if she can help it . . . not if she can catch that elusive tune. Sadly, not everyone can.”

  Silence fell on the room as every eye turned to Pierce. But for once, he was at a loss for a snappy rejoinder.

  To his surprise, it was Mother who jumped in to save him. “Are we going to sing Christmas carols, or not? I believe we should start with ‘The Cherry Tree Carol.’ Don’t you agree, Pierce?”

  He demurred but didn’t hear the rest of the discussion, his mind whirling around Camilla’s words. A life without love. He’d had that, and he’d once thought himself fortunate to escape the emotional dramatics that plagued a life with love.

  Now he wasn’t so sure. And the fact that she made him doubt it irked him.

  So did the possibility that she hoped to find love with Fowler. She didn’t belong with Fowler. It would be a mistake. And it was high time he made her see that.

  14

  Her ladyship had retired at last, so Camilla went up to kiss the sleeping Jasper before heading for Pierce’s room. It was later than usual, so she wasn’t even sure that Pierce would want her there this evening. But she had to make sure, in case their bargain from the previous nights held firm.

  She snorted. Right. Their bargain was why she couldn’t wait to see him alone, why she couldn’t breathe for the thought of being with him. What a fool she was. But she couldn’t help it. He’d looked so unsure of himself when they’d spoken of love; it broke her heart.