Greetings of the Season and Other Stories

by Barbara Metzger

  Half a glass of sherry later, Bevin was ready for the challenge of selecting gifts and writing warmer messages. He carried a handful of cards and his glass to the other table, where another inkstand was positioned, another quill perfectly pointed. Raising his glass, he silently toasted the absent, efficient secretary.

  For the dowager countess, Vincent had laid out a diamond pendant and a ruby brooch. Montravan chose the brooch. It was larger, gaudier, and more expensive, just the thing to appeal to his flighty mama. Vincent should have been her son, their tastes were that similar. No matter, the earl told himself, Mama’s real Christmas present was Lady Belinda Harleigh. Hadn’t the dowager been nagging at Bevin since his twenty-first year to find a bride and assure the succession? She must be in alt over the visit of Lady Belinda, ducal parents, handsome dowry, and all. He penned a short message about fulfilling obligations and moved on to his baby sister’s gift.

  Following the earl’s instructions, Vincent had purchased, on approval of course, the set of pearls proper for a young miss about to make her comeout, and a tiara. A gold tiara was totally unsuitable for a chit just out of the schoolroom, of course, even without the diamonds Allissa wanted, but the minx had been begging for one this last age. Allissa was growing into the type of spoiled, grasping featherbrain Bevin most disliked, but he recalled her cherubic infancy and put his card atop the tiara. The pearls could wait for her official presentation in the spring, he decided, when the budding beauty was bound to set London on its ear no matter what she wore. He groaned to think of all the young sprigs haunting Montford House and the idea of having to listen to their petitions for Allissa’s hand. Gads, he wasn’t that old, was he, that some spotty youth might come quaking into this very library? He downed another swallow of sherry. Mayhap he could get the prattlebox buckled to some country lad before the time, or a beau from Bath, where she and his mother were going after the holidays. Ah, well, at least Miss Sinclaire would not let the rattlepate wear the tiara to any of the country gatherings, so none would know what an expensive bit of fluff she’d be. And in the spring he’d have Lady Belinda to help with the presentation.

  For Squire Merton, his mother’s faithful cicisbeo, Bevin choose the riding crop over the snuffbox with a hunting scene on the cover. The old fool would only spill the snuff on Montravan’s own furniture. Lord Montravan quickly scrawled “Happy hunting” on the card and moved on.

  The next grouping was labeled Miss Corbett. Ah, Marina, the earl thought fondly, but not so fondly that he was tempted to keep the raven-haired actress on as his mistress. She was exquisite, voluptuous—and boring. She hadn’t always been, of course, so he designated the heavily jeweled bracelet as her Christmas present. The extravagance alone would tell her it was also a parting gift, but he added a few words to the card to ensure Marina knew he would not be returning to her when he returned to London after the holidays. Vincent could deliver the package, saving Montravan an unpleasant scene when Marina received her congé. Not that he was a coward, he told himself, just discreet.

  And wise. Too wise to leave town without securing the affections, or attentions, at any rate, of the latest highflier to soar over London’s demimonde. He tucked his message under the card addressed to Mademoiselle Bibi Duchamps and put both alongside the pair of diamond earbobs, setting the matching necklace aside for another occasion, such as the formalization of their arrangement. Bevin had no doubt there would be such an understanding, not when his note expressed his intentions. Bibi was no fool; she’d wait until Montravan came back before selecting her protector. He was bound to be the highest bidder, even if the earl modestly refused to consider his other attractions. No woman had turned him down yet.

  Bevin had never asked a woman to marry him, but he did not expect Lady Belinda Harleigh to refuse him either, if he decided to make the offer. She was an acknowledged beauty, well educated for a woman, and two years beyond that first giddy debutante stage. The on-dit was that her father, the duke, was also holding out for the best offer. A wealthy earl was like to be the best, or they would not have accepted his invitation to Wiltshire, where Montravan wanted to see firsthand how Belinda reacted to his home, his tenants, and his ramshackle family. He also wanted to have some private conversation with her, impossible in Town, and at least one tender embrace before deciding to spend the rest of his life with the young woman. Besides, he wanted to get a better look at her mother, to extrapolate the daughter’s future.

  The Harleighs were not arriving at Montravan until a day or two before the New Year’s ball, so a gift for the earl’s almost-intended would have to be delivered here in London. The present could not be too expensive and personal, such as jewels or furs, without being a declaration; it could not be too trifling without giving offense. Vincent had done well again, presenting the earl with a choice between an exquisitely filigreed fan and a pearl-studded jewel box. He selected the fan, which Belinda could carry at the ball, indicating her approval of his suit, instead of the jewel box, lest she and her father get the notion he was bound and determined to fill it with the family betrothal ring, now in the vault in Wiltshire. He wrote about looking forward to her visit, then considered the next and last pile of gifts.

  Miss Petra Sinclaire. Now there was a problem indeed. The earl went back to his desk and refilled his glass. Then he paced between the desk and the table, undecided. Petra was an employee. She was also an old friend, the orphaned daughter of his old tutor. When Vicar Sinclaire passed on, Bevin had paid for her schooling. Then it was natural for Petra to take up residence at Montravan, where the countess could take her around and find her some likely parti among the local gentry. She had no other connections, no great beauty to attract suitors, and only the modest dowry the earl insisted on providing. Only Petra had not accepted any of the offers and refused to live on charity. She threatened to accept a paid position in London, until Bevin was forced to hire her on as his mother’s companion, a position she’d been filling anyway, as well as mentor to his hoydenish sister, surrogate chatelaine of Montravan Hall for the vaporish countess, and general factotum in Bevin’s absence. If Vincent was indispensable in London, Petra Sinclaire was the earl’s lifeline in Wiltshire. Still, he was determined to see her established in her own household before she was more firmly on the shelf than her five and twenty years dictated. When she accompanied Allissa to London for the Season, Miss Petra Sinclaire was also going to find herself presented to every respectable gentleman Bevin knew, whether she wished it or not. He owed her that much, and more.

  Unfortunately he could not express his gratitude for her loyalty and calm good sense in his Christmas gift. It simply wasn’t done. He was already paying her the highest wage she would accept, and money would only place her more firmly among the ranks of servitors. He looked at the heap of rejected jewels from his mother’s and mistresses’ gifts, even the pearls for Allissa’s comeout, and had a mad urge to fill the pearl jewel box with the pirate’s treasure, for Petra. She was the only one of the bunch deserving of his largesse, the only one without a relative or other protector to satisfy her every whim, the only one not expecting an exorbitant present. And the only one he must not be lavish with.

  Vincent had selected carefully: a volume of Scott’s ballads, because Petra was of a serious mind, and a set of mother-of-pearl hair combs, which would look well in her long brown hair. Perfectly acceptable, perfectly tasteful, and perfectly awful.

  Bevin paced some more, then sat at his desk, thinking that a warmer greeting might better express his appreciation, since his gift could not. He disarranged his hair by threading his fingers through it in thought as he crumpled one card after another. Finally, just as the dinner gong reverberated through the halls, he had a message that met with his approval. He waved the card about to dry the ink, then put it on top of the combs. No, the book.

  “Hell and the devil take it!” he swore, putting the combs and the book together and slamming his card and Petra’s name on top of both so there was no mistake.

&nb
sp; Satisfied, the Earl of Montravan went in to dinner, whistling. This Christmas shopping was child’s play.

  3

  “Christmas gifting should be just for children,” Lady Montravan declared. “Gingerbread and shiny pennies and no bother to anyone else. This fustian of bestowing presents on everyone for miles around is too fatiguing for words,” she stated from her reclining position on the love seat, a pillow under her feet, a lavender-soaked cloth on her weary brow. The dowager countess credited her enervation to bearing her daughter so late in life. Others, such as her dresser, Travers, blamed it on sheer miserliness. Lady Montravan was so cheeseparing, she wouldn’t expand a single groat or an ounce of effort more than she had to. “Besides,” she went on now, sighing with exhaustion, “all these gifts take away from the religious celebration.” Which cost her nothing except her son’s donation to the church.

  “Oh, Mama, you cannot mean you wish for a Christmas without presents! Just think of all the treats you’d miss and the surprises you have to look forward to.” At seventeen, Allissa Montford was still young enough to shiver with anticipation, tossing her blond curls. Allissa’s fair hair was her heritage from the father she barely remembered, while Bevin’s coloring came more from his mother, whose own dark hair was now gone to gray—from frailty, the dowager swore.

  “Do sit still, Allissa. Your restlessness is agitating my nerves.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Lady Alissa dutifully picked up the fashion journal she’d been studying, but she couldn’t drop the subject, not with Christmas just a week or so away. All the cooking going on below-stairs, all the baskets being readied for the tenants, and all the greenery being fetched in for decorations kept her normally high spirits at fever pitch. “Only consider, Mama, Squire Merton is coming for Christmas dinner. He is sure to bring you something pretty, and you know Bev always delights you with his gifts. I’m sure this year will be no different. Except,” Allissa said with a giggle, “this year he can buy me extravagant jewelry, too.”

  “Oh, dear,” spoke a quiet voice from the window seat, where the light was better for her embroidery, since too many lamps bothered Lady Montravan’s eyes and used too much oil. “You haven’t been pestering your brother about a tiara again, have you?”

  “Oh, no, I merely wrote to Vincent about it.”

  Miss Sinclaire clucked her tongue and went back to her needlework. If Lady Montravan did not find fault with Allissa’s manners, surely it was not Petra’s place to correct the forward chit. Besides, she’d only be wasting her breath. Petra smiled to herself, a smile that softened her rather commonplace features into loveliness, to think that she was growing as stingy with her energy as her employer. She knew what Travers and the others thought of Lady Montravan: that she would let her son’s house burn down around her ears without lifting a pudgy, beringed finger, so long as her jewel box and bankbook were safe. Why, the abigail was fond of repeating, before Miss Sinclaire came to the Hall, the place was a shambles and Lady Allissa was running wild through the countryside with none to naysay her. ’Twas doubtful she even knew her letters before Petra took her in hand, the little savage. The staff adored the little hoyden—that was half the problem—but not one of them misdoubted that she’d make micefeet of her reputation ere long.

  The tiara was not Petra’s problem, she tried to convince herself. Bevin couldn’t be such a gudgeon as to forget what was suitable for such a young miss. Then again, it would be just like the generous earl to cave in to Allissa’s demands, then leave it up to Petra to forbid the peagoose to wear it. And it would be just like Lissa to want to flaunt a diamond tiara at the small local assemblies before her less fortunate friends. At least Bevin would be at Montravan for the New Year’s ball. If he wanted to see his little sister make a cake out of herself in front of his ducal guests, or be labeled “coming” by the neighbors, even before her presentation, that was his problem. Christmas was Petra’s.

  “You know, dearest,” she hinted, “you might think a bit more of others at this special season.”

  “Oh, I do, Petra!” Allissa jumped up. “I wonder if Squire Merton will bring me a gift as well as Mama.”

  “He can well afford it,” her fond mother commented, popping another bonbon into her mouth, then sucking on it as if the effort to chew was just too great. “If he ever gets his nose out of the smelly stables and kennels long enough to go shopping. And not in the village, either. There is nothing but pinchbeck stuff in the local shops. He’ll send to London if he has any sense.”

  If the squire had any sense, Petra thought, he wouldn’t be hanging around Lady Montravan. The hunting-mad squire was going to see his carefree bachelor days ended, if Petra was any judge, as soon as Bevin brought home his bride. Lady Montravan had declared often enough her refusal to take up residence in Montravan’s pawky dower house. And why should she, spending her own jointure on its upkeep, when Merton had a perfectly fine manor house just waiting for a mistress?

  The dowager had finally swallowed the sweet, but not the bitter thought of Merton’s coming the lickpenny with her present. “He’d better come down handsome, I say, after all the trouble I have gone to for his gift.”

  The squire’s gift was to be the needlepoint pillow with a portrait of his favorite hunter on the cover, the one that Petra was currently embroidering.

  Lady Montravan believed that handmade gifts showed greater feeling than mere monetary expenditures. “Why, giving Merton a gift he can jolly well go purchase for himself is foolish beyond permission,” the dowager had declared. “And as for buying Bevin a present, la, I am sure the boy has five of everything he could ever want or need. And doxies to provide the rest. Buying gifts for nabobs is like bringing coals to Newcastle.”

  Still, he was her son, so after much deliberation Lady Montravan decided on a burgundy velvet dressing gown with satin lapels and sash, with his initials embroidered on the chest and the family crest embroidered on the back. By Petra. A lion, a scepter, and a hawk, in gold thread.

  “Now that Mama is giving Bev such a marvelous surprise,” Allissa had mused to Petra, “I need a really special gift for him, too, to thank him for the tiara.”

  “What if he gives you something else, something equally nice, just more suitable?”

  “Then I’ll still want to give him something wonderful, so he feels guilty. My birthday is soon.” She twirled a golden lock around her finger, thinking. “Mama says handworked gifts show heart.” So Lady Allissa designed a pair of slippers to match the burgundy dressing gown, with a lion on the right shoe, a hawk and a scepter to be embroidered on the left. By Petra.

  Miss Sinclaire kept sewing, turning to catch the afternoon light. Lady Montravan was still exhausted from reading Vincent’s lists out loud to her companion. “I swear,” she said, “this doling out of money to the servants is another ridiculous tradition. Heaven knows we pay them a good enough wage. Why should we have to reward them extra simply for doing their jobs?”

  “Because they work harder at Christmastide, with all the extra company and such, my lady,” Petra offered. “And so they might have more joy in the season, buying gifts for their loved ones, too.”

  Allissa looked up from her magazine. “And you know servants can never manage to save any money. Besides, Mama, you shouldn’t say such things. Petra is a paid employee, too.”

  “Nonsense,” Lady Montravan stated, without lifting the scented cloth from her eyes to see Petra’s blush. “Petra is one of the family. Bevin explained it to you ages ago. We are not paying her a wage to make herself useful; we give her an allowance, the same as we give you one.”

  Except that Petra could not refuse to make all the arrangements for the ball, the household’s celebration, and the arrival of the ducal party. She couldn’t say she was too busy to wrap and pack all the baskets for the tenants, and she could not choose to work on her own Christmas gifts instead of embroidering scepters, lions, and hawks! She certainly could not go spend Christmas with her sister and Rosalyn’s curate husband at the
ir tiny cottage in Hampshire—no, not even if there was a new niece she had never seen, not with such an important event in the offing, the heir’s bringing home a prospective bride.

  And as for her allowance, why, Allissa couldn’t pass through the nearby village with its two insignificant shops without spending more than Petra’s quarterly income. Not that Petra complained, ever. She was nothing to Lord Montravan, no obligation, no relation, no debt of honor, yet he supported her, and handsomely. He even insisted that her clothes money come from the household accounts, not her “allowance.” The dowager agreed, not surprising since the bills were on Bevin’s tab, and since a well-dressed Miss Sinclaire was a suitable enough companion to send out with Allissa on her rounds of the neighbors, saving Lady Montravan the stress and strain of carriage rides and morning calls. Besides, the dowager liked to show Petra off to the local gentry and her Bath cronies as a symbol of her generosity.

  Lady Montravan was generous, in her way. She treated Petra like a daughter—just as negligently as she treated Allissa.

  *

  That night, long after the other ladies were abed, Petra sat up reflecting, not for the first time, on Lord Montravan’s generosity.

  It was not enough. Her quarterly payments, her life savings, and all the coins she’d managed to squirrel away in a more frugal fashion than even Lady Montravan espoused were not enough for her Christmas shopping. So Miss Sinclaire sat up sewing through the night on her own Christmas gifts.

  A gift from the hands was a gift from, the heart, she tried to convince herself, echoing Lady Montravan’s oft-repeated sentiments. The recipients would appreciate Petra’s laboriously worked handkerchiefs more than some store-bought bauble. And pigs would fly. Petra tried to imagine Allissa preferring the lace-edged, monogrammed linen squares to a diamond tiara. Instead she pictured Squire Merton wiping the manure off his boots with his initialed handkerchief.