“And still might be,” Brett muttered under his breath. What a little shrew! Some poor fool might have been saved a lifetime of misery if the archwife had drowned in the ditch after all. He tossed her another coin so he could be on his way. The infuriated female caught the gold piece and tossed it back in his face, along with a dollop of mud. At least Brett hoped it was mud. He closed the distance between them and took her shoulders, growing angry himself at the delay. “You should learn to hold your temper, girl, before your betters.”
“When I come upon someone better, I shall know precisely how to behave, sirrah! Unhand me, you dastard.”
This close, Brett couldn’t help noticing that her thick brown hair was fallen like a velvet shawl over her shoulders, and flame sparked from the depths of dark brown eyes. The petite country hoyden would be quite an attractive armful, he decided with a connoisseur’s eye, except for her waspish tongue. Well, he knew how to still a woman’s mouth, all right. He kissed her.
Her lips were cold and wet, but Lud, they sent a fire through him. There must be something about rustic wenches and their very earthiness, Brett thought, that moved him as no hothouse London beauty had in ages.
Miss Selden was stunned. She’d never experienced more than a timid peck or a chaste salute, hardly kisses at all when compared to this…this ravishment. Good Heavens, no wonder so many girls came to grief in the City! Of course, this devilishly handsome rogue, with his blue eyes and cleft chin, had to be an expert at the art. Why, she’d felt that kiss down to her toes—her waterlogged and frozen toes, the cad! How dare he take such unfair advantage of what he undoubtedly thought was some poor milkmaid or a farmer’s ignorant daughter. So she slapped him.
Rubbing his cheek, and incidentally spreading dirt from his no longer pristine gloves, Brett drawled, “My apologies, miss.” He was not about to tell this rag-mannered wench how affected he’d been by her innocent, unaware sensuality. “It was only a kiss, so you can stop sputtering now. Not a very proficient kiss, as these things go. Perhaps you’d like lessons, my dear?”
Not very proficient? That was more insulting than the stolen kiss! “How dare you bring your licentious ways to a decent neighborhood, you rakehell. You libertine, you immoral bas—”
So he kissed her again, longer and deeper. Then he stepped back to wait for the slap, knowing he deserved it, knowing the kiss had been worth it. Instead the girl gasped, patted her pockets, and shouted, “Bandit!” Brett glanced both ways along the road, searching for the danger, until he realized she meant him. “Dash it, I stole a kiss, nothing else. I admit I was riding too quickly, but I am no highwayman.”
She wasn’t paying him the least attention, rushing around in a frenzy. “Not you, you clunch. Bandit’s a kitten. He was in my pocket.” She bent over to peer into the ditch, leaving him with a draggle-tailed but delightful view.
Brett knew he should be on his way, but there was just something about this female that made him reluctant to leave. And he was, in truth, responsible for her difficulties, to say nothing of the liberties he’d taken with her person. So he stepped nearer, to help in the hunt, poking with his boot toe behind fallen branches, echoing the chit’s “Here, kitty, kitty.” And feeling like a prize fool on all counts.
“There you are!” she exclaimed, tearing her befouled mittens off to lift something out from behind a rock.
“That?” Brett asked, staring at the handful of lint she held. “That’s no cat, that’s what’s left in the currying comb after I brush my horse.” But she was cooing to the palm-sized dustball with blue eyes and a pushed-in face like a pug dog’s. “Great Scot, did it get squashed in the fall?”
Without taking her eyes off the ridiculous creature, Gerry told him, “No, that’s the way he’s supposed to look. It’s a rare type of long-haired cat from Malukistan, along the Silk Route. My uncle sent a pair back from his travels, and now I and a few other cat fanciers are trying to establish them as a special breed, without weakening the strain through too-close matings.”
Brett believed he now knew more about long-haired cats than he ever needed to. He also believed that he might have made an error. A serious error. His little rustic beauty was not quite as young as he’d thought, and he noticed that her accent, now that she was not shrieking like a banshee, was educated and refined. And her fingers bore no rings. Bloody hell.
“Yes, well, I am glad to see that the animal has not come to any harm. Now I really must continue my journey, Miss…ah, Miss…?”
She had already turned her back to him and gone through the gate toward the cottage. She was the first woman to cut him in his memory. Brett shrugged and remounted. He wasn’t here for any country dalliance, he told himself. Nor duels with irate fathers.
4
The earl was in Ossing, in time, thank goodness.
The child looked as pathetic as any undernourished, disease-ridden scrap of humanity he’d seen in London’s stews and kennels. Lud, how many times had he tossed such a creature a coin? And how much good had that done? he wondered now, for surely this ashen, enervated child was past praying for.
Brett prayed anyway, using words and phrases from his childhood, making bargains he didn’t know if he could keep, with forces he didn’t know if he believed. She couldn’t die, this black-haired piece of himself, she simply could not. “Do you hear me, Samantha?” he whispered, fearing a shout might still the shallow breaths altogether. “You cannot die. I forbid it! I have come all the way to see you, miss, and see you I shall. Don’t you dare leave me before I have even discovered the color of your eyes. Dash it, Samantha, wake up and look at me.”
Her eyes were blue, the same as his. But they were vacant, unfocused, as though she were staring at a light he couldn’t see.
“No, you can do better than that, Samantha. Try, sweetheart. You’ve got to get better, you know, because…because it’s almost Christmas. Come on, Sammy, you can do it. Wake up. Please.”
Butterfly lashes fluttered, then opened wider. “No one ever calls me Sammy,” she whispered back.
He leaned closer to hear. “No? Not your aunt or Miss Musgrove?”
“Oh, no. They say that would be common. I am a lady, you know.”
He nodded. “Yes, I did know that, Lady Samantha Wouk. Is that what you wish me to call you?”
Her brows knit in confusion. “I think you must, sir, as we have not been introduced. That’s one of the rules, you know.” She sighed. “There are so many I cannot remember them all. But you won’t tell Aunt Jane, will you, sir?”
“What, tattle on a new friend? Never. Besides, sometimes I forget some of those silly rules, too.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Word of a gentleman. No, word of a Wouk. That’s even better, you know, for we might forget a few plaguey manners, but we never forget a promise.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Are you really my father, then? You really came?”
“I came.”
“Then I suppose you can call me Sammy.” She smiled, showing a missing tooth and a dimple.
Lud, Brett thought, she was going to break a hundred hearts in a few years. “And I would be proud if you would call me Papa.”
“Not ‘my lord’?”
That’s how Brett had always addressed his sire, with proper respect for the cold, sanctimonious stranger. “Definitely not ‘my lord.’ Now you rest and get better, my girl, all right?”
“Word of a Wouk,” she murmured contentedly before drifting back to sleep.
*
The earl was in Ossing, thank heaven, thought a much relieved Miss Musgrove. At least she was relieved until Lord Boughton dismissed the doctor, tossed out the tonics, and announced that he would sit by Lady Samantha’s bedside from now on. How was she supposed to prove her dedication and devotion to the brat? How was she supposed to get a reference from him, or a Christmas bonus? Drat.
*
The earl really was in Ossing, for her! The next time Samantha awoke, he was asleep in the chair next
to her bedside, with his bare feet on a stool and a dark shadow on his chin. He was her father, in truth, not a fever dream, because he looked just like his portrait in the library downstairs, only much handsomer. How absolutely, positively glorious! Her plan was working even better than she’d expected. Samantha almost clapped her hands in excitement.
Her slight movement was enough to startle Lord Boughton awake. “Sammy? Are you thirsty, sweetheart? Would you like some fresh lemonade? I’ve been keeping it cool near the window. Or perhaps some hot broth?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not one of Miss Musgrove’s potions?”
He’d thrown them out the window, after one smell of the noxious brews. The nearby hedges were already withered. “No, you don’t need them anymore, now that you are doing so much better.”
She wasn’t well enough for him to leave yet! Samantha shook her head and whimpered, “I do not feel like anything right now, thank you. I’ll just lie here awhile.”
“Well, don’t plan on staying abed for too long, for we’ve a lot to do if we’re going to be ready for Christmas.”
“We do?”
“Of course. We need to gather greenery to decorate, and ribbons to tie around everything. We’ll have to search through the attics for my mother’s ornaments and such, and we’ll have to find us the biggest Yule log in Upper Ossing.” What he used to disdain at friends’ house parties now seemed eminently desirable, if he could tempt the child from her sickbed. The rituals and rigamarole of the season might even be pleasurable, if seen through those blue eyes, raised to him so trustingly. Why, once she was recovered—and he refused to consider that she might not—he could take the poppet skating and sledding, if the weather were not too cold, and if she were bundled tightly enough. And if they got snow. He found himself wishing for a blizzard like the veriest schoolboy, for his daughter’s sake, of course. Perhaps sledding was too rough a sport for such a delicate little sprite, though. How should he know? At least he could teach her to make snow angels, something he was certain neither his starched-up sister-in-law nor the proper Miss Musgrove would have taught her. How much else had she missed because he was such a wretched parent? He thought of all the other activities his hosts and their families had delighted in through all those interminable holiday gatherings, to his aggravation. “Oh, and we’ll have to make at least one kissing bough, if you promise not to get up any flirtations with the footmen.”
“Papa! I am only seven years old!”
“Ah, then I suppose it’s safe to have mistletoe in the house. And candles in every window. And caroling. We definitely must have caroling. You’ll like that, won’t you, poppet, all the trappings and trimmings?”
In her dreams, Samantha could not have imagined a more perfect holiday. She’d never even seen anything like what he described, not at her puritanical aunt’s house. They’d prayed on Christmas and had a goose for dinner; that was all. She thought she’d like this celebration much better, if he was there with her. “You’ll stay?”
He wouldn’t lie to her, not after boasting that a Wouk’s word was his bond. “I cannot stay forever, Sammy, for I have business in London and other properties to oversee.” Deuce take it, he was a conscientious landlord; how could he have ignored his own child for so long? But she’d been an infant when his wife died. Sending the babe to her aunt had seemed the best solution. Now remorse made him say, “But I will be here as long as you need me.”
Samantha sighed and the earl grabbed up her tiny hand, as if to keep her from drifting off again, whence she might not return. Desperate to focus her attention on the future, so that she’d fight to have one, he asked, “Surely there is something special you want to do for Christmas, some magical gift you are looking forward to? Perhaps a new doll? A pony?”
She had a closet full of dolls. His secretary sent her one for each birthday and holiday. She had a pony, Jessie, because Aunt Jane considered equestrian skills to be part of a proper female’s education. But she’d never had a pet of her own. “I’ve always wanted a kitten, but Aunt Jane says they are dirty, sneaky creatures.”
“Your aunt’s opinions do not matter here, Sammy. This is my house, and yours.”
“But Miss Musgrove would never permit an animal in the nursery.”
“If Miss Musgrove disapproves”—and the poker-backed governess seemed to disapprove of everything!—“she will have to leave.”
“You can do that, Papa?”
“Of course I can. I’m an earl, remember. I cannot toss her out in the cold, for that would be ungentlemanly, but if you don’t care for her, and she does not care for your pet, then we’ll find her another position or something. What do you think about that?”
“Would I have to go away to a school?”
“Eventually, so you’ll meet other girls your age. You’ll like making new friends.”
“I’ve never had a playmate. Aunt Jane says the village children are too vulgar for an earl’s daughter.”
Brett was growing heartily sick of Jane’s dictates. And feeling guilty as hell for leaving the little mite with Miss Prunes and Prisms for so long. No pets, no friends, nothing but lessons and prayers? The earl might know tuppence about being a parent, but he’d wager he could do better than that. Medea could do better than that! He patted his daughter’s hand. “You’ll just have to make a speedier recuperation, then, so we can go pick out your kitten. I’m sure the tenants will have any number for you to choose from if there is no kitchen cat with a litter here. And I’ll ask the grooms about the barn mousers. We’ll find the prettiest one in the bunch. Maybe a white one, so you can call it Snowball. How would that be?” He vowed he’d find her a purple one, if that was what she wanted.
“Oh, no, Papa, I don’t want just any old kind of cat.” Suddenly Brett was feeling a draft on the back of his neck. Or was that a prickling of doom? “No? You wanted a lion cub or a tiger, perhaps?”
“No, silly. I want a special, special cat.”
Oh, Lud, he was about to be punished for all his sins. “And I suppose you know exactly where to find this doubly special feline?”
Samantha sat up in bed, showing more energy than she had since he’d come. “Of course I do! Miss Selden raises them, you see, at the old gatekeeper’s cottage.”
“Miss Selden from Selden House lives at the gatehouse?” He’d been too concerned with his daughter’s health to ask about anything else. “The baronet’s sister?” Let there be another Miss Selden, he prayed, almost as fervently as he’d prayed for his daughter’s return to health.
“And Sir Eustace, also. Mr. Mactavish rents the big house. Miss Musgrove thinks he is common, but Miss Selden and Sir Eustace are Quality, she says, so we went to call on them once, when we first arrived. And I saw the most adorable kitties in the whole wide world. I want one of those kittens, Papa.”
Once, when he was swimming, the earl had stepped on an eel. That almost described what he was feeling now.
*
The earl was in Upper Ossing? Confound his craven heart, fumed Charleen, Lady Trant, as she peered again at the letter from Brett’s solicitor. Where the deuce was that anyway? And could the message really say that Boughton was going to be indefinitely detained in the country on account of a sick girl child? Her vision must be worse than she’d thought. By all that was holy, though, Charleen would not purchase spectacles. And she would not be cast aside like yesterday’s mutton. A skimpy string of pearls, that’s what he thought she deserved after she’d served his needs for all these months? Never mind his generosity at the dressmakers, the milliners, and the wine merchant, she was entitled to more. To his title, in fact.
Blast! Even with the diamond butterfly clasp, the necklace wouldn’t bring enough blunt to keep her in candles for a month. Her eyesight was good enough to count the diamond chips, but not to notice the folded bank draft that was tucked beneath the pearls. Perhaps he’d meant the necklace as a token of his esteem, until he could purchase a more worthy gift, Charleen decided. Yes, that was it: he�
�d left in such a hurry he’d delegated his fusty old man of affairs to send her a trifle, to show his regrets at being away from her over Christmas.
Of course, there was no good reason for them to be apart. The earl was certain to grow bored in the country. Lonely. He’d need a companion, perhaps a lady to act as hostess to the local gentry. Why, Charleen would be doing him a favor by traveling to… Where the devil was that place? Osier? Orange? And she could help with the sick child, too. She could, ah, read to her. No, that wouldn’t work. Charleen could play at dolls. Well, her maid could sew up some doll clothes, at any rate. Boughton would see what a good mother she’d make, what a good wife, what a good countess. What a good idea!
5
The earl was in Ossing, drat the man. Miss Selden had slapped one of the foremost members of the beau monde. She knew it even before the rumor mills started to grinding. After all, she’d heard the little girl was ailing, and what kind of unnatural father would leave a child alone on Christmas anyway?
Aside from the logic of Lord Boughton’s appearing at this time, there simply could not be many other such nonpareils as her highway accoster. But if by some chance there should ever happen to be a more handsome, more virile, more commanding gentleman—not that she thought he was gentlemanly, not by half—well, he wouldn’t be riding through Upper Ossing.
The libertine from the lane was the earl, all right, from his famous elegant tailoring to his fabled standing among the demimonde. And now he was standing in Gerry’s shabby parlor with a bouquet of flowers in one hand. Roses, no less, and this December. If his clothes or his confidence did not proclaim the rogue’s worth, the roses would have. And there she was, in a faded gown, likely with stains and spots from the ivy she’d been braiding for the mantel. At least she’d managed to wash away the stink of yesterday’s dousing; now if she could only get rid of his lordship so easily. He was everything she disliked in a man: arrogant and immoral. Like others she’d met during her London Season, the earl thought his wealth and title could buy him respect and affection. Likely they did. Then he’d gamble it all away on the turn of a card or a turned-down sheet, while others did his work, his worrying. No, Gerry did not admire his lordship’s ilk at all. Of course the earl’s dark good looks were another matter altogether.
Greetings of the Season and Other Stories Page 22
