by Mary Balogh, Jo Beverley, Sandra Heath, Edith Layton, Laura Matthews
Caroline 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.
&
nbsp; 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?
He frowned at the cottage when his carriage finally stopped outside its gate. It was small enough, though larger than he might have expected, considering the fact that Parr and Marjorie between them had wasted both his property and small fortune and her considerable dowry and had got themselves deeply and irrevocably into debt. But it was a shabby enough place. Gloomy. Depressing.
He felt rather sorry for the children. He wondered how deeply they mourned. Marjorie and Parr had been their parents, after all.
He became aware as he jumped down from his carriage that another was drawing up behind it. And a glance in its direction revealed the face of Lady Carlyle pressed to the glass, peering out at him. She withdrew her face hastily enough. Of course. It would be far beneath her dignity to give the impression that she was in any way interested in him.
He was annoyed. She had proved him wrong and he hated to be wrong. He would hate to think that she had an ounce of compassion for children in her soul. And the thought flashed through his mind that they would be at the house together. With Christmas approaching. And with a snowstorm imminent.
Bloody hell! He allowed his mind the luxury of the expletive.
Sometimes he hated the constraints placed upon him by the fact that he was a gentleman. He would have liked to ignore her presence and stride up the path to the cottage door alone. But he was a gentleman. He strode toward her carriage instead and opened the door. But he could not deny himself altogether the indulgence of bad temper.
“Ah,” he said, looking into her beautiful, cold, arrogant face, so at variance with the vivid red hair visible beneath the brim of her bonnet. “I see that I would have lost my wager had I been unwise enough to make it with anyone. You came.”
Her lovely wide mouth became a thin line and her jaw became so hard that he imagined her teeth must be just about cracking from the force with which they were pressed together.
“I came, my lord,” she said, her voice every bit as icy as the day, “because in my wildest imaginings I did not believe that you would. It seems that we can both occasionally be wrong.”
He did not like having to look up at her. Yet there was no sign of her coachman approaching to put down the steps for her to descend.
“Allow me, ma’am,” he said, and he leaned inside the carriage, pushed aside the blanket that covered her legs, set his hands at her waist, and swung her down to the roadway to stand in front of him. That was better. The top of her head barely reached his chin. Her waist, he noticed belatedly, was as small now as it had ever been. And she still wore the same perfume she had used to wear, a subtle scent that teased rather than assaulted the nostrils.
“Thank you,” she said with curt sarcasm, “for awaiting my permission, my lord. Your hands?”
He removed them and pursed his lips.
“Ma’am.” He bowed with exaggerated courtesy and contemplated pleasurable ways of curbing her sharp tongue. “Will you take my arm so that we may approach the house in seemly fashion to meet our nephew and nieces?” He waited for her answer.
“Thank you.” She elevated her chin and her nose—though both of necessity moved together, she succeeded in making it appear to be two quite separate motions. She set her arm lightly along his as if he were about to lead her into a dance and so saved herself from the appearance of having been bested.
They proceeded through the gate and up the path in stiff silence.
What a Christmas it was shaping up to be, Viscount Morsey thought. A shabby country cottage, an unwelcome snowstorm, three young children, a cold, haughty woman. Good God, what a Christmas!
He wondered by what madness he had once imagined he loved the woman. And he wondered for what unknown good deed the powers above had rewarded him by saving him from marrying her.
Two carriages. Not one, but two. They had all felt an almost sickening excitement at the sight of one drawing up outside the gate, especially since it was far grander than any carriage they had ever seen before. But when the second appeared behind it, they were saucer-eyed and ecstatic. Except that they were not allowed to enjoy the sight for long. Nurse whisked them away from the window and was soon scrubbing their faces with painful haste and changing the girls’ aprons for newer and cleaner ones.
It seemed that their aunt and uncle had arrived.
Rupert and Patricia, instantly alert, wanted to rush downstairs to meet the visitors. But Nurse said that neither the excitement nor the eagerness to leave the nursery was seemly. They must wait quietly where they were until their aunt and uncle had recovered from their journey and chose to call on them or summon them. And they must be on their best behavior.
Children should be seen and not heard. Children should speak only when spoken to. Caroline recited the rules in her head, though they were unnecessary. She. was glad they had not been allowed to run downstairs. She hoped her uncle and aunt would take a long time recovering from their journeys. She hoped she would remain unspoken to even after they had.
They came very soon. Nurse had said that they would want to wash and change and have a cup of tea, but Nurse must have been mistaken. Caroline tried to hide behind her when they came into the nursery, but she was pushed firmly forward after Nurse had curtsied deeply, and so Caroline clung to her brother’s sleeve instead and stood half behind him, peeping around his arm.
“Rupert,” her uncle said. “Patricia. Caroline.” He looked at them each in turn and inclined his head to them. Caroline ducked right behind Rupert when it came her turn. Her uncle was a stem-looking man and very tall. She thought he was taller than Papa had been, though she could not remember Papa very clearly. Papa had never bowed to her. She liked being bowed to. Princesses were always bowed to.
“Hello, children.” Her aunt smiled at each of them in turn. She was a very pretty lady. She had hair like Patricia’s. Caroline had heard the servants say that Patricia’s quick temper came from having red hair.
Though Caroline had not noticed that Patricia was bad-tempered. She wondered if her aunt was. Her aunt, she
noticed, would like to hide behind her uncle’s sleeve as Caroline was hiding behind Rupert’s. Her aunt was feeling shy.
“Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, ma’am.” Rupert was bowing, taking Caroline’s hand forward with him. He was using his grown-up voice.
“Good afternoon, Uncle. Good afternoon, Aunt.” Patricia’s curtsy was one of the best she had ever accomplished. She did not lift her skirt too high or topple sideways. Nurse would be pleased.
There was a slight pause and Caroline realized that it was her turn. Her thumb wandered toward her mouth, but she caught herself in time and lowered it firmly. Thumb-sucking was for babies. She moved in against Rupert’s back for reassurance and fixed the one eye that was not hidden against his sleeve on her aunt.
“There are snow snakes,” she said.
At first she thought she had said the wrong thing. Rupert and Patricia shuffled uncomfortably, and her aunt and uncle looked at her as if they did not understand. They were both looking at her.
“Are there?” her aunt asked at last. “Where?”
“Out there.” Caroline motioned with her free arm to the window, though she did not turn her head. “On the path. They are all going the same way.”
“Caroline!” Patricia’s voice was agonized.
“Caroline has an imagination, ma’am,” Rupert said, rushing to her defense. “She is only four. She will grow out of it. Did you have a pleasant journey?”
“Thank you, yes,” their aunt said.
But their uncle was talking at the same time. “Perhaps you would be good enough to show us, Caroline,” he was saying. And he had stepped forward and was stretching out a hand for hers.
Caroline looked all the way up into his face. He was not smiling and he still looked stem. But there was something in his eyes, something that took away some of her terror. But she had been talking to her aunt, and she had not intended to show them the snow snakes. She had merely been making conversation. Nurse always said that ladies—and gentlemen—had to learn to make conversation. She reached out a hand tentatively and set it in her uncle’s large one. She left the sanctuary of Rupert’s back and led the way to the window. Her aunt came too.