by Mary Balogh
“A shillin’?” The former jeweler frowned. “And sent yer in the middle of the night, did she?”
Nicky nodded.
“Did you steal these ’ere?” Chandler asked grimly. “I’ll whip the skin off yer backside if you did.”
Nicky began to cry. His tears were perhaps somewhat more genuine than was usual with him. “She’s pretty,” he said, “an’ she smells like a garden, an’ she brings me choc’lut when I’m in bed. An’ I’m ’avin’ it mended for ’er.”
“But she didn’t send yer, lad.” It was a statement, not a question.
Nicky shook his head. “It’s to be a surprise,” he said. “Honest, Mr.
Chandler. She lost the di’mond, an’ she cried, an’ I found it. I’m ’avin’ it mended for ’er. I’ll give you a shillin’.”
“I’ll do it,” Ned Chandler said with a sudden decision, looking ferociously down at the tiny child from beneath bushy eyebrows with a gaze that reminded Nicky uncomfortably of the earl. “But if I ’ear tell of a lady wot ’ad a ring stole, Nick, lad, I’ll find yer and whip yer backside. Understood?”
“Yes.” Nicky watched in silent concentration as the jeweler’s tools were unwrapped from an old rag and the diamond replaced in the ring.
“You can keep yer shillin’,” the man said, tousling the boy’s hair when the mended ring had been carefully restored to its hiding place. “And you make sure to give that ring back, lad. Don’t you be tempted to keep it, or I’ll be after yer, mind.”
“Take the money,” the boy said, holding out his treasure, “or it won’t be my present. Please?”
The man chuckled suddenly. “Well,” he said. “I’ll take it, ’cos it shows me yer must be honest. Off with yer then, lad. Be careful on your way back.”
Nicky grinned cheekily at him and was gone.
Christmas Eve. It had always been Estelle’s favorite day of the season.
It was on Christmas Day, of course, that the gifts were opened and that one feasted and sat around all day enjoying the company of one’s family.
But there had always been something magical about Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Eve there was all the anticipation of Christmas.
And this year was to be no exception. There was all the hustle and bustle of the servants and all the tantalizing smells coming from the kitchen, that of the mince pies being the most predominant. And there was Alma pretending to forget a dozen times during the day that the mistletoe was hanging in that particular spot, and standing beneath it.
Especially when Estelle’s unmarried brother, Rodney, happened to be in the room.
And there was Papa working everyone’s excitement to fever pitch, as he did every year, with hints dropped about the presents, hints that stopped just short of telling one exactly what the gift was. And Mama sitting with her needlepoint having a comfortable coze with Allan’s mother. And the children rushing about getting under everyone’s feet, and their parents threatening halfheartedly to banish them to the nursery even if it was Christmas.
And the men playing billiards. And the girls whispering and giggling.
And Papa tickling any child who was unwise enough to come within arms length of him.And Allan relaxed and smiling, playing the genial host.
And Nicky following the tea tray into the drawing room with a plate of cakes and pastries, looking fit enough to eat himself, and the pleased way he puffed out his chest when Estelle caught his eye and smiled and winked at him.
And the group of carolers who came to the door before the family went to church and were invited inside the hall and stood there and sang, their cheeks rosy from the cold outside, their lanterns still lit and in their hands. And the noisy and cheerful exchange of season’s greetings before they left again.
And the quiet splendor of the church service after the hectic day.And the Christmas music.And the Bible readings.And Bethlehem.And the star.And the birth of the baby, the birth of Christ.
And suddenly the meaning of it all, the quiet and breathless moment in the middle of all the noisy festivities surrounding it.
The birth of Christ.
Estelle was seated beside her husband, their arms almost touching. She looked at him, and he looked back. And they smiled at each other.
The drawing room was noisy again when they went back home, even though the children had been put to bed before they went to church. But finally the adults too began to yawn and make their way upstairs. After all, someone said, it would be a terrible tragedy if they were too tired to enjoy the goose the next day.
Estelle smiled rather regretfully at her husband when they were alone together. “It’s going so quickly,” she said. “One more day and it will all be over.”
“But there are always more Christmases,” he said.
“Yes.” Her smile did not brighten.
“Are you tired, Estelle?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Mm,” she said. “But I don’t want the day to end. It has been lovely, Allan, hasn’t it?”
“Come and sit down,” he said, seating himself on a love seat. “I want to tell you about Nicky.”
“About Nicky?” She frowned. And Allan wanted to talk to her?
One of his arms was draped along the back of the love seat, though he did not touch her when she sat down beside him. “I have been making some plans for him,” he said. “I spoke with him in my study this morning. He seemed quite agreeable.”
“Plans?” Estelle looked wary. “You are not going to send him away, Allan? Not another apprenticeship? Oh, please, no. He is too young.”
“He is going to live with his mother and his sister,” he said.
She looked her incomprehension.
“I am glad to say the orphanage was a fabrication,” he said. “To win your sympathy, I do believe.”
“He lied to me?” she said. “He has a family?”
“I am afraid he became the victim of a villainous character,” he told her gently. “Someone who was willing to set him up in life, buy his apprenticeship to a chimney sweep in exchange for stolen items from the houses that a climbing boy would have access to.”
Estelle’s eyes were wide with horror. She did not even notice her husband take one of her hands in his.
“I told him I would not tell you,” he said. “But I have decided to do so, knowing that you will not blame Nicky or think the worst of him. I caught him at it a week ago, Estelle, though I already had my suspicions.”
She bit her upper lip. There were tears in her eyes.
“The money from his stolen goods-or some fraction of it-was going to the upkeep of his mother and sister,” he said. “It seems the father took himself off some time ago.”
“Oh, the poor baby,” she whispered.
“I have spoken with the mother.” He was massaging her hand, which had turned cold, in both of his. “I had her brought here yesterday. I had from her the name of the villain who has been exploiting the child in this way and have passed it on with some pertinent information to the appropriate authorities. Enough of that. To cut a long story short, the mother has agreed that she would consider life in a country cottage as washerwoman to our house as little short of heaven. Nicky confessed this morning to a lifelong ambition to own a horse. I have suggested that he may enjoy working in our stables-when he is not at school, of course.
Somehow he was not nearly so enthusiastic about the idea of school.”
“So he is to live on your estate with his mother?” she asked.
“Yes.” He raised her hand to his lips, and this time she did notice as she saw it there and felt his lips warm against her fingers. “Do you think it a good solution, Estelle? Are you pleased?” He looked almost anxious.
“And you did all this without a word to me?” she asked in some wonder.
“You did it to save me some pain, Allan? Did you do it for me?”
His smile was a little twisted. “I must confess to a certain fondness for the little imp,” he said. “But yes, Estelle. I tho
ught it might make you happy. Does it?”
“Yes.” She leaped to her feet in some agitation and stood quite unwittingly beneath the mistletoe.
He said nothing for a few moments, but he got to his feet eventually and came to stand behind her. He set his hands on her shoulders. “Now this is an invitation impossible to resist,” he said, lowering his head and kissing the back of her neck.
She turned quickly and stared at him in some amazement. He had never-ever-held her or kissed her outside her bed. She had not even quite realized that he was so tall and that he would feel thus against her-strong and warm and very safe.
He lowered his head, and his mouth came down open on hers.
And how could a kiss when one was standing and fully clothed and in a public room that might possibly be entered by someone else at any moment seem every bit as erotic as any of the kisses they had shared in bed, when his hands were beneath her nightgown against her naked flesh and when his body was in intimate embrace with hers?
But it was so. She felt an aching weakness spiral downward from her throat to her knees.
When he removed his mouth from hers, it was only to set his forehead against her own and gaze downward at her lips.
“I want to give you your gift tonight,” he said. “Now. I want to do it privately. No one else would understand. May I?”
Her senses were swimming, but she smiled at him. “I feel the same way about mine to you,” she said. “Yes, now, tonight, Allan.Just the two of us.” She ran across the room to where they had all piled their gifts and came back to him with a small parcel in her hands. He had removed his from a pocket.
“Open mine first,” he said, and he watched her face as she did so. They were both still standing very close together, underneath the mistletoe.
“It is not the original,” he said quickly as she opened the velvet box.
“It is not nearly as lovely. There were nine sapphires, were there not?
I could not remember, but these do not look right. But I want you to have it anyway. Will you, Estelle? Will you wear it?” He took it from the box and slid it onto her nerveless finger.
“Allan!” she whispered. “But why?”
He was not sure he could explain. He had never been good with words.
Especially with her. “You called it the Star of Bethlehem,” he said. “I always loved that name, because it suggested Christmas and love and peace and hope. All the things I have ever wanted for you. And with you.
I felt I could only tell you with the ring. Never in words.Until now.”
He laughed softly. “It must be the mistletoe. I am not the man for you, Estelle. You are so beautiful, so full of life. So… glittering! I have always envied those other men and wanted to be like them. And I have been horribly jealous and tried to make your life a misery. But I have not meant to. And after Christmas you can go away with your parents, and no one will know that we are separated. There will be no stigma on your name. But you will be free of my taciturn and morose presence.” He smiled fleetingly. “My marble-statue self. But perhaps the ring will help you to remember me a little more kindly. Will it?”
“Allan!” She whispered his name. And looked down at the ring on her finger, the ring that was not the Star of Bethlehem, but that she knew would be just as precious to her. And she noticed the parcel lying forgotten in her hands. She held it out to him. “Open yours.”
He was disappointed that she said no more. He tried to keep his hands from trembling as he opened her gift.
He stood smiling down at the silver snuffbox with its turquoise-studded lid a moment later. “It is the very one I could not persuade Humber to sell me,” he said. “You succeeded, Estelle? You remembered that I wanted it for my collection? Thank you, my dear. I will always treasure it.”
But she was looking anxiously into his eyes. “Open it,” she said. “There is something else inside. It is not really a present. I mean, it is not for you. It fits me. But I lost the other-yes, I did, Allan. I lost it all, though I have been afraid to tell you. But I wanted you to have this so that you would know that I did not do so carelessly.”
He lifted the lid of the snuffbox and stood staring down at a diamond ring set with nine sapphires. He looked up at her, his eyes wide and questioning.
“I didn’t mean to lose it,” she said. “I have broken my heart over it, Allan. It was my most treasured possession. Because it was your first gift to me, and because at the time I thought it was a symbol of what our marriage would be. And because I spoiled that hope by going about a great deal with my friends when I might have stayed with you, and by flirting quite deliberately with other men when you were so quiet and never told me that I meant anything to you. Because I wanted you to know that my behavior has never shown my true sentiments. Those other men have meant nothing whatsoever to me. I have never allowed any of them to touch more than my fingers. You are the only person-the only one, Allan-who occupies the center of my world. The only one I can’t bear to think of spending my life without.
“Because I wanted you to keep the ring when you send me away after Christmas, so that perhaps you will come to know that I love you and only you. And so that perhaps you will want to bring me home again someday and put it on my finger again.” She flashed him a nervous smile.
“I have given it to you, you see, in the hope that you will give it back to me one day. Now, is that not the perfect gift?”
He lifted the ring from the snuffbox, slipped the box into a pocket, and took her right hand in his. He slid the ring onto her third finger and looked up into her face. “Perfect,” he said. “Now you have two gifts and I have one. I do not need to keep the ring for even one minute, you see, Estelle.”
The look in his eyes paralyzed her and held her speechless.
“It is the most wonderful gift I have ever had,” he said. “It is yourself you are giving me, is it not, Estelle?”
She nodded mutely.
“Come, then,” he said. “Give me your second and most precious gift.”
She moved into his arms and laid one cheek against his broad shoulder.
She closed her eyes and relaxed all her weight against him.
“Do you understand that my gift is identical to yours in all ways?” he murmured against her ear.
“Yes.” She did not open her eyes or raise her head. She lifted her hand to touch his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “Except that your ring has only eight sapphires.”
He laughed softly.
“You love me, Allan?” She closed her eyes even more tightly.
“I always have,” he said. “I knew it the moment I put the Star of Bethlehem on your finger two years ago. I am not good at showing it, am I?”
She raised her head suddenly and gazed into his eyes. “How is it possible,” she said, “for two people to be married for almost two years and live close to each other all that time and really not know each other at all?”
He smiled ruefully. “It is rather frightening, is it not?” he said. “But think of what a wonderful time we have ahead of us, Estelle. I have so much to tell you, if I can find the words. And there is so much I want to know about you.”
“I may find too many words,” she said. “You know that I can’t be stopped once I start, Allan.”
“But always to other people before,” he said. “Very rarely to me, because you must have thought that I did not want to hear. Oh, Estelle.”
He hugged her to him and rocked her.
Her arms were wrapped about his chest. She held up her two hands behind his back and giggled suddenly. “I love my two presents,” she said. “One on each hand. But I love the third present even more, Allan. The one I hold in my arms.”
“This was an inspired choice of location for mistletoe,” he said, kissing her again. “Perhaps we should take it upstairs with us, Estelle, and hang it over the bed.”
She flushed as she smiled back at him. “We have never needed any there,” she said.
He took her right
hand in his, smiled down in some amusement at his Christmas present, which he had placed there, and drew her in the direction of the door and the stairs and-for the first time in their married life-his own bedchamber.
The servants had been called into the drawing room to receive their Christmas gifts, the cook first, as she flatly refused to abandon her kitchen for longer than five minutes at the very most.
The Earl of Lisle allowed his wife to distribute the presents, contenting himself with shaking each servant’s hand warmly and conversing briefly with each. He wondered if he was looking quite as glowingly happy as Estelle was looking this morning. But he doubted it.
No one was capable of glowing quite like her.
Anyway, it was against his nature to show his feelings on the outside.
He doubtless looked as humorless and taciturn as ever, he reflected somewhat ruefully, making a special effort to smile at one of the scullery maids, who clearly did not quite know where to put herself when it became clear that she was expected to place her hand into that of her employer, whom she rarely saw.
But, the earl thought, startling the girl by asking if she had quite recovered from the chill that had kept her in bed for two days the week before and so showing her that he knew very well who she was, it was impossible-quite impossible-for Estelle to be feeling any happier than he was feeling. He hoped that she was as happy as he, but she could not be more so.
For he knew that the glow and the sparkle in her that had caused all attention to be focused on her since she had appeared in the breakfast room before they all adjourned to the drawing room to open their gifts-he knew that he had been the cause of it all. She glowed because he loved her and had told her so and shown her so all through what had remained of the night when they had gone to bed.
Indeed, it was amazing that she was not yawning and that she did not have dark rings beneath her eyes to tell the world that she had scarce had one wink of sleep all night. When they had not been making love, they had been talking. They had both tried to cram a lifetime of thoughts and feelings and experiences into one short night of shared confidences. And when they had paused for breath, then they had used even more breath in making love to each other and continuing their conversation in the form of love murmurings and unremembered nonsense.