Under the Mistletoe

by Mary Balogh

  Ah, poor child. Poor child. “Mama had to go away for a long time,” she said, walking back to the bed and smoothing her hand over the child’s head. “She did not want to leave you, Veronica, but she had to go. She sent you here, where you will be safe.”

  “Miss Craggs,” the child said, “don’t leave.”

  “I’ll stay for a while,” Jane said, seating herself on the side of the bed. “You are quite safe, dear. My name is Jane. It sounds a little nicer than ‘Miss Craggs,’ does it not?”

  “Miss Jane,” the child said, and closed her eyes.

  There was a rather painful aching around the heart to hear her name spoken aloud by another person. Jane sat quietly on the side of the bed, waiting for the little girl to fall asleep. But after a few moments the child’s eyes opened and she lay staring quietly upward.

  And the door opened softly, and when Jane turned her head it was to find Viscount Buckley standing there, his hand on the doorknob.

  “She is still awake?” he asked after a few moments.

  “Yes,” Jane said.

  He came to stand beside her and gazed down at his daughter. A daughter he had had with a mistress. A child he had never seen until today. And a child he seemed not to know what to do with. What would he do with her? Jane felt fear for the defenseless baby who was still staring quietly upward.

  “Veronica?” he said. “Is there anything you need?”

  “No, thank you,” the child said, not moving the direction of her gaze.

  “You are tired?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Go to sleep, then.” He leaned forward rather jerkily to lay the backs of his fingers against her cheek for a moment. “You are quite safe now.

  I will arrange something for you.”

  The child looked at him finally. “Good night, Papa,” she said.

  “Are you coming, Miss Craggs?” he asked, looking at Jane.

  “I will stay until she falls asleep,” Jane said.

  He inclined his head to her. “Deborah is having an early night,” he said. “Will you join me in the library as soon as you may? I need to talk with you.”

  Veronica was asleep no more than ten minutes later, not having spoken or moved since her father left the room. Jane got carefully to her feet, bent down after a moment’s hesitation to kiss the child’s forehead, and tiptoed from the room.

  How wonderful it must be, she thought, how wonderful beyond imagining, to be a mother.

  He sat in the library resisting the urge to refill his brandy glass for the second time. If he drank any more he would be foxed. The thought had its definite appeal, but getting drunk would solve nothing. He had learned that much in his almost thirty years of living.

  Deborah was sullen and unhappy-and angry.

  “How could you, Uncle Warren?” she had said just before going to bed.

  “How could you let her stay here and announce for all the world to hear that she is your daughter? Mama will be furious with you. Papa will kill you.”

  Yes, they would be a trifle annoyed, he conceded. But it served them right for foisting their daughter on him without so much as a by-your-leave.

  What was he to do? How did one go about finding a good home for a young child? Aubrey would doubtless know, but Aubrey was in London, about to take a holiday with his family. Perhaps Miss Craggs would have some idea. He hoped so.

  He was relieved when she was admitted to the library less than half an hour after he had left her in the nursery. He rose to his feet and motioned her to a chair. She sat straight-backed on the edge of it, he noticed, and clasped her hands in her lap. Her face had the impassive, empty look again now that Veronica was no longer present.

  “These things happen, Miss Craggs,” he said. He wondered how shocked this prim schoolteacher was beneath the calm exterior.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said. “I know.”

  “Can you blame me for taking her into my own home?” he asked. “What was I to do?”

  She looked fully into his eyes but did not reply. He shifted uncomfortably. He had never encountered eyes quite like hers.

  “Send her back where she came from?” he asked. “I could not do it, ma’am. She is my own flesh and blood.”

  “Yes, my lord,” she said.

  “What am I to do, then?” he asked. “How does one find a home for a child? A home in which one can be quite sure she will be well cared for.

  It is an infernally awkward time of year. Everything will be complicated by the fact that it is Christmas. What am I to do?”

  “Perhaps, my lord,” she said, “you should celebrate Christmas.”

  He frowned at her.

  “You have a young niece,” she said, “who is unhappy at being abandoned by her parents at this of all times. And you have a small child who is bewildered at the disappearance of her mother. Perhaps it is the very best time of year. Let Christmas bring some healing to them both.”

  He might have known it. For all her drab appearance and seemingly sensible manner and bearing, she was a sentimentalist. Christmas bringing healing, indeed! As if there was something inherently different in that day from all others. Besides, how could Christmas bring any sort of happiness to four such very different people-Deborah, Veronica, Miss Craggs, and himself?

  “You believe in miracles, Miss Craggs?” he asked. “Do you have any suggestions as to how this healing can be effected?”

  She leaned slightly forward in her chair, and there was a suggestion of eagerness in her face. “We could decorate the house,” she said. “I have always dreamed of… There must be greenery outside that we can gather.”

  “Holly and such?” he asked, still frowning.

  “And mistletoe,” she said, and interestingly enough she blushed.

  “And that will do it?” he asked, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “An instant miracle, Miss Craggs?”

  “Deborah needs company,” she said. “She is of an age at which it seems that life is passing her by unless she has company of her own age and activities to keep them busy and happy.”

  He grimaced. “Company of her own age?” he said. “From memory and experience I would say that young people of Deborah’s age are usually ignored at Christmastime-and all other times of the year, for that matter. Adults want nothing to do with them, yet they are too old to enjoy being with the children. It is an unfortunate time of life that has to be endured until it passes.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “there are other young people in the neighborhood who would be only too happy to get together independently of either the adults or the children.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that I visit all my neighbors within the next few days, seeking out the young and organizing a party here?” he asked, aghast.

  “I think that a wonderful suggestion, my lord,” she said.

  He should have left the woman where she was, he thought. She was definitely dangerous.

  “You would doubtless be left to organize and chaperon such an affair,” he warned her. “I will be invited to join a sane adult party.” And he would accept, too, though he usually sent his excuses.

  “I am accustomed to supervising young people, my lord,” she reminded him.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “On your own head be it.” He was feeling decidedly annoyed. Except that her suggestion made sense. And it would definitely solve the problem of Deborah. “I will have to postpone making a decision about Veronica until after Christmas. I suppose it will not matter greatly. She is a quiet and well-behaved child.”

  “She is hiding,” Miss Craggs said quietly.

  “Hiding?” he frowned.

  “She suspects that something dreadful has happened to her mother,” she said. “And she knows that you are a stranger, although you are her father. She is not at all sure that she is safe, despite your assurances to her and my own. She does not know what is going to happen to her. And so she has found a hiding place. The only one available. She is hiding inside herself.”

>   The notion was thoroughly preposterous. Except that he recalled his impression that morning that Miss Craggs herself did most of her living far inside herself. What was her own story? he wondered briefly. But there was a topic of more pressing importance on which to focus his mind.

  “But she must know,” he said, “that I will care for her, that I will find her a good home. I always have cared for her.”

  “Why must she know any such thing?” Miss Craggs asked. “She is four years old, my lord. A baby. Financial care and the assurances of a good home mean nothing to her. Her world has rested firmly on one person, and that person is now gone.”

  “Miss Craggs,” he asked quietly, though he already knew what her answer was going to be, “you are not suggesting that I keep the child here, are you?”

  She looked down at the hands in her lap. “I am suggesting nothing, my lord,” she said.

  But she was. She obviously knew nothing about life. She knew nothing about the types of relationships that might exist, between a man and his illegitimate offspring.

  And yet, even as he thought it, he recalled the totally unfamiliar experience of standing in the nursery looking down at his own small child in the bed there, lying still and staring quietly upward, in a most unchildlike way. And he felt now, as he had felt then, an unidentifiable ache about his heart.

  She was his child, the product of his own seed. She was his baby.

  “Miss Craggs.” He heard the irritability in his voice as he got to his feet. “I see clearly that nothing can be done and no decisions can be made until Christmas is over. It is looming ahead of us, a dark and gloomy obstacle, but one that must be lived through. Make of it what you will, then. Load the house with greenery if you must. Do whatever you will. And in the meantime I shall call upon my neighbors and try to organize that unheard-of phenomenon, a preadult party.” He felt thoroughly out of sorts.

  “Very well, my lord,” she said, and looked up at him.

  He felt almost as if he might fall into her eyes.

  “Come,” he said, extending an arm to her even though he had brought her here as more of a servant than a guest, “I will escort you to your room, Miss Craggs.”

  She got to her feet and looked at his arm with some misgiving before linking her own through it. Her arm was trembling quite noticeably though she did not feel cold, and she stood as far from him as their linked arms would allow.

  Good Lord, he thought, had she been shut up inside that school for so long?

  He stopped outside her dressing room and opened the door for her. “Thank you,” he said, “for agreeing to accompany Deborah here. And thank you for showing kindness and gentleness to Veronica. Good night.”

  “Good night, my lord,” she said, her eyes on a level with his neckcloth.

  And she moved hastily into the dressing room and closed the door behind her even as he prepared to take her hand to raise to his lips.

  He was glad then that she had not given him a chance to do it. She was, after all, merely a servant. What was her first name? he wondered. He hoped it was something more fortunate than her surname. Though it was of no concern to him. He would never have reason either to know it or to use it.

  Jane helped Veronica get dressed the following morning and brushed her curls into a pretty style while the child sat very still on a stool, her legs dangling over its edge. They were breakfasting together in the nursery when Mrs. Dexter, the viscount’s housekeeper, arrived there to ask Miss Craggs what her orders were regarding the Christmas baking and cooking.

  “What my orders are?” Jane asked, bewildered. “Should you not be consulting his lordship, Mrs. Dexter?”

  “He said I should come to you, miss,” the housekeeper said, looking somewhat dubious. “He said that whatever you wanted was to be supplied.”

  Oh, dear. He really meant what he had said last night, then. She was to do whatever she wanted to celebrate Christmas. The thought was dizzying when at the age of three-and-twenty she never had celebrated the season. She was to have a free hand?

  “Where is his lordship?” she asked.

  “He has gone visiting with Miss Deborah, miss,” the housekeeper said.

  “He said you were to wait until this afternoon to gather greenery so that he can help you carry it.”

  “Oh, dear,” Jane said. “What is usually cooked for Christmas, Mrs. Dexter?”

  The housekeeper raised her eyebrows. “Anything that will not remind his lordship that it is Christmas,” she said. “The cook threatens every year to resign, miss, but she stays on. It is unnatural not to have a goose and mince pies, at the very least.”

  Goose and mince pies. The very thought of them was enough to set Jane’s mouth to watering. “Perhaps,” she said, “I should go down to the kitchen and consult the cook.”

  “Yes, miss,” Mrs. Dexter said. But she paused as she was about to leave the room. “It is time Christmas came back to this house. It has been too long gone. And it needs to be celebrated when there is a child in the house, poor little mite.” She nodded in Veronica’s direction.

  Jane wondered what had happened to banish Christmas from Cosway. She could not imagine anyone’s deliberately deciding not to celebrate it.

  She looked at Veronica and smiled.

  “Shall we go down to the kitchen and talk to Cook?” she asked.

  The child nodded and got down from her stool to hold out her hand for Jane’s. Jane, taking it in hers and feeling its soft smallness, wondered if there could be a greater happiness in life.

  The cook was so overjoyed at the prospect of Christmas baking that Jane found she did not need to make any suggestions at all. She merely sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and approved every suggestion made.

  The cook lifted Veronica to the table, placed a large, shiny apple in her hand, and clucked over her and talked about the delight of having a child in the house again.

  “I do not care what side of the blanket she was born on, if you take my meaning, miss,” she said to Jane. “She is a child, and children have a right to a home and a right to be loved. Chew carefully, ducky. You do not want to choke on a piece.”

  Veronica obediently chewed carefully.

  “It will do his heart good to have her here,” the cook said, jerking her head toward the ceiling. “He does not love easy, miss, and when he do, his heart is easy to break.”

  Jane could not resist. “Was his heart broken once?” she asked.

  The cook clucked her tongue. “By his childhood sweetheart,” she said.

  “You never saw a man so besotted, miss, though she were a flighty piece, if you was to ask me. Their betrothal was to be announced on Christmas Day here at a big party. A big secret it was supposed to be, but we all knew it, miss. And then halfway through the evening, just when his lordship were excited enough to burst, a stranger who had come home with her brother a month before stood up and announced his betrothal to her. And she smiled at him as sweet as you please without so much as a guilty glance at our boy-or at her papa, who was as weak as water, as far as she was concerned. Six years ago it was, miss. His heart don’t heal easy. But this is one to mend any heart.”

  She nodded at Veronica, who had spotted a cat curled beside the fire and had wriggled off the table to go and kneel beside it and reach out gingerly to pat its fur. The cut purred with contentment.

  “A blessed Christmas gift she is for any man,” the cook said.

  Yes. Jane remembered sitting alone with him in the library last evening. She alone with a man! And talking with him. Being consulted on what he should do with his daughter. And having the temerity to give her opinion and her suggestions. She would have expected to have been quite tongue-tied in a man’s presence. But she had made a discovery about this particular man. He was not the infallible figure of authority she had thought all men were. He was an ordinary human being who did not have all of life’s answers or even the most obvious of them.

  He did not know that all his child needed-all!-was love
. The love of her father. And he did not know that good, docile behavior in a child did not necessarily denote a happy child. He had turned to her, Jane, for help. Even a man could need her in some small way for one small moment of time.

  It was the thought she had hugged to herself in bed. And also the memory of how it had felt to touch him.To feel his strongly muscled, unmistakably male arm with her own.To smell the unfamiliar odor of male cologne. To feel the body heat of a man only inches away from her own body. And to know that the yearning she had suffered and suppressed in herself for years had a definite cause. It was the yearning for a man, for his approval and his support and companionship. And for something else, too. She did not know quite what that something else was except that outside her dressing room, when he had stopped and thanked her for coming and for giving her attention to Veronica, she had felt suffocated. She had felt that there was no air in the corridor.

  She had felt the yearning for… for him. She still could not express the need less vaguely than that.

  And so she had fled into her room like a frightened rabbit.

  “And there.” The cook’s hand patting her shoulder felt strangely comforting. There had been so few physical touches in her life. “He would be a blessed Christmas gift for some lady too, missy.”

  But you are not a lady, Craggs. She heard again the words that had been spoken in the homework room just two days before. No, she was no lady. She smiled and got to her feet.

  “You are going to be busy if you are to make everything you have suggested,” she said. “Oh, I can hardly wait for all the smells and all the tastes. I can hardly wait for Christmas.”

  The cook chuckled. “It will come, miss, as it always does,” she said.

  But it had never come before. This would be her first-ever Christmas.

  She could scarcely wait. At the same time, she wanted to savor every moment as it came. They were to gather greenery during the afternoon, she and Veronica and perhaps Deborah. And Lord Buckley was to come to help carry the loads.