‘‘Who?’’
‘‘Kelly. Corcoran. The footman, groom, and gardener. And owl trapper this week, as it happens. Elizabeth would never have told me any of this. So they did.’’
Rhys closed his eyes wearily and leaned back in his chair. A creak made him think better of it, and he lowered the chair legs carefully to the floor. His nephew always got to know people—the names of spouses and children and family dogs. Rhys barely knew the Christian name of his butler. He had no idea if the man had children or a dog.
‘‘What is it you want me to do, Andrew?’’
Andrew opened his mouth, then closed it again. After a moment he announced, ‘‘Christmas is next week. Bad enough that we’re here at all, but far worse the reasons. Can we simply not spoil the holidays for Elizabeth and her household?’’
Rhys knew he’d done that already, just by arriving. And he could hardly be expected to traipse around decking the halls and wassailing, or whatever it was these people did at Christmas.
Mistletoe. Ridiculous.
‘‘Andrew . . .’’
‘‘Please, Uncle Rhys.’’
Rhys reached for his now-cold coffee. ‘‘I will not sing,’’ he muttered.
‘‘Fair enough,’’ his nephew shot back, and began whistling as he checked the sideboard for hidden drawers.
Chapter Five
Lizzie cleared the top of the desk with a dejected sweep of her arm. The sheaf of bills thudded heavily into the waiting drawer, which she shoved closed. It hardly mattered anymore. In the six days Captain Jones had been in residence, he had not shown so much as a smidgen of interest in saving Hollymore. He had strode about the house and grounds on his long legs, militarily stiff and forceful, taking notes and occasionally muttering to himself or his nephew.
He had been polite. Too polite, really. Lizzie had found conversing with him rather like talking to a very well-trained parrot. He fixed her with his cool blue gaze, tilted his head as she spoke, and repeated back the occasional phrase. He had not appeared in the least impressed by the Charles windows or the Boyne paneling. Lizzie’s spirits had lifted somewhat when he’d stood thoughtfully in front of the green marble fireplace in the Great Hall. Massive and ancient, it had the family symbol: the holly bough, carved into its surface. Now, in honor of Christmas, the top was festooned with entwined holly and ivy. It was a beautiful piece, saved from sale by the simple fact that removing it would have been impossible without destroying the entire hearth and chimney.
Captain Jones had soon dashed Lizzie’s hopes by announcing, ‘‘Perhaps my brother will want this salvaged for the new lodge.’’
Small blessings, she tried to convince herself. At least the marble wouldn’t be reduced to rubble with the stone surrounding it.
She’d caught the captain watching her often, sometimes with surprisingly—and, she had to admit, appealingly—softer eyes. Each time, he had glanced quickly away, and for that Lizzie was grateful. She couldn’t have borne seeing the pity she knew was there. Captain Jones was a hard man, but not, she’d come to believe, a wholly unfeeling one. There was certainly an abundance of affection for his nephew in those ice-blue eyes. He might try to cloak it, just as Lizzie did her anguish over her home, but as she saw the flashes of emotion in him, she expected she wasn’t any better at hiding hers.
She didn’t want his pitying glances. She didn’t really want him looking at her at all. It made her feel skittish and slightly warm and came with the inexplicable and absurd urge to check her reflection in the nearest tarnished mirror.
Lizzie glanced up now as the bells from the local church sounded faintly in the distance. It was noon on Christmas Eve. No more work would be done outside today in the county. Inside, even here at Hollymore, kitchens would be filled with the smells of the holiday, and the last of the decorations would be laid.
Her hopes for her house were all but dashed. It had been the hardest admission she’d ever had to make, but she had been forced to silently acknowledge that beneath the greenery and candles, behind the red of holly berries and scent of cloves, Hollymore was still a slowly crumbling pile of stone, beloved as each stone might be.
She had one last hope. It wasn’t a great one, but it was all she had.
After that . . . The day after Christmas was St. Stephen’s Day. She would hand over the house to Captain Jones and, while the festivities of the day went on through Wexford County, she would slip quietly into her place in Gregoria’s house. No fuss, no dramatic farewells. She would just as quietly start perusing the Dublin newspapers she would borrow from the Reverend Mr. Clark—Gregoria refused to pay so much as a penny for something so frivolous as the printed word—and if she were very lucky, would find a post as a companion or governess by the new year.
‘‘Well,’’ she said aloud, standing and patting Uncle Clarence’s bronze hedgehog on its misshapen head, ‘‘enough of that.’’
Her staff would see to most of the traditional Christmas Eve activities, but there was one she insisted on doing herself. Propped just outside the French doors was a stack of small holly and yew wreaths, twenty-six of them to be exact, strung together with twine. She gathered them up, ignoring the prick of holly spines through her worn wool coat, and set off through the gardens. The little family chapel hadn’t been used in decades, since its roof had collapsed, but the ground was still consecrated, still the resting place of departed Fitzhollises.
Lizzie placed the first wreath on the grave of the first Baron Fitzhollis. The marker had long since been lost to the earth, but each generation had taught the next where the right spot was. Lizzie’s father had brought her, year after year on Christmas Eve, to lay the wreath. Now she wondered who would take on the hallowed task. She couldn’t bear to think that the precious Christmas tradition would be lost. Perhaps she could tell Andrew. Or Captain Jones. Strange as it was, she had a feeling that he would understand.
No, she thought. He might understand, but there was no more reason for him to care about her long-gone Fitzhollis ancestors than for their house.
‘‘I’m sorry, my lord,’’ she whispered to the first Baron’s headstone. ‘‘I . . . I tried.’’
The next twenty-two wreaths went carefully, reverently one by one onto the graves of the Fitzhollis men who had died at the Battle of the Boyne. ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ she offered to each. And, as she went, found a precious and growing comfort in the task and in the quiet around her.
Of the last three wreaths, the first went to her great-uncle Clarence. She didn’t apologize to him. He’d been a jolly little man who’d lived for his art, and for the next day of eating, drinking, and being merry. ‘‘Happy Christmas, Uncle,’’ Lizzie offered to the stone marker he had carved himself. It depicted him as a sort of cheery Irish Bacchus, wearing a holly laurel and holding a chisel, a paintbrush, and a bottle of wine. ‘‘Sláinte.’’ She had surreptitiously saved a little vial of claret from the previous night’s dinner, and tipped its contents now onto the earth at the base of the stone.
The second wreath was for her mother. And the last, the fourth she had placed on its spot, was for her father. She sank down beside it, not caring about the cold or damp and pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms tightly around them.
‘‘I’ve done nearly all I can, Papa,’’ she told him. ‘‘I wish I could have done more or better—but that’s neither here nor there now. I love Hollymore with all my heart, but then, I loved you, too, and I’ve managed to carry on without you, hard as it has been at times.’’
She rested her chin on her knees. ‘‘I’m thinking I’ll go to Dublin, if I can find a post. Or England, perhaps. Yes, yes, I know what you think of England, but I’ve never been out of Ireland and I should like to see London. And you never know. Perhaps I will find a family with a well-stocked library and constant fires in the hearths.’’ She smiled as a brisk breeze lifted the curls around her face. ‘‘Fair enough. I don’t mind a bit of cold. But I cannot stay with Gregoria. You wouldn’t want me to.�
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She fell silent for a long moment, listened to the wind rattling in the trees and whispering through the cracks and crevices of the fallen chapel. ‘‘It isn’t much, Papa,’’ she continued softly, ‘‘but I will say a prayer, make a wish tonight. I’ve never wished for something so big as a house before. It was always for candy on Christmas, or new puppies in the stable. I suppose I was afraid of being disappointed if I asked for something larger.’’ She recalled the mountains of sweets she and her father had shared every Christmas, gorging themselves until they were both ill. ‘‘Oh, Papa. Well, they say no wish made on Christmas Eve in Ireland goes unanswered.’’
She patted the hard earth. ‘‘There’s never any harm in trying. You taught me that.’’
A crunch from behind her made her start. She turned to find Captain Jones not twenty feet away and wondered if he’d heard her conversing with her father. Not that it would matter if he had, she supposed. He was the one who was intruding.
He seemed to realize that. He cleared his throat. ‘‘I am sorry. I am interrupting a private moment.’’
Elizabeth shrugged. ‘‘I was nearly done.’’ She patted the earth again, and made sure the wreath was centered. ‘‘Happy Christmas, Papa,’’ she murmured. ‘‘I love you.’’
Then she rose to her feet and brushed some lingering dirt from her heavy skirts. ‘‘Can I help you, Captain?’’
He was looking, she noted, rather less starched than he had during his first several days at Hollymore. Living without a valet, she assumed. Much to his credit and amid much grumbling, O’Reilly had surpassed himself in the kitchen, but had adamantly drawn the line at acting as manservant to the guests. ‘‘I’ll feed him,’’ he’d muttered of the captain, ‘‘but damned if I’ll put my hands on his things. Let him wear dirty drawers. It’ll serve him right enough.’’
Lizzie had no idea about the state of Captain Jones’s drawers, but the rest of him had become appealingly rumpled of late. His cravats had wilted, softening the line of that formidable jaw, and his buttons and boots had lost their sharp, almost painful gleam.
It was clear he’d been out walking in the cold. His midnight hair was wind-tousled, his skin given a virile glow. He might not be a handsome man, but Lizzie, try as she might, couldn’t help appreciating the sight of him. She busied herself rewinding her father’s fraying old muffler about her neck.
‘‘I have been having a last stroll around the grounds,’’ Captain Jones remarked. ‘‘Andrew and I will be leaving on Monday.’’
The faint flare of disappointment startled her. She decided she would miss young Mr. Jones’s genial presence. It had been so long since there had been infectious cheer in the house. She certainly would not miss his uncle’s stern, stolid presence. Of course she wouldn’t.
‘‘You’ll be leaving on St. Stephen’s Day,’’ she said.
‘‘Is that significant?’’
‘‘The day,’’ she replied. ‘‘Not your leaving. It commemorates the day that a wren betrayed St. Stephen to his enemies by singing loudly in the bush behind which he was hiding.’’
Rhys raised a brow. ‘‘Interesting event to celebrate.’’
Elizabeth tucked the last errant strand of wool into her collar. It should be ermine, he found himself thinking, or the finest, softest kasimir. Not that the dun-colored wool detracted in the least from her beauty. She was glorious, shining gilt and ivory in the cold winter air.
‘‘It is a day for song and mummery,’’ she replied. ‘‘Boys dress up in costume and traipse through the villages, collecting money and gaming. I thought Andrew might enjoy it.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Rhys said automatically, ‘‘he probably would. But we’ll be on our way back to Wales.’’
‘‘Mmm. Pity.’’ She glanced around. ‘‘Where is Andrew?’’
Rhys knew she wouldn’t ask the same question should Andrew be present and he himself nowhere to be seen. He promptly quashed the twinge of regret. ‘‘He is in the house somewhere, tapping and prying at the paneling, looking for hidden passages. Foolish boy.’’
‘‘Oh, not at all.’’
‘‘Ah. Should I take it you have been encouraging him in this endeavor?’’
Elizabeth smiled. ‘‘I haven’t actually, but only because I wasn’t aware he was searching. I hope he finds something.’’
‘‘Do you expect him to?’’
‘‘Well, I have been searching all my life and have found nothing more exciting than a secret drawer in my father’s desk.’’ She smiled again. ‘‘It was full of spare quills, or rather, the remains of them. Papa and I decided the drawer had last been used by Great-Grandfather Seymour. He hoarded everything except gold, more’s the pity. When he died, my grandfather found three hundred forks stashed away in various parts of the house. Heaven only knew what sort of entertaining my great-grandfather was planning on doing . . . Anyway, Andrew ought to find what he’s searching for if he tries hard enough. Hollymore is like that.’’
Apparently it occurred to her that she’d belatedly hit upon one more of Hollymore’s charms: its mysteries. She launched into, ‘‘There are priest holes from the fifteenth century. And certainly some passageways used by various Fitzhollises in smuggling activities. I’m certain if Andrew explored that part of the old dungeon that hasn’t caved in, he might find an oubliette or two . . .’’ She broke off at the sight of Rhys’s scowl. ‘‘Oh. Oh, dear. I do not mean to say he is likely to fall into an oubliette . . .’’ She gave up. ‘‘I believe I will return to the house. O’Reilly will be needing help in the kitchen.’’
‘‘Allow me to escort you.’’
He offered his arm. She took it—with some reluctance, he thought, but she took it. He could see a hole in the thumb of one woolen glove, and he found the sight oddly charming, even as he found himself cursing the wastrel men of her family for allowing such a prize to be reduced to wearing much-mended clothes and holey gloves.
As they started back to the house, he pondered the scene upon which he had clumsily intruded. The sight had first stopped him in his brisk tracks, then had had him literally creeping closer. He didn’t think he had ever actually crept before. But she had been so beautiful, heartbreakingly so, first settling the wreaths carefully on the graves with a quiet word or two, then, seated like a child on the cold earth, legs tucked up, conversing with a headstone and little green twist of holly and yew. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. He wished he hadn’t.
It isn’t much, Papa, but I will say a prayer, make a wish tonight. I’ve never wished for something so big as a house before. It was always for candy on Christmas, or new puppies in the stable. I suppose I was afraid of being disappointed . . .
‘‘What are you going to wish for?’’ he asked, and was startled by his own question. Embarrassed, too, that he had given himself away.
Elizabeth, however, glanced up and gave him one of her stunning if fleeting smiles. ‘‘You overheard me talking to my father,’’ she remarked, seemingly not angry in the least.
‘‘I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, Miss Fitzhollis. I certainly—’’
‘‘Elizabeth.’’
‘‘I beg your pardon?’’
She stopped beside a particularly ugly little statue of a cherub, pulled her hand from his arm, and turned to face him fully. ‘‘It is Christmas Eve. I think such formality seems wrong somehow, when we should be thinking of peace and goodwill, and can be suspended for two days. Don’t you?’’
She rubbed a bit of grime from the cherub’s head with her sleeve. Then she removed a cluster of holly berries from her pocket and deftly arranged them on the stone curls. That done, she looked expectantly back to Rhys. He fought the urge to rub a faint muddy smudge from her cheek.
‘‘Well?’’ she demanded pleasantly.
He’d never spent much time contemplating peace on earth and goodwill to men. After all, he’d been a naval officer at war for so many years. ‘‘That is an appalling cherub.’’
‘‘Isn’t he
?’’ she answered, fondly patting the thing’s fat cheek. ‘‘My uncle Clarence’s work.’’
‘‘Ah. I should have known.’’ Then, without thinking, he said, ‘‘Rhys.’’
Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘‘I beg your pardon?’’
He was not going to have Lawrence falling from those inviting lips, not if Andrew and St. Stephen and all the heavenly hosts demanded it. Not when he could hear her saying his proper name. ‘‘If I am to call you Elizabeth, you will call me Rhys.’’
‘‘Rhys.’’ She pondered that quite seriously for a moment, then laughed briefly, a wonderful, silvery sound. ‘‘It suits you. Far better than Lawrence, if I may say so without giving offense to your parents.’’
His late father hadn’t given a damn what his second son was called as long as he responded and the first son stayed healthy. His mother, Rhys decided, would find the entire story vastly entertaining. He might even tell it to her when he got back to Wales, although he wasn’t much of a bard. That was yet one more of Tim’s talents.
‘‘No offense at all. Elizabeth.’’ He felt his hand lifting of its own accord toward a loose gold curl. He clenched his fingers into a fist and shoved it into his greatcoat pocket. ‘‘What are you going to—’’ He broke off and shook his head, wondering where his impeccable sense of propriety had gone. ‘‘No. I should not even think of asking.’’
She laughed again. ‘‘I rather like that you did. And I am glad that you overheard that particular tradition. Everyone should know to make a wish on an Irish Christmas Eve. You included, Captain. It might very well come true.’’
‘‘Ah, the simplicity of superstition.’’
She gave him an exasperated glance, but didn’t take umbrage. ‘‘They could be far worse,’’ she chided mildly. ‘‘Another says that if you die on Christmas Eve, you go straight to Heaven.’’
‘‘Is that what you will wish for, then? My speedy demise?’’
‘‘Goodness. A jest. Very good, Captain.’’ As he watched, surprised, charmed, and increasingly warm, she removed another sprig of holly from her pocket, tucked it into a buttonhole on his coat, and briskly patted his chest. ‘‘As you could easily guess, I will make a wish for Hollymore.’’
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