The Virtues of Christmas

by Grace Burrowes

  On her, that common herb would smell anything but proper. “Why wait until next month?”

  “I am determined on an objective, my lord. I expect to fail, but I must try. My success will depend on remaining very much the woman in possession of herself, rather than the meek girl who left Amblebank ten years ago.”

  The coach lurched sideways, then righted itself. Logan was a first-rate coachman, and thus when he slowed the team to a more cautious pace, Michael didn’t countermand his judgment.

  And yet, these conversations with Miss Whitlow were driving him barmy. He wanted to kiss her, though his job was to betray her, to the extent purloining one book was a betrayal. To blazes with Beltram, favors owed, and Yuletide travel.

  “I find it hard to believe you were ever a meek girl,” Michael said, though he well knew she had been. Beltram damned near took pride in “making Henrietta Whitlow what she is today,” as if ruining a housemaid was a rare accomplishment rather than a disgrace.

  “I was a drudge,” Miss Whitlow replied. “A pretty drudge, though I grasped too late how that beauty could affect my fate. I quarreled with my father over his choice of husband for me and decamped for the metropolis, as so many village girls have. The tale is prosaic and my fate not that unusual.”

  “Your fate is very unusual,” Michael countered. “Those village girls often end up plying their trade in the street, felled by the French disease, or behind bars. You had your choice of dukes and, I hazard, are wealthy as a result.”

  “I am wealthy, and all that coin only makes my father hold me in worse contempt. The wages of sin are to be penury, disease, disfigurement, and bitter remorse, not security and comfort.”

  Two hours ago, she would not have been that honest.

  “Your father’s household is the objective you’re intent upon?”

  She tucked one foot up under her skirts, a very informal pose. “Papa refuses to enter any room I’m in, he will not say my name to other family members, and he’s removed every likeness of me from his house.”

  And to think Michael was pouting because his sisters had declined to join him for Christmas. He did not want to know that Henrietta Whitlow was afflicted with heartaches. He wanted to believe she’d leave her London life, become an intriguing fixture among the lesser gentry of some backwater, and never miss one small volume from among her store of books.

  When Christmas angels took up residence at Inglemere, perhaps.

  “Why bother with further overtures in your father’s direction?” Michael asked. “He deserves to have the cold comfort of his intolerance directed right back at him.”

  Miss Whitlow peeked beneath the shade rolled down to keep the worst of the cold from leaking through the window.

  “I hope your coachman knows this road well. The weather is turning awful.”

  Was there any change of subject less adroit than the weather? Miss Whitlow hesitated to discuss her family, though she’d numbered her lovers without a hint of a blush.

  “I hired Logan when I bought Inglemere. He’s driven the route from here to London for years. We can’t be far from the next inn, and you are not to worry. Compared to the Norwegian coast in December, compared to the North Sea in a temper, this snowstorm is merely weather.”

  She continued to gaze out at the snowy landscape, which had acquired the bluish tinge of approaching twilight. Michael was running out of time to plunder her possessions, though tonight, as she slept secure at the next inn, he would surely see his task completed.

  “I cannot give up on my father,” she said, “because he gave up on me, and that was wrong of him. We are family. I will make one more effort to bridge our differences, and if he remains adamant, then I’ll do as you suggest and put him—and my quarrel with him—aside.”

  Ten years was an infernally long time to quarrel. Mr. Whitlow was a fool to toss away a daughter with that sort of tenacity, but then, Michael was a fool too.

  He’d wondered idly about how to concoct some sort of green-tea-and-scythed-grass soap to give Miss Whitlow for a Yuletide token—in a world where he wasn’t about to steal more than kisses from her—when what she wanted by Christmas morning was nothing less than a miracle of paternal forgiveness.

  * * *

  By the time the coach lumbered into the inn yard, Henrietta was tucked against his lordship, all but asleep, and half dreaming of a Christmas dinner with her family—all of her family—gathered around a laden table. Oddly enough, his lordship was present at the feast too.

  “I have doubtless snored as loudly as Lucille,” Henrietta muttered, righting herself. Her back ached, and her feet were blocks of ice.

  The baron retrieved the arm he’d tucked across her shoulders.

  “I suspect somebody keeps moving the inns along this stretch of the highway so they recede as we approach. In Ireland, we’d say the fairies have been busy.”

  The farther the coach traveled from London, the more a soft Irish brogue threaded into his lordship’s words. In the dark, his voice would be…

  Henrietta nudged Lucille’s knee. “We’ve arrived, my dear. Time to wake up.”

  Lucille scratched her nose, but otherwise didn’t budge.

  “Tea, Lucille!” his lordship said. “Hot, strong, sweet, and laced with a dollop of spirits.”

  Her eyes popped open. “I must have caught a few winks. If you’ll excuse me, Miss Henrietta, I’ll just be stretching my legs a wee while, and… my gracious, the daylight has all but fled.”

  Someday, much sooner than Henrietta wanted to admit, Lucille would be old. The maid had a crease across her right cheek, and her cloak had been misbuttoned at the throat. She already had the dowager’s habit of falling asleep in company.

  Lucille had been in service at Beltram’s, the same as Henrietta, and she’d been the first person Henrietta had hired for her own household.

  His lordship climbed from the coach to hand the ladies down, and off Lucille went.

  “The inn doesn’t look like it receives much custom,” Henrietta said. The entrance was lighted and the doors sported pine wreaths, but other than a tang of smoke in the air, little suggested the place was open for business.

  “I’ve not had to stay here previously,” the baron said. “We’re but eight miles from Inglemere. I’ve seldom even changed teams here, though I will today.”

  He was traveling on, then. Henrietta hated that notion. As the coach was led away, she wrapped her arms about his lordship’s waist.

  “I’m taking a liberty with your person,” she said. “You will think badly of me, but then, everybody already does. I will miss you.”

  He drew her closer, though winter clothing prevented the degree of closeness Henrietta sought. He’d been decent to her, and she’d missed decent treatment more than she’d realized.

  “I’m rarely in Oxfordshire,” he said, “though I will think of you when I travel back this way.”

  Henrietta knew exactly how to send a man on his way smiling. She usually dropped hints that he’d been the most exciting/passionate/affectionate/inventive lover—something credible, but not too effusive—gave him looks of fondness and regret and a parting exchange of intimacies remarkable for its dullness.

  Lest he second-guess his decision to part from her.

  In five cases out of six, her paramours had come wandering back around, hinting that a resumption of their arrangement would be welcome. Henrietta never obliged. Anselm had come around as well, and Henrietta had taken fierce joy in the fact that the duke had called simply as a friend, albeit one with marital troubles and a wide protective streak.

  She’d not even flirted with Michael, Baron Angelford, and she would miss him.

  “You’re being kind,” she said, stepping back. “Letting me know that some Yuletide chivalry on your part will not develop into anything more. I’m usually the one who must be kind. I suppose we’d best find me accommodations and see about sending word back to MacFergus regarding my whereabouts.”

  Please argue with me.
Please contradict my brisk conclusions, or at least express a hope that we might meet again.

  “I’ve come to Inglemere with an eye toward selling it.” His lordship used a gloved finger to brush a wind-whipped lock of hair from Henrietta’s cheek. “My sisters bide in Oxford itself, so owning a town house there makes more sense. If you ever have need of me, I can be reached at the home of Clarissa Brenner, Little Doorman Street.”

  Worse and worse.

  “I have brothers in the environs of Amblebank,” Henrietta said. “They won’t gainsay my father, but neither do they disdain my company. A wealthy sister is allowed a few peccadilloes.”

  I sound bitter.

  Probably because I am bitter.

  Henrietta was also tired, cold, and once again a lone female making her way against all sense on a path of her own choosing.

  The coachman, Logan, came down the inn’s steps. “Ye canna bide here, mistress.”

  “What do you mean?” the baron snapped. “Miss Whitlow has been traveling all day. She’s hungry, chilled, fatigued, and due a respite from my company. You should be unloading her trunks as I speak.”

  Must he be so ready to get rid of her?

  “I’m sorry, guv, but this inn accepts no overnight custom. The innkeeper and his wife are elderly, and they’re off to await the arrival of a new grandchild in Oxford. The housekeeper says we can get a fresh team and a hamper, and warm up for a bit in the common, but there are no beds to be had here.”

  No beds? How ironic that a courtesan, who generally plied her trade in a bed, should be so pleased to find none available.

  “What sort of inn stays in business by letting its beds go empty?” his lordship fumed. “I’ve never heard the like.”

  “Beds are a lot of work,” Henrietta said, which earned her a look of consternation from the baron. “The innkeeper would need maids to change the linens daily, laundresses to do endless washing, heaps and heaps of coal to heat the wash water, more maids to tidy up each room, every day. More coal to keep those rooms warm, and all for not very much coin. The kitchen and the stable generate most of the profit for an establishment like this.”

  His lordship peered down at her. “How do you know that?”

  “I need investments and have considered buying a few coaching inns. Widows often own their late husband’s businesses, and thus a female owning an inn isn’t that unusual. It’s a chancy proposition, though. Very dependent on mail routes, weather, and the whims of the fashionable.”

  “We can continue this discussion inside,” his lordship said. “Get me a fresh team, Logan, and leave Miss Whitlow’s bags on the coach. We can push on to Inglemere as soon as the moon rises.”

  The baron took Henrietta by the hand and tugged her in the direction of the steps, and a good thing that was. Left to her own devices, she might have stood in the snowy yard until nightfall, marveling that his lordship had more or less invited her to spend the night at his own house.

  * * *

  The storm had obligingly taken an intermission, and in the bright illumination of a full moon on new snow, Michael and his guests continued on their way. Lucille was at least awake, which meant he had more incentive to keep his conversation free of innuendo, overtures, or outright begging.

  He wanted time alone with Henrietta Whitlow, he needed time alone with her trunks. Having her as an overnight guest at Inglemere would tempt him to arrange the former, when he must limit himself to the latter.

  “I do believe it’s getting colder,” Lucille muttered. “Does that sometimes, when snow lets up. You think it’s cold, then winter stops funning about. How much farther, milord?”

  Too far . “We’re better than halfway,” Michael said. “If you’d like to continue to Amblebank, I can have Logan drive you tonight, though I’d suggest you leave your bags with me to make the distance easier for the horses.” Please say you’ll go.

  Please stay.

  I’m losing my wits.

  “Miss Henrietta,” Lucille said, “if you make me spend another minute longer than necessary in this coach, I will turn in my notice, so I will.”

  “You turn in your notice at least once a month,” Henrietta said. “In this case, such dramatics won’t be necessary. Nobody in Amblebank would be alarmed if my arrival were delayed until next week, though I do want the children to have their presents on Christmas morning.”

  She’d at least be spending her holiday around children. Michael would have to journey into Oxford for that privilege.

  “I never know what to get them,” he said. “My nieces and nephews. Two of my sisters are married and between them have a half-dozen children. I’m at something of a loss when it comes to presents. My brothers remain in Ireland, so the issue is less pressing with them.” Fine spirits for the menfolk, silk for his sisters, but the children were a puzzle.

  Miss Whitlow passed him the flask of tea they’d been sharing, though the contents had grown cold within a mile of the inn.

  “You’re at a loss because as a child, you never had presents. You had no toys, no books, no pets. My father was of a similar bent, though my mother’s influence softened him somewhat.”

  Michael’s diversion had been hard work and harder work. “We had a pig, a grand creature named Bridget Boru. If she had more than ten piglets, my father divided up the proceeds of sale from the extra piglets among us children. The birth of the Christ child was not more warmly anticipated than Bridget’s litters.”

  But how Michael had died a little inside to see those piglets sold off, season after season, and how jealously he’d guarded his “sow bank.”

  “You had dreams,” Miss Whitlow said. “Your nieces and nephews do too. I think of my girlhood dreams when I’m shopping for Christmas tokens.”

  The question was out before Michael realized how fraught the answer might be: “What were your dreams?”

  She took back the flask and capped it. “The same as every other girl’s: a home of my own, children, my own tea service.”

  “Not books?”

  “My love of books came later.”

  When the hope of children and family was beyond her? How odd that Henrietta and he should share the same dream—a family, in all its prosaic, complex, dear, and exasperating variability. All of his hard work, all of the risks he’d taken, had been so that someday he’d be able to provide for a family, with no fear of potato blight, English prejudice, or hard winters.

  “For Christmas, I want never to set my backside upon a coach bench again,” Lucille said. “In case anybody should wonder.”

  “I was consumed with curiosity on that very point,” Michael said. “Assuming your wish can be granted temporarily, what else might Father Christmas bring you?”

  Lucille’s gaze landed on Miss Whitlow. “Peace on earth. It was a fine aspiration back in Bethlehem, though we’ve yet to achieve it. Peace in Oxfordshire would be a start.”

  “Lucille.” Miss Whitlow’s reproof was weary.

  “I’ll hold my tongue, miss. But his lordship’s bound to hear the parish gossip. You haven’t done any more than many other country girls do when they’re—”

  “Perhaps my nieces would like a tea service for their dolls,” Michael said, rather than watch the maid’s defense further erode her employer’s mood. The closer they drew to Amblebank, the quieter Miss Whitlow became.

  “That’s a lovely idea,” she said. “Or a lap desk, for the older children. One with their name carved on the top.”

  “What about a journal?” Michael mused. “My nieces would memorialize their brothers’ every transgression given a chance.”

  “Not a journal.” Miss Whitlow tucked the half-empty flask into her sizable valise—which Michael might also have to search. “Journals can be found and their contents exposed by mischievous siblings at the worst possible moment.”

  Was no topic of conversation safe with her? “You speak from experience.”

  “Two brothers’ worth. My older brother showed up shortly after my parents
married, and I followed less than two years later. My younger brother waited a proper five years to come along. In any case, I learned not to keep a journal. What of you, your lordship? What would you like for Christmas?”

  Her question brought an image to mind of Michael in the great hall at Inglemere presiding over a long table shared with sisters, in-laws, children, the occasional cousin, and—truly, he’d been shut up in the coach for too long—Henrietta Whitlow at the far end of the table.

  He wanted a holiday full of laughter, warmth, and family.

  He’d get a solitary tray in the library and a guilty conscience.

  “I hope the coming days will allow me to find some rest,” he said, “and peace and quiet. I’ll read, catch up on my correspondence, and consider properties in Oxford for possible purchase.” His sisters claimed there weren’t any, though Michael suspected they’d simply got used to managing without his fraternal interference.

  Henrietta was at her customary place beside him, close enough that he could see the fatigue shadowing her eyes, a bleakness in her gaze, and a grimness about her mouth.

  “I know it’s highly unusual,” he said, “and you must feel free to refuse me, but I’d be very grateful if you’d tarry at Inglemere tomorrow. My coachman and grooms deserve to rest, and I daresay you do as well.”

  He was a cad, a bounder, an idiot, and very good thief. He did not need an extra day to paw through Miss Whitlow’s effects.

  “I don’t—” Miss Whitlow began.

  “What a generous offer,” Lucille said. “You’ll have the rest of your life to wear plain caps, miss, and endure sneers in the churchyard. Might as well get a good night’s rest before we embark on your penance, aye?”

  “My staff is utterly discreet,” Michael said, “and I won’t think of you journeying on to Amblebank tomorrow. The roads will be safer in a day or two, and you will be fortified for the challenge of dealing with family.”

  Didn’t he sound like the voice of gentlemanly reason? Miss Whitlow ought to toss him from the coach.