by Louise Allen
‘That sounds like a good idea. Shall I arrange it?’
‘No. I’ll go and talk to her, if that dragon of a landlady will let me, a dangerous man, into her female fortress. Anything else in that very efficient little notebook?’
‘I need to know exactly what happens here at Christmas. What the arrangements for the rest of the staff are, whether you’ll be entertaining, whether you’ll be out much. I need to plan for meals, shop for provisions,’ she added when he looked at her blankly. ‘Phipps and MacDonald tell me they don’t have family in the south and then there’s the coachman and your grooms.’
‘What happens is that I don’t expect to see them from the morning of the twenty-fourth until the evening of the twenty-sixth. They fill the coal scuttles and leave the place tidy and I eat out at my clubs. I can cope with making my own bed once a year,’ he added, presumably in response to her opening and closing her mouth like a landed carp. ‘I told you—I spend Christmas by my own fireside with a pile of books and a bottle or so of good brandy. All of my friends of a sociable disposition will be out of town.’
‘Then, you do not mind what happens below stairs so long as it does not disturb you?’
‘Or burn the house down or bring in the parish constable. Exactly.’
‘Right.’ Tess closed her notebook with a snap. This house was going to have a proper Christmas regardless of what his lordship expected. ‘And above stairs you just want appropriate preparation made?’
‘Certainly. You can manage that?’
‘Oh, yes, especially if you are out most of the time.’
‘That would be helpful, would it?’ Alex asked absently. He was already running one finger down a column of figures. ‘I’ll be at the club a lot of the time.’ He flipped open his desk diary and made a note as there was a knock at the door. ‘Come in!’
‘My lord?’ Mr Bland looked in, his arms full of papers. ‘I have the auction catalogues from Christie’s you wanted, but I can come back when it is convenient.’
‘No, we’ve finished, haven’t we, Mrs Ellery?’
‘Indeed we have, my lord.’
When she went down the indoor staff were all below stairs. ‘MacDonald? Please ask the stable staff to join us. All of them. Annie! Leave the scullery cleaning a moment and come in here.’
They crowded into the kitchen, Annie still clutching her scrubbing brush, Byfleet the flatirons he’d been about to set on the grate. The grooms brought the rich, warm smell of horses to mingle with the aroma of baking bread as they stood awkwardly by the back door.
How long had she been here? Tess wondered as she surveyed their faces. Scarcely a week? It was hardly much more since she had staggered in, battered and exhausted, and yet this was beginning to feel like home, and she was gaining a confidence she never expected to find. In the new year, when Hannah was well again, she could set out on her quest for employment feeling so much better equipped.
The staff were waiting patiently. Tess jerked her thoughts away from the prospect of employment agencies and smiled. ‘I have been discussing Christmas with his lordship. Mrs Semple is much better, you’ll be glad to hear, but she’ll be going off to her in-laws in Kent very soon to recover. Now, how many of you will be spending Christmas at home with your families?’
Annie held up her hand, realised it was holding a dripping brush and gulped. ‘Me. I’ll be at me lodgings, I s’pose, Mrs Ellery, ma’am.’
‘No one else?’ Heads shook. ‘And who’s at the lodgings, Annie?’
She shrugged. ‘The other lodgers, ma’am.’
Tess had a fairly good idea what home must be like for Annie. ‘Do you think you would like to join us for Christmas, Annie?’ The girl’s jaw dropped, then she nodded energetically. ‘You can have one of the upstairs rooms for a few nights. What do the rest of you usually do?’
‘Make do,’ Byfleet volunteered. ‘We’re all men, so we get in some food from the cook shops, his lordship lets us have extra money and plenty of beer and a bottle or so from the wine cellar. We smoke, play cards, yarn a bit.’
‘We’ll be a mixed party this year,’ Tess said briskly. ‘I can cook a proper Christmas dinner if I have some help.’ I hope. She glanced at the row of cookery books on the mantelshelf. ‘Then we can go to church afterwards, for midnight service. Christmas morning we’ll exchange presents and enjoy ourselves for the rest of the day.’ She looked around the room. ‘What do you say?’
‘I say yes,’ MacDonald said with a broad grin. ‘I’ll get out my fiddle and Will there has got his flute. And with the youngsters we’ll have a proper Christmas.’ He started counting heads. ‘There’s the three from the stables, me and Phipps, Mr Byfleet, Dorcas and little Daisy, Annie and you, ma’am.’ He grinned. ‘That’s ten, a snug little party, Mrs Ellery.’
‘It is indeed,’ Tess said. And if I can work a miracle there will be eleven of us. So far, so good. We have a party. Now we need presents.
*
Alex tossed the sale catalogue aside. Nothing in it got his acquisitive juices flowing. He felt bored, he realised incredulously. No, not bored exactly. Stale? Tired of London, tired of routine. Unsettled. It was ridiculous. He was normally so involved with his work and with his social round that Christmas was a welcome opportunity to sit back and relax. He regarded his drawing room with disfavour. It was too damn tasteful, too blasted orderly.
It was Tess who was responsible for this mood, he suspected. She was turning the place upside down. Hannah had been efficient, but mostly invisible. She left him to himself except for the occasional evening when she would shed her housekeeper’s cap and come and curl up in a chair in the drawing room and gossip over a glass of wine. She was an old friend, she had a busy life of her own beyond his front door and she left him alone to live his life as it suited him.
But Tess was there, in the house, day and night. And she expected things of him beyond the regular payment of housekeeping money and a list of meal times when he wanted to be fed at home. She expected him to react, to involve himself with the concerns of the other staff. And she was up to something with this Christmas obsession of hers. And that was leaving aside the nagging awareness of her physically, the effort it took not to think of the slim figure, the soft mouth, those wise, young, blue eyes.
There was a tap on the door, the modest yet definite knock he was learning to associate with his temporary housekeeper.
‘Come in.’ Yes, it was his little nun with her confounded notebook. He got up from the sofa where he’d been sprawled and waved her to the chair opposite.
Not such a little nun now, he thought as she settled her well-cut skirts into order. With good food and a warm house she had lost that pinched, cold look. Taking command suited her, put a sparkle in those blue eyes and a determined tilt to that pointed chin. And the food had done more than keep her warm, it had given her curves that were most definitely not nun-like.
My staff, my responsibility, he reminded himself, sat down and dumped the Christie’s catalogue firmly onto his lap.
‘Are you all right, my lord? I thought you winced just now.’
‘Alex, for goodness’ sake.’ He smiled to counteract the snap. ‘And it was just a touch of…er…rheumatism.’
‘Rheumatism?’
He shrugged and the catalogues slid helpfully, painfully, into his throbbing groin. ‘What can I do for you, Tess?’
‘Christmas presents,’ she said. She flipped open her notebook, produced a pencil and stared at him as though expecting dictation.
‘Whose Christmas presents?’
‘For the staff. The men, of course, Dorcas and little Daisy. And Annie. I think Annie should stay for a few nights, I don’t like to think of her having to go back to that lonely lodging house.’
‘Who the blazes is Annie? The scullery maid? No, don’t answer that. Do what you want about staff meals, but why presents? I give them all money on St Stephen’s Day.’
‘Of course you do and I am sure it is very generous. But Christmas pr
esents are special, don’t you think? Personal.’
Alex considered a range of things he could say and decided it was probably safer not to utter any of them, not when faced with a woman armed with a notebook. ‘I’ll give you some money and you can buy them.’
‘I think the staff would really appreciate it if you chose them yourself.’ He could feel himself glowering and could only admire her courage as she continued to smile. ‘It is more in the Christmas spirit, don’t you think?’
‘Tess, you know perfectly well what I think about Christmas spirit. Codswallop. Humbug. Ridiculous sentimentality.’ Anyone else would have backed down in the face of that tone and his glare. All the men he knew certainly would have done. They obviously raised them with backbones of steel in convents.
‘But I know you value your staff,’ she said in a voice of sweet reason. ‘We could go out this afternoon unless you are very busy.’ By not so much as a flicker did her eyes move towards the pile of discarded journals, abandoned catalogues, crumpled newspapers and the other evidence of a lazy morning. ‘It isn’t raining. And I have a list.’
‘I’ll wager you have.’ Alex got to his feet. ‘I surrender. Wrap up warmly, I’ll get the carriage sent around.’
*
Half an hour later when he met her in the hall she was wearing a smart mantle that matched a deep-blue bonnet and she had decent gloves on. How pretty she is with the bruise gone and that bonnet framing her face. ‘Where is Dorcas?’ he snapped.
‘Daisy was fretful and Dorcas has a lot of work on her hands hemming petticoats for me and it would only distract Annie from her work if she has to watch the baby, as well. We don’t really need Dorcas, do we?’
The innocent question, the questioning tilt of her head to one side, got to him every time. He just wanted to kiss her silly. Which is not going to happen. ‘Not if you feel comfortable alone in a closed carriage with me.’ Alex kept his voice neutral, but she still turned a delicate shade of pink.
‘Of course I do. We discussed…that. I thought we had forgotten about it.’
Forgotten that kiss? Forgotten that you admitted that the attraction wasn’t just one-sided? When you become prettier and happier with every day that passes? When hell freezes over. Alex wasn’t going to lie to her. ‘I think we are doing a very good job of pretending it doesn’t exist,’ he said drily. ‘Best put that veil down in case anyone sees you. Now, where to?’
‘A music publishers first, there’s one in Albemarle Street. I want music for MacDonald and Phipps—good tunes, ballads, dances. MacDonald can play the violin and read music and Phipps plays the flute, but only by ear, so MacDonald’s going to teach him to read music. They’ve only got one or two pieces now.’
*
Alex helped her out of the carriage and into the shop, his ears ringing, while Tess talked. He had learned more about his footmen in ten minutes than he’d known in five years, he realised as he stood back to let her go through the door into the shop in front of him.
Chapter Eleven
‘That was easy,’ Tess said fifteen minutes later as she gave a satisfied pat to the brown paper parcel on the carriage seat. ‘Now then, tobacco jars for Perring and Hodge. John Coachman says he’ll not be responsible for his actions if he has to deal with two grooms squabbling over which tobacco is whose much longer. And he takes snuff, so a new box for him, don’t you think?’
Alex directed John to Robert Lewis’s tobacconist shop in St James’s Street and sat back to digest the discovery that he was actually enjoying himself. Part of it, of course, was Tess’s company. Her enjoyment of the shops, her enthusiasm and cheerful goodwill was infectious, and he found he had no objection at all to the image he saw reflected in shop windows of the two of them arm in arm. But strangely, it was more than that.
‘Do you know, I find this oddly satisfying, like working out the attribution of a painting,’ he confessed as they emerged later from Gray’s the jewellers with a coral-and-silver teething ring for little Daisy. ‘Are we done now?’
‘Not yet.’ Tess looked back over her shoulder as she got into the carriage.
Alex closed the door behind him and then stayed on his feet to shift parcels on the seat. ‘More?’
‘Well, yes. There’s—’ Tess began as the carriage started off, then stopped with a lurch.
Alex twisted round, caught his balance and lost it again as the vehicle jerked forward, accompanied by a vigorous exchange of curses from on top of the box. He just missed the seat; Tess grabbed for him and he hit the floor with her on top, one sharp elbow planted firmly in his midriff. ‘Ough.’
‘Alex? Oh, I am so sorry, I’ve hurt you.’ She was sprawled down the length of him, the two of them wedged on the floor. He looked up, through eyes watering from the impact, into her face, so close. The tip of her nose was pink from the chill, her lips were parted, her eyes were wide with concern. Adorable. She’s adorable. And outrageously arousing with every inch of her pressed to him.
‘Winded…’ he managed. ‘That’s all.’ He closed his eyes the better to enjoy the sensation of her curves, the erotic, impossibly innocent, scent of plain soap and a dab of lavender water.
‘Alex! Alex, can you hear me?’ She squirmed, trying to get to her feet without, he supposed, trampling all over him. ‘Have you hit your head?’
Alex groaned, opened his eyes and found himself still nose to nose with Tess. This is more than any man can be expected to withstand, he told himself, gritting his teeth.
With a dolphin-like heave she got herself up at the expense of no more than an inch or two of skin scraped from his shin bones. ‘I am so sorry I squashed you, Alex. Just lie still. I’ll pull the cord and tell John Coachman to drive direct to your doctor.’
‘No need.’ He found his voice from somewhere and sat up before Tess observed the interesting effect her squirming had produced on his body. ‘I’m fine. Just…’ Hanging on to my self-control by my fingernails. Alex put both hands on the squabs and pushed himself up and onto the seat next to her. ‘Winded, as I said. What were we talking about?’ Something, please God, dull and non-inflammatory.
‘A donkey!’ For a moment he thought she meant him, which was nothing but the truth, given that he was an experienced man about town reduced to a quivering mass of sexual frustration by a chit from a nunnery.
‘Oh, isn’t it sweet?’ Tess pointed out of the window to a costermonger’s barrow pulled by an improbably fluffy little donkey.
‘Yes,’ Alex agreed cautiously. It was not the word he would have used. ‘But we do not need a donkey.’ The way she collected things he could expect to come home to find an ass and an ox in the stables, just for Christmas. He wouldn’t put it past her to go to Pidcock’s Menagerie and borrow a camel for atmosphere.
Tess smiled at him, apparently able to read his mind. ‘Of course not.’
Alex was seized with a contrary urge to buy her one, just to see that smile again. He repressed the whim. ‘Now where?’
‘A toyshop. I want a doll for Daisy.’
*
The shop, whose owner had obviously stocked up well for the approaching season, was a treasure trove. Alex restrained himself from buying a full set of lead soldiers just to arrange on the study mantelshelf. The display of dolls was astounding, and he blinked at the array of miniature femininity. Tess was studying the far corner where the plainest examples were arrayed.
Alex made for the most magnificent, complete with real hair and elegant clothing. ‘There’s no need to stint, I don’t expect Dorcas can afford to give the child many toys.’
‘She’s too young for one, really, but I think it is nice if she grows up with a doll who will become an old favourite. But a baby needs a simple, soft doll, like those.’ Tess lifted down a medium-size rag doll, then turned back to the counter past a row of wooden dolls, their hair and features painted on. She stopped and touched one, just with the tip of her finger, and something in her smile sent a cold shiver down Alex’s spine.
‘Wh
at’s wrong, Tess?’
‘Nothing. Only memories.’ Her hand hesitated for a moment over the brightly coloured skirt, then she gave herself a little shake and took the rag doll across to the counter. ‘I had a doll like that once.’ Tess was looking at the wooden dolls again. ‘Mama gave it to me for Christmas when I was six.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘The nuns took it when I went to the convent.’
‘But you were, what, twelve by then?’
‘Thirteen, and far too old to play with dolls, of course. I didn’t play with her, though, I talked to her. She was my friend,’ Tess said simply.
When they were outside on the pavement she blinked as if she had been miles away. Or years, perhaps, Alex thought. ‘Did you not have friends?’
‘Not really.’ Her expression went blank. ‘We moved an awful lot. And not when we were travelling, of course. I was perfectly happy,’ she said hastily when he opened his mouth. ‘I had Mama and Papa. But you know what it is like when you are a child, you need an ear to whisper your secrets into, someone to tell your troubles to. Some children have imaginary friends, Patty was my confidant, that is all.’
Yes, I know. Peter was all of that to me, but he was real. Friend, confidant, someone to tell my troubles and my secrets to. Only he hadn’t been able to tell me his biggest secret and because of that, he’s been cold in the ground these ten years.
‘Where do you want to go next?’ Alex asked and fished out his clean handkerchief for Tess.
She blew her nose briskly, stuffed the linen square into her reticule and said, ‘A bookshop. Dorcas enjoys novels.’
*
Alex left Tess browsing amidst the stacked tables in Hatchard’s in Piccadilly. ‘Will you be all right here for half an hour? I’ve just remembered something I need to do.’
By the time he came back she had accumulated a pile of six books, two new notebooks and some sheets of wrapping paper with gold stars stamped on it. ‘The notebooks and two of the books are for me,’ she explained as he carried them to the counter for her. ‘You must take those out of my wages.’