Christmas Miracles

by Mary Balogh

  The gentleman had understood that he could sing no more. And he had said Matt was someone to be proud of. And that she was too. He was like a real papa. He was proud of them even though she had done nothing of which anyone could be really proud. And he had smiled at them and been kind to them and had had that lady give them the creamiest cakes for tea that she had ever tasted. She had eaten two. And before he had crossed the room to Matt, after setting her down on Mama’s lap, he had looked into Mama’s eyes and touched her hand. He liked Mama, and surely Mama liked him. How could she not?

  Christmas was soon. Not tomorrow. Two more sleeps, Mama had said when Katie had asked earlier. After two more sleeps she would really have a papa. She just knew it. She was not even going to worry about it anymore. She yawned and set her head against her mother’s bosom. Someone was playing a violin.

  Well before the end of the concert Lord Heath had suggested to Mrs. Berlinton that his housekeeper take the children to the guest room set aside for their use and put them to bed until it was time to take them home. The little one was fast asleep against her mother’s bosom, her cheeks flushed, her mouth open. Matthew was clearly exhausted, both physically and emotionally. He picked the boy up while she got carefully to her feet so as not to wake the child.

  And so the concert continued and came to its grand finale with the carol singers. They were not nearly the disastrous anticlimax he had feared. They were all dressed up in their finest outdoor garments and all carried sheet music except for the two appointed to hold high lit lanterns. Lord Heath had the presence of mind to signal for all the candles in the room to be extinguished so that the atmosphere would be right and distract attention from the inferiority of the music.

  But the warbling voice of Miss Kemp sounded almost musical, and Mr. Fothergill sounded—merely earnest. Everyone else did a passable job of singing for that jolliest and holiest of all seasons. And the audience, pleased and mellowed by an evening of exceptional music, sang along with the group after the first carol and declared afterward that the idea of hiring carol singers had been an inspired one on his lordship’s part. Now they were all fully in the mood to celebrate Christmas Day just the day after tomorrow.

  Drinks and dainties were served in the dining room immediately after the concert, and the guests divided themselves between the music room, the drawing room, and the dining room. It was a merry, festive occasion, far more so than was usual with his concerts. It was not so much the hiring of the carol singers that had been inspired, he thought, but the placement of the concert so close to Christmas. He must do the same every year.

  “My lord?” Mrs. Berlinton was standing before him—it had irked him that the demands of being host had kept him away from her since the end of the concert. Crofton, that damned rake, had been engaging her in conversation for all of fifteen minutes. “If you would be so good as to order around your carriage, we will be taking our leave. I am anxious to get the children into their own beds.”

  He turned with her to leave the room and picked up a branch of candles from the hall table. He walked beside her up the stairs, having sent a message to the coach house with a servant. There was nothing left to say. He could not keep heaping praises on her son, and he would not renew his offer to speak with her brother-in-law. Though it was imperative that someone do something for the boy.

  He would not see her again, he thought. There would be no reason to. And did it matter to him that he would not? There was no fiancé or favored suitor waiting in the wings, it appeared, but that made no difference to anything. She was a virtuous woman. He was a—well, yes, he supposed the word applied to a certain degree. He was a rake. Certainly he had no honorable intentions where women were concerned.

  Tomorrow, he decided, he would spend the whole afternoon with Lucy, and probably the whole night as well. He would immerse himself in an orgy of sensual delights. He would stay for the whole of Christmas Day. To hell with the notion of spending part of the day quietly in his library. A boudoir was a better place for forgetfulness. He would forget about virtuous widows and about their immensely talented sons—and their curiously adorable daughters.

  They walked in silence—up the stairs and along the dark, deserted corridor to the chamber where the children slept. There was a small table a short distance from their door. Lord Heath stopped when he came to it and set down the candlestick. She stopped walking too.

  She looked at him quietly, with noncommittal eyes. In the flickering of the candlelight her skin looked like porcelain and her eyes large and mysterious. Red lights tangled with the darkness of her hair. Her pale gown was modestly cut but it did not disguise her magnificent bosom or the beginnings of cleavage.

  She must know what was coming, he thought, yet she was making no attempt to turn the moment. He set his hands on either side of her waist and drew her toward him.

  Her lips were cool, soft, trembling against his own. She smelled of roses. Her breasts were firm against his waistcoat. Her hands were on his shoulders. He parted his lips and traced the seam of her lips lightly with the tip of his tongue. When her lips parted and her mouth opened, he slid his tongue deeply inside, feeling the warmth and moisture of her, delving into the very essence of her.

  Her breasts were generous and youthfully firm. He caressed them with his hands, drew down the light fabric of her gown until he could set the pads of his thumbs against her bare nipples, and rubbed lightly. He slid his hands down her back, spread them over her firm buttocks and drew her snugly against him, pressing her against the pain of his erection. Her arms were about his neck. She was making soft guttural sounds in her throat.

  Someone might come upstairs at any moment.

  “Stay with me,” he said softly against her mouth. “The children will sleep.” To hell with his guests downstairs.

  “Come to bed with you?” she asked, opening her eyes. “Is that what you mean?”

  “It will be good,” he promised her. “Believe me, it will be good.”

  “I believe you,” she said. Her eyes were becoming more aware. “The answer is no, my lord. Take me to my children, please.”

  He held her against him for a few moments longer while he closed his eyes and tipped back his head. He swallowed twice. He released her and picked up the candlestick.

  “Why not?” he asked her. A stupid question. He knew very well why not.

  “There has to be more,” she said. “More than just the physical.”

  “Like love?” he said. “And marriage, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Like love and marriage.”

  “I am not the marrying kind,” he told her. “Or the loving kind.”

  “No,” she said. “I know. And I feel no love for you. Nor any desire to marry you. Only to lie with you. It is not nearly enough.”

  Well, he had asked for it. Now he would not even be able to console himself with the sneering conviction that she had been trying to trap him into marriage.

  “On the contrary, my dear,” he said, “it is everything. But I will not waste any more of your time. I can see that you are not to be either convinced or seduced. I thank you for allowing your son to share his talent with me and my guests. I will never forget this evening.”

  “Neither will I,” she said quietly.

  Neither will I. Neither will I. The words echoed in his head for the rest of the long evening, after she had left with her children, and for the rest of a longer night. They echoed in his head for all of the following morning, even after he had sent to Lucy to instruct her to be ready for him during the afternoon.

  He did not go to Lucy’s during the afternoon. He went shopping instead. In person. On Bond Street.

  Fanny was feeling mortally depressed by the time Christmas Eve drew to an end. It did not help to remind herself that she would be feeling no better if she had gone into the country with John and Mercy. The point was that she expected to be depressed in the country. She had dreamed of a real Christmas, with her home and her children and her church and
nothing to distract them from remembering the meaning of it all and experiencing the peace and goodwill that were supposed to be a part of the season.

  The dream had come true, and it was hollow.

  The weather had been dreary with heavy gray clouds and a biting wind. It had done nothing to lift the spirits.

  Matthew had been suffering from reaction after his success of the evening before. He had been listless and inclined to whine and had asked if Lord Heath would be calling upon them again. She had told him that he would not.

  Katie had been more than usually quiet and had been scolded gently twice—once by her nurse and once by Fanny herself—for sucking her thumb. She had said nothing when reminded that there was only one more sleep left before Christmas, but had merely grown wider-eyed, though whether with excitement or with disappointment that she was not surrounded by other children as she had been last year her mother did not know.

  Fanny had been unable to settle to anything. She had spent far longer than necessary decorating the house, yet even after she had finished she was not satisfied that the atmosphere of Christmas had been captured. She had wandered down to the kitchen more than once on the unnecessary errand of seeing that all the Christmas baking was well in hand. Yet even the smell of Christmas pudding and mince pies had been unable to stir that old magic that had always been Christmas.

  She had remembered with a horrible feeling of embarrassment. She had allowed him to put his tongue in her mouth. Had anyone else ever allowed such a thing to happen? She had allowed him to bare her breasts and set his hands on them. She had allowed his hands to move below her waist, to draw her right against him. There had been no mistaking his own involvement in what had been happening.

  They had been in an open corridor. Any of the guests or servants could have come along at any moment. One of the children might have come out of the bedchamber.

  He was a man she deeply despised.

  He was a man very highly respected in the world of music. He had recognized Matthew’s talent and had treated it with respect and something bordering on awe. He had not allowed his guests to cajole her son into singing yet another encore. He had allowed Katie to climb into his lap and sit gazing up at him.

  He was a man she had wanted more than she had known it possible to want a man. She had throbbed with desire. She had been almost desperate with the need to open for him, to receive him deep inside, to take his seed into her womb.

  It would have been good, he had told her. Of course it would have been good. It would have been the most ecstatic experience of her life. All night and all day too there was a part of her that had cursed herself for not having had the courage to stay with him as he had suggested. Where would have been the harm?

  The harm would have been in becoming the mistress of a rake. The harm would have been in beginning an addiction that he would feed only until he grew bored with her. The harm would have been in fornicating under the same roof as her sleeping children. The harm would have been in setting physical pleasure before morality and plain common sense.

  Oh, she could go on forever. The harm would have been catastrophic. She was simply not a woman made for casual affairs.

  She hated him. And hated her own childishness in feeling such an irrational emotion.

  The Christmas Eve church service that evening was lovely. It was not one of London’s most fashionable churches—Fanny had chosen it for that reason—and was not very full, several of the parishioners being from home for the holiday. But there was the feeling of being among friends who cared, and the vicar’s kindliness went a long way to making up for the tedium of his sermon. And there was the memory as the congregation, most notably the carolers, sang the Christmas hymns with unmusical enthusiasm, of the night before and the way in which they had offered a strangely moving finale to a very professional concert.

  Matthew was made much of after the service was over, and Katie, on the verge of sleep, her head against Fanny’s shoulder, was fussed over.

  “And what have you requested for Christmas?” the vicar asked her in the jovial voice he reserved for children and the very elderly.

  But Katie was not telling. “It is a secret,” she said just before her thumb found its way to her mouth. Fanny did not scold, and the vicar and other parishioners who were in earshot laughed heartily.

  Fanny stood at the window of her bedchamber late that night, absently brushing her hair and gazing outward on a night that was almost as light as day. She must make an effort at greater cheerfulness tomorrow, she decided. For the children’s sake she must be festive. She had been very selfish keeping them at home. She must make them happy.

  And then the brush stilled in her hand and she half smiled. What a strange irony it was that it had begun to snow. On Christmas morning, or very close to it—it was not quite midnight. It never snowed at Christmas. Everyone always hoped that it would and sometimes persuaded themselves that it would. But it usually snowed before Christmas, just when people were trying to travel to house parties, or just after Christmas, when everyone was trying to return home. Or not at all. Winter moisture usually came down as chill rain. But it never snowed at Christmas.

  Except now, this year, when she and the children were stuck in town. They might have been in the countryside, where there would have been a whole park to frolic in tomorrow. But they were in town, thanks to her.

  Perhaps it would come to nothing, she thought, closing the curtains firmly and extinguishing the candle before climbing into bed. An empty, cold, lonely bed. She closed her eyes and felt his mouth against her own and his thumbs stroking and tautening her aching nipples. She felt him hard and large against her abdomen as his hands fitted her against him. She ached with unfulfilled desire. And regret. And self-hatred.

  Tomorrow was Christmas. She was going to have to be happy tomorrow.

  Sleeping, or at least hovering blissfully on the very brink of sleep, had been easy at church when there were voices droning around her and there had been Mama’s comfortable lap and Mama’s comfortable bosom to lull her. It had been easy on the way home when Mama had carried her. But it had fled entirely after she had been laid down in her own bed and the candles had been blown out and all was peace and quiet and warmth.

  There was only one sleep left to Christmas. If only she could start having that one sleep, Katie thought, yawning loudly, it would come. Yet she was half afraid to have it. Tomorrow was Christmas and the Christmas gifts. If she had a doll, how would she contain her disappointment? How would she smile and look pleased so that Mama would not know that she did not want a doll at all. Or rather she did, but she wanted a papa more and if she had a doll, then that would mean that she was not going to have her new papa.

  Mama had told Matt that the gentleman was not going to come again. And he had not come all day. She had waited for him anyway, but he had not come. She had thought maybe he would come to church, but he had not been there.

  If she just stayed awake and did not have that one sleep to Christmas, she would never know for sure that she was not to have her new papa. But what if she was? If he was going to come, she wanted to sleep immediately so that he would come quickly.

  But what if she had a doll instead?

  The choice of sleeping or staying awake was ultimately not hers to make. She slept—and woke with a start, knowing that there were no sleeps left, that it was Christmas, even though it was still dark outside. She felt suddenly almost sick with excitement. There would be presents and that very special feeling there was at Christmas—she could remember it from last year.

  She also felt almost sick with apprehension. She knew she had to act quickly, without giving herself time to think. Perhaps his horse or his carriage would be below her window and she would know that her Christmas wish had been granted. She jumped out of bed without even feeling the cold, raced over to the window, and pulled back the curtain with one hand. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened.

  Snow! Heaps and heaps of white snow just waiting to
be played in. Excitement welled in her for a moment and she was on the verge of turning and rushing, shrieking, into Matthew’s room next door. But then she noticed that there was no horse and no carriage and no footsteps in the snow. And snow was hard to travel in. It was deep and slippery. She could remember that from some other time. He would not be able to come. She would not be able to have a new papa for Christmas.

  She let the curtain fall back into place. And noticed that she was cold. And wanted her mama. She opened her door quietly so as not to wake Nurse in the room opposite and went to her mother’s room. She let herself in quietly and closed the door behind her. Mama was asleep and did not stir when Katie stood beside her bed.

  A doll would be nice, Katie thought. Surely she would have a doll. She would be happy. She would be able to play with it all day. The doll was probably here already and would not have to come through the snow. Perhaps she would have a papa next year.

  She climbed up onto the bed and burrowed beneath the bedclothes, helped by her mother, who stirred, smiled sleepily at her, and drew her close before kissing her on top of the head—just where the gentleman had kissed her that night she had been wearing her white bow. Mama was all warm. Katie put her cold feet against her and wriggled even closer. She sighed and went back to sleep.

  Snow! A great heavy blanket of it. Lord Heath stood at the window of his bedchamber, scowling out at it. He would not be able to go to Lucy’s today. She lived a considerable distance away, and he knew he would not risk the safety of any of his horses by taking them out until it had melted. Snow this thick would not melt for a day or two at least and then the slush would be even more treacherous.

  He had received a letter from Lucy last evening, badly spelled and reeking of her particular brand of perfume. If he could not keep his appointments when he had sent her specific instructions and she had denied herself an outing on both occasions in order to comply with them, she had written, then she knew another gent—another half-dozen gents, in fact—who would be only too willing to engage her services.