The Heart of Christmas

by Nicola Cornick; Courtney Milan Mary Balogh

  She had wanted to lessen his hurt, but she’d made it worse.

  All you have managed to do is make me miserable. Not William’s words, but they seemed to apply all the same.

  No, no, no. Lavinia stood and walked to her window. Thick, choking fog filled her vision. It was past midnight, and thus it was now Christmas Eve. But it was not yet near morning. The night fog was so thick it would swallow an entire troupe of players juggling torches. It could easily hide one nineteen-year-old woman who didn’t want to be seen. She would make William feel better. She had to.

  Silently she opened her bedroom door. She crept out into the main room and removed her cloak from its peg. She found her boots with her toe, and then bent to pick them up. Slowly she crept down the not-quite-creaking stairs, and across the lending library. And then she was outside, the fog enshrouding her in its cold embrace.

  Lavinia lifted her chin, put on her boots and walked. In the few nights before Christmas, a musicians’ company sent men on the streets to play through the darkness of night. There were no players anywhere near her house, of course, but in these quiet hours before dawn, the haunting sound of twin recorders came to her in tiny snatches. The sound wafted through the fog like fairy music. She’d catch a bar, but before the melody resolved itself into a recognizable tune, it slipped away, melting into the fog like the shadow of a Christmas that had not yet come.

  As she walked through the engulfing mist, those enchanted notes grew fainter and fainter. By the time she reached Norwich Court, they had disappeared altogether.

  When she arrived at his home, she realized she had no key to unlock his door. Surely, his chamber was too distant for him to hear her knock.

  A little thing like impossibility had never stopped Lavinia.

  She was systematically testing the windows when the creak of a door opening sounded behind her.

  “Lavinia?” His voice.

  She turned, her stomach churning in anticipation at the sound of her name on his lips. He stood, four feet away from her, his form barely visible through the fog. She jumped down from her uncomfortable perch on the windowsill, and would have run into his arms—but he’d crossed them in a most forbidding manner. Instead, she walked slowly toward him, her heart pounding.

  “You must be freezing.” His words reeked of disapproval. “Thank God I couldn’t sleep again. Thank God you didn’t meet anyone on your way over. If you were my—”

  She had come close enough that she saw the scowl flit over his face at that. He shut his mouth and turned away, walking into the house.

  She followed. “If I were your wife,” she threw at his retreating back, “I wouldn’t need to risk all this fog just to see you on a morning.”

  He didn’t respond. But he left the door open, and she went after him. This time, he had not climbed the stairs to his bedchamber. He was headed down a narrow cramped hall into the back of the house. Lavinia sighed and closed the door behind her.

  She was not his wife. She was not even anything to him so clean and uncomplicated as his sweetheart. She was the woman who’d made his life miserable. Still, she followed him down the hall. The narrow passage gave way to a tiny kitchen in the back of the house. Without looking at her, he pulled a chair out from under a narrow, wooden table and placed it directly by the hearth. She sat; he stoked the fire and then placed a kettle on the grate.

  For a long while he only stared into the orange ribbons that arched away from the flames. The dancing light painted his profile in glimmering yellow. His lips pressed together. His eyes were hooded. Then he shook his head and stabbed the coals with a poker. Bright sparks flew.

  “If you were my wife,” he finally said, “this moment would be a luxury—enough coal of a morning to heat the room.”

  He shook his head, set the poker down and turned away. William moved about the tiny room with the efficiency of a man used to dealing for himself. He set out a pot and cups, and then turned back to her. “If you were my wife, you’d take your bread without butter. You would mend your gloves three, four, five times over, until the material became more darn than fabric. And when the babes came, we’d have to remove from even these tiny and insupportable quarters into a part of London that is even less safe than this address. We’d have no other way to support a family.”

  “When the babes came?” Those words sent a happy thrill through her.

  He turned to contemplate the fire again. “I am not such a fool as to imagine they wouldn’t. Lavinia, if you were my wife, the babes would come. And come. And come. I couldn’t keep my hands off you. I pray one is not already on the way.”

  It was not her fog-dampened cloak that left her chilled. He spoke of putting his hands on her as if she were one more bitter sip from a cup that was already starkly devoid of happiness.

  “It would be worth it,” she said quietly. “The gloves. The bread. It would be worth it to me for the touch of your hands alone.”

  “Is that why you came here this morning?” He spoke in tones equally low to hers. “Did you come here so that I would touch you?”

  Yes. Or she’d come to touch him—to see if she could salvage the moment when he’d thought himself dishonored. He’d said once he had no notion of love. She’d wanted to show him.

  “Did you come thinking I would kiss your lips? That I would undo the ties of your cloak and let my hands slide down your skin?”

  Her body heard, and it answered. The heat of the fire flickered against her neck; she imagined its warm touch was his hands. She imagined his hands tracing down her cheek; his hands cupping the curve of her bodice and warming her breasts; his hands coaxing her nipples into hard points. She ached in tune with his every word. Her breath grew fast.

  He knelt on the floor in front of her, one knee on the ground. With that frozen, almost supercilious expression on his face, his posture seemed a gross parody of a proposal of marriage.

  “In the year since I first saw you,” he said, “I have imagined your giving yourself to me a thousand times. If these were my wildest dreams, I’d have you now. On that chair. I would spread your legs and nibble my way from your thigh to your sex. I’d slip inside you. And when I’d had my way with you, I would thank the Lord for the bruises on my knees.”

  As he spoke, her legs parted. Her sex tingled. His breath quickened to match hers. Do it. Yes, do it.

  He reached out one hand and laid it on her knee. It was the first time he’d touched her all morning, and her whole body thrilled in wicked recognition of his. She leaned forward. For one eternal second, she could taste his breath, hot and masculine, on the tip of her tongue. She stretched to meet him. But before her lips found his, he stood.

  “Lavinia.” His words sounded like a reproach. “I can’t have you in dishonor. I can’t have you in poverty. And so I will not be marrying you.”

  She stared up into his eyes. Those dark mahogany orbs seemed so far away, so implacable. She had to fix this. But before she could speak, a hissing, sputtering noise intruded from her left, and he turned away from her.

  It was the kettle, boiling with inappropriate merriment over the fire. He found a cloth. For a few minutes, he busied himself with the kettle and teapot, his back to her.

  When he finally turned back, he held a cup in his hands.

  “Here,” he said. “The very nectar of poverty. Five washings of the leaves. I believe the liquid still has some flavor.” He handed it to her. “There’s no sugar. There’s never any sugar.”

  She took the cup. He pulled his hand away quickly, before she could clasp it against the clay. In her hands, the warm mug radiated heat. Tiny black dots, the dust of broken tea leaves, swirled in the beverage.

  “You don’t speak like a poor man.” She darted a gaze up at him. “You don’t read like a poor man, either. Malthus. Smith. Craig. The Annals of Agriculture.”

  He turned away from her to pour his own cup of tea. He did not drink it. “When I was fourteen, my father, a tradesman who aspired to be more, engaged in some rather r
isky speculation. A friend of his had lured him in. He promised to see me through my schooling, and to settle some significant amount on me should the investment fail.”

  William lifted the mug to his mouth. But he barely wet his lips with the liquid. “The investment did fail—quite spectacularly. My father shot himself. And his friend—” he drew that last word out, a curl to his lip “—thought that a promise made to a man who killed himself was no promise at all. What little property remained was forfeit when he was adjudged a suicide. And so down I went to London, to try and make shift for myself.”

  “Where did all this take place?”

  “Leicester. I still have the edge of their speech on my tongue. I’ve tried to eradicate it, but…”

  He looked down, moving his cup in gentle circles. Perhaps he was trying to read his own tea leaves. More likely, Lavinia thought, he was avoiding her gaze.

  “So you see, I am in fact the lowest of the low. I am the son of a suicide. I make a bare eighteen pounds a year. I was once a member of that unfortunate class that your lovely books label the deserving poor. After I had you—after I took to my bed a woman I could not afford to marry—I don’t qualify as deserving any longer. Even if I had the coin to take you as my wife, I don’t think I’d have the temerity.”

  Lavinia stood, the better to knock sense into his head.

  But already he was setting down his tea, stepping away from her.

  “It’s getting on toward morning,” he said. “I’d best get you home.” And then he turned toward the hall and left her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WILLIAM WALKED DOWN the hall. He had made the matter as plain as he dared to her. She’d wanted to argue—he’d seen it in her eyes. Her words could have tied him in knots. And having to watch her deliver those arguments—having to hold his distance from her when every fiber in his being yearned toward her—had been almost impossible. But she had no way to debate straightforward gestures. He hid behind those unarguable motions now. He got his coat. He walked to the door. He opened it, and stood there in silence until she came from the kitchen.

  Even then she stopped by his arm and looked up at him. Her blue eyes seemed to see right through to the contents of his soul. So what if she took the measure of that sorry item? After all, he’d set it out for her to see, a tattered standard past the point of all repair.

  He walked outside, into the chill of early morning. She followed, her eyes liquid, her skin seeming to light with an incandescent glow against that mass of white fog. He wasn’t sure he could bear another fifteen minutes in her presence—but whatever depths he’d plumbed, he had not sunk so far as to send a woman alone into the maw of that dampening mist. Least of all Lavinia.

  Outside, Norwich Court was a silent sea of mist. Tendrils of white curled around the gaslight on the corner and combed long, thin fingers through the tangled branches of the trees. Lavinia came up behind him. He could feel the warmth of her body radiating through the fog. She was mere inches away from his embrace. She’d never felt so distant.

  “I rather think,” she said, “that I should be the one to decide if you’re deserving.”

  He hunched his shoulders deeper and drew his coat about him. “I don’t wish to speak about this at present.”

  “Not at present? Very well.”

  He was surprised—and perhaps a touch disappointed—at the grace with which she accepted his pronouncement. Silence enfolded them. They walked in darkness. William counted to thirty slowly, one number for every two steps, and then she spoke again.

  “How about now, then?”

  He was staring straight ahead as they walked, the better to ignore her. But there wasn’t much to see on an early, foggy morning. A bakery had just come to life, the light from its windows diffusing gold through the mist. As they passed, the smell of the first baking of cinnamon-and-spice bread wafted out.

  But the scent of those warm ovens was soon left behind, and there was nothing else he could focus on in the swirling fog. He felt a muscle twitch in his jaw.

  “Very well,” Lavinia said. “You don’t need to say anything.”

  That muscle twitched, harder.

  “I shall supply both halves of the conversation. I’m rather good at that, you know.”

  He had to admit, her proclamation came as no great surprise.

  “Besides,” she said slyly, “you’re very handsome when you’re taciturn.”

  Oh, he was not going to feel pleased. He was not going to look toward her. But damn it, he was delighted. And his head twisted toward her—until he caught himself and converted the motion into a shake of his head.

  “That gesture,” Lavinia said, “must be William Q. White for ‘Dear Lord, she’s given me a rabid compliment! Run away before it bites me!’”

  He ruthlessly suppressed a traitorous grin.

  “I shall imagine,” she said, “that what you really meant to say was, ‘Thank you, Lavinia.’”

  William lifted his chin. He set his jaw and looked ahead.

  “And that impassive, stony look,” Lavinia continued, “is William Q. White for ‘I must not smile, or she’ll figure out precisely what I am not saying.’ Really, William, is this silence the best you have to offer me on the way home? You’ve said all there is to say, and you have not one question to put to me?”

  They were almost to her home now. William stopped walking and turned to her. He looked into her eyes—a dire mistake, as she smiled at him, and then his blood refused to do anything so sensible as flow demurely through his veins. It thundered instead, insistent and demanding. He wanted to learn the curve of her jaw, every lash on her lids. He wanted to run his hand down her cheek until he’d committed the feel of her skin to memory.

  “I do have one question, Miss Spencer.”

  He should not have spoken. Her eyes lit with such hope. If he’d remained silent, perhaps she’d have realized he had nothing to give her—nothing but his eighteen pounds a year. And even that was subject to the arbitrary and rather capricious whims of Lord Blakely.

  But instead, her lips curled upward in anticipation. “Ask. Oh, do ask.”

  He ought not. He should not dare. But he did.

  “Why do you call me William Q. White?”

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened in discomfited surprise. Clearly, she’d not been imagining anything along those lines. “Oh,” she said on an inrush of breath. “I know it’s too familiar. You’ve never actually given me permission. I ought to call you Mr. White. But I thought, perhaps, after—you know—the formality seemed somehow wrong, after we—after we—after we—” She paused, took a deep breath as if for courage, and then said the words aloud. “After we shared a bed.”

  Good God. She thought he was objecting to the use of his Christian name? “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I know I sound mad. Completely mad. I can’t help but be a little mad when you’re looking down at me. You make me feel foolish, right to the bottom of my toes.”

  William ruthlessly suppressed the thrill that ran through him at her words.

  “It is not the familiarity I object to,” he said slowly. “I am rather more curious as to why you persist in placing a Q in the middle.”

  “Because I don’t know what the Q stands for. Quincy?”

  He must have looked as baffled as he felt, because she forged bravely onward.

  “Quackenbush? Quintus? Come, you must tell me.”

  Finally he managed to put words to his befuddlement. “What Q?”

  “Your middle initial. What other Q would possibly come between William and White?”

  He blinked at her in continued bewilderment. “But I don’t have a middle initial.”

  “Yes, you do. When you first applied for a subscription, I asked your name, and you told me, William Q. White. I may be a little giddy, and perhaps I might lose my head when you look at me, but I could not have manufactured such a thing out of whole cloth.”

  A memory asserted itself. He’d saved two
years to make the initial fee for the subscription. When he’d walked into Spencer’s library on High Holborn, he’d thought of nothing but books and self-improvement. And then he’d seen her, lush and lovely and briskly competent. He had suddenly known—he would be reading a great deal more than he had imagined. He’d been quite stupid that day.

  Well. He’d never really stopped.

  “Ah. I had forgotten. That Q.” He smiled, faintly, and looked away.

  “No, no. You cannot keep silent. You must tell me about the Q. I am all ears.”

  He glanced back at her. “All ears? No. You’re a good proportion mouth.” The grin he gave her slid so easily onto his face. “When I first applied for a subscription you asked my name. And I said, ‘William White.’”

  “No, you—”

  He held up a hand. “Yes, I did. And you didn’t even look up at me. You sat there, nib to paper, and you said, ‘William White. Is that all?’” He folded his arms and gave her a firm nod.

  Now it was her turn to frown in perplexity, as if his explanation were somehow insufficient.

  “So you made up a middle initial rather than simply saying yes.” Lavinia frowned. “The only thing I gather is that I am not mad. You are.”

  “Absolutely.” His voice was low. “Have you any idea what a declaration of war those words are? You’re a lovely woman. You can’t just look at a man and ask, ‘Is that all?’ Any man worth his salt can give only one answer. ‘Is that all?’ ‘No, damn it. There’s more. There’s much more.’”

  She laughed with delight. “Mr. William Q. White,” she said, wagging a finger, “you sly devil. I’ve been wanting to know the more ever since.”

  They were almost to her home, and William could not help but wish he could tease that laughter out of her every day. He held up his hands as if he could ward off their shared happiness.

  “But, Lavinia,” he said, “there will be no more. I can never make it up to you, this debt that lies between us. You have already given me more than I can repay.”

  The smile on her face faded into nothingness. “Is that how you see matters between us, then? As some sort of grim commerce, where the transactions are ones of personal worth and desert?”