The Heart Of Christmas: A Handful Of Gold / The Season for Suitors / This Wicked Gift

There had been another letter in the morning’s post. From Bertie. Bertrand Hollander had been his close friend and coconspirator all through school and university. They were still close even though Bertie spent most of his time now overseeing his estates in the north of England. But Bertie had a hunting box in Norfolkshire and a mistress in Yorkshire and intended to introduce the two to each other over Christmas. He was avoiding his own family with the excuse that he was going to go shooting with friends over the holiday. He intended instead to spend a week with his Debbie away from prying eyes and the need for propriety. He wanted Julian to join him there with his own mistress.

Julian did not currently have a resident mistress. He had dismissed the last one several months before on the grounds that evenings spent in her company had become even more predictable and every bit as tedious as evenings spent at the insipid weekly balls at Almack’s. Since then he had had a mutually satisfactory arrangement with a widow of his acquaintance. But she was a respectable woman of good ton, hardly the sort he might invite to spend a cozy week of sin in Norfolkshire with Bertie and his Debbie.

Damn! He was more foxed than he knew, Julian thought suddenly. He had gone somewhere tonight even before attending Elinor’s soirée. He had gone to the opera. Not that he was particularly fond of music—not opera at least. He had gone to see the subject of the newest male gossip at White’s. There was a new dancer of considerable charms, so it was said. But in the few weeks since she had made her first onstage appearance, she had not also made her first appearance in any of the beds of those who had attempted to entice her there. She was either waiting for the highest bidder or she was waiting for someone she fancied or she was a virtuous woman.

Julian, his father’s summons and Bertie’s invitation fresh in his mind, had gone to the opera to see what the fuss was all about.

The fuss was all about long, shapely legs, a slender, lithe body and long titian hair. Not red, nothing so vulgar. Titian. And emerald eyes. Not that he had been able to see their color from the box he had occupied during the performance. But he had seen it through his quizzing glass as he had stood in the doorway of the greenroom afterward.

Miss Blanche Heyward had been surrounded by a court of appropriately languishing admirers. His lordship had looked her over unhurriedly through his glass and inclined his head to her when her eyes had met his across the room. And then he had joined the even larger crowd of gentlemen gathered about Hannah Dove, the singer who sang like her name, or so one of her court had assured her. For which piece of gross flattery he had been rewarded with a gracious smile and a hand to kiss.

Julian had left the greenroom after a few minutes and taken himself off to his married sister’s drawing room.

It might be interesting to try his own hand at assaulting the citadel of dubious virtue that was Blanche Heyward. It might be even more interesting to carry her off to Bertie’s for Christmas and a weeklong hot affair. If he went to Conway, all he would have was the usual crowded, noisy, enjoyable Christmas, and the Plunkett chit. If he went to Norfolkshire…

Well, the mind boggled.

What he could do, he decided, was make her decision his, too. He would ask her. If she said yes, then he would go to Norfolkshire. For a final fling. As a swan song to freedom and wild oats and all the rest of it. In the spring, when the season brought the fashionable world to town, the Plunkett girl among them, he would do his duty. He would have her big with child by next Christmas. The very thought had him holding his aching head with the hand that had been holding his glass a minute before. What the devil had he done with it? Dropped it? Had there been any brandy left in it? Couldn’t have been or he would have drunk it instead of sitting here conspiring how he might reach the decanter, on legs that refused to obey his brain.

If she said no—Blanche, that was, not the heiress—then he would go down to Conway and embrace his fate. That way he would probably have a child in the nursery by next Christmas.

Julian lowered his hand from his head to his throat with the intention of loosening his neck cloth. But someone had already done it for him.

Dammit, but she was gorgeous. Not the heiress. Who the devil was gorgeous, then? Someone he had met at Elinor’s?

There was a quiet scratching at the sitting room door, and it opened to reveal the cautious, respectful face of his lordship’s valet.

“About time,” Julian told him. “Someone took all the bones out of my legs when I was not looking. Deuced inconvenient.”

“Yes, my lord,” his man said, coming purposefully toward him. “You will be wishing someone took them from your head before many more hours have passed. Come along then, sir. Put your arm about my neck.”

“Deuced impertinence,” his lordship muttered. “Remind me to dismiss you when I am sober.”

“Yes, my lord,” the valet said cheerfully.

SEVERAL HOURS before Viscount Folingsby found himself sprawled before the fire in his sitting room with boneless legs and aching head, Miss Verity Ewing let herself into a darkened house on an unfashionable street in London, using her latchkey and a considerable amount of stealth. She had no wish to waken anyone. She would tiptoe upstairs without lighting a candle, she decided, careful to avoid the eighth stair, which creaked. She would undress in the darkness and hope not to disturb Chastity. Her sister was, unfortunately, a light sleeper.

But luck was against her. Before she could so much as set foot on the bottom stair, the door to the downstairs living room opened and a shaft of candlelight beamed out into the hall.

“Verity?”

“Yes, Mama.” Verity sighed inwardly even as she put a cheerful smile on her face. “You ought not to have waited up.”

“I could not sleep,” her mother told her as Verity followed her into the sitting room. She set down the candle and pulled her shawl more closely about her shoulders. There was no fire burning in the hearth. “You know I worry until you come home.”

“Lady Coleman was invited to a late supper after the opera,” Verity explained, “and wanted me to accompany her.”

“It was very inconsiderate of her, I am sure,” Mrs. Ewing said rather plaintively. “It is thoughtless to keep a gentleman’s daughter out late almost every night of the week and send her home in a hackney cab instead of in her ladyship’s own carriage.”

“It is kind of her even to hire the hackney,” Verity said. “But it is chilly and you are cold.” She did not need to ask why there was no fire. A fire after ten o’clock at night was an impossible extravagance in their household. “Let us go up to bed. How was Chastity this evening?”

“She did not cough above three or four times all evening,” Mrs. Ewing said. “And not once did she have a prolonged bout. The new medicine seems really to be working.”

“I hoped it would.” Verity smiled and picked up the candle. “Come, Mama.”

But she could not entirely avoid the usual questions about the opera, what Lady Coleman had worn, who else had made up their party, who had invited them for supper, what they had eaten, what topics of conversation had been pursued. Verity answered as briefly as she could, though she did, for her mother’s sake, give a detailed description of the costly and fashionable gown her employer had worn.

“All I can say,” Mrs. Ewing said in a hushed voice as they stood outside the door of her bedchamber, “is that Lady Coleman is a strange sort of lady, Verity. Most ladies hire companions to live in and run and fetch for them during the day when time hangs heavy on their hands. They do not allow them to live at home, and they do not require their services mostly during the evenings when they go out into society.”

“How fortunate I am to have discovered such a lady, then,” Verity said, “and to have won her approval. I could not bear to have to live in and see you and Chastity only on half days off. Lady Coleman is a widow, Mama, and needs company for respectability when she goes out. I could scarcely ask for more pleasant employment. It pays reasonably well, too, and will get better. Only this evening Lady Coleman declared that she is pleased with me and is considering raising my salary quite substantially.”

But her mother did not look as pleased as Verity had hoped. She shook her head as she took the candle. “Ah, my love,” she said, “I never thought to see the day when a daughter of mine would have to seek employment. The Reverend Ewing, your papa, left us little, it is true, but we might have scraped by quite comfortably if it had not been for Chastity’s illness. And if General Sir Hector Ewing were not unfortunately in Vienna for the peace talks, he would have helped us, I am certain. You and Chastity are his own brother’s children, after all.”

“Pray do not vex yourself, Mama.” Verity kissed her mother’s cheek. “We are together, the three of us, and Chastity is recovering her health after seeing a reputable physician and being prescribed the right medicine. Really, those are the only things that matter. Good night.”

A minute later she had reached her own room and had entered it and closed the door. She stood for a moment against it, her eyes closed, her hands gripping the knob behind her back. But there was no sound apart from quiet, even breathing from her sister’s bed. Verity undressed quickly and quietly, shivering in the frigid cold. After she had climbed into bed, she lay on her side, her knees drawn up, and pulled the covers up over her ears. Her teeth were chattering, though not just with the cold.

It was a dangerous game she played.

Except that it was no game.

How soon would it be, she wondered, before Mama discovered that there was no Lady Coleman, that there was no genteel and easy employment? Fortunately they had moved to London from the country so recently and under such straitened circumstances that they had few friends and none at all who moved in fashionable circles. They had moved because Chastity’s chill, contracted last winter not long after their father’s death, had stubbornly refused to go away. It had become painfully clear to them that they might well lose her if they did not consult a physician more knowledgeable than the local doctor. They had feared she had consumption, but the London physician had said no, that she merely had a weak chest and might hope to recover her full health with the correct medicines and diet.

But his fees and the medicines had been exorbitantly expensive and the need for his services was not yet at an end. The rent of even so unfashionable a house as theirs was high. And the bills for coal, candles, food and other sundries seemed always to be piling in.

Verity had searched and searched for genteel employment, assuring her mother that it would be only temporary, until her uncle returned to England and was apprised of their plight. Verity placed little faith in the wealthy uncle who had had nothing to do with them during her father’s life. Her grandfather had held aloof from his youngest son after the latter had refused an advantageous match and had married instead Verity’s mother, the daughter of a gentleman of no particular fortune or consequence.

In Verity’s opinion, the care of her mother and sister fell squarely on her own shoulders and always would. And so when she had been unable to find employment as a governess or companion or even as a shop assistant or seamstress or housemaid, she had taken up the unlikely offer of an audition as an opera dancer. She was quite fit, after all, and she had always adored dancing, both in a ballroom and in the privacy of a shrubbery or empty room at the rectory. To her intense surprise she had been offered the job.

Performing on a public stage in any capacity—as an actress, singer or dancer—was not genteel employment for a lady. Indeed, Verity had been well aware even before accepting the employment that, in the popular mind, dancers and actresses were synonymous with whores.

But what choice had she?

And so had begun her double life, her secret life. By day, except when she was at rehearsals, she was Verity Ewing, impoverished daughter of a gently born clergyman, niece of the influential General Sir Hector Ewing. By night she was Blanche Heyward, opera dancer, someone who was ogled by half the fashionable gentlemen in town, many of whom attended the opera for no other purpose.

But it was a dangerous game. At any time she might be recognized by someone she knew, though no one from her neighborhood in the country was in the habit of staying in London and sampling its entertainments. More important, perhaps, she was making it impossible to mingle with polite society in the future if the general should ever decide to help them. But she did not anticipate that particular problem.

There were more immediate problems to deal with.

But what she earned as a dancer was just not enough.

Verity huddled deeper beneath the bedcovers and set her hands between her thighs for greater warmth.

“Verity?” a sleepy voice asked.

Verity pushed back the covers from her face again. “Yes, love,” she said softly, “I am home.”

“I must have fallen asleep,” Chastity said. “I always worry so until you are home. I wish you did not have to go out alone at night.”