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

She smiled into the dancing flames. Men were always lavish in their compliments on her eyes, though no one had ever said it quite like this before.

“I have some Irish blood in me, my lord,” she said.

“Ah. The Emerald Isle,” he said softly. “Land of redhaired, fiery-tempered beauties. Do you have a fiery temper, Miss Heyward?”

“I also have a great deal of English blood,” she told him.

“Ah, we mundane and phlegmatic English.” He sighed. “You disappoint me. Come to the table.”

“You like hot-tempered women, then, my lord?” she asked him as he seated her and took his place opposite.

“That depends entirely on the woman,” he said. “If I believe there is pleasure to be derived from the taming of her, yes, indeed.” He picked up the bottle of wine that stood on the table, uncorked it and proceeded to fill her glass and then his own.

While he was so occupied, Verity looked fully at him for the first time since they had left the theater. He was almost frighteningly handsome, though why there should be anything fearsome about good looks she would have found difficult to explain. Perhaps it was his confidence, his arrogance more than his looks that had her wishing she could go back to the greenroom and change her answer. They seemed very much alone together, though two waiters were bringing food and setting it silently on the table. Or perhaps it was his sensual appeal and the certain knowledge that he wanted her.

He held his glass aloft and extended his hand halfway across the table. “To new acquaintances,” he said, looking very directly into her eyes in the flickering light of the candles. “May they prosper.”

She smiled, touched the rim of her glass to his and drank. Her hand was steady, she was relieved to find, but she felt almost as if a decision had been made, a pact sealed.

“Shall we eat?” he suggested after the waiters had withdrawn and closed the door behind them. He indicated the plates of cold meats and steaming vegetables, the basket of fresh breads, the bowl of fruit.

She was hungry, she realized suddenly, but she was not at all sure she would be able to eat. She helped herself to a modest portion.

“Tell me, Miss Heyward,” the viscount said, watching her butter a bread roll, “are you always this talkative?”

She paused and looked unwillingly up at him again. She was adept at making social conversation, as were most ladies of her class. But she had no idea what topics were suited to an occasion of this nature. She had never before dined tête-à-tête with a man, or been alone with one under any circumstances for longer than half an hour at a time or beyond a place where she could be easily observed by a chaperone.

“What do you wish me to talk about, my lord?” she asked him.

He regarded her for a few moments, a look of amusement on his face. “Bonnets?” he said. “Jewels? The latest shopping expedition?”

He did not, then, have a high regard for women’s intelligence. Or perhaps it was just her type of woman. Her type.

“But what do you wish to talk about, my lord?” she asked him, taking a bite out of her roll.

He looked even more amused. “You,” he said without hesitation. “Tell me about yourself, Miss Heyward. Begin with your accent. I cannot quite place its origin. Where are you from?”

She had not done at all well with the accent she had assumed during her working hours, except perhaps to disguise the fact that she had been gently born and raised.

“I pick up accents very easily,” she lied. “And I have lived in many different places. I suppose there is a trace of all those places in my speech.”

“And someone,” he said, “to complicate the issue, has given you elocution lessons.”

“Of course.” She smiled. “Even as a dancer one must learn not to murder the English language with every word one speaks, my lord. If one expects to advance in one’s career, that is.”

He gazed silently at her for a few moments, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth. Verity felt herself flushing. What career was he imagining she wished to advance?

“Quite so,” he said softly, his voice like velvet. He carried his fork the rest of the way to his mouth. “But what are some of these places? Tell me where you have lived. Tell me about your family. Come, we cannot munch on our food in silence, you know. There is nothing better designed to shake a person’s composure.”

Her life seemed to have become nothing but lies. In each of her worlds she had to withhold the truth about the other. And withholding the truth sometimes became more than a passive thing. It involved the invention of lie upon lie. She had some knowledge of two places—the village in Somersetshire where she had lived for two-and-twenty years, and London, where she had lived for two months. But she spoke of Ireland, drawing on the stories she could remember her maternal grandmother telling her when she was a child, and more riskily, of the city of York, where a neighborhood friend had lived with his uncle for a while, and about a few other places of which she had read.

She hoped fervently that the viscount had no intimate knowledge of any of the places she chose to describe. She invented a mythical family—a father who was a blacksmith, a warmhearted mother who had died five years before, three brothers and three sisters, all considerably younger than herself.

“You came to London to seek your fortune?” he asked. “You have not danced anywhere else?”

She hesitated. But she did not want him to think her inexperienced, easy to manipulate. “Oh, of course,” she said. “For several years, my lord.” She smiled into his eyes as she reached for a pear from the dish of fruit. “But all roads lead eventually to London, you know.”

She was startled by the look of naked desire that flared in his eyes for a moment as he followed the movement of her hand. But it was soon veiled behind his lazy eyelids and slightly mocking smile.

“Of course,” he said softly. “And those of us who spend most of our time here are only too delighted to benefit from the experience in the various arts such persons as yourself have acquired elsewhere.”

Verity kept her eyes on the pear she was peeling. It was unusually juicy, she was dismayed to find. Her hands were soon wet with juice. And her heart was thumping. Suddenly, and quite inexplicably, she felt as if she had waded into deep waters indeed. The air fairly bristled between them. She licked her lips and could think of no reply to make.

His voice sounded amused when he spoke again. “Having peeled it, Miss Heyward,” he said, “you are now obliged to eat it, you know. It would be a crime to waste good food.”

She lifted one half of the pear to her mouth and bit into it. Juice cascaded to her plate below, and some of it trickled down her chin. She reached for her napkin in some embarrassment, knowing that he was watching her. But before she could pick it up, he had reached across the table and one long finger had scooped up the droplet of juice that was about to drip onto her gown. She raised her eyes, startled, to watch him carry the finger to his mouth and touch it to his tongue. His eyes remained on her all the while.

Verity felt a sharp stabbing of sensation down through her abdomen and between her thighs. She felt a rush of color to her cheeks. She felt as if she had been running for a mile uphill.

“Sweet,” he murmured.

She jumped to her feet, pushing at her chair with the backs of her knees. Then she wished she had not done so. Her legs felt decidedly unsteady. She crossed to the fireplace again and reached out her hands as if to warm them, though she felt as if the fire might better be able to take warmth from her.

She drew a few steadying breaths in the silence that followed. And then she could see from the corner of one eye that he had come to stand at the other side of the hearth. He rested one arm along the high mantel. He was watching her. The time had come, she thought. She had precipitated it herself. Within moments the question would be asked and must be answered. She still did not know what that answer would be, or perhaps she did. Perhaps she was just fooling herself to believe that there was still a choice. She had made her decision back in the greenroom—no, even before that. This was a tavern, part of an inn. No doubt he had bespoken a bedchamber here, as well as a private dining room. Within minutes, then…

How would it feel? She did not even know exactly what she was to expect. The basic facts, of course…

“Miss Heyward,” he asked her, making her jump again, “what are your plans for Christmas?”

She turned her head to look at him. Christmas? It was a week and a half away. She would spend it with her family, of course. It would be their first Christmas away from home, their first without the friends and neighbors they had known all their lives. But at least they still had one another and were still together. They had decided that they would indulge in the extravagance of a goose and make something special of the day with inexpensive gifts that they would make for one another. Christmas had always been Verity’s favorite time of the year. Somehow it restored hope and reminded her of the truly important things in life—family and love and selfless giving.

Selfless giving.

“Do you have any plans?” he asked.

She could hardly claim to be going home to that large family at the smithy in Somersetshire. She shook her head.

“I will be spending a quiet week in Norfolkshire with a friend and his, ah, lady,” he said. “Will you come with me?”

A quiet week. A friend and his lady. She understood, of course, exactly what he meant, exactly to what she was being invited. If she agreed now, Verity thought, the die would be cast. She would have stepped irrevocably into that world from which it would be impossible to return. Once a fallen woman, she would never be able to retrieve either her virtue or her honor.

If she agreed?

She would be away from home at Christmas of all times. Away from Mama and Chastity. For a whole week. Could anything be worth such a sacrifice, not to mention the sacrifice of her very self?

It was as if he read her mind. “Five hundred pounds, Miss Heyward,” he said softly. “For one week.”

Five hundred pounds? Her mouth went dry. It was a colossal sum. Did he know what five hundred pounds meant to someone like her? But of course he knew. It meant irresistible temptation.