A Victorian Christmas (39 page)

She gasped as he caught her suddenly in his arms. “Rosalind, I love you more than words can express!” he exclaimed. “As I watch you, I feel so undeserving of you. You are good and kind and so beautiful!”

“And you are generous and witty and very handsome!” she returned, laughing with pleasure. “Oh, Mick, I cannot think when I have ever been so happy.”

“Nor I. God has given me such a gift in you.” He bent his head and touched his lips gently to hers. “I have longed to kiss you.”

“Kiss me again,” she said breathlessly. “For I am dizzy with joy.”

He drew her more closely into his arms and this time permitted his kiss to linger. “Rosalind, I spoke to you of my past,” he said, his breath warming her ear, “and I feel that before we marry, I should make a confession.”

She drew back a little, but she could not see his expression in the darkness. “Mick, does your behavior of the past continue into the present?”

“No, of course not. Absolutely not, but I—”

“Then I do not wish to hear it. God has forgiven you, and tomorrow we shall begin to build our new life together. The only confessions I will hear from your lips are confessions of love.”

“Rosalind!” he whispered, clasping her tightly.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, feeling a small object in his breast pocket. “What do you have in your coat, Mick? Is it that little thing you take out when you are troubled? Let me see it.”

He pulled the lamb from his pocket and set it in her hand. “Come, we must go back to the parlor, or we shall begin to freeze.” He slipped his arm around her. “I keep that little toy in my pocket as a sort of comfort. It reminds me of when my mother was still alive . . . when hope lived in my heart . . . I’m not sure what it is, really. A lamb or something, but I treasure it as the anchor to which I have clung when all the world seemed falling down around me.”

“Mick, it is so tiny,” Rosalind said as they stepped back through the French door into the lighted parlor. “It is a lamb, a small carved lamb. Indeed, it—”

Her voice caught as she looked across the room at the nativity scene that Caroline was arranging. Unable to speak, Rosalind walked to her side and stared down at the small carved figures. There were Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. The three kings and the shepherd with his hook. And there were the donkey and the camel. But the lamb . . . the tiny lamb had gone missing on one terrible Christmas Eve.

Feeling that she might faint, Rosalind clenched the lamb in her fist and started for the door. She had to get out of this house, she thought as she ran across the foyer. She had to pack her bags and send for a carriage and have her papa brought—

“Rosalind!” Mick’s voice seemed to echo in her spinning head as he caught her arm. “Are you ill? What is the matter?”

She turned slowly and forced herself to face him. “This lamb,” she said, her words barely audible in the deserted foyer. “I have seen it before.”

“But that’s impossible, for I have had it since I was a child.”

“Many years ago,” she began, unable to look at him, “my papa decided to convert all his liquid assets into bonds. I was but a small child at the time, but I remember how he worked day and night to sort out the ledgers before the new year began. One evening, we went out to a Christmas party, and he left his ledgers and the bank notes on a table in the parlor. When we came home, they were gone. Most of our good silver was stolen, too.” She swallowed hard. “But what I wept for was the desecration of the small nativity scene my grandpapa had carved and painted by hand. I had played with it, loved it, cherished it. And that night . . . that night, someone had stolen the lamb.”

Mick reached for her, but she pulled back. “Rosalind, I—”

“My family never recovered from that loss. Our fortunes continued to fall, and my father was forced to sell much of his land and other holdings. My mama died, brokenhearted and rejected by her own friends and family. In the end, Papa and I moved into the gamekeeper’s cottage, where we were forced to peddle the family statuary and paintings in order to keep coal in our fireplace and food on our table.” She opened her palm. “The night this lamb was stolen, we were ruined.”

“But how can you be sure—”

“I know this lamb!” she cried, her heart tearing in two. “My grandpapa carved it, and it is a perfect match to the set in your parlor—the set that is missing its lamb! Mick, please tell me you did not take this from my house. Please say you had nothing to do with the crime that destroyed my family!”

He stared at her, and his face grew hard. “I see that my past does matter after all.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“He ruined us!” Rosalind knotted her fists as she paced before the small fire in her father’s bedroom. The only relief in her heart was that she had escaped Mick’s house. On learning that she was unwell, the decorating party had dispersed. Sir William and Lady Caroline returned to their home with Rosalind and Lord Buxton. Lord Remington’s carriage took him back to his town house. And Mick was left alone.

“Ros-ind,” Lord Buxton said, holding up his ear trumpet.

“Mick ruined us!” Rosalind stepped forward and fairly shouted into the horn. “It was he who stole your money that night so many years ago, Papa. He is a deceitful man with a wicked past. All of his great wealth has been gained from thievery. And he professed himself to be a Christian!”

Taking her handkerchief from her sleeve, Rosalind pressed it against her eyes. She walked to the fireplace and stared down at the glowing coals. “All that I believed in was a lie! Indeed, he is a parvenu. Sir Michael Stafford—oh, that is a good joke! He probably got his title by some underhanded means. And then he thought he could marry me in order to carry out the final workings of his evil scheme! He stole your money, Papa, and then he tried to steal your land and all your titles. Abominable man! Insufferable, horrible, revolting man!”

She grabbed the poker and gave the fire a prod. “I don’t know how I was so easily tricked. I was lulled into thinking him handsome and good and . . . well, he did tell me he had a wicked past . . . but I had no idea it was so frightfully evil! I thought perhaps he had taken advantage of a business partner or violated a trade agreement or something so much less. . . .”

Rosalind glanced over at her father, who was attempting to write on a sheet of paper. A letter, perhaps. A document freeing her from the marriage agreement. Her father had always said, “Sin is sin,” and by that he had meant no evil was greater than another.

But Mick’s sin had been against her! Against her dear papa! How could she see that as anything but the worst, most unforgivable wickedness? And to think how close she had been to marrying him.

She had been such a fool! She had come to believe Mick was truly a gentleman of the first order. He had cared for her father with the greatest of kindness. He had paid for doctors, nurses, the phonetician, even the ear trumpet. He had visited day and night during Lord Buxton’s gravest hours. And he had done all in his power to provide Rosalind with every comfort and luxury a woman could dream of. But now she understood—all this was merely a part of his plan to secure her hand in marriage, and with that, to gain the prestige of her father’s titles for himself!

“He is a vile man!” she shouted, crossing to her father and speaking into his trumpet. She picked up the carved lamb that had been lying on the table where her father was writing and shook it in his face. “Mick took this from us, Papa. That Christmas Eve when all your money was stolen, Mick was in our house, and he stole this lamb. Do you not recognize it? Grandpapa carved it! It went missing from the nativity scene on that very night. Sir Michael is a thief, Papa, a lying, horrible, despicable thief, and we should do all in our power to—”

To what? What could they do to recover their losses? He had ruined them, but what power did they have to . . .

Rosalind stared at the lamb. “We must ruin
him
!” she cried. Grabbing the wide end of the trumpet, she spoke into it. “All Mick’s acquaintances have seen him holding this lamb from time to time. Everyone knows it is his. We shall therefore prove to one and all that it was stolen from our home, Papa! We must expose him for the man he is. All his past will be revealed— his childhood on the docks of the Thames, his wealth gained from breaking into the homes of wealthy families, and his lies about . . . about that rich uncle in India, his education at Cambridge, and . . .”

And he had said he loved her! She slammed the lamb back onto the table and crossed to the fire again. Surely, he had meant those words, that passion! His eyes had been so full of adoration. He had clasped her so tightly. And oh, how she had welcomed every whispered word from his lips . . . his wonderful, magical lips . . .

“Ros-ind!” The growl caught her as she was blotting the tears that had fallen down her cheeks. She turned to find her father beckoning.

“I believed he loved me, Papa,” she wept. “And I loved him. I loved him so dearly . . .”

Her father picked up the paper on which he had been writing and waved it at her. She took it and read the spidery letters he had penned.

“John 1:29.” A Bible verse. “What does it mean?” she demanded. “Why have you written this?”

The viscount took the paper away from her, picked up the little lamb, and set it firmly on top of his written words. He gave her such a significant look that she dropped down into the chair beside his.

“What, Papa?” she asked. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember that Scripture verse.”

He let out a raspy note of exasperation.

“Fine then, I shall go to the library and look it up!” She started for the door but returned and spoke into the trumpet. “It is our duty to expose him. He has risen to his position by wicked means, and all his friends and business associates are deceived in him. We must draft the letter in the morning.”

As Rosalind hurried down the staircase, she heard her words echoing in the corridor. In the morning . . . in the morning she had planned to be getting married! She would have put on her gown of white silk, woven strands of pearls through her hair, and given her heart to the man she had grown to love as dearly as life itself.

Oh, how could he have betrayed her so? Had he known from the moment he chose her that it was her father’s wealth he had stolen? Had he selected her as some kind of a joke—the final
coup
de grâce
to the slow destruction of their family that he had begun so many years before?

“Ma’am?” A small boy standing in the shadows startled her. “I’ve been ringin’ and ringin’ but nobody comes. I’ve brought a message to Miss Treadwell from Sir Michael Stafford.” He stepped forward and extended a silver tray. “Can you see that she gets it? He gave me a whole shillin’ to do the job, and I don’t want to lose me wages.”

“I’ll see that she gets the letter,” Rosalind said, taking the tray.

“Thanks, ma’am, and a happy Christmas to ye!”

“Happy Christmas.” Rosalind sighed as she walked toward the library. Of course she had known this would come. Mick would try to explain himself. Or make some offer of apology. Or perhaps he would guess that she had no course but to expose him. Might the letter contain a bribe?

Stepping into the library, she broke the seal and opened the letter.

“‘Miss Treadwell,’” she read softly. His ill-favored penmanship bore testimony to the fact that he had never attended Cambridge. Why hadn’t she known from the beginning that something was amiss?

“‘I have nothing to offer you now but the truth,’” she read.

I was six years old when my father and I entered your
manor house one Christmas Eve whilst you were out. It
was the first time I had assisted him in a burglary, but it
was not the last. After collecting most of your silver, we
prepared to leave, when my father noticed some items on
the desk in the parlor. As he took the papers, I was drawn
to the small set of figures on a side table. From among
them, I selected the lamb, which became my constant
companion during all the years that followed.

There it is!
she thought.
He has convicted himself!
This letter would be all that was required to bring about his downfall. She returned to reading.

My father took the money he had stolen from your home
and spent most of it in a manner that made it unable to
be reclaimed. When I was twelve, my father died violently.
Having lost my mother some years before—the very night
we invaded your home, in fact—I was compelled to see to
my own fortunes. It was at that time I determined that the
only road to security lay in the accumulation of property,
prestige, and power. I took what little money my father had
not gambled away and began to invest it in small enterprises.
I educated myself through the reading of books, and
I erased all trace of my early speech patterns.
     
By sheer determination, I found myself growing
wealthy and gaining in both reputation and power.
Realizing that I could not hope to further myself if anyone
learned of my wretched past, I invented a fabulous tale of a
wealthy uncle in India—which to my great surprise was
willingly believed by one and all.

“I knew it!” She wadded up the letter. “He never lived in India! It was all a lie. No doubt he grew up in some wretched rookery on the East Side!”

Stalking across the library to the stand where the Bible was displayed, Rosalind suddenly thought of the night Mick had sat beside her father and poured out the story of his mother’s death. That hadn’t been a lie, of that she was most certain. He had loved his mother dearly, and she had died of consumption without even a blanket to warm her.

“Oh, God!” she cried, lifting her head as if she might call her heavenly Father to come at once—and in person. “I don’t want to feel any sympathy for him. He is wicked!”

All the same, she smoothed out the letter and resumed reading.

By the time I purchased the factories in Manchester and
Nottingham, which I still own, I had washed my hands of
every trace of the guile that had given me my start. I had
erased my past, I felt sure. I wanted nothing more than
to continue along the path to wealth and power, vowing
to myself that I would never again be forced to live like a
common thief.
     
I provided valuable services to a certain member of
Parliament during the recent wars, and I was rewarded
with a baronetcy. But I had begun to dream higher still.
My goal became absolute legitimacy. I determined to
marry a woman whose titles and lands I could obtain as
my own and pass down to my sons—as though I were
a true peer and not the son of a criminal whom I hardly
knew because he had spent most of my childhood in gaol.