'Twas the Night After Christmas (3 page)

He bristled. “Are you suggesting that I marry?”

Eugenia pulled on her gloves. “I’m suggesting that you let someone inside that empty room you call a heart. Whether you make her your wife or your mistress, a man’s bed is decidedly warmer if there’s a fire burning in something other than his cock.”

He repressed an oath. So much for this being easy. “I never guessed you were such a romantic.”

“Me? Never.” She patted her reticule. “This is as romantic as I get. Which is precisely why I can offer such advice. When we met, I thought we were both the sort who live only for pleasure, with no need for emotional connections.” Her voice softened. “But I was wrong about you. You’re not that sort at all. You just haven’t realized it yet.”

Then with a smile and a swish of her skirts, she swept out the door.

He stared bitterly after her. Sadly, he
did
realize it. Leave it to a woman of the world to recognize a fraud.

Matrons might panic when he spoke to their innocent daughters, and his exploits might appear so regularly in the press that his Waverly cousins kept clippings for their own amusement, but his seemingly aimless pursuit of pleasure had never been about pleasure. It had been about using the only weapon he had—the family reputation—to embarrass the family who’d abandoned him.

Leaving his study, he strode to the drawing room, where sat his pianoforte, his private defiance of his father. He sat down and began to play a somber Bach piece, one that often allowed him to vent the darker emotions that never saw the light of day in public, where he was a gadabout and a rebel.

Or he had been until Father’s death. Since then his petty rebellions had begun to seem more and more pointless. There’d been no deathbed reconciliation, but also no attempt to keep him from his rightful inheritance. And no explanation of why he’d been abandoned. None of it made sense.

The fact that he
wanted
it to make sense annoyed him. He was done with trying to understand it. The only thing that mattered was that he’d triumphed in the end. He’d gained the estate while he was still young enough to make something of it, and clearly that was the most he could hope for.

Of course, now that he was the earl, people expected him to change his life. To marry. But how could he? Once married, a man had to endure the whims of his wife and children. He’d grown up suffering beneath the whims of his parents; he wasn’t about to exchange one prison for another.

He pounded the keys. So for now, everything would stay the same. He would go to the opera this evening to seek out a new mistress, and life would go on much as before. Surely his restlessness would end in time.

Leaving the pianoforte, he was walking out of the drawing room when the sight of Boyd heading toward him with a look of grim purpose arrested him.

“An express has come for you, my lord, from Montcliff.”

He tensed. His estate manager, Miles Fowler, never sent expresses, so it must be something urgent.

To his surprise, the letter Boyd handed him hadn’t come from Fowler but from Mother’s companion. Since Mrs. Stuart hadn’t written him in the entire six months she’d been working
for him, the fact that she’d sent an express brought alarm crashing through him.

His heart pounded as he tore open the letter to read:

Dear Sir,

Forgive me for my impertinence, but I feel I should inform you that your mother is very ill. If you wish to see her before it is too late, you should come at once.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Camilla Stuart

The terse message chilled him. Based on Mrs. Stuart’s recommendation letters and references, not to mention the glowing accolades heaped on her by Fowler, Pierce had formed a certain impression of the widow. She was practical and forthright, the sort of independent female who would rather eat glass than admit she couldn’t handle any domestic situation.

She was decidedly
not
a woman given to dramatic pronouncements. So if she said his mother was very ill, then Mother was at death’s door. And no matter what had passed between them, he couldn’t ignore such a dire summons.

“Boyd, have my bags packed and sent on to the estate. I’m leaving for Montcliff at once.”

“Is everything all right, my lord?” Boyd asked.

“I don’t believe it is. Apparently my mother has fallen ill. I’ll let you know more as soon as I assess the situation.”

“What should I tell your uncle?”

Damn. The Waverlys were expecting him in a few days; he
still spent most holidays with them. “Tell Uncle Isaac I’ll do my best to be there for Christmas, but I can’t promise anything right now.”

“Very good, my lord.”

As far as Pierce was concerned, the Waverlys—his great-uncle Isaac and his second cousin Virginia—were his true family. Mother was merely the woman who’d brought him into the world.

He ought to abandon her in death, the way she’d abandoned him in life. But he still owed her for nurturing him in those early years, before he was old enough to be fobbed off on relatives. He still owed her for giving birth to him. So he would do his duty by her.

But no more. She’d relinquished the right to his love long ago.

I
n a cozy sitting room of the dower house on the Montcliff estate, Camilla mended a petticoat while keeping a furtive watch on her six-year-old son, Jasper. With his blue eyes wide, he sat in Lady Devonmont’s lap, waiting for her to read him a story.

“What shall we read?” Lady Devonmont asked him. “
Cinderella
?”

“That one’s stupid,” Jasper said airily. “Princes don’t marry servant girls.”

Camilla bit back a smile as she pushed up her spectacles. Lady Devonmont had a fondness for German fairy tales because of her late mother being German, but Jasper had no such bias. He also didn’t like girls in his fairy tales. Not surprising for a boy his age.

“Why wouldn’t a prince marry a servant?” her ladyship asked.

“He has to marry a princess. That’s the rule. Everybody knows that. I never saw a servant marry a prince.”

Her ladyship shot Camilla a rueful glance. “Clearly he spends far too much time in the servant hall.”

“Better there than at his uncle’s,” Camilla said softly.

After Camilla’s husband, Kenneth, had died unexpectedly, leaving her and Jasper destitute, she’d had no choice but to go to work, and most employers frowned on having children around who distracted their mothers. So until she had come to work for the countess, she’d always been forced to leave her son with Kenneth’s brother, a somber Scot with a dour wife and three children of his own.

But when Lady Devonmont learned of Jasper through the servants, she’d insisted on having him brought to the dower house to live. For that kindness alone, Camilla adored her ladyship.

Of course, neither the earl nor the estate manager knew about Jasper. Nor must they ever. Mr. Fowler, who’d hired her, had been adamant that she be unencumbered with children—he’d said the dictum had come straight from the earl himself. So she and Lady Devonmont had agreed that Jasper’s presence had to be kept a secret.

“Read the poem about Christmas again,” Jasper said. “I like that one.”

The countess’s American cousin had sent her a newspaper clipping of a poem that was becoming very popular in America during the season, called “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Camilla had thought it perfectly lovely the first three times she’d heard it, but
its magic had begun to fade now that they were up to the fifteenth reading.

Lady Devonmont laughed. “Aren’t you sick of it by now, lad?”

“I like to hear about the reindeer. Will there be reindeer at the fair in Stocking Pelham next week? I want to see one.” He turned a sly glance up at the countess. “Mama says we can’t go, but I really want to.”

Camilla tensed. “Jasper, you mustn’t—”

“Of course we can go,” Lady Devonmont put in. “We have to. I’m in charge of a booth there.”

“Forgive me, my lady,” Camilla said, “but we can’t risk Jasper being seen with us in town by Mr. Fowler.”

The countess sighed. “Oh. I didn’t think of that. I suppose that
would
be unwise.” Her tone turned wistful. “It’s a pity, though. I used to take my own boy when he was only a bit older than Jasper.”

“And now he’s a fine earl,” Jasper said.

“Yes, a fine earl,” Lady Devonmont echoed.

Camilla nearly stabbed her finger trying not to react to
that.
“Fine earls” did not abandon their mothers.

Still, she probably shouldn’t have sent his lordship that misleading letter. But she’d had to do something. How could the wretch not even plan to visit his own mother for Christmas? It was unfathomable.

Besides, he would no doubt ignore the summons. Mr. Fowler might praise the earl for his handling of the estate, but that was clearly his lordship’s only virtue. And it wasn’t much of a virtue at that—any man who neglected his property was a fool, and apparently
the earl was no fool. But according to London gossip, the man was also a selfish scoundrel who spent most of his time in an empty pursuit of pleasure. If he didn’t come, it would at least prove what she’d known all along—he might have brains, but he had no heart.

Then Camilla could reveal to her ladyship what she’d done, and the woman would recognize once and for all that her son wasn’t worthy of all the pining she wasted on him every day.

Of course, if he did appear . . .

She swallowed. She would cross that bridge when she came to it.

“And anyway, I don’t think there will be any reindeer at the fair,” Lady Devonmont said, stroking Jasper’s wild, red-brown curls. “Just a lot of boring cattle and horses.”

“What about St. Nicholas? Will he be there?”

“I doubt that,” Camilla said with a laugh.

“Do you even know who St. Nicholas is?” her ladyship asked.

“He’s a ‘jolly old elf.’ ” Jasper slipped off her lap, impatient with being petted. “His belly shakes like a ‘bowlful of jelly.’ And he comes down the chimney. Do you think he’ll come down
our
chimney?”

“Perhaps,” the countess said. “My cousin tells me that Americans believe St. Nicholas brings gifts to children on Christmas Eve.”

Jasper stared at her in wide-eyed wonder. “Will he bring
me
a gift?”

“I’m sure he will,” her ladyship said, her twinkling gaze meeting Camilla’s over his head. “Why should he only bring presents to American boys, after all?”

Camilla stifled a smile. The woman spoiled Jasper shamelessly and encouraged all of his wild imaginings, but Camilla didn’t mind. She wanted him to have a better childhood than her own. There’d been no gifts in St. Joseph’s Home for Orphans. And no fairy tales and stories of St. Nicholas to dream on, nothing but Bible readings and moral stories of children who got into trouble whenever they disobeyed. Perhaps that’s why she’d developed such a perverse tendency to disobey as an adult.

Suddenly a great noise rose up beneath them, of voices calling and footmen and maids rushing about.

“Good Lord, what has happened?” Lady Devonmont said.

Mrs. Beasley, the housekeeper, rushed into the room, uncharacteristically panicked. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but his lordship has sent a man ahead to say he will arrive here in a matter of minutes!”

Lady Devonmont tensed. “I don’t see how that affects
us
. I’m sure he’ll be staying at Montcliff Manor as usual.”

“No, my lady—here! He’s coming
here,
to the dower house. He asked that we prepare the Red Room for him and everything!”

“Oh, my word!” The countess leaped to her feet. “But I’m not dressed. . . . I look a fright!” She cast Camilla a look of such joy that it cut her to the heart. “My son is coming to visit, my dear!” She hurried toward the door leading into her bedchamber. “I must change my gown at the very least. And perhaps freshen my hair.” She ran into the other room, crying for her lady’s maid.

Mrs. Beasley turned for the door to the hall, but Camilla
called out to stop her. “Please, madam, would you take Jasper upstairs to Maisie?”

The housekeeper blinked. “Oh, yes, of course. I forgot about the lad.” She made an impatient movement with her hand. “Come, boy, come. You must spend your day with Maisie, do you hear?”

Lady Devonmont had hired a maid to look after Jasper whenever Camilla couldn’t. Maisie, a sweet little Scottish girl of about seventeen, also served as a sort of lady’s maid to Camilla.

Though Jasper was fond of Maisie, at the moment he was obviously more excited about the arrival of the master of the estate. “I want to see the great earl!” he protested.

Camilla knelt to catch his hands, aware of Mrs. Beasley’s impatience to be off attending to her duties. “Listen, muffin, do you remember what I told you about the earl’s being too important to have little boys underfoot?”

With a hard swallow, Jasper nodded. “But I just want to—”

“You can’t. If you wish to continue to stay here with me and her ladyship, and not be sent back to live at your uncle’s, then you must do as I say. Go with Mrs. Beasley. I’ll see you tonight when I come to tuck you in, all right?”