The Heart of Christmas Read online

  “I can only echo your sentiments, Lady Folingsby,” the Reverend Moffatt remarked. “Though by my observations, the servants are not the only ones who have been hard at work. My wife and I will not soon forget the warm welcome we have received here and the efforts you have all put into entertaining our children. Not to mention last night, for which we will never be able to repay you, my lady, and you, Mrs. Hollander. We will not try, of course, as we know that you acted out of the goodness of your hearts. We humbly accept the gift from two true ladies.”

  Debbie sniffled and blew her nose in the handkerchief Bertie handed her. “That is one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me,” she said. “But it was Blanche who did all the work.”

  The servants spent the best part of an hour in the sitting room, eating cakes and mince pies and drinking wassail and accepting Christmas bonuses from their employer, as well as from both Julian and the Reverend Moffatt. Julian was never afterward sure who suggested singing Christmas carols again, though he did not doubt it was Blanche. They did so anyway to her accompaniment on the spinet and sang themselves into a thoroughly genial and sentimental mood.

  And then after the servants had gone back belowstairs, Mrs. Moffatt made a surprise appearance in the sitting room with the baby.

  Julian had always been fond of children. He had had to be, for there had always been enough of them at family gatherings to make life miserable for anyone who was not. But he had never been much for infants or newborns. They were a woman’s preserve, he had always thought, needing only to be fed and rocked and sung to and changed.

  But he felt a certain proprietary interest in the little Moffatt girl, he discovered. Her birth had somehow brought Christmas alive for him more than ever before. And Blanche had delivered her. And now Blanche was holding her and gazing down at her with such a look of tenderness in her face that he felt dazzled. She looked so right thus, dressed with simple elegance, glowing with health and vitality and warmth, holding a newborn infant in her arms.

  If it were her child, his…

  He jerked his mind free of such an alarming daydream and found himself gazing deep into her eyes. She smiled at him.

  Ah, Blanche. It was hard to believe that just a week ago he had looked on her only as a desirable candidate for his bed. He had seen her beauty—the long, shapely legs, the taut slender body, the glorious hair and lovely face—and not given even one moment’s consideration to the fact that there must be a person behind the facade.

  And what a person was there. Even more beautiful, perhaps, than the body in which she resided.

  He was in love with her, he thought in some astonishment. He had never been in love before. He had been in lust more times than he could recall and had sometimes called it love, especially when he had been younger. But he had never before felt this ache of longing for a person. It was not just that he wished to bed her, though he did, of course. It was more than that. Much more. He wanted to be a part of her, a part of her life, not just a very temporary occupant of her body.

  He smiled back at her a little uncertainly.

  “I daresay,” Mrs. Moffatt said, having noticed perhaps the exchange of smiles, “you and her ladyship have not been married long, my lord.” Not long enough for the union to have been fruitful, her words implied.

  “Not long, ma’am,” he agreed.

  He was glad, he thought some hours later, after tea, after the vigorous indoor games Blanche and the Reverend Moffatt had organized for the amusement of the children and everyone else, that he had not gone to Conway for Christmas. He had been thinking about it on and off all day and had been missing his family. Had his Christmas gone according to plan, he realized now, he would be regretting his decision. The sort of activity he had planned would not have been any way to celebrate such an occasion. But as events had turned out, he had discovered everything one was surely meant to discover at Christmas—love, hospitality, merriment, kindness, sharing, decency…The list could go on and on.

  Sometimes it seemed almost as if one were led blind by some guiding hand toward something for which one had not known one searched. By a star perhaps. To the stable at Bethlehem perhaps. Perhaps he had more in common with the wise men than he had realized until this moment.

  The children, yawning and protesting, were finally led away by their father to bed after hugging their adopted “uncles” and “aunts” as if they had known them all their lives.

  “I do not believe we will be far behind them, Deb,” Bertie said, yawning hugely after they had left. “Have you enjoyed Christmas?”

  “Ee, love,” Debbie said, “it has been the grandest Christmas since I left home. Maybe grander than then. The Rev is the kindest of gents and the boys are darlings. And the baby! I will never forget last night. I never will. It has been a Christmas to end Christmases.”

  “I believe,” Bertie said, pulling her down onto his lap, perhaps feeling free to do so since the clergyman had expressed his intention of joining his wife and the baby after he had put the boys to bed, “we have you to thank for much of the joy of the past two days, Blanche.”

  “Oh,” she said, “how foolish. It is Christmas. Christmas has a way of happening without any assistance from anyone.”

  “Nonsense,” Julian said. “It needed a whole host of angels to get the shepherds moving off their hillside. It has taken one angel to set us off on a similar pilgrimage.”

  “Do you mean me?” she asked, blushing. “A strange angel indeed. One with very tarnished wings.”

  He got to his feet and held out a hand for hers. “It has been a long day,” he said, “and you had only a few hours of sleep last night. It is bedtime.”

  Her eyes met his as she took his hand. There was not even a hint of martyrdom in their expression.

  “Good night, Mr. Hollander,” she said as the two couples took their leave of one another. “Good night, Debbie. Thank you for helping make Christmas such a joy.”

  HE WAS STANDING at the window when she came out of the dressing room. He was wearing a nightshirt. The room was warm from the fire that had been built high.

  “Is the star still there?” she asked him, going to stand at his side and looking up.

  “Gone,” he said. “Or merely hidden by clouds. It is warming up out there. The snow will disappear rapidly tomorrow.”

  “Ah.” She sighed. “Christmas is over.”

  “Not quite.” He set an arm about her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. It felt perfectly right to do so. She felt strangely comfortable with him as if, perhaps, she had come to believe the myth that they belonged together. She had even found herself imagining downstairs during the afternoon that that newborn baby was hers, theirs.

  “Blanche,” he said softly.

  And then they were in each other’s arms, pressed together, kissing each other with such passion that it seemed indeed that they were one, that they were not meant to be two separate beings, that they would find wholeness and happiness and peace only together like this.

  “Blanche.” He was kissing her temples, her jaw, her throat, her mouth again. “Ah, my dear one.”

  It was not enough to touch him with her mouth, her tongue, her arms, her hands. She touched him with her breasts, her hips, her abdomen, her thighs. She wanted…ah, she wanted and wanted. He was warm and hard muscled. He smelled musky and male. And he felt safe, solid, dependable. He felt like a missing part of herself for which she craved. She wanted him. She wanted wholeness.

  She did not know how her nightgown had become unbuttoned down the front. She did not care. She needed him closer. She needed his hands and then his mouth on her breasts. She needed…ah, yes.

  “Ah, yes,” she said from somewhere deep in her throat, and she twined her fingers in his hair and tipped her head back as he suckled first one nipple and then the other, sucking gently, laving the tips with his tongue, sending raw aches down between her thighs and up through her throat into her nostrils. “Ah, yes. Please.” Her knees no longer quite belonged
to her.

  “Come, my love,” he whispered against her mouth, lifting her into his arms. “Come to bed.”

  He slid her nightgown down over her feet after setting her down and pulled his nightshirt off over his head. She gazed at him in the flickering light of the fire, her eyes half-closed. He was beautiful, beautiful.

  “Come.” She lifted her arms to him. “Come.”

  His hands and his mouth moved over her, worshiping her, arousing her. She touched him, explored him, rejoiced in the feel of him, the heat of him. But she could not touch him there, though she became increasingly aware of that part of him, thick and long and hard. He touched her where she had never thought to be touched with a hand, with fingers. She felt an ache so intense it was pain and pleasure all strangely mixed together. And she heard wetness and was curiously unembarrassed.

  She could not wait—for she knew not what.

  “Please,” she begged him, her voice sounding not quite her own. “Please.”

  “Yes,” he said, coming to her open arms, coming down into them, coming down between her thighs, pressing them apart with his own, coming heavy and warm and eager to her nakedness. “Yes, my love. Yes.”

  She would not believe at first that it could be possible. He pressed against her and she was almost surprised, although she knew her own body, when he found an opening there and pushed into it, stretching her wide, not stopping, coming and coming.

  “Don’t tense,” he murmured against her ear. “Just relax. Ah, my dear one, my love. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  But it did not hurt. Not really. It only surprised her and filled her with wonder and gave her a moment’s panic when she thought he could come no farther but he pressed on. There was what she expected to be pain, and then he pressed past it until he was deep, deep inside. She lifted her legs from the bed and twined them about his. He moaned.

  And then, just when she thought ecstasy had been arrived at and finally relaxed, he moved. He moved to leave her.

  “No,” she murmured in protest.

  He lifted his head, looked down into her face and kissed her. “Yes,” he said. “Like this, you see.” And from the brink of her he pressed deep again. And withdrew and pressed deep.

  Final ecstasy came several minutes or hours later—time no longer had any meaning—after they had loved together with sweet, strong rhythm, with a sharing of bodies and pleasure, with a mingling of selves. It came with a building of almost unbearable need, with an involuntary tightening of every inner muscle and with a final relinquishing of self, a final trust in the power of union. It came as shivering relaxation and quiet peace. It came with shared words.

  “My sweet life,” he whispered. “My dear angel.”

  “My love,” she heard herself murmuring. “My love, my love.”

  She fell asleep moments later, after he had drawn out of her and rolled onto his side, taking her with him and keeping her against him. Just after he drew the bedcovers warmly about her.

  JULIAN DID NOT fall asleep for a long while, even though he lay in a pleasant lethargy. He was sexually sated. He was also deeply happy.

  He had never set much store by happiness. It was strange, perhaps, when for all his adult years he had directed almost all his energies into activities that would bring him pleasure or gratification in varying degrees. But he had never really believed in happiness. He had never either expected or craved it for himself.

  Happiness, he thought, was a feeling of rightness, of having arrived at a place one had always sought, however halfheartedly, but never quite believed existed. With a person of whose existence one had always dreamed, even if not always consciously, but had never thought to find. Happiness was a moment in time when one was at peace with life and the universe, when one felt one had found the meaning of one’s existence. And it was more than a moment. It was a direction for the rest of life, an assurance that the future, though not, of course, a happily ever after, would nevertheless be well worth living.

  He had never really believed in romantic love.

  But he was in love with Blanche Heyward.

  There was more to it than that, though. He would perhaps, even now, have laughed at himself if that had been all. But it was not. He loved her. She had become in the course of a few days—though he felt he had known her from the eternity before birth—as essential to his life as the air he breathed.

  Fanciful thoughts. He would be writing a poem to her left eyebrow if he did not watch himself. He mocked himself as he smoothed the hair back from her sleeping face and settled her head more comfortably in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. He had been teased by her for a few days, that was all, and had finally had very good sex indeed with her. In a few weeks’ time, when they were back in London and he had set her up properly as his mistress, he would already be tiring of her. He had quickly tired of every mistress he had ever kept.

  He kissed her brow and then her lips. She made little protesting sounds but did not wake.

  No, it was not so. He wished it were. She was a blacksmith’s daughter and an opera dancer. He was a viscount, heir to an earldom. No other relationship was possible between them but that of protector and mistress. He could not…

  But as he stared into the darkness, lit only by the dying embers of the fire, he knew that there was one thing he would never be able to do. He could never marry anyone else. Ever. Even though he owed it to his father to secure the succession for the next generation. Even though he owed it to his mother and his sisters to secure their future. Even though he owed it to his birth, his upbringing, his position.

  If he could not marry Blanche—and he did not see how he ever could—then he would not marry anyone.

  Perhaps he would see things differently tomorrow, next week, next year. He did not know. All he did know now was that he loved, that he was happy, that—he had been led to one of those earth-shattering experiences one sometimes read about that changed the whole direction of his life.

  He would wake her up later, he decided, and make slow, lazy love to her again. And if they stayed awake afterward, he would take the risk of telling her how he felt. It was no very great risk, he thought. She felt about him as he felt about her. That was a part of the miracle. Unworthy as he was of her, she felt as he did. My love, she had called him over and over again as he had spilled his seed into her. And her body had told him the same thing even if she had not spoken the words aloud, and their minds and their very souls had intertwined as their bodies had merged.

  Later he would love her again. In the meantime he slept.

  NOT FOR ONE moment did Verity feel disoriented when she awoke. Neither did she entertain any illusions.

  She had given in to naiveté and passion and the sentimentality that had surrounded Christmas. She had given in to a practiced seducer. Not that she would have resisted even if she had realized the truth at the time. She would not have done so. She would have given her body just as unprotestingly. She would have done so as part of the bargain she had made with him in London. But she would have guarded her heart. She would not so foolishly have imagined that it was a love encounter.

  He had been a man claiming his mistress.

  She had been a woman at work, earning her pay.

  And now, beyond all argument, she was a fallen woman. A whore. She had done it for Chastity. Strange irony, that. But that fact notwithstanding, she was and always would be a whore.

  She could not bear to face him in the morning. She could not bear to see the knowing look in his eyes, the triumph. She could not bear to play a part. She could not bear to become his regular mistress, to be used at his convenience until he tired of her and discarded her. She could not even bear to finish out this week, after which she would be free to withdraw from any future commitment.

  Perhaps at the end of the week she would not have the strength to do so.

  She could not bear to face him in the morning and see from his whole attitude how little their encounter had meant to him.

  Sh
e had no choice but to live out the week. Even if there were a way of leaving now, she still had two hundred and fifty pounds to earn. And he had already paid her that same amount. Had she earned that advance? With what had happened here a few hours ago? With her willingness to allow it to happen on the two previous nights? Two hundred and fifty pounds? If she were a governess, she would be fortunate to earn that amount in four years.

  There was a way of leaving. There was a village three miles away. A stagecoach stopped there early each morning. She had heard the servants mention it. But there was snow on the ground. And would the stage run on the day after Christmas? The snow had been melting since yesterday afternoon. It had been a cloudy night, perhaps a mild night. Why would the stage not run?

  She would surely wake him if she tried to get out of bed, if she tried to dress and creep away.

  But now that the mad, impossible idea had entered her mind, she could not leave it alone. She could not face him in the morning. If she felt nothing for him, she would do so with all the cheerful good sense she could muster. She had taken this employment quite deliberately, after all, knowing what was involved. She had been prepared to do what she had done with him earlier as many times as he chose. It was not from that she shrank.

  In her naiveté she had not realized that her feelings might become involved. It had not occurred to her that spending a few days in close proximity with a man would reveal him to her as a person, or that she would find this particular man likable, charming, lovable. She had never for one moment expected to fall in love. She had done even worse than that. She had loved and still did and always would.

  After removing herself from his arms while he grumbled sleepily, she edged her way across and then out of the bed. The room was cold, she realized, shivering, and she was naked and stiff. She silently gathered up her nightgown from the floor and tiptoed to the dressing room, the door of which was fortunately ajar. She slipped inside and shut the door slowly. Fortunately the hinges were well oiled and made no sound.