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

What utter balderdash!

Those three wise men of the Christmas story—if they had existed, and if they had been wise, and if there had really been three of them—had they gone lurching off across the desert on their camels, clutching their offerings, in hopeful pursuit of wisdom and meaning? More likely they had been escaping overly affectionate relatives who were attempting to marry them off to the biblical-era equivalent of the Plunkett chit. Or hoping to find something that would gratify their jaded senses.

They must all have been despicably rich, after all, to be able to head off on a mad journey without fear of running out of money. It was purely by chance that they had discovered something worth more than gold, or those other two commodities they had had with them. What the deuce were frankincense and myrrh anyway?

Well, he was no wise man even though he had set out on his journey with his pathetic handful of gold. And even though he was hoping to find gratification of his senses at the end of the journey. That was all he did want—a few congenial days with Bertie, and a few energetic nights in bed with Blanche. To hell with hope and wisdom and meaning. He knew where his life was headed after this week. He was going to marry Lady Sarah Plunkett and have babies with her until his nursery was furnished with an heir and a spare, to use the old cliché. And he was going to live respectably ever after.

It was going to snow, he thought, glancing up at the heavy clouds. They were going to have a white Christmas. The prospect brought with it none of the elation he would normally feel. At Conway there would be children of all ages from two to eighty gazing at the sky and making their plans for toboggan rides and snowball fights and snowman-building contests and skating parties. He felt an unwelcome wave of nostalgia.

But they had arrived at Bertie’s hunting box, which looked more like a small manor than the modest lodge Julian had been expecting. There were the welcome signs of candlelight from within and of smoke curling up from the chimneys. He swung down from his horse, wincing at the stiffness in his limbs, and waved aside the footman who would have opened the carriage door and set down the steps. His lordship did it himself and reached up a hand to help down his mistress.

And that was another thing, he thought as she placed a gloved hand in his and stepped out of the carriage. She was not looking at all like the bird of paradise he had pictured himself bringing into the country. She was dressed demurely in a gray wool dress with a long gray cloak, black gloves and black half boots. Her hair—all those glorious titian tresses—had been swept back ruthlessly from her face and was almost invisible beneath a plain and serviceable bonnet. There was not a trace of cosmetics on her face, which admittedly was quite lovely enough without. But she looked more like a lady than a whore.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, glancing up at the house.

“I trust,” he said, “you were warm enough under the lap robes?”

“Indeed.” She smiled at him.

One thing at least was clear to him as he turned with her toward Bertie, who was standing in the open doorway, rubbing his hands together, a welcoming grin on his face. He was still anticipating the night ahead with a great deal of pleasure, perhaps more so than ever. There was something unusually intriguing about Miss Blanche Heyward, opera dancer and authority on the Star of Bethlehem.

VERITY FELT embarrassment more than any other emotion for the first hour or so of her stay at Bertrand Hollander’s hunting box, and what a misnomer that was, she thought, looking about at the well-sized, cozy, expensively furnished house that a gentleman used only during the shooting season. And, of course, for clandestine holidays with his mistress.

It was that idea that caused the embarrassment. Mr. Hollander appeared to be a pleasant gentleman. He had a good-looking, amiable face and was dressed with neat elegance. He greeted them with a hearty welcome and assured them that they must make themselves at home for the coming week and not even think of standing on ceremony.

He greeted her, Verity, with gallantry, taking her hand and raising it to his lips before tucking it beneath his arm and leading her into the house while begging her to call upon him at any time if he might be of service in increasing her comfort.

And yet there was something in his manner—a certain familiarity—that showed he was a gentleman talking, not with a lady, but with a woman of another class entirely. There was the frank way, for example, that he looked her over from head to toe before grinning at Viscount Folingsby. It was not quite an insolent look. Indeed, there was a good deal of appreciation in it. But he would not have looked at a lady so, not at least while she was observing him doing it. Nor would he have called a lady by her first name. But Mr. Hollander used hers.

“Come into the parlor where there is a fire, Blanche,” he said. “We will soon have you warmed up. Come and meet Debbie.”

Debbie was the other woman, Mr. Hollander’s mistress. She was blond and pretty and plump and placid. She spoke with a decided Yorkshire accent. She did not rise from the chair in which she lounged beside the fire, but smiled genially and lazily at the new arrivals.

“Sit down there, Blanche,” she said, pointing to the chair at the other side of the fire. “Bertie will send for tea, won’t you, love? Ee, you look frozen, Jule. You’d better pull a chair closer to the fire unless you want to sit with Blanche on your lap.”

She was addressing Viscount Folingsby, Verity realized in some shock as she took the offered chair and removed her gloves and bonnet, since no servant had offered to take them in the hall. She directed a very straight look at her new protector, but he was bowing over Debbie’s outstretched hand and taking it to his lips.

“Charmed,” he said. “I do hope you are not planning to order tea for me, too, Bertie?”

His friend barked with laughter and crossed the room to a sideboard on which there was an array of decanters and glasses. The viscount pulled up a chair for himself, Verity was relieved to find, but Mr. Hollander, when he returned with glasses of liquor for his friend and himself, raised his eyebrows at Debbie. She sighed, hoisted herself out of the chair, and then settled herself on his lap after he had sat down.

Verity refused to feel outrage. She refused to show disapproval by even the smallest gesture. These were two gentlemen with their mistresses. She was one of the latter, by her own choice. There was already more than two hundred pounds safely stowed away in a drawer at home. The rest of the advance payment had been spent on another visit to the physician for Chastity and more medicine. A small sum was in her purse inside her reticule. It was too late to go back even if she wanted to. The money was not intact to be returned.

And so she resigned herself to what must be. But she had made one decision during the days since she had accepted Viscount Folingsby’s proposition. She was not going to act a part besides what she had already committed herself to. She spoke with some sort of accent to disguise the refinement of her lady’s voice. She had invented a family at a smithy in Somersetshire. But beyond those things she was not going to go. She was not going to try to be deliberately vulgar or stupid or anything else she imagined a mistress would be.

She had brought with her the clothes she usually wore at home. She had dressed her hair as she usually wore it there. She had kept her end of the bargain by coming here. She would keep it by staying over Christmas and allowing Viscount Folingsby to do that to her. Her mind still shied away from the details and from the alarming fact that she was ignorant of many of them. She had hardly been in a position to ask her mother, as she would have done had she been getting married and facing a wedding night.

She had told Mama and Chastity that Lady Coleman was going into the country for Christmas and required her presence. She had told them that she was being paid a very generous bonus for going, though she had not mentioned the incredible sum of five hundred pounds. They had both been upset at the prospect of her absence over Christmas, and she had shed a few tears with them, but they had consoled themselves with the belief that as a member of a house party she would have a wonderful time.

“Are you warmer now?” Viscount Folingsby asked suddenly, bringing Verity’s mind back to Mr. Hollander’s sitting room, into which a servant was just carrying a tea tray. He leaned forward and took one of her hands in both of his. His were warm; hers was not. “Perhaps I should have cuddled you on my lap after all.”

“I believe the fire and the tea between them will do the trick nicely for now, my lord,” she said before turning her attention to Mr. Hollander, who was smiling genially at them. “I have never before been into this part of the world, sir. Do tell me about it. What beauties of nature characterize it? And what history and buildings of note are there here?”

She would no longer be mute, wondering what topics of conversation were appropriate for an opera dancer and a gentleman’s mistress.

“Ee, Bertie, love,” Debbie said, “there is a right pretty garden out back. Tell Blanche about it. Tell her about the tree swing.”

It was not tree swings exactly that Verity had had in mind, but she settled back in her chair with a smile as the servant handed her her tea. Viscount Folingsby relinquished her hand.

“For now,” he murmured. “But later, Blanche, I beg leave to do service in place of the fire and the tea.”

It took her a moment to realize he was referring to her earlier words. When she did so, she wished she were sitting a little farther back from the fire. Her face felt as if it were being scorched.

It did not seem, she thought suddenly, as if Christmas was close. Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. For a few moments there was the ache of tears in her throat.

THERE MUST have been a goodly number of bedchambers in the house, Julian guessed later that night as he ascended the staircase with Blanche on his arm. But Bertie, of course, had assigned them only one. It was a large room overlooking the small wooded park at the back of the house. It was warmed by a log fire in a large hearth and lit by a single branch of candles. Heavy velvet curtains had been drawn back from the large canopied bed and the covers had been turned down.

He was glad he had not had her before, he decided as he closed the door behind them and extinguished the single candle that had lit their way upstairs. Pleasurable anticipation had been building in him for over a week. It had reached a crescendo of desire this evening. She had been looking almost demure in the green silk dress she had worn the evening they first supped together, her hair dressed severely but not unattractively.

And she had been acting the part of a lady, keeping the conversation going during dinner and in the sitting room afterward with observations about their journey, about the Christmas decorations and carol singers in London, and about—of all things—the peace talks that were proceeding in Vienna now that Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated and was imprisoned on the island of Elba. She had asked Bertie what plans had been made for their own celebration of Christmas. Bertie had looked surprised and then blank. He obviously had no plans at all beyond enjoying himself with his pretty, buxom Debbie.

Paradoxically Julian had found Blanche’s demure appearance and ladylike behavior arousing. He considered both erotic. She had too many charms to hide effectively.

“Come here,” he said now.

She had gone to stand in front of the fire. She was holding out her hands to the blaze. But she turned her head, smiled at him and came to stand in front of him. She was clever, he thought. She must know that an overeagerness on her part would somehow dampen his own. Though there was just a chance she was not quite as eager as he. This was a job to her, after all. He would soon change that. He set his hands on either side of her waist and drew her against him, fitting her body against his own from the waist down. He could feel the slimness of her long legs, the flatness of her abdomen. His breath quickened. She looked back into his eyes, a half smile on her lips.

“At last,” he said.

“Yes.” Her smile did not waver. Neither did her eyes.

He bent his head and kissed her. She kept her lips closed. He teased them with his own and touched his tongue lightly to the seam, moving it slowly across in order to part her lips and gain entrance. Her head jerked back.

“What are you doing?” She sounded breathless.

He stared blankly at her. But before he could frame an answer to such a nonsensical question, her look of shock disappeared, she smiled again and her hands came up to rest on his shoulders.

“Pardon me,” she said. “You moved just a little too fast for me. I am ready now.” She brought her mouth back to his, her lips softly parted this time, and trembling against his own.

What the devil?

His mind turned cold with suspicion. He closed his arms about her and thrust his tongue deep into her mouth without any attempt at subtlety. She made no move to pull away, but she went rigid in every limb for a few moments before relaxing almost to limpness. He moved his hands forward quite deliberately and cupped her breasts with them, his thumbs seeking and pressing against her nipples. Again there was the momentary tensing followed by relaxation.

He was looking down at her a moment later, his eyes half-closed, his hands again on either side of her waist.

“Well, Miss Heyward,” he asked softly, “how have you enjoyed your first kiss?”

“My first…” She gazed blankly at him.

“I suppose it would be strange indeed,” he said, “if I were to discover in a few minutes’ time on that bed that you are not also a virgin?”

She had nothing to say this time.

“Well?” he asked her. “Shall I put the matter to the test?” He watched her swallow.

“Even the most hardened of whores,” she said at last, “was a virgin once, my lord. For each there is a first time. I will not flinch or weep or deny you your will, if that is what you fear. You are paying me well. I will do all that is required of me.”

“Will you indeed?” he said, releasing her and crossing the room to the hearth to push a log farther into the blaze with his foot. He watched the resulting shower of sparks. “I am not paying for the pleasure of observing martyrdom.”

“I was not acting the martyr,” she protested. “You took me by surprise. I did not know…I am perfectly willing to do whatever you wish me to do. I am sorry that I will be awkward at first. But I will learn tonight, and tomorrow night I will know better what it is you expect of me. I hope I…Perhaps under the circumstances you will decide that you have already paid me handsomely enough. I believe you have. I will try to earn it.”

Did she realize, he wondered in some amazement, that she was throwing a pail of cold water over his desire with every sentence she uttered? Anger was replacing it—no, fury. Not so much against her. She had told him no lies about her experience, had she? His fury was all against himself and his own cleverness. He would keep her for Bertie’s, would he? He would savor his anticipation, would he, until it was too late to change his mind, to go to Conway as he ought to have done? He would have one last fling, would he, before he did his duty by his family and name? Well, he had been justly served.

In the middle of the desert, far from home, had the wise men ever called themselves all kinds of fool?

“I do not deal in virgins, Miss Heyward,” he said curtly.

“Ah,” she said, “you do not like to face what it is you are purchasing, then, my lord?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and regarded her over his shoulder in silence for a few moments. This woman had sharp weapons and did not scruple to wield them. “Is your need for the money a personal one?” he asked her, turning from the fire. “Or is it your family that is in need?” He did not want to know, he realized after the questions were out. He had no wish to know Blanche Heyward as a person. All he had wanted was one last sensual fling with a beautiful and experienced and willing partner.

“I do not have to answer that,” she said. “I will pay back all I can when we have returned to London. But I am still willing to earn my salary.”

“As I remember,” he said, “our agreement was for a week of your company in exchange for a certain sum, Blanche. There was no mention of your warming my bed during that week, was there? We will spend the week here. It is too late now for either of us to make other arrangements for Christmas. Besides, those were snow clouds this afternoon if ever I have seen any. We will salvage what we can of the holiday, then. It might be the dreariest Christmas either of us has ever spent, but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe I will decide to give you lessons in kissing so that your next, ah, employer will make his discovery rather later in the process than I did. Undress and go to bed. There is a dressing room for your modesty.”

“Where will you sleep?” she asked him.

He looked down at the floor, which was fortunately carpeted. “Here,” he said. “Perhaps you will understand that I have no wish for Bertie to know that we are not spending the night in sensual bliss together.”

“You have the bed,” she said. “I will sleep on the floor.”

He felt an unexpected stirring of amusement. “But I have already told you, Blanche,” he said, “that I have no wish to gaze on martyrdom. Go to bed before I change my mind.”

By the time she came back from the dressing room a few minutes later, dressed in a virginal white flannel nightgown, her head held high, her cheeks flushed and her titian hair all down her back, he had made up some sort of bed for himself on the floor close to the fire with blankets he had found in a drawer and a pillow he had taken from the bed. He did not look at her beyond one cursory glance. He waited for her to climb into the bed and pull the covers up over her ears, and then extinguished the candles.

“Good night,” he said, finding his way back to his bed by the light of the fire.

“Good night,” she said.

What a marvelously just punishment for his sins, he thought as he lay down and his body registered the hardness of the floor. But why the devil was he doing this? She had been willing and he was paying her handsomely. Heaven knows, he had wanted her badly enough, and still did.

It was not any real reluctance to violate innocence, he decided, or any unwillingness to deal with awkwardness or the inevitable blood. It was exactly what he had said it was. He had no desire to watch martyrdom or to inflict it.

I will not flinch or weep or deny you your will.

If there were less erotic words in the English language, he could not imagine what they might be. Sheer martyrdom! If only she had wanted it, wanted him just a little bit, even if she had been nervous…

Miss Blanche Heyward, he was discovering to his cost, was not the average, typical opera dancer. In fact she was turning out to be a royal pain.

A fine Christmas this was going to be. He thought glumly of Conway and of what he would be missing there tomorrow and the day after. Even the Plunkett chit was looking mildly appealing at this particular moment.

“What would you have done for Christmas,” a soft voice asked him as if she had read his thoughts, “if you had not come here with me?”

He breathed deeply and evenly and audibly.

Perhaps tomorrow he would teach her to see a night spent in bed with him as fitting a different category of experience from Christians being prodded into the arena with slavering lions. But unlike his usual confident self, he did not hold out a great deal of hope of succeeding.

Surprisingly he slept.

Chapter Four

VERITY DID NOT sleep well during the night. But as she lay staring at the window and the suggestion of daylight beyond the curtains, she was surprised that she had slept at all.

There were sounds of deep, even breathing coming from the direction of the fireplace. She listened carefully. There were no sounds from beyond the door. Did that mean no one was up yet? Of course, Mr. Hollander and Debbie had probably been busy all night and perhaps intended to be busy for part of the morning, too.

It should have been all over by this morning, she thought. She should be a fallen woman beyond all dispute by now. And he had been wrong. It would not have felt like martyrdom. Even in the privacy of her own mind she was a little embarrassed to remember how exciting his hard man’s body had felt against her own and how shockingly pleasurable his open mouth had felt against her lips. All her insides had performed some sort of vigorous dance when he had put his tongue into her mouth. What an alarmingly intimate thing to do. It should have been disgusting but had not been.

Well, she thought with determined honesty, she had actually wanted to experience the whole of it. And deny it as she would, she had to confess to herself that there had been some disappointment in his refusal to continue once he had realized the truth about her.

And so here they were in this ridiculous predicament with all of Christmas ahead of them. How could she possibly earn five hundred pounds when one night was already past and he had slept on the floor?

All of Christmas was ahead of them. What a depressing thought!

And then something in the quality of the light beyond the window drew her attention. She threw back the bedcovers, ignored her shivering reaction to the frigid air beyond their shelter and padded across the room on bare feet. She drew aside the curtain.

Oh!

“Oh!” she exclaimed aloud. She turned her head and looked eagerly at the sleeping man. “Oh, do come and look.”

His head reared up from his pillow. He looked deliciously tousled and unshaven. He was also scowling.

“What?” he barked. “What the devil time is it?”

“Look,” she said, turning back to the window. “Oh, look.”

He was beside her then, clad only in his shirt and last night’s knee breeches and stockings. “For this you have dragged me from my bed?” he asked her. “I told you last night that it would snow today.”

“But look!” she begged him. “It is sheer magic.”

When she turned her head, she found him looking at her instead of at the snow beyond the window, blanketing the ground and decking out the bare branches of the trees.

“Do you always glow like this in the morning?” he asked her. “How disgusting!”

She laughed. “Only when Christmas is coming and there is a fresh fall of snow,” she said. “Can you imagine two more wonderful events happening simultaneously?”

“Finding a soft warm bed when I am more than halfasleep and stiff in every limb,” he said.

“Then have my bed,” she said, laughing again. “I am getting up.”

“A fine impression Bertie is going to have of my power to keep you amused and confined to your room,” he said.

“Mr. Hollander,” she told him, “will doubtless keep to his room until noon and will be none the wiser. Go to bed and go to sleep.”

He did both. By the time she emerged from the dressing room, clad in the warmest of her wool dresses, her hair brushed and decently confined, he was lying in the place on the bed where she had lain all night, fast asleep. She stood gazing down at him for a few moments, imagining that if she had not been so gauche last night…

She shook her head and straightened her shoulders. Mr. Hollander had made no preparations for Christmas. Doubtless he thought that spending a few days in bed with the placid Debbie would constitute enough merrymaking. Well, they would see about that. She was not being allowed to earn her salary in the expected way. The least she could do, then, was make herself useful in other ways.