His Housekeeper's Christmas Wish

Chapter Two

Tess swum up out of sleep, deliciously warm and with a definite need for the chamber pot. Too much tea. ‘Ouch!’ Her ankle gave a stab of pain as she hopped across to the screen in the corner, made herself comfortable and then hopped back. It was still light, so she could not have slept long. In fact, it was very light. She pulled aside the curtain and stared out at a corner of the inn yard with a maid bustling past with a basket of laundry and a stable boy lugging a bucket of water. It was unmistakably morning.

She hobbled to the door, flung it open. The four men were still around the table. The dice player and the blond icicle were playing cards with the air of gamblers who could continue for another twelve hours if necessary. Mr Rivers was pouring ale into a tankard with one hand while holding a bread roll bulging with ham in the other. And Lord Weybourn, who she now realised was the most unreliable, infuriating man—regardless of her pulse quickening simply at the sight of him—was fast asleep, his chair tipped on its back legs against a pillar, his booted feet on the table amidst a litter of playing cards.

The fact that he was managing to sleep without snoring, with his mouth mostly closed and his clothing unrumpled, only added fuel to the fire.

‘Lord Weybourn!’

‘Humph?’ He jerked awake and Tess winced at the thump his head made against the pillar. ‘Ouch.’

The other men stood up. ‘Miss Ellery. Good morning. Did you sleep well?’ Mr Rivers asked.

‘I told him. I told him I had to be down at the canal port. I told him the boat left very early this morning.’ She jerked her head towards Lord Weybourn, too cross to look at him.

‘It is early morning.’ He got to his feet and she could not help but notice that he did not look as though he had slept in his clothes. He was as sleek and self-possessed as a panther. What she looked like she shuddered to think.

Tess batted an errant lock of hair out of her eyes. ‘What time is it?’

The blond icicle glanced at the mantelshelf clock. ‘Just past nine.’

‘That isn’t early, that is almost half the morning gone.’ Tess hopped to the nearest chair and sat down. ‘I have missed the boat.’

‘You can buy a ticket on the next one. They are frequent enough,’ the viscount said, stealing Mr Rivers’s unguarded tankard. The ale slid down in a long swallow, making his Adam’s apple move. His neck was strapped with muscle.

‘I do not have any money,’ Tess said through gritted teeth, averting her eyes from so much blatant masculinity. If she knew any swear words this would be an excellent opportunity to use them. But she did not. Strange that she had never felt the lack before. ‘I have a ticket for the boat that left at four o’clock. It arrives in Ostend with just enough time to catch the ship across the Channel. The ship that I have another ticket for. I have tickets, useless tickets. I have no money and I cannot go back to the convent and ask for more. I cannot afford to repay it,’ she added bleakly.

‘Ah. No money?’ Lord Weybourn said with that faint, infuriating smile. ‘I understand your agitation.’

‘I am not agitated.’ Agitation was not permitted in the convent. ‘I am annoyed. You knocked me down, my lord. You brought me here and let me sleep. You promised to wake me in time for the boat. Therefore this is now your problem to resolve.’ She folded her hands in her lap, straightened her back and gave him the look that Mother Superior employed to extract the admission of sins, major and minor. Words were usually not necessary.

She should have known he would have an answer. ‘Simple. Grant and I are going to Ostend by carriage later today. You come with us and I will buy you a boat ticket when we get there.’

This was what Sister Luke would describe as the Primrose Path leading directly to Temptation. With a capital T. And probably Sin. Capital S. No wonder they said it was a straight and easy road. Being carried by a strong and attractive man, eating delicious pastries, sleeping—next door to four men—on a blissfully soft bed. All undoubtedly wicked.

After that, how could travelling in a carriage with two gentlemen for a day make things any worse? She wasn’t sure she trusted Lord Weybourn’s slanting smile, but Mr Rivers seemed eminently reliable.

‘Thank you, my lord. That will be very satisfactory.’ It was certain to be a very comfortable carriage, for none of these men, even the rumpled dice player, looked as though they stinted on their personal comfort. She found she was smiling, then stopped when no one leaped to their feet and started to bustle around making preparations. ‘When do we start and how long will it take us?’

‘Seven and a half, eight hours.’ Finally, Lord Weybourn got to his feet.

‘But we will arrive after dark. I do not think the ships sail in the dark, do they?’

‘We are not jolting over muddy roads all day and then getting straight on board, whether a ship is sailing or not.’ The viscount strolled across to one of the other doors, opened it and shouted, ‘Gaston!’

‘They do sail at night and I am taking one to Leith at nine this evening,’ Mr Rivers remarked. ‘But I am in haste, you’ll do better to take the opportunity to rest, Miss Ellery.’

‘I am also in haste,’ she stated.

Lord Weybourn turned from the door. ‘Do nuns hurry?’

‘Certainly. And you know perfectly well that I am not a nun, my lord.’ The maddening creature refused to be chastened by her reproofs, which showed either arrogance, levity or the hide of an ox. Probably all three. ‘I am expected at the London house of the Order.’

‘The Channel crossing is notoriously uncertain for weather and timing. They will not be expecting you for a day or so either way. Unless someone is at death’s door?’ He raised an interrogative brow. Tess shook her head. ‘There, then. Arrive rested and, hopefully, not hobbling. Always a good thing to be at one’s best when making an entrance. Breakfast is on its way.’

He sauntered out, lean, elegant, assured. Tess’s fingers itched with a sinful inclination to violence.

‘You might as well contemplate swatting a fly, Miss Ellery,’ the blond icicle remarked. Apparently her face betrayed her feelings graphically. He inclined his head in a graceful almost bow. ‘Crispin de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore, at your service. Rivers you know.’ He gestured towards the third man. ‘This, improbable as it might seem, is not the local highwayman, but Gabriel Stone, Earl of Edenbridge.’

Lord Edenbridge stood, swept her an extravagant courtesy, then collapsed back into his chair. ‘Enchanted, Miss Ellery.’ His cards appeared to enchant him more.

‘I’ll send for some hot water for you.’ Mr Rivers held the bedchamber door open. ‘You will feel much better after a wash and some breakfast, believe me, Miss Ellery.’

Tess thanked him, curtsied as best she could to all three men and sat down on the bed to await the water. It wasn’t their fault. She knew just who to blame, but because she was a lady—or, rather, had been raised to have the manners of one—she would bite her tongue and do her best to act with grace. Somehow. As for breakfast at this hour—why, it was going to be almost noon by the time it was finished at this rate.

* * *

As she had suspected, the carriage proved to be very comfortable. ‘I keep this and my own horses over here,’ Lord Weybourn explained when Tess exclaimed in pleasure at the soft seats and the padded interior. ‘Job horses and hired vehicles are unreliable.’

‘You come to the Continent frequently, my lord?’ Tess settled snuggly into one corner and submitted to Mr Rivers arranging her legs along the seat and covering them with a rug. A hot brick wrapped in flannel was tucked in, too. Such luxury. She would enjoy what good things this journey had to offer, especially as the future seemed unlikely to hold much in the way of elegant coach travel.

‘We all do.’ Lord Weybourn folded his length into an opposite corner while Mr Rivers took the other. They had given her the best, forward-facing position, she noted. ‘Cris—Lord Avenmore—is a diplomat and spends half his time at the Congress and half doing mysterious things about the place. Gabe enjoys both travelling and fleecing any gamester foolish enough to cut cards with him and Grant here buys horses.’

‘I have a stud,’ Mr Rivers explained. ‘I import some of the more unusual Continental breeds from time to time.’

‘And you, my lord?’

‘Alex.’ He gave her that slanting, wicked smile. ‘I will feel that you have not forgiven me if you my lord me from here to London.’

It seemed wrong, but perhaps that degree of informality was commonplace amongst aristocrats. ‘Very well, although Alex Tempest sounds more like a pirate than a viscount.’

Mr Rivers snorted. ‘That’s what he is. He scours the Continent in search of loot and buried treasure.’

‘Art and antiquities, my dear Grant.’ Alex grinned. ‘Certainly nothing buried. Can you imagine me with a shovel?’

Tess noted the flex of muscles under the form-fitting tailoring of his coat. Perhaps it was not achieved by digging holes, but the viscount was keeping exceptionally fit somehow. No, she thought, not a shovel, but I can imagine you with a sword.

‘I am a connoisseur, a truffle hound through the wilderness of a Continent after a great war.’

‘Poseur,’ Mr Rivers said.

‘Of course.’ Alex’s ready agreement was disarmingly frank. ‘I do have my reputation to maintain.’

‘But forgive me,’ Tess ventured, ‘is that not business? I thought it was not acceptable for aristocrats to engage in trade.’ And perhaps it was not acceptable to mention it at all.

‘Social death,’ Grant Rivers agreed. ‘So those of us who cannot rely upon family money maintain a polite fiction. I keep a stud for my own amusement and profit and sell to acquaintances as a favour when they beg to share in a winning bloodline. Alex here is approached by those with more money than taste. Gentlemen are so very grateful when he puts them in the way of acquiring beautiful, rare objects from his collection to enhance their status or their newly grand houses. Naturally he cannot be out of pocket in these acts of mercy. Gabe is a gambler, which is perfectly au fait. It is strange that he rarely loses, which is the norm, but you can’t hold that against a man unless you catch him cheating.’

‘And does he?’

‘He has the devil’s own luck, the brain of a mathematician and the willpower to know when to fold. And he would kill anyone who suggested he fuzzes the cards,’ Alex explained. ‘And before you ask, Cris is the only one of us who has come into his title. The rest of us are merely heirs in waiting. He’s a genuine marquess.

‘And you, little nun? Given that we are being so frank between friends.’

He knew perfectly well that she was not a nun, but perhaps if she ignored the teasing he would stop it. ‘I, on the contrary, have not a guinea to my name, save what Mother Superior gave me for food and the stagecoach fare in England.’ Tess managed a bright smile, as though this was merely amusing. It had been quite irrelevant until Mother Superior’s little discussion a week ago.

Dear Teresa had been with them for ten years, five since the death of her aunt, Sister Boniface. She had steadfastly declined to convert from her childhood Anglicanism, so, naturally, she had no future with the convent as a nun. Equally obviously, she could not go to her, er...connections in England. And then Mother Superior had explained why.

Teresa was twenty-three now, so what did she intend to do with her life? she had asked while Tess’s understanding of who and what she was tumbled around her ears.

I must have looked completely witless, Tess thought as she gazed out of the carriage window at the sodden countryside. She had been teaching the little ones, the orphans like herself, but that apparently had been merely a stop-gap until she was an adult. And, she suspected now she had a chance to think about it, until Mother Superior was convinced no conversion was likely.

But it was all right; even if there was no money left from the funds Papa had sent to her aunt, she would manage, somehow. The dream of a family in England, people who might forgive and forget what Mama and Papa had done, had evaporated. She would not repine and she would try not to think about it. She could work hard and, goodness knew, she wasn’t used to luxury.

Heavy clouds rolled across the sky, making it dark enough outside for Tess to glimpse her own reflection in the glass. What a dismal Dora! This bonnet doesn’t help. She sat up straighter, fixed a look of bright interest on her face and tried to think positive thoughts.

* * *

What was wrong with the little nun? Alex watched her from beneath half-closed lids. Beside him Grant had dropped off to sleep, and he was weary himself after a hard night of cards, brandy and talk, but something about the woman opposite kept him awake. If she was not a nun, what was she doing going to a convent, dressed like a wet Sunday morning in November? Her accent was well bred. Her manners—when she was not ripping up at him—were correct and she was obviously a lady.

A mystery, in fact. As a rule Alex enjoyed mysteries, especially mysterious ladies, but this one was not happy and that put a damper on enjoyable speculation. There was more to it than her sprained ankle and irritation over missed boats, he was certain. Tess was putting a brave face on things whenever she remembered to. No coward, his little nun.

Alex grinned at the thought of his nun. The nunneries he was acquainted with were very different establishments. She raised one slim, arching dark brow.

‘Comfortable, Miss Ellery?’

‘Exceedingly, thank you, my lord...Alex.’ Yes, that smile was definitely brave, but assumed.

‘Ankle hurting?’

‘No, Mr Rivers has worked wonders and there is no pain unless I put weight on it. I am sure it is only a mild sprain.’ She lapsed into silence again, apparently not finding that awkward. No doubt chatter was discouraged in a nunnery.

‘So what will you be doing in London? Making your come-out?’

She had taken her bonnet off and he remembered how that soft, dark brown hair had felt against his cheek when he had lifted her to carry her to her bed. It was severely braided and pinned up now, just as it had been last night, and he wondered what it would look like down. The thought made him shift uncomfortably in his seat and he wrenched his mind away from long lashes against a pale cheek flushed with rose and the impact of a pair of dark blue eyes.

His... No, Miss Ellery laughed, the first sound of amusement he had heard from her, albeit with an edge to it. Her hand shot up to cover her mouth, which was a pity because it was a pretty mouth and it was prettier still when curved.

‘My come-out? Hardly. No, I will stay at the London house until the Mother Superior there finds me position as a governess or a companion.’

‘With a Roman Catholic family?’ That might take a while, there were not that many, not of the class to be employing well-bred young females of her type. Rich merchants were a possibility, he supposed.

‘No. Not only am I not a nun, I am also an Anglican.’

‘Then, what the bl—? What on earth are you doing in a nunnery?’

‘It is a long story.’ She folded her hands neatly in her lap and seemed to feel that ended the discussion.

‘It is a long journey,’ he countered. ‘Entertain me with your tale, please, Miss Ellery.’

‘Very well.’ She did not look enthusiastic. ‘I will make it as concise as possible. My father’s elder sister, Beatrice, converted to Catholicism against the violent disapproval of her parents and ran away to Belgium to join an order of nuns.

‘But Papa, after he came of age, started writing to her. My parents enjoyed travelling, even though there was a war on, and besides, it was often cheaper to live on the Continent.’ She bit her lip and her gaze slid away from his. A prevarication? ‘So just after my thirteenth birthday we were in Belgium and Papa decided to visit my aunt.’

‘And that was when?’ How old is she? Twenty? Alex tried to recall what was happening seven years past.

‘Ten years ago. I am twenty-three,’ Tess admitted with a frankness no other unmarried lady of his acquaintance would have employed.

‘1809.’ Alex delved back in his memory. He had been seventeen, half tempted by the army, finally deciding against it for the very good reason his father would probably have had a stroke with the shock of his son and heir doing something his parent approved of for the first time in his life. ‘Most of the action was towards the east at that time, I seem to recall.’

‘I think so.’ Tess bit her lower lip in thought and Alex crossed his legs again. Damn it, the girl—woman—was a drab little peahen for all the rainwater-washed complexion and the pretty eyes. What was the matter with him? ‘Anyway, it was considered safe enough. We arrived in Ghent and Papa visited the convent and was allowed to see my aunt, who was Sister Boniface by then. But there was an epidemic of cholera in the city and both Mama and Papa... They both died.’

She became so still and silent Alex wondered if she had finished, but eventually, with a little movement, as though shaking raindrops off her shoulders, she gathered herself. ‘When Papa realised how serious it was he sent me to my aunt with all the money he had. I have lived there ever since, but now I do not want to become a nun and the money has run out, paying for my keep, so I am ready to make my own way in the world.’

‘But your grandparents, your aunts and uncles—surely you have living relatives? Cousins?’

‘There is no one I could go to.’

There had to be, surely? Her gaze slid away from his again and Tess stared out of the window. There was some story here, something she wasn’t telling him, and she was too honest to lie. Alex bit his tongue on the questions. It was no concern of his. ‘And the convent was not for you?’

Tess shook her head. ‘I always knew I was not cut out to be a nun.’ She managed a very creditable smile.

There must be relatives somewhere, Alex thought, forcing back the query. Perhaps the runaway aunt had caused the rift, which was hard on Tess. He understood what it was like to be rejected, but he was a man with money and independence, and these days, power of his own. He knew how to hit back and he’d spent more than ten years doing just that. This was a sheltered, penniless young woman.

‘Now I know you better I can tell that you’re not suitable for the cloister,’ he drawled, intent on teasing her out of introspection. ‘Too much of a temper, for one thing.’

Tess blushed, but did not deny the accusation. ‘It is something I try to overcome. You did provoke me excessively, you must admit, although I should not make excuses.’

‘Go on, blame me, I have a broad enough back.’ Alex smiled at her and noticed how that made her drop her gaze. Not at all used to men. A total innocent with no idea how to flirt. Behave yourself, Tempest. But she was a charming novelty.

‘I will spend December and perhaps January at the London convent, I expect. I do not imagine anyone will be looking to employ a governess or a companion just now.’ She fiddled with the fringe on the edge of the rug. ‘A pity, because it would be wonderful to spend Christmas with a family. But still, it is always a happy season wherever one is.’

‘Is it?’ Alex tried to recall the last Christmas he had spent with his family. He had been almost eighteen. His parents had not been speaking to each other, his batty great-aunt had managed to set the breakfast room on fire, his younger siblings had argued incessantly and at dinner on Christmas Day his father had finally, unforgivably, lost his temper with Alex.

There are some things that a mature man might laugh off or shrug aside as the frustrated outpourings of a short-tempered parent. But they are usually not things that a sensitive seventeen-year-old can accept with any grace or humour. Or forgive. Not when they led to tragedy.

Alex had left the table, packed his bags, gone straight back to Oxford and stayed there, taking care to extract every penny of his allowance from the bank before his father thought to stop it. When the news had reached him of just what his father’s outburst had unleashed he’d settled down, with care and much thought, to convince his father that he was exactly what he had accused him of being, while at the same time living his life the way he wanted to.

‘You will be going home for Christmas, surely?’ Tess asked.

Alex realised he must have been silent for quite some time. ‘I am going back to my own home, certainly. But not to the family house and most certainly not for Christmas.’

‘I am sorry,’ she said with every sign of distress on his behalf.

Beside him Grant gave an inelegant snort and woke up. ‘Christmas? Never say you’re going back to Tempeston, Alex?’

‘Lord, no.’ Alex shuddered. ‘I will do what I always do and hole up in great comfort with good wine, excellent food, brandy, a pile of books and a roaring fire until the rest of humanity finishes with its annual bout of plum pudding–fuelled sentimentality and returns to normal. What about you?’

‘I promised to call on Whittaker. I was with his brother when he died in Salzburg, if you recall. He lives just outside Edinburgh and I said I’d go and see him as soon as I was back in Britain.’ Grant shifted his long legs into a more comfortable position. ‘Can’t stay too long, though, I’ll go straight from there to my grandfather in Northumberland.’

‘How is he?’ Grant was the old man’s heir and he’d be a viscount in his own right when he went, given that his father had died years ago.

‘He’s frail.’ Grant was curt. He was fond of his grandfather, Alex thought with an unwelcome twinge of envy.

‘He will be helped by your company at Christmas,’ Tess said warmly.

‘He’d be glad to see Grant at any time.’ Alex managed not to snap the words. ‘What is it about Christmas that produces this nonsense anyway?’

It was meant as a rhetorical question, but Tess stared at him as though he had declared that it rained upwards. ‘You are funning, surely?’ When he shook his head she announced, ‘Then I will remind you, although I cannot truly believe you are really such a cynic.’ She paused, as though to collect her thoughts, then opened her mouth. ‘Well, first of all there is...’

Please, no, Alex thought despairingly. If there was anything as bad as Christmas it was someone who was an enthusiast about it.

‘Evergreens...’ the confounded chit began. ‘Cutting them and...’

Alex glowered.

Chapter Three

‘And it is so cold, but that is part of the fun, everyone wrapped up and the snow crunching underfoot, and that gorgeous smell of pines.’ Tess closed her eyes, the better to recall it. Memories of those wonderful English Christmases from many years ago, before Papa had said they must go abroad. There hadn’t been much money and it had been a different village each year.

She had never asked why they kept moving; she had simply taken it for granted, as children do. Now, from an adult perspective, she realised they had probably been keeping one step ahead of recognition and scandal and that was why they’d left the country—the Continent was cheaper and there would be less gossip.