Under the Mistletoe

The Star of Bethlehem

“I’ve lost the Star of Bethlehem,” she told him bluntly when he came to her room at her maid’s bidding. There was some sullenness in her tone, some stubbornness, and something else in addition to both, perhaps.

He stood just inside the door of her bedchamber, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind him, staring at her, showing little emotion.

“You have lost the Star of Bethlehem,” he repeated. “Where, Estelle? You were wearing it last night.”

“I still have the ring,” she said with a nonchalance that was at variance with her fidgeting hands. She noticed the latter, and deliberately and casually brushed at the folds of her morning wrap in order to give her hands something to do. “But the diamond is gone.”

“Was it missing last night when we came home?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on her. Having assured herself that her wrap fell in becoming folds, she was now retying the satin bow at her throat. She looked as if she cared not one whit about her loss.

“I would have mentioned it if I had noticed, would I not?” she said disdainfully. “I really don’t know, Allan. All I do know is that it is missing now.” She shrugged.

“It probably came loose when you hurled the ring at my head last night,” he said coolly. “Did you look at it when you picked it up again?”

She regarded him with raised chin and eyes that matched his tone. Only the heightened color of her cheeks suggested the existence of some emotion. “Yes, I did,” she said. “This morning. The star was gone. And there is no point in looking about you as if you expect it to pop up at you. Annie and I have been on our knees for half an hour looking for it.

It simply is not here. It must have fallen out before we came home.”

“I was standing at the foot of the bed when you threw it,” he said. “You missed me, of course. The ring passed to the left of me, I believe.”

“To the right,” she said. “I found it at the far side of the bed.”

“To the right, then,” he said irritably. “If I were to say that you threw it up into the air, you would probably say that you threw it under the floorboards.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said coldly.

“The diamond probably landed on the bed,” he said.

“What a brilliant suggestion!” She looked at him with something bordering on contempt. “Both Annie and I had similar inspiration. We have had all the bedclothes off the bed. It is not there. It is not in this room, Allan.”

She reached into the pocket of her wrap and withdrew a ring, which she handed to him rather unnecessarily. There was certainly no doubt of the fact that the diamond was missing.

The Earl of Lisle took it on the palm of his hand and looked down at it-a wide gold band with a circlet of dark sapphires and an empty hole in the middle where the diamond had nestled. The Star of Bethlehem, she had called it-her eyes glowing like sister stars, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted-when he had given her the ring two years before, on the occasion of their betrothal.

“Look, my lord,” she had said-she had not called him by his given name until he had asked her to on their wedding night a few minutes after he had finished consummating their marriage. “Look, my lord, it is a bright star in a dark sky. And this is Christmas. The birthday of Christ.The beginning of all that is wonderful.The beginning for us.How auspicious that you have given me the Star of Bethlehem for our betrothal.”

He had smiled at her-beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacious Estelle, the bride his parents had picked out for him, though his father had died a year before and unwittingly caused a delay in the betrothal.

And holding her hand, the ring on her finger, he had allowed himself to fall all the way in love with her, though he had thought that at the age of thirty there was no room in his life for such deep sentiment. He had agreed to marry her because marriage was the thing to do at his age and in his position, and because marrying Estelle made him the envy of numerous gentlemen-married and single alike-in London. She would be a dazzling ornament for his home and his life.

It would have been better if he had kept it so, if he had not done anything as foolish as falling in love with her. Perhaps they would have had a workable relationship if he had not done that. Perhaps after almost two years of marriage they would have grown comfortable together.

“Well,” he said, looking down at the ring in his hand and carefully keeping both his face and voice expressionless, “it is no great loss, is it, Estelle? It was merely a diamond. Merely money, of which I have an abundance.” He tossed the ring up, caught it, and closed his hand around it. “A mere bauble. Put it away.” He held it out to her again.

Her chin lifted an inch as she took it from him. “I am sorry to have taken your time,” she said, “but I thought you should know. I would not have had you find out at some future time and think that I had been afraid to tell you.”

His lips formed into something of a sneer. “We both know that you could not possibly fear my ill opinion, don’t we?” he said. “I am merely the man who pays the bills and makes all respectable in your life. Perhaps the diamond fell into the pocket or the neckcloth of Martindale last evening. You spent enough time in his company. You must ask him next time you see him. Later today, perhaps?”

She ignored his last words. “Or about the person of Lord Peterson or Mr.

Hayward or Sir Caspar Rhodes,” she said. “I danced with them all last evening, and enticed them all into anterooms for secret dalliances.” Her chin was high, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I believe we said-or rather yelled-all that needs to be expressed about your behavior at the Eastman ball-or your lack of behavior-last night,” he said. “I choose not to reopen the quarrel, Estelle. But I have thought further about what I said heatedly then. And I repeat it now when my temper is down. When Christmas is over and your parents return to the country, I believe it will be as well for you to return with them for a visit.”

“Banishment?” she said. “Is that not a little gothic, Allan?”

“We need some time apart,” he said. “Although for the past few months we have seen each other only when necessary, we have still contrived to quarrel with tedious frequency. We need a month or two in which to rethink our relationship.”

“How about a lifetime or two?” she said.

“If necessary.” He looked at her steadily from cold blue eyes.

Beautiful, headstrong Estelle.Incurably flirtatious. Not caring the snap of a finger for him beyond the fact that he had had it in his power to make her the Countess of Lisle and to finance her whims for the rest of a pampered life, despite the occasional flaring of hot passion that always had him wondering when it was all over and she lay sleeping in his arms if she had ever gifted other men with such favors. And always hating himself for such unfounded suspicions.

She shivered suddenly. “It is so cold in here,” she said petulantly.

“How can we be without fires in December? It is quite unreasonable.”

“You are the one being unreasonable,” he said. “You might be in the morning room now or in the library, where there are fires. You might have slept in a bedchamber where there was a fire. Chimneys have to be swept occasionally if they are not to catch fire. Half the house yesterday; the other half today. It is not such a great inconvenience, is it?”

“It should be done in the summertime,” she said.

“During the summer you said it could wait until the winter, when we would be going into the country,” he reminded her. “And then you had this whim about having Christmas here this year with both our families.

Well, I have given you your way about that, Estelle-as usual. But the chimneys have been smoking. They must be cleaned before our guests arrive next week. By tomorrow all will be set to rights again.”

“I hate it when you talk to me in that voice,” she said, “as if I were a little child of defective understanding.”

“You hate it when I talk to you in any voice,” he said. “And sometimes you behave like a child of defective understanding.”

“Thank you,” she said, opening her hand and looking down at the ring. “I wish to get dressed, Allan, and go in search of a room with a warm fire.

I am grateful that you have seen fit not to beat me over the loss of the diamond.”

“Estelle!” All his carefully suppressed anger boiled to the surface and exploded in the one word.

She tossed her head up and glared across at him with dark and hostile eyes. He strode from the room without another word.

Estelle returned her gaze to the ring in the palm of her hand. The back of her nose and throat all the way down to her chest were a raw ache.

The diamond was gone. It was all ruined. All of it. Two years was not such a very long time, but it seemed like another Estelle who had watched as he slid the ring onto her finger and rested her hand on his so that she could see it.

It had been Christmas, and she had been caught up in the usual euphoric feelings of love and goodwill, and the unrealistic conviction that every day could be Christmas if everyone would just try hard enough. She had looked at the diamond and the sapphires, and they had seemed like a bright symbol of hope. Hope that the arranged marriage she had agreed to because Mama and Papa had thought it such a splendid opportunity for her would be a happy marriage. Hope that the tall, golden-haired, unsmiling, rather austere figure of her betrothed would turn out to be a man she could like and be comfortable with-perhaps even love.

The ring had been the Star of Bethlehem to her from the start and without any effort of thought. And he had smiled one of his rare smiles when she had looked up at him and named the ring that. Looking into his blue eyes at that moment, she had thought that perhaps he would grow fond of her. She had thought that perhaps he would kiss her. He had not, though he had raised her hand to his lips and kissed both it and the ring.

He had not kissed her mouth at all before their marriage. But he had kissed her afterward on their wedding night in their marriage bed. And he had made a tender and beautiful and almost painless experience out of what she had anticipated with some fright.

She had thought… She had hoped…

But it did not matter. The only really tender and passionate moments of their marriage had happened in her bed. Always actions of the body.

Never words.

They had not really grown close. He never revealed much of himself to her. And she shared only trivialities with him. They never really talked.

They were lovers only in fits and starts. Sometimes wild passion for three or four nights in a row.And then perhaps weeks of nothing in between.

She had never conceived. Not, at least… But she was not at all sure.

The only thing consistent in their relationship was the quarrels. Almost always over her behavior toward other gentlemen. His accusations had been unjust at first. It was in her nature to be smiling and friendly, flirtatious even. She had meant nothing by it. All her loyalty had been given to her new husband. She had been hurt and bewildered by his disapproval. But in the last year, she had begun to flirt quite deliberately. Never enough to deceive the gentlemen concerned. No one except Allan had ever been offered her lips or any other part of her body except her hand. And never even one small corner of her heart. But she had taken an almost fiendish glee in noting her husband’s expression across a crowded drawing room or ballroom, and anticipating the wild rages they would both let loose when they came home.

Sometimes after the quarrels he would retire to his room, slamming the door that connected their dressing rooms behind him. Sometimes they would end up together in her bed, the heat of anger turned to the heat of sexual passion.

The night before had not been one of those latter occasions. She had dragged the Star of Bethlehem from her finger and hurled it at his head and screeched something to the effect that since the ring had become meaningless, he might have it back and welcome to it. And he had yelled something about its being less likely to scratch the cheeks of her lovers if she were not wearing it. And he had stalked out, leaving the door vibrating on its hinges.

And now she really was without the ring. No, worse. She had the shell of it left, just as the shell of her marriage still remained. The star was gone-from the ring and from her marriage.

She was taken by surprise when a loud and painful hiccup of a sob broke the silence of the room, and even more surprised when she realized that the sound had come from her. But it was a wonderful balm to her self-pity, she found. She allowed herself the rare indulgence of an extended and noisy cry.

It was all his fault. Nasty, unfeeling, sneering, cold, jealous monster!

She hated him. She did not care that the ring was ruined. What did she care for his ring? Or for him?Or for their marriage? She would be delighted to go home with Mama and Papa when Christmas was over. She would stay with them, surrounded by all the peace and familiarity of her childhood home. She would forget about the turmoil and nightmare of the past two years. She would forget about Allan.

“Allan.”

The name was spoken on a wail. She looked down at the ring and sniffed wetly and noisily.

“Allan.”

She drew back her arm suddenly and hurled the ring with all her strength across the room. She heard it tinkle as it hit something, but she did not go in pursuit of it. She rushed into her dressing room and slammed the door firmly behind her.

Two minutes passed after the slamming of the door before there came a rustling from the direction of the cold chimney followed by a quiet plop and the appearance of a tiny, ragged, soot-smeared figure among the ashes. After looking cautiously around and stooping for a moment to grub about among the ashes, it stepped gingerly out into the room and revealed itself as a child.

The chimney sweep’s boy looked briefly down at the diamond in his hand, a jewel he had mistaken for a shard of glass until he had overheard the conversation of the man and woman. His eyes darted about the room, taking in the door through which the woman had disappeared, and close to which she must have been standing while she was crying and when he had heard the tinkling sound.

She must have thrown the ring they had been talking about. It was just the sort of thing women did when they were in a temper.

His mind tried to narrow the search by guessing in which direction she would have thrown the ring from that particular door. But his wits really did not need sharpening, he saw as soon as he turned his eyes in the direction that seemed most likely. It was lying on the carpet in the open, the light from the window sparkling off the gold band.

What queer coves these rich people were, giving up the search for the diamond after only half an hour, if the woman was to be believed-and the man had not even searched at all. And throwing a gold band set full of precious stones across a room and leaving it lying there on the floor for anyone to take.

The child darted across the room, scooped up the ring, and pulled a dirty rag from somewhere about his person. He stopped when he had one foot back among the ashes, and tied his two treasures securely inside the rag. He must get back to old Thomas. The sweep would be hopping mad by now, and the old excuse of getting lost among the maze of chimneys had been used only three days before.

However, the child thought with a philosophy born of necessity, today’s haul would probably be worth every stinging stroke of old Thomas’s hand.

As long as he did not use his belt. Even the costliest jewel did not seem quite consolation enough for the strappings he sometimes got from the sweep’s belt.

The boy had both feet in the grate and was about to pull himself up into the darkness and soot of the chimney when the door through which the lady had disappeared opened abruptly again. He started to cry pitifully.

Estelle, now clad in a morning dress of fine white wool, even though her hair was still about her shoulders in a dark cloud, stopped in amazement.

The child wailed and scrubbed his clenched fists at his eyes.

“What is it?” she said, hurrying across the room to the fireplace and stooping down to have a better look at the apparition standing there.

“You must be the chimney sweep’s boy. Oh, you poor child.”

The last words were spoken after she had had a good look at the grimy, skeletal frame of the child and the indescribable filth of his person and of his rags. Hair of indeterminate color stood up from his head in stiff and matted spikes. Two muddy tracks flowed from his eyes to his chin. He looked as if he were no older than five or six.

“It’s dark up there,” he wailed. “I can’t breathe.”

“You shouldn’t be climbing chimneys,” she said. “You are just a baby.”

The child sniffed wetly and breathed out on a shuddering sob. “I got lost,” he said. “It’s dark up there.”

“Oh, you poor child.” Estelle reached out a hand to touch him, hesitated, and took hold of one thin arm. “Step out here. The ashes will cut your poor feet.”

The boy started to cry in noisy earnest again. “He’ll… thrash… me,” he got out on three separate sobs. “I got lost.”

“He will not thrash you,” Estelle said indignantly, taking hold of the child’s other arm with her free hand and helping him step out onto the carpet. He was skin and bones, she thought in some horror. He was just a frightened, half-starved little baby. “He will certainly not thrash you.

I shall see to that. What is your name?”

“N-Nicky, missus,” the boy said, and he hung his head and wrapped one skinny leg about the other and sniffed loudly.

“Nicky,” she said, and she reached out and tried to smooth down the hair on top of his head. But it was stiff with dirt. “Nicky, when did you last eat?”

The child began to wail.

“Have you eaten today?” she asked.

He shuffled his shoulders back and forth and swayed on one leg. He muttered something.

“What?” she said gently. She was down on her knees looking into his face. “Have you eaten?”

“I don’t know, missus,” he said, his chin buried on his thin chest. And he rubbed the back of his hand over his wet nose.

“Did your master not give you anything to eat this morning?” she asked.

“I ain’t to get fat,” he said, and the wails grew to a new crescendo.

“I’m so hungry.”

“Oh, you poor, poor child.” There were tears in Estelle’s eyes. “Does your mama know that you are kept half-starved? Have you told her?”

“I ain’t got no maw.” His sobs occupied the child for several seconds.

“I got took from the orphanage, missus.”

“Oh, Nicky.” Estelle laid one gentle hand against his cheek, only half noticing how dirty her hand was already.

“He’ll belt me for sure.” The child scratched the back of one leg with the heel of the other foot and scrubbed at his eyes again with his fists. “I got lost. It’s dark and I can’t get me breath up there.”

“He will not hurt you. You have my word on it.” Estelle straightened up and crossed the room to the bellpull to summon her maid. “Sit down on the floor, Nicky. I shall see that you have some food inside you, if nothing else. Does he beat you often?”

The child heaved one leftover sob as he sat down cross-legged on the carpet. “No more nor three or four times a day when I’m good,” he said.

“But I keep getting lost.”

“Three or four times a day!” she said, and turned to instruct her maid to sit with the child for a few minutes. “I will be back, Nicky, and you shall have some food. I promise.”

Annie looked at the apparition in some disbelief as her mistress disappeared from the room. She sat on the edge of the bed a good twenty feet away from him, and gathered her skirts close about her as if she were afraid that they would brush against a mote of soot floating about in his vicinity.

Estelle swept down the marble stairway to the hall below, her chin high, her jaw set in a firm line. At one glance from her eyes, a footman scurried across the tiles and threw open the doors of his lordship’s study without even knocking first. His mistress swept past him and glared at her husband’s man of business, who had the misfortune to be closeted with the earl at that particular moment.

“Can I be of service to you, my dear?” his lordship asked, as both men jumped to their feet.

“I wish to speak with you,” she said, continuing her progress across the room until she stood at the window, gazing out at the gray, wintry street beyond. She did not even listen to the hurried leavetaking that the visitor took.

“Was that necessary, Estelle?” her husband’s quiet voice asked as the doors of the study closed. “Porter is a busy man and has taken the time to come half across town at my request this morning. Such men have to work for a living. They ought not to be subject to the whims of the aristocracy.”

She turned from the window. She ignored his cold reproof. “Allan,” she said, “there is a child in my bedchamber. A thin, dirty, frightened, and hungry child.”

He frowned. “The sweep’s climbing boy?” he said. “But what is he doing there? He has no business being in any room where his master or one of our servants is not. I am sorry. I shall see to it. It will not happen again.”

“He is frightened,” she said. “The chimneys are dark and he cannot breathe. He gets lost up there. And then he is whipped when he gets back to the sweep.”

He took a few steps toward her, his hands clasped behind his back. “They do not have an enviable lot,” he said. “Poor little urchins.”

“He is like a scarecrow,” she said. “He cannot remember if he has eaten today. But he is not allowed to eat too much for fear he will get fat.”

“They get stuck in the chimneys if they are too fat,” he said, “or too big.”

“He gets beaten three or four times a day, Allan,” she said. “He does not have a mother or father to protect him. He comes from an orphanage.”

He looked at her, his brows drawn together in a frown. “You ought not to be subjected to such painful realities,” he said. “I shall have a word with Stebbins, Estelle. It will not happen again. And I shall see to it that the child is not chastised this time. I’m sorry. You are upset.” He crossed the room to stand a couple of feet in front of her.

She looked up at him. “He is a baby, Allan,” she said. “A frightened, starving little baby.”

He lifted a hand to rest his fingertips against her cheek. “I will have a word with the sweep myself,” he said. “Something will be done, I promise.”

She caught at his hand and nestled her cheek against his palm. “You will do something?” she asked, her dark eyes pleading with him. “You will?

You promise? Allan”-her voice became thin and high-pitched-“he is just a little baby.”

“Is he still in your room?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I have promised him food.”

“Have some taken to him, then,” he said. “And keep him there for a while. I will come to you there.”

“You will?” Her eyes were bright with tears, and she turned her head in order to kiss his wrist. “Thank you, Allan. Oh, thank you.”

He held the door of the study open for her, his face as stern and impassive as usual, and summoned a footman with the lift of an eyebrow.

He sent the man running in search of the butler and the chimney sweep.

A little more than half an hour later the Earl of Lisle was standing in his wife’s bedchamber, his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at a tiny bundle of rags and bones huddled over a plate that held nothing except two perfectly clean chicken bones and a few crumbs of bread. The bundle looked up at him with wide and wary eyes. The countess’s eyes were also wide, and questioning.

“You are Nicholas?” his lordship asked.

“Nicky, guv’nor,” the child said in a high, piping voice.

“Well, Nicky,” the earl said, looking steadily down at him. “And how would you like to stay here and not have to climb chimneys ever again?”

The boy stared, openmouthed. The countess clasped her hands to her bosom and continued to stare silently at her husband.

“I have talked with Mr. Thomas,” the earl said, “and made arrangements with him. And I have instructed Mrs. Ainsford, the housekeeper, to find employment for you belowstairs. You will live here and be adequately fed and clothed. And you will continue to have employment with me for as long as you wish, provided you do the work assigned to you. You will never be whipped.”

He paused and looked down at the boy, who continued to stare up at him openmouthed.

“Do you have anything to say?” he asked.

“No more chimneys?” the child asked.

“No more chimneys.”

Nicky’s jaw dropped again.

“Does this please you?” the earl asked. “Would you like to be a part of this household?”

“Cor blimey, guv’nor,” the boy said.

Which words the earl interpreted as cautious assent. He assigned his new servant to the tender care of the housekeeper, who was waiting outside the door and who considered that her position in the household was an exalted enough one that she could permit herself a cluck of the tongue and a look tossed at the ceiling before she took the little ragamuffin by the hand and marched him down the back stairs to the kitchen and the large tin bathtub that two maids had been instructed to fill with steaming water.

Estelle smiled dazzlingly at her husband and hurried after them. Her white dress, he noticed, standing and watching her go, his hands still clasped behind his back, was smudged with dirt in several places.

She looked more beautiful even than usual.

Estelle was lying in her husband’s arms, feeling relaxed and drowsy, but not wanting to give in to sleep. It had been a happy and exciting day and she was reluctant to let it go.

The best part of it was that Allan had come to her after she had gone to bed, for the first time in two weeks. He had said nothing-he almost never did on such occasions-but he had made slow love to her, his hands and his mouth gentle and arousing, his body coaxing her response and waiting for it. They were good in bed together. They always had been, right back to that first time, when she had been nervous and quite ignorant of what she was to do. Even when there was anger between them, there was always passion too. But too often there was anger, and it always left a bitterness when the body’s cravings had been satiated.

It was best of all when there was no anger. And when he held her afterward and did not immediately return to his own room. She liked to fall asleep in his arms, the warmth and the smell of him lulling her.

Except that she did not want to fall asleep tonight. Not yet.

“Allan,” she whispered hesitantly. They almost never talked when they were in bed. And very rarely when they were out of it, except when they were yelling at each other.

“Yes?” His voice sounded almost tense.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for what you did for Nicky. I think he will be happy here, don’t you? You have taken him out of hell and brought him into heaven.”

“Our home, heaven?” he said quietly, jarring her mood slightly. “But he will be safe here, Estelle, and warm and well fed. It is all we can do.”

“He has a new home in time for Christmas,” she said. “Poor little orphan child. He must be so very happy, Allan, and grateful to you.”

“He has merely exchanged one servitude for another,” he said. “But at least he will not be mistreated here.”

“What did you say to the sweep?” she asked. “Did you threaten him with jail?”

“He was doing nothing that every other sweep in the country is not doing,” he said. “The problem does not end with the rescue of the boy, Estelle. I merely bought him for twice his apprenticeship fee. The man made a handsome profit.”

“Oh, Allan!” Her hand spread across his chest over the fabric of his nightshirt. “The poor little boys.”

She felt him swallow. “Some members of the House are concerned over the matter,” he said, “and over the whole question of child labor. I shall speak with them, find out more, perhaps even speak in the House myself.”

“Will you?” She burrowed her head more deeply into the warmth of his shoulder. She wanted to find his mouth in the darkness. But she only ever had the courage to do that when he had aroused passion in her.

“In the meantime,” he said, “you can console yourself with the thought that at least your little Nicky has a warm and soft bed for the night and a full stomach.”

And then a wonderful thing happened. Something that had never happened before in almost two years of marriage. He turned his head and kissed her, long minutes after their lovemaking was over, and turned onto his side and stroked the hair back from her face with gentle fingers. And before another minute had passed, she knew that he was going to come to her again.

She fell asleep almost immediately after it was over. It was not until later in the night, when she had awoken and nestled closer to the sleeping form of her husband, who was still beside her, that reality took away some of the magic of the previous day. He had done a wonderful thing for Nicky, she thought. They would be able to watch him grow into a healthy and carefree childhood, long after this particular Christmas was past.

They would be able to watch him? He would, perhaps. Allan would. But would she? She was to be banished to Papa’s home after Christmas for a stay that would surely extend itself beyond weeks into months. Perhaps even years.Perhaps forever. Perhaps she would only ever see Allan again on brief visits, for form’s sake.

He was sending her away. So that they might rethink their relationship, he had said. So that he might end their marriage to all intents and purposes. He didn’t want her anymore. He did not want their marriage to continue. And even if he were forced to continue their marriage to some degree, even if her suspicion and hardly admitted hope proved right, it would be an empty thing, only a third person holding them together.

And there was that other thing. That thing that she had not allowed to come between her and her joy the previous day.The missing ring. Not just the diamond, but the whole ring. She had hunted for it until she had felt almost sick enough to vomit. But she had not found it. Or told Allan about its disappearance. She had repressed her panic and the terrible sense of loss that had threatened to overwhelm her.

Where could it have gone? Had it been swept up by the maids? She had even thought briefly of Nicky, but had shaken the thought off immediately. It had just disappeared, as the diamond had.

Christmas was coming, and there would be no Star of Bethlehem for her.

No joy or love or hope.

But she would not think such depressing and self-pitying thoughts. She settled her cheek more comfortably against her husband’s broad shoulder and rested a hand on his warm arm. And she deliberately thought back on the brighter part of the previous day. She smiled.

Nicky not wanting to be parted from his filthy rags and bursting into pitiful wailings when Mrs. Ainsford snatched away the rag of a handkerchief he clutched even after he had relinquished all else. He had a curl of his mother’s hair in the little bundle, he had claimed, and a seashell that someone had given him at the orphanage. All his worldly possessions. Mrs. Ainsford had given the rag back to him and another clean one to use instead. But the child had not unpacked his treasures to their interested gaze.

Estelle smiled again, listened for a few moments to the deep and even breathing of the man beside her, and turned her head to kiss his shoulder before allowing herself to slip back into sleep.

The earl had not slept for a while after making love to his wife for the second time. He ought not to have come. Relations between them had been strained enough for several months, and the bitter quarrel of the night before had brought matters to a crisis. He had made the decision that they should live apart, at least for a time. They must keep up the charade over Christmas, of course, for the sake of her family and his own. But the pretense did not at least have to extend to the bedchamber.

There was no harmony between them-none-except in what passed between them in silence between the sheets of her bed. He had often wanted to try to extend that harmony into other aspects of their life by talking to her in the aftermath of passion, when they would perhaps feel more kindly disposed to each other than at any other time.

But he had never done so. He was no good at talking. He had always been afraid to talk to Estelle, afraid that he would not be able to convey his inner self to her. He had chosen to keep himself closed to her rather than try to communicate and know himself a failure. He had always been mortally afraid of having his love thrown back in his face. Better that she did not know. And so he had contented himself with giving his love only the one outlet. Only the physical.

But he should not have come tonight. The events of the day had created the illusion of closeness between them. And so he had come to her, and she had received him with something more than the usual passion, which he knew himself capable of arousing. There had been an eagerness in her, a tenderness almost. A gratitude for what he had done for her little climbing boy.

He should not have come. How would he do without her after she had left with her parents after Christmas?

How would he live without her?

What would he give her as a Christmas gift? It must be something very special, something that would perhaps tell her, as he could never do, that despite everything he cared.

Some jewels perhaps? Something to dazzle her?

He smiled bitterly into the darkness as Estelle made low noises in her sleep and burrowed more closely into his warmth. Something to remind her that she had a wealthy husband. More baubles for her to lose or to cast aside with that look of disdain that she was so expert at when he was angry with her for some reason.

Like that ring. He stared upward at the dark canopy over his head. The Star of Bethlehem.The ring that had told him as soon as he slid it onto her finger two years before that she was the jewel of his life, the star of his life. It was not a bauble. Not merely a symbol of wealth.

It was a symbol of his love, of his great hope for what their marriage might have been.

If he could replace the diamond…

Where had she put the ring? It had probably been tossed into a drawer somewhere. It should not be hard to find. He could probably find it with ease if he waited for her to go out and then searched her rooms.

He would have the diamond replaced for her. She had been careless about its loss. It had not really mattered to her. She had told him about it merely to avoid a scolding if he had discovered it for himself at a later date.

But surely if he could put it on her finger again this Christmas, whole again, the Star of Bethlehem new again, as Christmas was always new even more than eighteen hundred years after the first one, then it would mean something to her.

Perhaps she would be pleased. And perhaps in the months to come, when she had not seen him for a while, when the bitterness of their quarrels had faded, she would look at it and realize that he had put more than his money into the gift.

He turned his head and kissed his sleeping wife with warm tenderness just above her ear. There was an excitement in him that would surely make it difficult to get to sleep.

Estelle had been happy about Nicky. He remembered the look she had given him as she left this very room after Mrs. Ainsford and the child-a bright and sparkling look all focused on him. The sort of look he had dreamed of inspiring before he married her. Before he knew himself quite incapable of drawing to himself those looks that she bestowed so willingly on other men. Before he realized that he would find himself quite incapable of communicating with her.

He would bask in the memory. And the child had been saved from a brutal life. That poor little skeletal baby, who was probably sleeping peacefully at that very moment in another part of the house, as babies ought.

At that precise moment the former climbing boy, whom his new master thought to be peacefully asleep, was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a room in quite another part of London-a dingy, dirty attic room that was sparsely furnished and strewn with rags and stale remnants of food and empty jugs.

“I tell you, Mags,” he was saying in his piping voice, which nevertheless did not sound as pathetic as it had sounded in the countess’s bedchamber the previous day, “I took me life in me ’ands comin’ ’ere in these togs.” He indicated the white shirt and breeches, obviously of an expensive cut and equally obviously part of a suit of livery belonging to some grand house. “But there weren’t nothin’ else.

They burned all me other things.”

The Mags referred to shook with silent laughter. “I scarce knew you, young Nick,” he said. “I always thought you ’ad black hair.”

The child touched his soft fair hair. “Such a scrubbin’ you never did ’ear tell of,” he said in some disgust. “I thought she’d rub me skin away for sure.”

“So yer can’t be up to the old lark no more,” Mags said, the laughter passing as silently as it had come.

“Naw.” Nicky scratched his head from old habit. “Thought she was bein’ a blessed angel, she did, that woman. And ’im standin’ there arskin’ me if I wanted to stay at their ’ouse. Exceptin’ I couldn’t say no. I would’ve given an ’ole farthin’ to ’ave seen old Thomas’s face.” He giggled, sounding for a moment very much like the baby the Earl and Countess of Lisle had taken him for. He was in reality almost eleven years old.

“This might be better,” Mags said, rubbing his hands together thoughtfully. “You can go ’round the ’ouse at leisure, young Nick, and lift a fork ’ere and a jeweled pin there. P’raps they’ll take you to other ’ouses, and yer can ’ave a snoop around them too.”

“It’ll be almost too easy,” Nicky said, rubbing the side of his nose with one finger. His voice was contemptuous. “They’re a soft touch if ever I seen one, Mags.”

“Got anythin’ for me tonight?” Mags asked.

The child shifted position and scratched his rump. “Naw,” he said after a few moments’ consideration. “Nothin’ tonight, Mags.Next time.”

“It weren’t hardly worth comin’, then, were it?” the older man said, his narrowed eyes on the child.

“Just wanted yer to know that me fairy godmother come,” the child said, leaping lightly to his feet. “Did yer give the money to me maw for that thimble I brought you last week?”

“ ’Tweren’t worth much,” Mags said quickly. “But yes. Yer maw got her food money.” He laughed silently again. “And yer sister got ’er vittles to grow on. Another two or three years, young Nick, and yer maw’ll be rich with the two of yer.”

“I got to go,” the child said. And he climbed down the stairs from the attic and went out into the street, where for the first time in his life he had something to fear. His appearance made him fair game for attack.

Only the filthy stream of curses he had been quite capable of producing had discouraged one pair of tough-looking urchins when he had been on his way to Mags’s attic.

And unexpectedly he still had something to protect on his way back home.

He still had the ring and the diamond pressed between the band of his breeches and his skin, although the main reason for his night’s outing had been to deliver them to Mags for payment. One of his better hauls.

But he had not given them up. That woman, whom he had been told he must call “your ladyship,” had bawled like a baby after the man had left her, and flung the ring across the room.

And she had had food brought to him, and had sat and watched him eat it, and smiled at him. And she was the one who had told the big, sour-faced, big-bosomed woman to give him back his bundle-the bundle that held her ring and diamond, and who had stooped down and kissed him on the cheek before he got dumped in that hot water up to the neck and scrubbed raw.

She was pretty. Silly of course, and not a brain in her brainbox-calling him a baby, indeed, and believing his story about the orphanage and about his mother’s lock of hair! But very pretty. Well, he would keep her ring for a day or two and sell it to Mags the next time he came. He would have more things by then, though not much. The reason he had never been caught was probably that he had never been greedy. He had learned his lesson well from Mags. He had never taken more than one thing from each house, and never anything that he had thought would be sorely missed.

Nicky darted in his bare feet along a dark street in the shadows of the buildings and cursed his clean hair and skin, which would make him more noticeable, and his clothes, which would be like a red flag to a bull if the wrong people were to spot him on these particular streets.

The bed was empty beside Estelle when she woke up the following morning.

She felt only a fleeting disappointment. After all, he never had stayed until morning. And if he had been there, there would have been an awkwardness between them. What would they say to each other, how would they look at each other if they awoke in bed together in the daylight?

And remembered the hot passion they had shared before they had fallen asleep.

When she met him downstairs-in the breakfast room perhaps, or later in some other part of the house-he would be, as always, his immaculate, taciturn, rather severe self again. It would be easy to look at him then. He would seem like a different man from the one whose hands and mouth and body had created their magic on her during the darkness of the night.

It was a good thing that he was not there this morning. The night had had its double dose of lovemaking and silent tenderness. At least she could image it was tenderness until she saw him again and knew him incapable of such a very human emotion.

Estelle threw back the bedclothes even though Annie had not yet arrived and even though the fire was all but extinguished in the fireplace. She shivered and stood very still, wondering if she really felt nausea or if she were merely willing the feeling on herself. She shrugged, and resumed the futile search for her ring. She had combed through every inch of the room the day before, more than once. It was not to be found.

What she should do was repeat what she had done the day before. She should send for Allan before she had time to think and tell him the truth. If he ripped up at her, if he yelled at her, or-worse-if he turned cold and looked at her with frozen blue eyes and thinned lips, then she would think of some suitably cutting retort. And she need not fear him. He had never beaten her, and she did not think she could ever do anything bad enough that he would.

And what could he do that he had not already done? He had already decided to banish her. There was nothing he could do worse than that.

Nothing.

“Oh, my lady,” Annie said a few minutes later, coming into the room with her morning chocolate and finding her standing in the corner of the room where she had thrown the ring, “you will catch your death.”

Estelle glanced down at herself and realized that she had not even put on a wrap over her nightgown. She shivered. And looked at her maid and opened her mouth to tell the girl to go summon his lordship.

“It is rather cold in here,” she said instead. “Will you have some coals sent up, Annie?”

The girl curtsied and disappeared from the room.

And Estelle knew immediately that the moment had been lost. In the second that had elapsed between the opening of her mouth and the speaking of the words about coal being brought for the fire, she had turned coward.

It had been easy the morning before to have Allan called and to tell him about the missing diamond. She had still be smarting from the accusations he had hurled at her the night before, and the sentence he had passed on her. She had derived a perverse sort of pleasure from telling him of the ruin of his first gift to her.

This morning it was different. This morning she could remember his kindness to a little child. And his gentle tenderness to her the night before. And she could hope that perhaps it would be repeated that night if nothing happened during the day to arouse the hostility that always lurked just below the surface of their relationship-except when it boiled up above the surface, that was.

This morning she was a coward. This morning she could not tell him.

She had arranged to go shopping with her friend Isabella Lawrence. There were all sorts of Christmas gifts to be purchased before their houseguests began to arrive to take up all her time. There was Allan’s gift to be chosen, and she did not know what she would get him. She did have one gift for him already, of course. She had persuaded Lord Humber, that elderly miser, to part with a silver snuffbox Allan had admired months before, and she had kept it as a Christmas gift. But that had been a long time ago. And Lord Humber had refused to take anything but a token payment. Besides, she had given him a snuffbox the year before too. She wanted something else, something very special. But what did one buy for a man who had everything? Still, she would enjoy the morning despite the problem. Isabella could always cheer her up with her bright chatter and incessant gossiping.

She ate her breakfast in lone state, her husband having already removed to his study, Stebbins told her. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

But there was one thing she had to do before going out. She had Annie bring Nicky to her dressing room.

She smiled at him when he stood inside the door, his chin tucked against his chest, one leg wrapping itself around the other. He was clean and dressed smartly in the livery of the house. But he was still, of course, pathetically thin and endearingly small.

“Good morning, Nicky,” she said.

He muttered something into the front of his coat.

She crossed the room in a rush, stooped down in front of him, and set her hands on his thin shoulders. “Did you have a good breakfast?” she asked. “And did you sleep well?”

“Yes, missus,” he said. “I mean…”

“That is all right,” she said, lifting a hand to smooth back his hair.

“You do look splendid. Such shiny blond hair. Are you happy, Nicky, now that you have a real home of your own?”

“Yes, missus,” he said, sniffing and drawing his cuff across his nose.

“Nicky,” she said, “I lost a ring yesterday. In my bedchamber. You did not see it there when you came down the chimney, I suppose?”

The child returned his foot to the floor and scratched the back of his leg with his other heel.

“No, of course you did not,” she said, putting her arms about his thin little body and hugging him warmly. “Oh, Nicky, his lordship gave me the ring when we were betrothed. And now I have lost it. It was without question my most precious possession. Like the lock of your mama’s hair is to you. And the seashell.” She sighed. “But no matter. Something else very precious came into my life yesterday. Even more precious perhaps because it is living.” She smiled at his bowed head and kissed his cheek. “You came into my life, dear. I want you to be happy here. I want you to grow up happy and healthy. There will never be any more chimneys, I promise you. His lordship would not allow it.”

Nicky rubbed his chin back and forth on his chest and rocked dangerously on one leg.

“Annie is waiting outside for you,” Estelle said. “She will take you back to the kitchen, and Mrs. Ainsford will find you jobs to do. But nothing too hard, I assure you. Run along now. I shall buy you a present for Christmas while I am out. And I will not add ‘if you are good.’ I shall give you a gift even if you are not good. Everyone should have a Christmas gift whether he deserves it or not.”

Nicky looked up at her for the first time, with eyes that seemed far too large for his pale, thin face. Then his hand found the doorknob and opened the door. He darted out to join the waiting maid.

Estelle tied the strings of her bonnet beneath her chin and knew what she was going to buy for her husband for Christmas. It was not really a gift for him, she supposed. But it would do. It would be the best she could do, and perhaps after she had gone away into her banishment he would understand why she had chosen to give him such a strange gift.

Perhaps-oh, just perhaps-her exile would not last a lifetime.

The Earl of Lisle felt very guilty. He had often accused his wife of flirting, on the basis of very hard evidence he had seen with his own eyes. He had a few times accused her of doing more than flirting. She had always hotly denied the charges, though she had usually ended the arguments with a toss of the head and that look of disdain and the comment that he might believe what he pleased. And who, apart from him, would blame her anyway for taking a lover, when she was tied for the rest of a lifetime to such a husband?

He had never looked for evidence. And it was not because he was afraid of what he might discover. Rather it was out of a deep conviction that even though he was her husband, he did not own her. Although in the eyes of the law she was his possession, he would never look on her as such.

She was Estelle. His wife. The woman he had secretly loved since before his marriage to her. And if she chose to flirt with other men, if she chose to be unfaithful to him with one or more of those men, then he would rant and rave and perhaps put her away from him forever. But he would never spy on her, never publicly accuse her, never publicly disown her.

He would endure if he must, as dozens of wives were expected to endure when their husbands chose to take mistresses.

It was with the greatest of unease, then, that he searched his wife’s rooms after she had left on her shopping trip with Isabella Lawrence. He was looking for the ring. He was terrified of finding something else.

Something that he did not want to find.Something that would incriminate her and destroy him.

He found nothing. Nothing to confirm some of his worst suspicions. And not the ring either. Wherever she had put it, it certainly was not in either her bedchamber or her dressing room.

It seemed to him, as he wandered through into his own dressing room, that he must now abandon the plan that had so delighted him the night before. But not necessarily so, he thought after a while. The diamond would have been new anyway. Why not the whole ring? Why not have the whole thing copied for her? A wholly new gift.

A wholly new love offering.

The trouble was, of course, that he would have to describe the ring very exactly to a jeweler in order that it could be duplicated. He had bought the ring for her two years before. He had put it on her hand. He had looked at it there, with mingled pride and love and despair, a thousand times and more. And yet he found that he could not be clear in his mind whether there had been eight sapphires or nine. And exactly how wide had the gold band been?

He tried sketching the ring, but he had never been much of an artist.

He would have to do the best he could. After all, it was not as if he were going to try to pretend to her that it was the original ring.

The idea of the gift excited him again. Perhaps he would even be able to explain to her when he gave it. Explain why he had done it, what the ring meant to him. What she meant to him.

Perhaps. Perhaps if he did so she would look at him in incomprehension.

Or with that look of disdain.

Or perhaps-just perhaps-with a look similar to the one she had given him the day before, after he had told the little climbing boy that he would be staying with them.

He would go immediately, he decided. The ring would have to be made specially. And there were less than two weeks left before Christmas. He must go without delay.

He decided on eight sapphires when the moment came to give directions to the jeweler he had chosen. And he picked out a diamond that looked to him almost identical to the Star of Bethlehem. And left the shop on Oxford Street feeling pleased with the morning’s work and filled with a cautious hope for the future. Christmas was coming. Who would not feel hopeful at such a season of the year?

But his mood was short-lived. As he walked past the bow windows of a confectioner’s shop, he turned his head absently to look inside and saw his wife sitting at a table there with Lady Lawrence. And with Lord Martindale and Sir Cyril Porchester. Estelle’s face was flushed and animated. She was laughing, as were they all.

She did not see him. He walked on past.

Estelle, inside the confectioner’s shop, stopped laughing and shook her head at the plate of cakes that Sir Cyril offered to her. “What a perfectly horrid thing to say,” she said to Lord Martindale, her eyes still dancing with merriment. “As if I would buy Allan an expensive gift and have the bill sent to him.”

“There are plenty of wives who do just that, my dear Lady Lisle,” he said.

“I save my money for Christmas,” she said, “so that I can buy whatever I want without having to run to Allan.”

“But you still refuse to tell us what you are going to buy him, the lucky man?” Sir Cyril asked.

“Absolutely,” she said, bright-eyed and smiling. “I have not even told Isabella. It is to be a surprise. For Allan alone.”

Lord Martindale helped himself to another cake. “One would like to know what Lisle had done to deserve such devotion, would one not, Porchester?”

Estelle patted him lightly on the arm. “He married me,” she said, and looked at Lady Lawrence and laughed gaily.

“Oh, unfair, ma’am,” Lord Martindale said. “Since he has already done so, you see, the rest of us poor mortals are unable to compete.”

“We could find some excuse to slap a glove in his face and shoot him,”

Sir Cyril said.

They all laughed.

“But I should not like that at all,” Estelle said. “I would be an inconsolable widow for the rest of my life, I warn you.”

“In that case,” Sir Cyril said with a mock sigh, getting to his feet and circling the table in order to pull out Lady Lawrence’s chair, “I suppose we might as well allow Lisle to live. Lucky devil!”

When they were all outside the shop, the gentlemen bowed and took their leave, and Estelle promised to meet Lady Lawrence at the library as soon as she had completed her errand. She did not want her friend to come into the jeweler’s shop with her-a different jeweler from the one her husband had visited half an hour before.

She was very excited. Surely he would understand when he saw it, even though strictly speaking it would not seem like a gift for him.

She had the advantage over the earl. She remembered quite clearly that there had been nine sapphires. And she was able to tell the jeweler exactly how wide the gold band was to be made. She took a long time picking out a diamond, and did so eventually only because she must do so unless the whole idea was to be abandoned, for none of them looked quite like the Star of Bethlehem.

But it did not matter. She was not going to try to deceive Allan. There was no question of trying to pass off this new ring as the lost one. She would give it to him only because she wanted him to know that the betrothal ring had been important enough to her that she would spend almost all she had on replacing it. She wanted him to know that there was still the hope in her that she had worn on her finger for two years.

The hope that one day he would come to love her as she loved him.

She was going to ask him to keep the ring until she came home to stay.

Perhaps he would understand that she wanted that day to come.

Perhaps.

But she would want him to have it anyway.

She hurried along the street in the direction of the library a short while later, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes still bright. Everyone around her seemed to be loaded down with parcels. Everyone looked happy and smiled back at her.

What a wonderful time of year Christmas was. If only every day could be Christmas!

The Earl of Lisle was sitting in one corner of his darkened town carriage, his wife in the other. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn across the windows, it being late at night. Estelle’s gaze was necessarily confined within the carriage, then. But she did not need to see out. Her gaze was fixed on an imaginary scene of some magnificence.

“ ‘For unto us a child is born,’ ” she sang quietly to herself. “ ‘Unto us a son is given; unto us a son is given.’ ” She looked across to her husband’s darkened face. “Or is it ‘a child is born’ twice and ‘a son is given’ once?” she asked. “But no matter. Mr. Handel’s Messiah must be the most glorious music ever composed, don’t you agree, Allan?”

“Very splendid,” he agreed. “But I am surprised you heard any of it, Estelle. You did so much talking.” He had meant the words to be teasing, but he never found it easy to lighten the tone of his voice.

“But only before the music began and during the interval,” she said.

“Oh, come now, Allan, you must admit it is true. I did not chatter through the music. How could I have done so when I was so enthralled?

And how could I have sat silent between times when we were in company with friends? They would have thought I was sickening for something.”

Her eyes fixed on the upholstery of the seat opposite her, and soon she was singing softly again. “ ‘There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night.’ ” She hummed the orchestra’s part.

The earl watched her broodingly. He could not see her clearly in the darkness, but he would wager that her cheeks still glowed and that her eyes still shone. As they had done through dinner at the Mayfields’, through the performance of Handel’s Messiah they had attended in company with six friends, and through late-evening tea and cards at the Bellamys’.

She was so looking forward to Christmas, she had told everyone who had been willing to listen-and everyone was always willing to listen to Estelle, it seemed. The first that she and her husband had spent at their own home. And her mama and papa were coming, and her married brother with his wife and two children, and her unmarried brother. And her husband’s mother and his two sisters with their families.And two aunts and a few cousins. One more week and they would begin to arrive.

She had been pleased when he had agreed a couple of months before to stay in London and host the family Christmas that year. But she had not bubbled over so with high spirits to him. He could not seem to inspire such brightness in her.

“I spent a fortune this morning, Allan,” she said to him now, turning her head in his direction. And he could tell from her voice that she was still bubbling, though she had only him for audience. “I bought so many presents that Jasper looked dubious when I staggered along to the coach.

I think he wondered how we were to get all the parcels inside.” She laughed.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked.

“I love Christmas,” she said. “I live like the world’s worst miser from summer on just so that I can be extravagant at Christmas. I think I enjoy choosing gifts more than I like receiving them. I bought Nicky a little silver watch for his pocket. Such a dear little child’s thing.

You should just see it.” She giggled. “I suppose he cannot tell time. I will have to teach him.”

“Did you buy such lavish gifts for the other servants?” he asked.

“Oh, of course not.” She laughed again. “I would have to live like a beggar for five years. But I did buy them all something, Allan. And they will not mind my giving Nicky something special, will they? He is just a child, and has doubtless never had a gift in his life. Except for his seashell, of course.”

“Did you meet anyone you knew?” he asked.

“I was with Isabella,” she said. “We nodded to a few acquaintances.”

There was the smallest of hesitations. “No one special.”

“Martindale is not special?” he asked quietly. “Or Porchester?”

There was a small pause again. “Someone told you,” she said. “We met them on Oxford Street and they invited us for tea and cakes. I was glad to sit down for half an hour. My feet were sore.”

“Were they?” he said. “You did not look as if you were in pain.”

She looked sharply at him. “You saw us,” she said. “You were there, Allan. Why did you not come inside?”

“And break up the party?” he said. “And make odd numbers? I am more of a sport than that, Estelle.”

“Oh,” she cried, “you are cross. You think that I was doing something I ought not to have been doing. It is quite unexceptionable for two married ladies to take tea with two gentlemen friends at a public confectioner’s. It is too bad of you to imply that it was some clandestine meeting.”

His voice was cold. “One wonders why you decided not to tell me about it if it was so unexceptionable,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, exasperated. “For just this reason, Allan.For just this reason. I knew you would read into it something that just was not there.

It was easier not to tell you at all. And now I have put myself in the wrong. But if you will spy on me, then I suppose you must expect sometimes to be disappointed. Though when I think about that last statement, I don’t suppose you were disappointed. Unless it was over the fact that it was not just me and one of the gentlemen. That would have suited you better, would it not?”

“One is hardly spying on one’s wife by walking along Oxford Street in the middle of the day,” he said.

“Then why did you ask me those questions?” she said. “In the hope that I would lie or suppress the truth? Why did you not simply remark that you had seen me with Isabella and Lord Martindale and Sir Cyril?”

“I should not have had to either ask or make the comment,” he said. “If it was all so innocent, Estelle, you would have come home and told me about the afternoon and your encounters. You find it very easy to talk to all our friends and acquaintances, it seems. You never stop talking when we are out. Yet you have very little to say to me. How can I escape the conclusion sometimes that you have something to hide?”

“What nonsense you speak!” she said. “I have been talking to you tonight, have I not? I talked to you about the concert and you remarked that I had chattered too much. I told you about my Christmas gifts and you suggested that I had spent too much on Nicky. Do you think I enjoy such conversation? Do you think I enjoy always being at fault? I don’t think I am capable of any goodness in your eyes.”

“There is no need to yell,” he said. “We are in a small space and I am not deaf.”

“I am not yelling!” she said. “Oh, yes, I am, and I yell because I choose to do so. And if you were not so odious and so determined to put me in the wrong, you would yell too. I know you have lost your temper.

You speak quietly only so that I will lose mine more.”

“You are a child!” he said coldly. “You have never grown up, Estelle.

That is your trouble.”

“Oh!” she said. And then with a loudly indrawn breath, “I would rather be a child than a marble statue. At least a child has feelings. You have none, do you? Except a fanatical attachment to propriety. You would like a little mouse of a wife to mince along at your side, quiet and obedient and adding to your consequence. You have no human feelings whatsoever.

You are incapable of having any.”

“We had best be quiet,” he said. “We neither of us have anything to say except what will most surely wound the other. Be quiet, Estelle.”

“Oh, yes, lord and master,” she said, her voice suddenly matching his in both volume and temperature. “Certainly, sir. Beg pardon for being alive to disturb you, my lord. Console yourself that you will have to put up with me for only another few weeks. Then I will be gone with Mama and Papa.”

“Something to be looked forward to with eager anticipation,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

They sat side by side for the remainder of the journey home in frigid silence.

Estelle had to keep swallowing against the lump in her throat. It had been another lovely day, though she had seen very little of her husband until the evening, when they had been in company. She had so hoped that they could get to the end of the day without trouble. She had hoped that he would come back to her that night so they might recapture the tenderness of the night before. And they had come so close.

She took his hand as he helped her from the carriage, and tilted her chin up at such an angle that he would know her unappeased. His jaw was set hard and his eyes were cold, she saw in one disdainful glance up at him.

He unlocked the door and stood aside to allow her to precede him into the hallway. Although the coachman had been necessarily kept up very late indeed, all the other servants were in bed. The Earl of Lisle refused to keep them up after midnight when he was perfectly capable of turning a key in a lock. He had explained his strange theories to his butler three years before, on his acquisition of the title and the town house.

Estelle waited in cold silence while he took her cloak and laid it on a hall stand, and picked up a branch of lit candles. But before she could reach out a hand to place on his sleeve so that he might escort her to her room, he set a warning hand on her arm and stood very still, in a listening attitude.

Estelle looked at him questioningly. He handed her the candlestick slowly and without a word, his eyes on a marble statue that stood to one side of the staircase, between the library and his study. A hand gesture told her that she was to stay exactly where she was. He moved silently toward the statue.

A child’s treble wailing broke the silence before the earl reached his destination. The sounds of a child whose heart was breaking.

“What are you doing here?” the earl asked, stopping beside the statue and looking down. His voice was not ungentle.

Estelle hurried across the tiles to his side. Nicky was standing between the statue and the wall, his fists pressed to his eyes, one bare foot scratching the other leg through his breeches.

“I was thirsty,” he said through his sobs. “I got lost.”

The earl stooped down on his haunches. “You wanted a drink of water?” he asked. “Did you not go down the back stairs to the kitchen? How do you come to be here?”

The sobs sounded as if they were tearing the child’s chest in two. “I got lost,” he said eventually.

“Nicky.” The earl reached out a hand and pushed back the boy’s hair from his forehead. “Why did you hide?”

“I got scared,” the boy said. “Are you goin’ ter beat me?” His fists were still pressed to his eyes.

“I told you yesterday that you would not be beaten here, did I not?” the earl said.

Estelle went down on her knees and set the candlestick on the tiled floor. “You are in a strange house and you are frightened,” she said.

“Poor little Nicky. But you are quite safe, you know, and we are not cross with you.” She took the thin, huddled shoulders in her hands and drew the child against her. She patted his back gently while his sobs gradually subsided. She glanced across at her husband. He was still stooped down beside her.

The sobs were succeeded by a noisy and prolonged yawn. The earl and his countess found themselves smiling with some amusement into each other’s eyes.

“Come on,” Estelle said, “we will take you back to your bed, and you shall have your drink.”

“I’ll take him, Estelle,” the earl said, and he stood up, scooping the small child into his arms as he did so. Nicky yawned again.

She picked up the candlestick and preceded them down the stone stairs to the kitchen for a cup of water and up the back stairs to the servants’ quarters and the little room that she had been to once the day before.

She helped a yawning Nicky off with his shirt and on with his nightshirt while her husband removed the child’s breeches.

She smoothed back his hair when he was lying in his bed, looking sleepily up at her. “Sleep now, Nicky,” she said softly. “You are quite safe here and must not be afraid of his lordship and me or of anyone else in the house. Good night.” She stooped down and kissed him on the cheek.

“Bring a cup to bed with you at nights,” the earl said, glancing to the washstand and its full jug of water. “And no more wanderings, Nicky. Go to sleep now. And there must be no more fear of beatings either.” He touched the backs of two fingers to the child’s cheek, and his lips twitched when a loud yawn was his only answer.

The yawning stopped abruptly when his door closed softly behind his new master and mistress. Nicky clasped his hands behind his head and stared rather glumly at the ceiling. Mags would kill him if he didn’t show up with something within the next few days. More to the point, there would be no money for his mother.

But he was, after all, only ten years old. And the hour was something after two in the morning. Sleep overtook him. She smelled like a garden, he thought as he drifted off. Or as he imagined a garden would smell. A really soft touch, of course, as was the governor, for all his stern looks. But she smelled like a garden for all that.

The Earl of Lisle had taken the candlestick from his wife’s hand. He held it high to light their way back to the main part of the house and their own rooms.

Estelle turned to face him when they entered her dressing room. Her eyes were soft and luminous, he saw. They had lost their cold disdain.

“Oh, Allan,” she said, “how my heart goes out to that child. Poor little orphan, with no one to love him and hug him and tuck him into his bed at night.”

“You were doing quite well a few minutes ago,” he said.

There were tears in her eyes. “His is so thin,” she said. “And he was so frightened. Thank you for being gentle with him, Allan. He did not expect you to be.”

“I would not imagine he knows a great deal about gentleness or kindness,” he said.

“He should not be working,” she said. “He should be playing. He should be carefree.”

He smiled. “Children cannot play all the time,” he said. “Even children of our class have their lessons to do. Mrs. Ainsford will not overwork him. If you fear it, you must have a word with her tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said. “I will. How old do you think he is, Allan? He did not know when I asked him.”

“I think a little older than he looks,” he said. “I will see what I can do, Estelle. I need to make a few inquiries.”

Her face brightened. She smiled up at him. “For Nicky?” she said. “You will do something for him? Will you, Allan?”

He nodded and touched her cheek lightly with his knuckles as he had touched the child’s a few minutes before. “Good night,” he said softly, before taking one of the candles and going into his own dressing room.

He shut the door quietly behind him.

Estelle looked at the closed door before beginning to undress herself rather than summon her maid from sleep. She wished fleetingly that she had apologized for calling him a marble statue. He was not. He did have feelings. They had shown in his dealings with Nicky. But what was the point of apologizing? If she could not call him that in all truth, there were a hundred other nasty things she would call him when next he angered her. And his own words and suspicions were unpardonable.

She climbed into bed ten minutes later and tried not to think of the night before. Soon enough she would have to accustom herself to doing without altogether. She needed to sleep anyway. It was very late.

But even before she had found a totally comfortable position in which to lie and quieted her mind for sleep, the door of her dressing room opened and closed and she knew that after all she was not to be alone. Not for a while anyway.

And as soon as he climbed into the bed beside her and touched her face with one hand so that his mouth could find hers in the darkness, she knew that he had not come to her in anger. She put one arm about his strongly muscled chest and opened her mouth to his seeking tongue.

During the week before their guests began to arrive and the Christmas celebrations could begin in earnest, Estelle kept herself happily busy with preparations. Not that there was a great deal for her to do beyond a little extra shopping. She was not the one who cleaned the house from top to bottom or warmed the extra bedrooms and changed their bed linen and generally readied them for the reception of their temporary occupants. She was not the one who would cook and bake all the mounds of extra food.

But she did confer with Mrs. Ainsford about the allocation of rooms and with the cook on the organization of meals. And she insisted, the day before her parents were to arrive, and her husband’s mother, and a few of the other relatives, on decorating the drawing room herself with mounds of holly and crepe streamers and bows and a bunch of mistletoe.

The earl was called in to help, and it was generally he who was having to risk having all his fingers pricked to the bone, he complained, handling the holly and placing it and re-placing it while Estelle stood in the middle of the room, one finger to her chin, directing its exact placement.

But there was not a great deal of rancor in his complaints. There had been no more quarrels since the night of the concert. And Estelle seemed to be happy to be at home, aglow with the anticipation of Christmas. She smiled at him frequently. And he basked in her smiles, pretending to himself that it was he and not the festive season that had aroused them.

“Oh, poor Allan,” she said with a laugh after one particularly loud exclamation of protest as he pricked his finger on a holly leaf. “Do you think you will survive? I will kiss it better if you come over here.”

“I am being a martyr in a good cause,” he said, not looking over his shoulder to note her blush as she realized what she had said.

The mistletoe had to be moved three times before it was in a place that satisfied her. Not over the doorway, she decided on second thought, or everyone would get mortally tired of kissing everyone else, and Allan’s cousin Alma, who was seventeen, with all the giddiness of her age, would be forever in and out of the room. And not over the pianoforte, or only the musical people would ever be kissed.

“This is just right,” she said, standing beneath its final resting place to one side of the fireplace. “Perfect.” She smiled at her husband, and he half smiled back, his hands clasped behind his back. But he did not kiss her.

She made some excuse to see Nicky every day. Mrs. Ainsford would despair of ever training him to be a proper servant, the earl warned her at breakfast one morning when the child had come into the room to bring him his paper, if she persisted in putting her arm about his shoulders whenever he appeared, whispering into his ear, and kissing him on the cheek. And the poor housekeeper would doubtless have an apoplexy if she knew that her mistress was taking a cup of chocolate to the child’s room each night after he was in bed.

But he did not forbid her to do either of those things. For entirely selfish reasons, he admitted to himself. Estelle was happy with the child in the house, and somehow her happiness extended to him, as if he were solely responsible for saving the little climbing boy from a life of drudgery. She smiled at him; her eyes shone at him; she gave him tenderness as well as passion at night.

The Earl of Lisle was not entirely idle as far as his new servant was concerned, though. He had learned during his interview with the chimney sweep, of course, that Nicky was no orphan, but that there was a mother at least and perhaps a father, and probably also some brothers and sisters somewhere in the slums of London. The mother had paid to have the boy apprenticed. The sweep had shrugged when questioned on that point. Someone had probably given her the money. He did not know who, and why should he care?

The mother had not come to protest the ending of the apprenticeship.

Neither had anyone else. His lordship had not tried to penetrate the mystery further. He had decided not to question the child, not to confront him with his lie. Not that first lie, anyway. But the second?

Had Estelle really believed that the boy had been in search of a drink and had gotten lost? Yes, doubtless she had. She had seen only a thin and weeping orphan, alone in the dark.

The earl had still not done anything about the matter five days after the incident. But on the fifth day he entered his study in the middle of the morning to find Nicky close to his desk, his eyes wide and startled.

“Good morning, Nicky,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“I brought the post,” the boy said in his piping voice, indicating the small pile on the desk and making his way to the door.

Lord Lisle did not stand aside. His eyes scanned the desktop. His hands were behind his back. “Where is it, Nicky?” he asked eventually.

“What?” The eyes looked innocently back into his.

“The top of the inkwell,” the earl said. “The silver top.” He held out one hand palm-up.

The child looked at the hand and up into the steady eyes of his master.

He lifted one closed fist slowly and set the missing top in the earl’s outstretched hand. “I was just lookin’ at it,” he said.

“And clutched it in your hand when I came in?”

“I was scared,” the child said, and dropped his head on his chest. He began to cry.

Lord Lisle strolled over to his desk, and sat in the chair behind it.

“Come here, Nicky,” he said.

The boy came and stood before the desk. His sobs were painful to hear.

“Here,” the earl directed. “Come and stand in front of me.”

The child came.

The earl held out a handkerchief. “Dry your eyes and blow your nose,” he said. “And no more crying. Do you understand me? Men do not cry-except under very exceptional circumstances.”

The boy obeyed.

“Now,” the earl said, taking the crumpled handkerchief and laying it on one corner of the desk, “look at me, Nicky.” The boy lifted his eyes to his master’s chin. “I want you to tell me the truth. It must be the truth, if you please. You meant to take the inkwell top?”

“I didn’t think you’d miss it,” the boy said after a pause.

“Have you taken anything else since you have been here?”

“No.” Nicky lifted his eyes imploringly to the earl’s and shook his head. “I ain’t took nothin’ else.”

“But you meant to a few nights ago when we found you outside this door?”

His lordship’s eyes advised the truth. Nicky hung his head. “Nothin’ big,” he said. “Nothin’ you’d miss.”

“What do you do with what you steal, Nicky?” the earl asked.

“I ain’t never stole nothin’ before,” the child whispered.

A firm hand came beneath his chin and lifted it.

“What do you do with what you steal, Nicky?”

The boy swallowed against the strong hand. “Sell it,” he said.

“You must have a lot of money hidden away somewhere then,” the earl said. “In that little bundle of yours, perhaps?”

Nicky shook his head. “I ain’t got no money,” he said.

The earl looked into the frightened eyes and frowned. “The man you sell to,” he said, “is he the same man who apprenticed you to the sweep?”

The eyes grew rounder. The child nodded.

“Who gets the money?” the earl asked.

There was no answer for a while. “Someone,” the boy whispered eventually.

“Your mother, Nicky?”

“Maw’s dead,” the boy said quickly. “I was in the orphanage.”

The earl’s tone was persistent, though not ungentle. “Your mother, Nicky?” he asked again.

The eyes, which were too old for the face, looked back into his. “Paw left,” the child said. “Maw ’ad me an’ Elsie to feed. ’E said we would all ’ave plenty if I done it.”

The earl removed his hand from the child’s chin at last. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers against his mouth. The boy stood before him, his head hanging low, one foot scuffing rhythmically against the carpet.

“Nicky,” Lord Lisle said at last, “I will need to know this man’s name and where he may be found.”

The boy shook his head slowly.

The earl sighed. “Your mother’s direction, then,” he said. “She will perhaps be worried about you. I will need to communicate with her. You will tell me where she may be found. Not now. A little later, perhaps. I want to ask you something. Will you look at me?”

Nicky did so at last.

“Do you like her ladyship?” the earl asked.

The child nodded. And since some words seemed to be required of him in response, he said, “She’s pretty.” And when his master still did not say anything, “She smells pretty.”

“Would you want her to know that I found you with the silver top in your hand?” the earl asked.

The child shook his head.

“Neither would I,” the earl said. “We are in entire agreement on that.

What do you think she would do if she knew?”

Nicky swallowed. “She would cry,” he said.

“Yes, she would,” the earl agreed gently. “Very hard and very bitterly.

She will not be told about this, Nicky. But if it happens again, perhaps she would have to know. Perhaps she would be the one to discover you. I don’t want that to happen. Her ladyship is more important to me that anyone or anything else in this life. Do you know what a promise is?”

The child nodded.

“Do you keep your promises?”

Another nod.

“Are you able to look me in the eye and promise me that you will never steal again, no matter how small the object and no matter how little it will be missed?” Lord Lisle looked gravely and steadily back into the child’s eyes when he looked up.

Another nod.

“In words, Nicky, if you please.”

“Yes, guv’nor,” he whispered.

“Good man. You may leave now.” But before the child could turn to go, the earl set a hand on his head and shook it slightly. “I am not angry with you,” he said. “And you must remember that we are now in a conspiracy together to make her ladyship happy.”

He removed his hand, and the child whisked himself from the room without further ado. Lord Lisle stared at the door for a long while.

Estelle was not entirely pleased with the ring when she returned to the jeweler’s to fetch it. It was very beautiful, of course, but she did not think she would have called it the Star of Bethlehem if this had been the one Allan had put on her finger. The diamond no longer looked like a star in a night sky. She did not know why. It was surely no larger or no smaller than the other had been, and yet it looked more prominent. It did not nestle among the sapphires.

But no matter. She had not expected it to look the same, anyway. There could be no real substitute for the original ring. This one would serve its purpose-perhaps. She took it home and packed it away with the rest of her gifts.

The following day the guests would begin to arrive. She would see her parents for the first time in six months. She had missed them. And everyone else would be coming, too, either on the same day or within the few days following. And Christmas would begin.

She was going to enjoy it more than any other Christmas in her life. It might be her last with Allan. The last during which they would be truly husband and wife, anyway. And though panic grabbed at her stomach when she thought of what must happen when the holiday was over and Mama and Papa began to talk about returning home, she would not think of that.

She wanted a Christmas to remember.

The Earl of Lisle was no better pleased with his ring. He knew as soon as he saw it that the original must have had nine sapphires. The arrangement of eight just did not look right. They did not look like a night sky with a single star shining from it.

But it did not matter. Nothing could look quite like the Star of Bethlehem, and this ring was lovely. Perhaps she would know that it was not meant to be a substitute, but something wholly new. Perhaps. He wrapped the little velvet box and carried it about with him wherever he went.

Nicky, in the meanwhile, was feeling somewhat uncomfortable, for several reasons. There was the whole question, for example, of what Mags would do with him if he could get his hands about his throat. And what his new master would do with him if he caught him thieving again. Nicky had the uncomfortable feeling that it would not be a whipping, which would be easy to bear. The governor would force him to look into his eyes for a start, and that would be worse than a beating. He was proving to be not such a soft touch after all.

Then, of course, there was his mother. And Elsie. Were they starving?

Was Mags bothering them? He knew what Mags did to help girls to a living. But Elsie was not old enough yet. Nicky did not know what he would do, short of abandoning his family to their fate. Nothing had been said about any money in this new position of his. Plenty of clothes and food, yes, and very light work.But no money.

There was, of course, the shiny shilling the lady had given him the first night she came to him with a cup of chocolate. Nicky had never seen so much money all at once. But he couldn’t give that to his mother.

He needed it for something else.

And that brought him to the nastiest problem of all. That ring and that diamond almost burned a hole in his stomach every day, pressed between the band of his breeches and his skin as they always were. He couldn’t sell them to Mags now. It would seem like breaking his promise, though the things were already stolen when he had been forced to look into his master’s eyes and make the promise, and though he had never thought of keeping a promise before.

And he couldn’t put them back in the lady’s room, though he had thought of doing so. Because she would tell the governor and he would know the truth. He was a real sharper, he was. And he would not whip or even scold. He would look with those eyes. He might even put a hand on his head again and make him squirm with guilt.

There was only one thing he could think of doing. And that would mean leaving his room again during the night, and the house, after the lady had brought him his chocolate and kissed him and allowed him to breathe in the scent of her. And the governor might catch him and look at him.

And the stupid clothes he would be forced to wear would draw ruffians like bees to a honey pot. And Ned Chandler might refuse to help him at the end of it all and might not believe where he had got the things and what he meant to do with them.

Nicky sighed. Sometimes life was very hard. Sometimes he wished he were all grown up already so that he would know without any difficulty at all what was what. And he was getting used to a warm and comfortable bed and to a full night’s sleep. He did not particularly want to be prancing about the meaner streets of London at an hour when no one would ever hear of him again if he were nabbed.

Ned Chandler had been a jeweler of sorts at one time. He still had the tools of his trade and still mended trinkets for anyone who came to ask and dropped a few coins his way. Nicky, as a very small child, had often crept into the man’s hovel and sat cross-legged and openmouthed on the floor watching him when he was busy.

It was doubtful that Chandler had ever held in his hands a gold ring of such quality set with nine sapphires of such dark luster, and a diamond that must be worth a fortune in itself.

“Where did you get these ’ere, lad?” he asked in the middle of one particular night, not at all pleased at having been dragged from his slumbers and his two serviceable blankets. He held the ring in one hand, the diamond in the other.”

“It belongs to my guv’nor’s missus,” the child said. “I’m ’avin’ it mended for ’er. She sent me. She sent me a shillin’.”

“A shillin’?” The former jeweler frowned. “And sent yer in the middle of the night, did she?”

Nicky nodded.

“Did you steal these ’ere?” Chandler asked grimly. “I’ll whip the skin off yer backside if you did.”

Nicky began to cry. His tears were perhaps somewhat more genuine than was usual with him. “She’s pretty,” he said, “an’ she smells like a garden, an’ she brings me choc’lut when I’m in bed. An’ I’m ’avin’ it mended for ’er.”

“But she didn’t send yer, lad.” It was a statement, not a question.

Nicky shook his head. “It’s to be a surprise,” he said. “Honest, Mr.

Chandler. She lost the di’mond, an’ she cried, an’ I found it. I’m ’avin’ it mended for ’er. I’ll give you a shillin’.”

“I’ll do it,” Ned Chandler said with a sudden decision, looking ferociously down at the tiny child from beneath bushy eyebrows with a gaze that reminded Nicky uncomfortably of the earl. “But if I ’ear tell of a lady wot ’ad a ring stole, Nick, lad, I’ll find yer and whip yer backside. Understood?”

“Yes.” Nicky watched in silent concentration as the jeweler’s tools were unwrapped from an old rag and the diamond replaced in the ring.

“You can keep yer shillin’,” the man said, tousling the boy’s hair when the mended ring had been carefully restored to its hiding place. “And you make sure to give that ring back, lad. Don’t you be tempted to keep it, or I’ll be after yer, mind.”

“Take the money,” the boy said, holding out his treasure, “or it won’t be my present. Please?”

The man chuckled suddenly. “Well,” he said. “I’ll take it, ’cos it shows me yer must be honest. Off with yer then, lad. Be careful on your way back.”

Nicky grinned cheekily at him and was gone.

Christmas Eve. It had always been Estelle’s favorite day of the season.

It was on Christmas Day, of course, that the gifts were opened and that one feasted and sat around all day enjoying the company of one’s family.

But there had always been something magical about Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve there was all the anticipation of Christmas.

And this year was to be no exception. There was all the hustle and bustle of the servants and all the tantalizing smells coming from the kitchen, that of the mince pies being the most predominant. And there was Alma pretending to forget a dozen times during the day that the mistletoe was hanging in that particular spot, and standing beneath it.

Especially when Estelle’s unmarried brother, Rodney, happened to be in the room.

And there was Papa working everyone’s excitement to fever pitch, as he did every year, with hints dropped about the presents, hints that stopped just short of telling one exactly what the gift was. And Mama sitting with her needlepoint having a comfortable coze with Allan’s mother. And the children rushing about getting under everyone’s feet, and their parents threatening halfheartedly to banish them to the nursery even if it was Christmas.

And the men playing billiards. And the girls whispering and giggling.

And Papa tickling any child who was unwise enough to come within arms length of him.And Allan relaxed and smiling, playing the genial host.

And Nicky following the tea tray into the drawing room with a plate of cakes and pastries, looking fit enough to eat himself, and the pleased way he puffed out his chest when Estelle caught his eye and smiled and winked at him.

And the group of carolers who came to the door before the family went to church and were invited inside the hall and stood there and sang, their cheeks rosy from the cold outside, their lanterns still lit and in their hands. And the noisy and cheerful exchange of season’s greetings before they left again.

And the quiet splendor of the church service after the hectic day.And the Christmas music.And the Bible readings.And Bethlehem.And the star.And the birth of the baby, the birth of Christ.

And suddenly the meaning of it all, the quiet and breathless moment in the middle of all the noisy festivities surrounding it.

The birth of Christ.

Estelle was seated beside her husband, their arms almost touching. She looked at him, and he looked back. And they smiled at each other.

The drawing room was noisy again when they went back home, even though the children had been put to bed before they went to church. But finally the adults too began to yawn and make their way upstairs. After all, someone said, it would be a terrible tragedy if they were too tired to enjoy the goose the next day.

Estelle smiled rather regretfully at her husband when they were alone together. “It’s going so quickly,” she said. “One more day and it will all be over.”

“But there are always more Christmases,” he said.

“Yes.” Her smile did not brighten.

“Are you tired, Estelle?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Mm,” she said. “But I don’t want the day to end. It has been lovely, Allan, hasn’t it?”

“Come and sit down,” he said, seating himself on a love seat. “I want to tell you about Nicky.”

“About Nicky?” She frowned. And Allan wanted to talk to her?

One of his arms was draped along the back of the love seat, though he did not touch her when she sat down beside him. “I have been making some plans for him,” he said. “I spoke with him in my study this morning. He seemed quite agreeable.”

“Plans?” Estelle looked wary. “You are not going to send him away, Allan? Not another apprenticeship? Oh, please, no. He is too young.”

“He is going to live with his mother and his sister,” he said.

She looked her incomprehension.

“I am glad to say the orphanage was a fabrication,” he said. “To win your sympathy, I do believe.”

“He lied to me?” she said. “He has a family?”

“I am afraid he became the victim of a villainous character,” he told her gently. “Someone who was willing to set him up in life, buy his apprenticeship to a chimney sweep in exchange for stolen items from the houses that a climbing boy would have access to.”

Estelle’s eyes were wide with horror. She did not even notice her husband take one of her hands in his.

“I told him I would not tell you,” he said. “But I have decided to do so, knowing that you will not blame Nicky or think the worst of him. I caught him at it a week ago, Estelle, though I already had my suspicions.”

She bit her upper lip. There were tears in her eyes.

“The money from his stolen goods-or some fraction of it-was going to the upkeep of his mother and sister,” he said. “It seems the father took himself off some time ago.”

“Oh, the poor baby,” she whispered.

“I have spoken with the mother.” He was massaging her hand, which had turned cold, in both of his. “I had her brought here yesterday. I had from her the name of the villain who has been exploiting the child in this way and have passed it on with some pertinent information to the appropriate authorities. Enough of that. To cut a long story short, the mother has agreed that she would consider life in a country cottage as washerwoman to our house as little short of heaven. Nicky confessed this morning to a lifelong ambition to own a horse. I have suggested that he may enjoy working in our stables-when he is not at school, of course.

Somehow he was not nearly so enthusiastic about the idea of school.”

“So he is to live on your estate with his mother?” she asked.

“Yes.” He raised her hand to his lips, and this time she did notice as she saw it there and felt his lips warm against her fingers. “Do you think it a good solution, Estelle? Are you pleased?” He looked almost anxious.

“And you did all this without a word to me?” she asked in some wonder.

“You did it to save me some pain, Allan? Did you do it for me?”

His smile was a little twisted. “I must confess to a certain fondness for the little imp,” he said. “But yes, Estelle. I thought it might make you happy. Does it?”

“Yes.” She leaped to her feet in some agitation and stood quite unwittingly beneath the mistletoe.

He said nothing for a few moments, but he got to his feet eventually and came to stand behind her. He set his hands on her shoulders. “Now this is an invitation impossible to resist,” he said, lowering his head and kissing the back of her neck.

She turned quickly and stared at him in some amazement. He had never-ever-held her or kissed her outside her bed. She had not even quite realized that he was so tall and that he would feel thus against her-strong and warm and very safe.

He lowered his head, and his mouth came down open on hers.

And how could a kiss when one was standing and fully clothed and in a public room that might possibly be entered by someone else at any moment seem every bit as erotic as any of the kisses they had shared in bed, when his hands were beneath her nightgown against her naked flesh and when his body was in intimate embrace with hers?

But it was so. She felt an aching weakness spiral downward from her throat to her knees.

When he removed his mouth from hers, it was only to set his forehead against her own and gaze downward at her lips.

“I want to give you your gift tonight,” he said. “Now. I want to do it privately. No one else would understand. May I?”

Her senses were swimming, but she smiled at him. “I feel the same way about mine to you,” she said. “Yes, now, tonight, Allan.Just the two of us.” She ran across the room to where they had all piled their gifts and came back to him with a small parcel in her hands. He had removed his from a pocket.

“Open mine first,” he said, and he watched her face as she did so. They were both still standing very close together, underneath the mistletoe.

“It is not the original,” he said quickly as she opened the velvet box.

“It is not nearly as lovely. There were nine sapphires, were there not?

I could not remember, but these do not look right. But I want you to have it anyway. Will you, Estelle? Will you wear it?” He took it from the box and slid it onto her nerveless finger.

“Allan!” she whispered. “But why?”

He was not sure he could explain. He had never been good with words.

Especially with her. “You called it the Star of Bethlehem,” he said. “I always loved that name, because it suggested Christmas and love and peace and hope. All the things I have ever wanted for you. And with you.

I felt I could only tell you with the ring. Never in words.Until now.”

He laughed softly. “It must be the mistletoe. I am not the man for you, Estelle. You are so beautiful, so full of life. So… glittering! I have always envied those other men and wanted to be like them. And I have been horribly jealous and tried to make your life a misery. But I have not meant to. And after Christmas you can go away with your parents, and no one will know that we are separated. There will be no stigma on your name. But you will be free of my taciturn and morose presence.” He smiled fleetingly. “My marble-statue self. But perhaps the ring will help you to remember me a little more kindly. Will it?”

“Allan!” She whispered his name. And looked down at the ring on her finger, the ring that was not the Star of Bethlehem, but that she knew would be just as precious to her. And she noticed the parcel lying forgotten in her hands. She held it out to him. “Open yours.”

He was disappointed that she said no more. He tried to keep his hands from trembling as he opened her gift.

He stood smiling down at the silver snuffbox with its turquoise-studded lid a moment later. “It is the very one I could not persuade Humber to sell me,” he said. “You succeeded, Estelle? You remembered that I wanted it for my collection? Thank you, my dear. I will always treasure it.”

But she was looking anxiously into his eyes. “Open it,” she said. “There is something else inside. It is not really a present. I mean, it is not for you. It fits me. But I lost the other-yes, I did, Allan. I lost it all, though I have been afraid to tell you. But I wanted you to have this so that you would know that I did not do so carelessly.”

He lifted the lid of the snuffbox and stood staring down at a diamond ring set with nine sapphires. He looked up at her, his eyes wide and questioning.

“I didn’t mean to lose it,” she said. “I have broken my heart over it, Allan. It was my most treasured possession. Because it was your first gift to me, and because at the time I thought it was a symbol of what our marriage would be. And because I spoiled that hope by going about a great deal with my friends when I might have stayed with you, and by flirting quite deliberately with other men when you were so quiet and never told me that I meant anything to you. Because I wanted you to know that my behavior has never shown my true sentiments. Those other men have meant nothing whatsoever to me. I have never allowed any of them to touch more than my fingers. You are the only person-the only one, Allan-who occupies the center of my world. The only one I can’t bear to think of spending my life without.

“Because I wanted you to keep the ring when you send me away after Christmas, so that perhaps you will come to know that I love you and only you. And so that perhaps you will want to bring me home again someday and put it on my finger again.” She flashed him a nervous smile.

“I have given it to you, you see, in the hope that you will give it back to me one day. Now, is that not the perfect gift?”

He lifted the ring from the snuffbox, slipped the box into a pocket, and took her right hand in his. He slid the ring onto her third finger and looked up into her face. “Perfect,” he said. “Now you have two gifts and I have one. I do not need to keep the ring for even one minute, you see, Estelle.”

The look in his eyes paralyzed her and held her speechless.

“It is the most wonderful gift I have ever had,” he said. “It is yourself you are giving me, is it not, Estelle?”

She nodded mutely.

“Come, then,” he said. “Give me your second and most precious gift.”

She moved into his arms and laid one cheek against his broad shoulder.

She closed her eyes and relaxed all her weight against him.

“Do you understand that my gift is identical to yours in all ways?” he murmured against her ear.

“Yes.” She did not open her eyes or raise her head. She lifted her hand to touch his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “Except that your ring has only eight sapphires.”

He laughed softly.

“You love me, Allan?” She closed her eyes even more tightly.

“I always have,” he said. “I knew it the moment I put the Star of Bethlehem on your finger two years ago. I am not good at showing it, am I?”

She raised her head suddenly and gazed into his eyes. “How is it possible,” she said, “for two people to be married for almost two years and live close to each other all that time and really not know each other at all?”

He smiled ruefully. “It is rather frightening, is it not?” he said. “But think of what a wonderful time we have ahead of us, Estelle. I have so much to tell you, if I can find the words. And there is so much I want to know about you.”

“I may find too many words,” she said. “You know that I can’t be stopped once I start, Allan.”

“But always to other people before,” he said. “Very rarely to me, because you must have thought that I did not want to hear. Oh, Estelle.”

He hugged her to him and rocked her.

Her arms were wrapped about his chest. She held up her two hands behind his back and giggled suddenly. “I love my two presents,” she said. “One on each hand. But I love the third present even more, Allan. The one I hold in my arms.”

“This was an inspired choice of location for mistletoe,” he said, kissing her again. “Perhaps we should take it upstairs with us, Estelle, and hang it over the bed.”

She flushed as she smiled back at him. “We have never needed any there,” she said.

He took her right hand in his, smiled down in some amusement at his Christmas present, which he had placed there, and drew her in the direction of the door and the stairs and-for the first time in their married life-his own bedchamber.

The servants had been called into the drawing room to receive their Christmas gifts, the cook first, as she flatly refused to abandon her kitchen for longer than five minutes at the very most.

The Earl of Lisle allowed his wife to distribute the presents, contenting himself with shaking each servant’s hand warmly and conversing briefly with each. He wondered if he was looking quite as glowingly happy as Estelle was looking this morning. But he doubted it.

No one was capable of glowing quite like her.

Anyway, it was against his nature to show his feelings on the outside.

He doubtless looked as humorless and taciturn as ever, he reflected somewhat ruefully, making a special effort to smile at one of the scullery maids, who clearly did not quite know where to put herself when it became clear that she was expected to place her hand into that of her employer, whom she rarely saw.

But, the earl thought, startling the girl by asking if she had quite recovered from the chill that had kept her in bed for two days the week before and so showing her that he knew very well who she was, it was impossible-quite impossible-for Estelle to be feeling any happier than he was feeling. He hoped that she was as happy as he, but she could not be more so.

For he knew that the glow and the sparkle in her that had caused all attention to be focused on her since she had appeared in the breakfast room before they all adjourned to the drawing room to open their gifts-he knew that he had been the cause of it all. She glowed because he loved her and had told her so and shown her so all through what had remained of the night when they had gone to bed.

Indeed, it was amazing that she was not yawning and that she did not have dark rings beneath her eyes to tell the world that she had scarce had one wink of sleep all night. When they had not been making love, they had been talking. They had both tried to cram a lifetime of thoughts and feelings and experiences into one short night of shared confidences. And when they had paused for breath, then they had used even more breath in making love to each other and continuing their conversation in the form of love murmurings and unremembered nonsense.

It seemed that the only time they had nodded off to sleep had been just before his valet had come into his room from the dressing room, as he always did, to pull back the curtains from the windows. It was fortunate that the time of year was such that the earl had covered Estelle up to the neck with blankets, because she did not have a stitch on beneath the covers any more than he did.

Poor Higgins had frozen to the spot when he had glanced to the bed and seen his master only barely conscious, his cheek resting on a riot of tumbled dark curls. The poor man had literally backed out of the room.

Estelle, fortunately, had slept through the encounter until he woke her with his kisses a few minutes later. And he had gazed in amusement and wonder at the blush that had colored her face and neck-after two years of marriage.

Estelle had just given Nicky his present and, child that he was, he had to open it right there. She sat down close to where he stood, one arm about his thin waist, heedless of the presence of all her guests and many of the other servants. She looked into his face with a smile and watched his look of wide-eyed wonder and his dropped jaw as he saw his watch for the first time.

She laughed with delight. “It is a watch for you, Nicky,” she said, “so that you will always know what time of day it is. Do you know how to tell time?”

“No, missus,” he said in his treble voice, his eyes on his new treasure.

“Then I shall teach you,” she said, hugging him and kissing his cheek.

“And when you move to the country with your mama and your sister, you will know when it is time to come to the stables to groom the horses, and when it is time to go home from school. Happy Christmas, sweetheart.”

He traced the silver frame of the watch with one finger, as if he were not quite sure that it was real.

“His lordship and I will be going into the country after Christmas too,” she said. “We will meet your mama and your sister. What is her name?”

“Elsie,” he said, and then added hastily, “missus.”

“You will want to run along,” she said, kissing his cheek again. “I hear that one of the footmen is to accompany you and carry a basket of food to your mama and then go back for you tonight. Do have a lovely day.”

“But he don’t need to come for me,” the child said with some spirit, “I know the way.”

Estelle smiled, and the earl held out his hand gravely. “Happy Christmas, Nicky,” he said. “Her ladyship and I are very happy that you have come to us.”

The child forced his eyes up to the dreaded ones of his master, but he saw nothing but a twinkling kindness there. He turned to leave, but at the last moment whisked a crumpled rag out from the band of his breeches and almost shoved it into Estelle’s hands.

“For you,” he said, and was gone from the room before she could react at all.

“Oh, Allan, he has given me his seashell,” she said to her husband in some distress before being caught up again in the noise and bustle of the morning.

An hour passed before there was a lull enough that the Earl of Lisle could take his wife by the hand and suggest into her ear that they disappear for half an hour. She picked up the half-forgotten rag as they were leaving the room.

“I wished you a happy Christmas very early this morning under the mistletoe,” he said with a smile when the study door was safely closed behind them, “and early this morning after I had quite finished waking you. But I feel the need to say it again. Happy Christmas, Estelle.” He lifted her hands one at a time to his lips, kissing first the ring he had given her, and then the one she had given him. “We have established an undying reputation for eccentricity, I believe, with two almost identical rings, one on each of your hands.”

“They are identical in meaning too,” she said, gripping his hands and stretching up to kiss him on the lips. “Allan, what am I to do with this seashell? He has treasured it so much.”

“He really wanted to give it to you,” he said. “Let’s have a look at it, shall we?”

They both stood speechless a few moments later, their foreheads almost touching as they gazed down at the Star of Bethlehem nestled on her palm inside the rag. And then their foreheads did touch and Estelle closed her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, after a lengthy silence during which neither of them seemed able to find quite the right words to say, “was there ever such a Christmas, Allan?”

“What I am wondering,” he said in a voice that sounded surprisingly normal considering the emotion that had held them speechless, “is where we are to find another finger to put it on.”

“I see how it is,” she said, clasping ring and rag in one hand and lifting both arms up about his neck. She made no attempt to suggest a solution to the problem he had posed. “The Wise Men lost the star too for a while, but when they found it again, it was over Bethlehem, and they found also everything they had ever been looking for. Oh, Allan, that has happened to us too. It has, hasn’t it? What would we have ever done if Nicky had not come into our lives?”

He did not answer her. He kissed her instead.

She giggled suddenly after he had lifted his head. “I have just had a thought,” she said. “A thoroughly silly thought. Nicky came down a chimney and brought us a Christmas happier than any our dreams could have devised.”

He laughed with her. “But I don’t think even our wildest dreams could convey sainthood on Nicky,” he said. “I don’t think he can possibly be the real Saint Nicholas, Estelle. Would a real saint steal both a diamond and a ring, as Nicky of the sharp eyes obviously did, be smitten by a pretty lady who smells pretty, and have the ring mended by some devious means? I think it will be entirely better for my digestion if I don’t investigate that last point too closely, though doubtless I will feel obliged to do just that tomorrow. The little imp. Perhaps he is Saint Nicholas after all. Now, do you suppose we should go back upstairs to our guests?”

She hesitated and brushed at an imaginary speck of lint on his shoulder and passed a nervous tongue over her lips.

“What is it?” he asked.

She flushed and kept her eyes on his shoulder. “I have another gift for you,” she said. “At least, I am not sure about it, though I am almost sure. And I suppose I should not offer it as a gift until I am certain.

But by that time Christmas will be over. And it is such a very special Christmas that I have become greedy and want to make it even more so.”

He laughed softly. “Suppose you give it to me,” he said, “and let me decide if it a worthy offering or not.”

She raised her eyes to his and flushed a deeper shade. “I can’t actually give it to you for a little more than seven months,” she said. “That is, if I am right about it, anyway. But I think I must be, Allan, because it has been almost a whole month now.”

“Estelle?” He was whispering.

“I think it must be right,” she said, wrapping her arms about his neck again, “because I am never late except perhaps by a day or two. And I think I have felt a little dizzy and nauseated some mornings when getting out of bed, though that could, of course, be wishful thinking. I think I am with child, Allan. I think so. After almost two years. Can it be true, do you think?”

He did not even attempt to answer her question. He caught her up in a hug that seemed designed to crush every bone in her body, and in the body of their child too. He pressed his face to her neck. Hers was hidden against his shoulder.

For the next several minutes it was doubtful that Estelle was the only one without dry eyes. It seemed that men did sometimes cry-in very exceptional circumstances.