Under the Mistletoe

The Best Gift

“Christmas is an unutterable bore,” Lady Enid Penn said with an affected sigh. “There is positively no one with whom to amuse oneself except parents and aunts and uncles and cousins by the score and nothing to do except feast and make merry-with one’s own family!”

There was a murmur of sympathetic agreement from several other young ladies.

“I shall simply die,” the Honorable Miss Elspeth Lynch informed her listeners, “if the Worsleys remain in town for the holiday, as they did last year, instead of returning home. Patricia Worsley is my dearest bosom friend, and Howard Worsley is… well, he is interesting.” She looked around archly at her companions, who tittered on cue.

“If one were only sixteen instead of fifteen,” the Honorable Miss Deborah Latimer said, adding her sigh to everyone else’s. “One’s parents and aunts and uncles and all their friends have a wonderful time dancing and partaking of the wassail bowl and staying up almost until dawn while one is banished to the nursery and to bed with the children.”

“And what about you, Craggs?” Lady Enid turned her head to look at the lady who had sat silently writing at her desk while they talked. “Do you find Christmas a bore, too? Or do you have wonderfully exciting plans?

You are older than sixteen, after all.”

The other young ladies tittered again, though there was an edge of cruelty to their laughter this time.

“Do you have dozens of beaux, Craggs? Do tell,” Miss Lynch said, widening her eyes.

Miss Jane Craggs looked up from the journal in which she was writing.

Although it was homework hour and school rules stated quite categorically that it was to be a silent hour, she was not enforcing the rule this evening. It was the last day of school before Christmas.

Tomorrow all the girls would be going home, most of them with their parents or with liveried servants in sumptuous carriages.

“I believe it would be something of an exaggeration, Elspeth, to count my beaux in the dozens,” she said. “Besides, a lady never does tell, you know.”

“But you are not a lady, Craggs,” one of the younger girls said.

But she won only frowns for her witticism. Everyone knew that Jane Craggs was not a lady, that she had spent most of her life at Miss Phillpotts’s school for young ladies, her board and education paid for by an unknown benefactor-undoubtedly her father-until she was seventeen, that she had stayed on afterward as a teacher, though Miss Phillpotts treated her more as a servant than as an instructor. All the girls took their cue from the headmistress. The names of all their teachers were preceded by “Miss” except for Craggs. They treated her with a condescension bordering sometimes on insolence. But there was an undefined borderline beyond which they would not go. It was unladylike to remind Craggs in words that she was no lady.

“I believe,” Jane Craggs said, closing her journal and getting to her feet, “we will make a concession to the approaching holiday and end homework hour five minutes early. Would anyone care to argue the point?”

There was relieved laughter and some enthusiastic cheering from the young ladies, who jumped to their feet and made for the door.

“Happy Christmas, Craggs,” Deborah Latimer said as she was leaving the room.

Jane Craggs smiled at her and returned the greeting.

She sat down again when she was alone and began deliberately to clean and mend the pen she had been using. And she tried to ignore the knowledge that Christmas was approaching-an impossibility, of course.

No one with whom to amuse oneself except aunts and uncles and cousins and parents.Nothing to do but feast and make merry with one’s family members. Such a Christmas was unutterably boring? Jane felt rather like crying, and ruthlessly suppressed the feeling. If only she could once-just once in her life-experience such a Christmas.

She had always hated Christmas. As a child and as a young girl she had also dreaded it. Dreaded the aloneness, with which she had always lived every day of the year but that always assaulted her most cruelly at Christmas. Dreaded the emptiness. Dreaded the excitement of the other girls as they prepared to go home and waited for family members or servants to come and fetch them. Dreaded the departure of Miss Phillpotts and the teachers until she was quite alone in the school with the few servants who were kept on for the holidays-always, it seemed, the most humorless of the servants.

Now she was three-and-twenty years old. The dread had gone. But the aloneness, the loneliness, the emptiness had not. She had heard and read so much about Christmas. For her there had never been family-she understood that she had spent her early years in an orphanage, a rather expensive one. She believed, though she did not know for sure, that her mother had been a nobody, perhaps a whore, while her father had been a wealthy man who had agreed to support her until she was old enough to support herself. And so there had never been family for her and never Christmas gifts or Christmas parties.

Sometimes she had to remind herself that her name was Jane. A rather plain name, it was true, but her own. She heard it so rarely on anyone’s lips that she could not remember the last time. It seemed singularly unfortunate to her that someone-her mother, she supposed-had blessed her with the surname of Craggs.

As a child she had dreamed of Christmas, and the dream had lingered even though she had passed the age of dreams. But did one ever pass the age of dreams? Would life be supportable if one could not dream?

She had dreamed of a large house with three stories in which every window blazed with light. It was always twilight and there was snow outside blanketing the ground and making of the trees and their branches magical creations. Inside there was a large hall, three stories high, with two large fireplaces crackling with log fires, the hall decked out in greenery and bows for the season. It was a house filled with people.

Happy, beautiful people. All of whom loved her. All of whom she loved.

As a child she had even given names and faces and personalities to all those people. And in her imagination she had bought or made special gifts for each of them and had received gifts in return.

In her dream there was always a carved Nativity scene in the window of the drawing room, and it was always the focal point of family celebrations. The family always went to church on Christmas Eve, trudging through the snow to get there, filling a number of the pews.

They always ran and laughed and ambushed one another with snowballs and rolled one another in the snow on the way home.

The contrast between dream and reality had been almost unbearable when she was a child. Now it was bearable. Jane tidied the already tidy teacher’s desk, picked up her journal, her best friend, and clasped it with both hands against her bosom as she left the study room to climb the stairs to her small attic room. Now she was old enough to know that Christmas Day was just a day on the calendar like all others, that it would pass, that before she knew it the teachers and girls would be returning for the spring term. She had learned to be sensible.

She lit a candle in her room, shivered, and began to undress. Oh, no, she had not-she had not learned to be sensible. And it had not become bearable. It had not, it had not.

But she had learned to pretend to be sensible. And she had learned to pretend that it was bearable. She had learned to hold on to her childish dreams.

To say that he was feeling annoyed was to understate the case. He disliked Christmas. He had disliked it for most of his adult years. It was all just a parcel of nonsense as far as he was concerned. He liked to remove himself from town and all other centers of merriment well before the collective madness set in and take himself off to Cosway, his country seat, where he could wait out the season in quietness and sanity.

The trouble was that his family knew it and saw him as being available to care for unwanted relatives. Not that it had ever happened before, it was true, but it was happening this year, and he knew that it would happen again, that he was setting a trend this year that he would regret forever after. His sister and brother-in-law had decided entirely on the spur of the moment to spend Christmas with friends in Italy and had disposed of the minor inconvenience of a fifteen-year-old daughter by informing him-yes, Susannah had told him, not asked him-that she would spend Christmas with him at Cosway.

What, in the name of all that was wonderful, was he going to do with a fifteen-year-old niece for a few weeks? And at Christmas, of all times?

What he would do, he had decided at once, having neglected the obvious solution of telling his elder sister that she must change her plans, that he just would not do it-what he would do was enlist the help of someone else. Some female who had no other plans for Christmas.Someone who would be pleased enough to spend it at Cosway, keeping Deborah out of mischief. And out of his way.

Agatha, in fact. But Agatha, his maiden aunt, had been invited to spend the week of Christmas with her dear friends, the Skinners, in Bath, and while she hated to inconvenience her dear nephew and great-niece, she really could not disappoint the Skinners this close to Christmas.

When Viscount Buckley descended from his carriage outside Miss Phillpotts’s school and had himself announced to speak with the headmistress herself, he was scowling. And his mood matched his expression exactly.

“Deborah will be very delighted to learn that her uncle, the viscount, has come in person to convey her home for the holidays, my lord,” Miss Phillpotts said to him, smiling graciously.

His lordship sincerely doubted it. Especially when the child discovered that her parents had taken themselves off to Italy without a word to her. He felt sorry for the girl, if the truth were known. But he felt sorrier for himself.

“I suppose, ma’am,” he said, without allowing himself to feel even the faintest glimmering of hope, “that there is not another young lady at the school who has nowhere to go for the holiday? Someone who could come with my niece and be company for her over Christmas?”

“I am afraid not, my lord,” the headmistress said. “All our girls will be leaving today.”

The viscount sighed. “It was a faint hope,” he said. “I am not much in practice as far as entertaining very young ladies is concerned, ma’am.”

Or as far as celebrating Christmas was concerned. And Deborah would doubtless want to celebrate it. Damn!

“It is indeed kind of you to be willing to extend your hospitality to another young lady,” Miss Phillpotts said. “But the only person who will be remaining at the school apart from three servants is Miss Craggs.”

Miss Craggs sounded like an elderly tyrant. But Viscount Buckley was somewhat desperate. “Miss Craggs?” he said.

“One of my teachers,” Miss Phillpotts explained.

Undoubtedly a tyrant.Poor Deborah. She would probably hate him forever for asking the question he was about to ask.

“Is there any possibility,” he asked, “that she would be willing to accompany us to Cosway?”

“I believe she would be delighted, my lord,” the headmistress told him.

“Shall I send her down to you? I see that Sir Humphrey Byrde’s carriage has arrived.” She glanced toward the window, which looked down onto a cobbled courtyard. “I should go to greet him.”

The viscount bowed his acquiescence and wandered to the window while Miss Phillpotts left the room to see another of her pupils on her way.

Damn Susannah and Miles! How could they think of going off to Italy for Christmas when they had a young daughter to care for? And how could they think of leaving her with him when they knew he did not celebrate Christmas? But then Susannah had always been the flighty, selfish one, quite different from their other two sisters. She was the youngest of the three and by far the most beautiful.

He had a suspicion that Susannah had never wanted children.

He thought briefly of his own child. Had he reminded his secretary to send her a gift? But then Aubrey would remember without a reminder. Part of his job was to remember what his employer was likely to forget.

He turned when the door opened behind him. She was not elderly, and despite her name, she did not look like a tyrant.

“Miss Craggs?” he said.

She inclined her head.

She was not elderly at all. She was probably five or six years younger than he, in fact. She was rather tall, and slender almost to the point of thinness. She had a rather thin, pale face, with fair hair smoothed back into a bun at her neck. Her gray dress was of cheap fabric and was high-waisted but made no other concession to fashion. Only her eyes saved her from being so nondescript that she might have faded entirely into her surroundings. Her eyes were dark gray and long-lashed. And they appeared to have such depth that he had the strange feeling that most of her living must be done very far within herself.

“Miss Craggs.” He took a few steps toward her. “I understand that you will be staying here for Christmas?”

“Yes, my lord.” Her voice was unexpectedly low and soft.

“You are expecting company?” he asked. “There would be someone to miss you if you were not here?”

Her face did not change expression. And yet he was given the impression that far within herself, where her living was done, she grimaced. “No, my lord,” she said.

“I am Deborah Latimer’s uncle,” he said. “Warren Nash, Viscount Buckley, at your service, ma’am. Would it be possible to persuade you to come with us to my country seat in Hampshire? My sister and her husband, Deborah’s parents, have gone to Italy and left her in my care. Frankly, I do not know what I am to do with a fifteen-year-old over Christmas. I need a female companion or chaperon for her. Will you come?”

There was the merest flicker in her eyes. Nothing more. He had never known a woman who was so impassive. He had always thought of women as open books, their emotions as clear to view as the words on a page. He had never had any problem knowing what his various mistresses felt or thought.

“Yes, my lord,” she said.

He waited for more, for some questions or conditions. But she said nothing else. Her eyes, he noticed, were focused, not on his, but on his chin or thereabouts.

“I would guess that Deborah is eager to leave,” he said. “How soon can you be ready, Miss Craggs?”

“Half an hour?” she said.

Half an hour! Good Lord, most women of his acquaintance would have asked for two or three days. He inclined his head to her. “Would you have Deborah sent to me?” he asked as she turned to leave the room.

Damn Susannah, he thought, too irritated to think of an original way mentally to censure his sister. How was he supposed to break the news to his niece?

Miss Craggs looked as if she had about as much joy in her as would half fill a thimble. A thimble for a small finger.

Damn!

She could not remember going farther from the school than could be accomplished on foot. She could not remember riding in a carriage. She could not remember being in company with a gentleman for longer than a minute or two at a time, except the dancing master who came in to teach the girls. She was usually chosen to partner him when he taught them the steps because he was not allowed to touch any of the girls, and none of the other teachers was willing to tolerate his lavishly insincere compliments and his moist hands.

She was not sure if she was glad or sorry to be where she was. At first she had been numbed with the strangeness and wonder of it. She was going on a holiday. She was going to spend Christmas at a private home in Hampshire. The home of Viscount Buckley. She was not going to be alone at the school, as she always had been for as far back as she could remember. And then she had been excited. Her teeth had chattered and her hands had shaken and her mind had whirled at dizzying speed as she had packed her few belongings into a valise she had had to borrow from Miss Phillpotts.

Now, after hours of travel, the luxury of a well-sprung, lavishly upholstered carriage was no longer able to mask the discomfort of the near silence that existed among its three occupants. An unnatural, uncomfortable silence. Deborah was sullen and unhappy. Jane did not blame her when she had discovered only this morning that her parents had gone away for Christmas and left her behind. But she feared that part of the sullenness was caused by the fact that she had been appointed the girl’s companion. Craggs, the teacher who was not really a lady.

The viscount was merely silent. Jane doubted that he felt uncomfortable.

But she did. Dreadfully so. She had had no experience with maleness.

Viscount Buckley seemed suffocatingly male to her. He was dark, not much taller than she, elegant. She imagined he was handsome by any standards.

She really had not seen many men. He seemed to her more handsome than any man she could possibly imagine. And very male.

She was uncomfortable and terrified.

“We are almost there,” he said, turning his head and looking at Deborah.

“You will feel better after a cup of tea.”

“I will not feel better,” his niece said sullenly. “I hate Christmas.

And I hate Mama and Papa.”

Jane looked at the girl. She wanted to take her hand and tell her that at least she had an uncle willing to take her in. At least she had someone to whom she belonged and somewhere to go. But such an assurance would not console, she supposed.

“If it is any consolation,” the girl’s uncle said, “they are not exactly my favorite people at this moment either, Deborah.”

“Meaning that you do not want to be burdened with me, I suppose,” the girl said, misery overlaying the sullenness. “Everyone knows you do not believe in Christmas, Uncle Warren.”

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “I shall have to see what I can do to exert myself on your behalf this year, Deborah. Ah, the house. It is always a relief to see it at the end of a long journey.”

Jane did not hear the rest of the conversation if, indeed, there was more. She had seen the house. Built within the last century, it had a classical symmetry of line combined with a deceptive simplicity of design. Built of light gray stone, it was rectangular in shape, three stories high, with a domed central portion and a pillared portico with wide marble steps leading up to double doors. It was larger and more magnificent than the house of her dream. And there was no snow, only bare trees and flower beds and grass of faded green. But it was all like enough to the dream house to catch at her breathing.

This was Cosway? This was where she was to spend the holiday?

She was aware suddenly that she had leaned forward and was gazing rather intently through the window. She was aware of the silence of her two companions. She turned her head and met the viscount’s dark eyes. She sat back in her seat again and retreated within herself, into that secret place far inside where it never mattered that no one noticed her or respected her or loved her. A secret place she had discovered as a very young child.

“You admire my home, Miss Craggs?” the viscount asked her.

“Yes, my lord,” she said. She felt the uncharacteristic urge to babble, to enthuse. She curbed it. “It is very beautiful.”

“I think so, too,” he said.

She felt his eyes on her for a few moments longer. She kept her own eyes firmly on the hands she had clasped in her lap. And then the carriage lurched slightly as it stopped, and the door was being opened and the steps set down. She felt excitement ball in her stomach again.

Was this really happening? To her?

Always as he drove up to the house, and more especially when he stepped inside the great domed hall, he wondered why he did not spend more of his time here. There was always a special feeling of homecoming when returning to Cosway. He loved the hall, especially in the winter, when the log fires in the great twin fireplaces at opposite sides gave welcome and the illusion of warmth. The hall was too large and too high, of course, ever to be really warm in reality.

“Ah, Kemp,” he said to his butler, rubbing his hands together as a footman took his hat and his gloves and waited for him to remove his greatcoat. “It is good to be home. I have brought my niece with me, as you see, and her companion, Miss Craggs. You will see that Mrs. Dexter assigns rooms to them? And that their bags are taken up? We will have tea served in the drawing room immediately.”

Kemp cleared his throat. “There was a, ah, delivery for you earlier this afternoon, m‘lord,” he said, nodding his head significantly to one side.

“I did not know quite what to do with it but knew you would be arriving yourself before the afternoon was out.”

The viscount turned his head toward one of the fireplaces. Beside it, seated on a wooden settle, quite upright and quite still, sat a small child so bundled up inside a large coat and woolen scarf and mittens and so hidden beneath an absurdly large hat that she looked more like a bundle of abandoned laundry than a living child. To the left side of her chest was pinned a square sheet of paper.

“She would not, ah, remove her gloves or her hat, m’lord, or allow either Mrs. Dexter or myself to remove the label,” the butler said. “The name on the label is Miss Veronica Weston, m’lord, care of yourself and this house.”

Veronica Weston. Oh, good Lord. Viscount Buckley crossed the hall, his booted feet echoing on the marble tiles, and stopped a few feet in front of the child, who looked up at him with eyes that he supposed were very like his own.

He had never seen her before. He had known of her existence since before her birth and had never tried to deny paternity or to shirk the responsibility of providing for her financially. But he and Nancy had parted company before she discovered the pregnancy, and she had moved on to another protector soon after the birth. He himself had never felt any particular human interest in his daughter.

“Veronica?” he asked.

“Yes.” She was looking very directly into his eyes. “Are you my papa? I am not to speak to anyone except my papa.”

Papa! He had never thought of himself by any such name. He was a father.

He had a daughter. He had never been a papa.

“This name is mine.” He touched one finger lightly to the label she wore on her chest. “You may speak to me. Your mama sent you here?”

“Mama went away,” the child said. “Mrs. Armstrong said I was to come to my papa.”

“Mrs. Armstrong?” He raised his eyebrows.

“She looks after me,” the child said. “But Mama went away and Mrs.

Armstrong said there was no money. I was to come to my papa.”

The label was thick. He guessed that there was a letter sealed up within it. Nancy had never neglected the child despite the demands of an acting career. Aubrey had assured him of that. But she had gone away? She had tired of the child?

“Do you have a letter for me, Veronica?” he asked, holding out one hand.

He was only just beginning to realize what a coil he was in now. As if things were not bad enough as they were.

The child looked down and laboriously unpinned the label from her coat.

She handed it to him. Sure enough, there was a letter. Nancy had been out of town for a weekend party, leaving her daughter with Mrs.

Armstrong, a neighbor who frequently cared for the child. Nancy had fallen from an upper gallery in the house she was visiting to the hall below and had died instantly. Mrs. Armstrong, with six children of her own, could not afford to keep the child when there was no chance of payment. She respectfully sent her to her father. She had been to the expense of hiring someone to write the letter for her and of sending the child on the stagecoach. She hoped she would be reimbursed for her pains.

Poor Nancy, he thought. She had been beautiful and a talented actress.

And a skilled lover. She had borne his child. And now she was dead. He folded the letter again and looked down at his daughter. She was gazing up at him, quiet and self-contained. And all of four years old.

Lord. Oh, dear Lord. What was he to do?

He turned his head to the two young ladies, who were still standing there, watching him. His eyes instinctively came to rest on Miss Craggs.

“She is my daughter,” he said. “Her mother has d-Her mother has gone away and she has been sent here.” He looked at her in mute appeal, like a child himself who did not know how to proceed.

“Uncle Warren!” Deborah said, shock in her voice.

Miss Craggs came closer, her eyes on the child. “She will want something to eat and a glass of milk,” she said. “She will need to remove her hat and her coat and have them and her bag taken to a room that will be hers.”

Of course! How practical and how simple.“Are you hungry, Veronica?” he asked.

“Yes, Papa,” the child said.

“Come along, then,” he said, clasping his hands awkwardly behind him.

Good Lord, his illegitimate child, his by-blow, was in his own home with his niece. His servants would be scandalized. His neighbors would be shocked. “Will you give your hat and your coat to Kemp?”

“Will you let me help you, Veronica?” He watched as Miss Craggs went down on her knees before the child, who stood up and allowed her outer garments to be removed. “What a pretty color your scarf is. There-now you will be more comfortable. But we will need to comb those curls of yours before you sit down for your milk and your food.” She touched the backs of two fingers to a tangled curl at the child’s cheek and smiled at her.

The viscount felt jolted, first by the sight of his daughter without the heavy outer garments-she was little more than a baby-and then by the smile on the face of his niece’s teacher. Good God, he thought, he had not noticed that the woman was beautiful. Though he knew even as he thought it that she was not beautiful, that it was merely something from deep within her that for the moment she had allowed to the surface of her face.

“Would you like to hold my hand?” she asked his daughter.

“Yes, please,” the child said, looking up at her and suiting action to words.

“Uncle Warren?” Deborah asked faintly.

“She is my child,” he told her. He felt almost as if he were realizing it for the first time. It was one thing to know one had fathered a child and to have accepted financial responsibility for her. It was another thing entirely to see the child, tiny and dainty and quiet, her eyes and her hair the color of his own.

“But-” Deborah said.

“She is my daughter,” he said firmly. “Shall we go up for tea and get warm again?” He offered her his arm.

“Is this Papa’s very own house?” Veronica was asking Miss Craggs.

Her own awkwardness and awe and even her excitement had been forgotten.

Although the great hall was the hall of her dream with the addition of a painted and gilded dome, and although the staircase was wide and magnificent and the drawing room large and splendid, Jane noticed them only with her eyes and not with her heart. And her own bedchamber with a separate dressing room was large and richly furnished and far surpassed anything she might have dreamed for herself. But she merely glanced at it when she hurried in to change her dress for dinner-to change from one drab gray dress to another.

Her time and her attention and her heart were otherwise engaged than in the perusal of a mere house and in the recognition of a dream come true.

She had never had anything to do with very young children. The girls who came to Miss Phillpotts’s school were older and more independent and did not really need her for anything outside her capacity as a teacher.

No one had ever needed her. The thought came without any self-pity. It was simply the truth.

Until today. But today she had seen a small child bewildered and frightened by the loss of her mother and by her arrival at the home of the father she had never seen before. And her heart had lurched with all the love she had never been called upon to give.

She had taken a comb from her own reticule in the drawing room and drawn it gently through the soft baby curls. And she had sat by the child and helped her to food and milk. And then she had taken her to the nursery, where a bed had been made up, and had helped her unpack her little bag, which had been full of surprisingly pretty dresses. She had taken the child down to dinner, although she would probably eat in the nursery on future days, and had helped her wash and change into her nightgown afterward. She had tucked her into bed.

A maid was to stay in the nursery next to the bedchamber and sleep on a truckle bed there.

“Good night, Veronica,” Jane said as she was leaving. Her heart ached with unfamiliar love and happiness. Someone had needed her for almost half a day and would need her again tomorrow.

“Good night, Miss Craggs,” the child said, peering at her with wide eyes over the blanket that had been tucked beneath her chin. “When will Mama be coming back?”

Ah, poor child. Poor child. “Mama had to go away for a long time,” she said, walking back to the bed and smoothing her hand over the child’s head. “She did not want to leave you, Veronica, but she had to go. She sent you here, where you will be safe.”

“Miss Craggs,” the child said, “don’t leave.”

“I’ll stay for a while,” Jane said, seating herself on the side of the bed. “You are quite safe, dear. My name is Jane. It sounds a little nicer than ‘Miss Craggs,’ does it not?”

“Miss Jane,” the child said, and closed her eyes.

There was a rather painful aching around the heart to hear her name spoken aloud by another person. Jane sat quietly on the side of the bed, waiting for the little girl to fall asleep. But after a few moments the child’s eyes opened and she lay staring quietly upward.

And the door opened softly, and when Jane turned her head it was to find Viscount Buckley standing there, his hand on the doorknob.

“She is still awake?” he asked after a few moments.

“Yes,” Jane said.

He came to stand beside her and gazed down at his daughter. A daughter he had had with a mistress. A child he had never seen until today. And a child he seemed not to know what to do with. What would he do with her? Jane felt fear for the defenseless baby who was still staring quietly upward.

“Veronica?” he said. “Is there anything you need?”

“No, thank you,” the child said, not moving the direction of her gaze.

“You are tired?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Go to sleep, then.” He leaned forward rather jerkily to lay the backs of his fingers against her cheek for a moment. “You are quite safe now.

I will arrange something for you.”

The child looked at him finally. “Good night, Papa,” she said.

“Are you coming, Miss Craggs?” he asked, looking at Jane.

“I will stay until she falls asleep,” Jane said.

He inclined his head to her. “Deborah is having an early night,” he said. “Will you join me in the library as soon as you may? I need to talk with you.”

Veronica was asleep no more than ten minutes later, not having spoken or moved since her father left the room. Jane got carefully to her feet, bent down after a moment’s hesitation to kiss the child’s forehead, and tiptoed from the room.

How wonderful it must be, she thought, how wonderful beyond imagining, to be a mother.

He sat in the library resisting the urge to refill his brandy glass for the second time. If he drank any more he would be foxed. The thought had its definite appeal, but getting drunk would solve nothing. He had learned that much in his almost thirty years of living.

Deborah was sullen and unhappy-and angry.

“How could you, Uncle Warren?” she had said just before going to bed.

“How could you let her stay here and announce for all the world to hear that she is your daughter? Mama will be furious with you. Papa will kill you.”

Yes, they would be a trifle annoyed, he conceded. But it served them right for foisting their daughter on him without so much as a by-your-leave.

What was he to do? How did one go about finding a good home for a young child? Aubrey would doubtless know, but Aubrey was in London, about to take a holiday with his family. Perhaps Miss Craggs would have some idea. He hoped so.

He was relieved when she was admitted to the library less than half an hour after he had left her in the nursery. He rose to his feet and motioned her to a chair. She sat straight-backed on the edge of it, he noticed, and clasped her hands in her lap. Her face had the impassive, empty look again now that Veronica was no longer present.

“These things happen, Miss Craggs,” he said. He wondered how shocked this prim schoolteacher was beneath the calm exterior.

“Yes, my lord,” she said. “I know.”

“Can you blame me for taking her into my own home?” he asked. “What was I to do?”

She looked fully into his eyes but did not reply. He shifted uncomfortably. He had never encountered eyes quite like hers.

“Send her back where she came from?” he asked. “I could not do it, ma’am. She is my own flesh and blood.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said.

“What am I to do, then?” he asked. “How does one find a home for a child? A home in which one can be quite sure she will be well cared for.

It is an infernally awkward time of year. Everything will be complicated by the fact that it is Christmas. What am I to do?”

“Perhaps, my lord,” she said, “you should celebrate Christmas.”

He frowned at her.

“You have a young niece,” she said, “who is unhappy at being abandoned by her parents at this of all times. And you have a small child who is bewildered at the disappearance of her mother. Perhaps it is the very best time of year. Let Christmas bring some healing to them both.”

He might have known it. For all her drab appearance and seemingly sensible manner and bearing, she was a sentimentalist. Christmas bringing healing, indeed! As if there was something inherently different in that day from all others. Besides, how could Christmas bring any sort of happiness to four such very different people-Deborah, Veronica, Miss Craggs, and himself?

“You believe in miracles, Miss Craggs?” he asked. “Do you have any suggestions as to how this healing can be effected?”

She leaned slightly forward in her chair, and there was a suggestion of eagerness in her face. “We could decorate the house,” she said. “I have always dreamed of… There must be greenery outside that we can gather.”

“Holly and such?” he asked, still frowning.

“And mistletoe,” she said, and interestingly enough she blushed.

“And that will do it?” he asked, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “An instant miracle, Miss Craggs?”

“Deborah needs company,” she said. “She is of an age at which it seems that life is passing her by unless she has company of her own age and activities to keep them busy and happy.”

He grimaced. “Company of her own age?” he said. “From memory and experience I would say that young people of Deborah’s age are usually ignored at Christmastime-and all other times of the year, for that matter. Adults want nothing to do with them, yet they are too old to enjoy being with the children. It is an unfortunate time of life that has to be endured until it passes.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “there are other young people in the neighborhood who would be only too happy to get together independently of either the adults or the children.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that I visit all my neighbors within the next few days, seeking out the young and organizing a party here?” he asked, aghast.

“I think that a wonderful suggestion, my lord,” she said.

He should have left the woman where she was, he thought. She was definitely dangerous.

“You would doubtless be left to organize and chaperon such an affair,” he warned her. “I will be invited to join a sane adult party.” And he would accept, too, though he usually sent his excuses.

“I am accustomed to supervising young people, my lord,” she reminded him.

“Very well, then,” he said. “On your own head be it.” He was feeling decidedly annoyed. Except that her suggestion made sense. And it would definitely solve the problem of Deborah. “I will have to postpone making a decision about Veronica until after Christmas. I suppose it will not matter greatly. She is a quiet and well-behaved child.”

“She is hiding,” Miss Craggs said quietly.

“Hiding?” he frowned.

“She suspects that something dreadful has happened to her mother,” she said. “And she knows that you are a stranger, although you are her father. She is not at all sure that she is safe, despite your assurances to her and my own. She does not know what is going to happen to her. And so she has found a hiding place. The only one available. She is hiding inside herself.”

The notion was thoroughly preposterous. Except that he recalled his impression that morning that Miss Craggs herself did most of her living far inside herself. What was her own story? he wondered briefly. But there was a topic of more pressing importance on which to focus his mind.

“But she must know,” he said, “that I will care for her, that I will find her a good home. I always have cared for her.”

“Why must she know any such thing?” Miss Craggs asked. “She is four years old, my lord. A baby. Financial care and the assurances of a good home mean nothing to her. Her world has rested firmly on one person, and that person is now gone.”

“Miss Craggs,” he asked quietly, though he already knew what her answer was going to be, “you are not suggesting that I keep the child here, are you?”

She looked down at the hands in her lap. “I am suggesting nothing, my lord,” she said.

But she was. She obviously knew nothing about life. She knew nothing about the types of relationships that might exist, between a man and his illegitimate offspring.

And yet, even as he thought it, he recalled the totally unfamiliar experience of standing in the nursery looking down at his own small child in the bed there, lying still and staring quietly upward, in a most unchildlike way. And he felt now, as he had felt then, an unidentifiable ache about his heart.

She was his child, the product of his own seed. She was his baby.

“Miss Craggs.” He heard the irritability in his voice as he got to his feet. “I see clearly that nothing can be done and no decisions can be made until Christmas is over. It is looming ahead of us, a dark and gloomy obstacle, but one that must be lived through. Make of it what you will, then. Load the house with greenery if you must. Do whatever you will. And in the meantime I shall call upon my neighbors and try to organize that unheard-of phenomenon, a preadult party.” He felt thoroughly out of sorts.

“Very well, my lord,” she said, and looked up at him.

He felt almost as if he might fall into her eyes.

“Come,” he said, extending an arm to her even though he had brought her here as more of a servant than a guest, “I will escort you to your room, Miss Craggs.”

She got to her feet and looked at his arm with some misgiving before linking her own through it. Her arm was trembling quite noticeably though she did not feel cold, and she stood as far from him as their linked arms would allow.

Good Lord, he thought, had she been shut up inside that school for so long?

He stopped outside her dressing room and opened the door for her. “Thank you,” he said, “for agreeing to accompany Deborah here. And thank you for showing kindness and gentleness to Veronica. Good night.”

“Good night, my lord,” she said, her eyes on a level with his neckcloth.

And she moved hastily into the dressing room and closed the door behind her even as he prepared to take her hand to raise to his lips.

He was glad then that she had not given him a chance to do it. She was, after all, merely a servant. What was her first name? he wondered. He hoped it was something more fortunate than her surname. Though it was of no concern to him. He would never have reason either to know it or to use it.

Jane helped Veronica get dressed the following morning and brushed her curls into a pretty style while the child sat very still on a stool, her legs dangling over its edge. They were breakfasting together in the nursery when Mrs. Dexter, the viscount’s housekeeper, arrived there to ask Miss Craggs what her orders were regarding the Christmas baking and cooking.

“What my orders are?” Jane asked, bewildered. “Should you not be consulting his lordship, Mrs. Dexter?”

“He said I should come to you, miss,” the housekeeper said, looking somewhat dubious. “He said that whatever you wanted was to be supplied.”

Oh, dear. He really meant what he had said last night, then. She was to do whatever she wanted to celebrate Christmas. The thought was dizzying when at the age of three-and-twenty she never had celebrated the season. She was to have a free hand?

“Where is his lordship?” she asked.

“He has gone visiting with Miss Deborah, miss,” the housekeeper said.

“He said you were to wait until this afternoon to gather greenery so that he can help you carry it.”

“Oh, dear,” Jane said. “What is usually cooked for Christmas, Mrs. Dexter?”

The housekeeper raised her eyebrows. “Anything that will not remind his lordship that it is Christmas,” she said. “The cook threatens every year to resign, miss, but she stays on. It is unnatural not to have a goose and mince pies, at the very least.”

Goose and mince pies. The very thought of them was enough to set Jane’s mouth to watering. “Perhaps,” she said, “I should go down to the kitchen and consult the cook.”

“Yes, miss,” Mrs. Dexter said. But she paused as she was about to leave the room. “It is time Christmas came back to this house. It has been too long gone. And it needs to be celebrated when there is a child in the house, poor little mite.” She nodded in Veronica’s direction.

Jane wondered what had happened to banish Christmas from Cosway. She could not imagine anyone’s deliberately deciding not to celebrate it.

She looked at Veronica and smiled.

“Shall we go down to the kitchen and talk to Cook?” she asked.

The child nodded and got down from her stool to hold out her hand for Jane’s. Jane, taking it in hers and feeling its soft smallness, wondered if there could be a greater happiness in life.

The cook was so overjoyed at the prospect of Christmas baking that Jane found she did not need to make any suggestions at all. She merely sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and approved every suggestion made.

The cook lifted Veronica to the table, placed a large, shiny apple in her hand, and clucked over her and talked about the delight of having a child in the house again.

“I do not care what side of the blanket she was born on, if you take my meaning, miss,” she said to Jane. “She is a child, and children have a right to a home and a right to be loved. Chew carefully, ducky. You do not want to choke on a piece.”

Veronica obediently chewed carefully.

“It will do his heart good to have her here,” the cook said, jerking her head toward the ceiling. “He does not love easy, miss, and when he do, his heart is easy to break.”

Jane could not resist. “Was his heart broken once?” she asked.

The cook clucked her tongue. “By his childhood sweetheart,” she said.

“You never saw a man so besotted, miss, though she were a flighty piece, if you was to ask me. Their betrothal was to be announced on Christmas Day here at a big party. A big secret it was supposed to be, but we all knew it, miss. And then halfway through the evening, just when his lordship were excited enough to burst, a stranger who had come home with her brother a month before stood up and announced his betrothal to her. And she smiled at him as sweet as you please without so much as a guilty glance at our boy-or at her papa, who was as weak as water, as far as she was concerned. Six years ago it was, miss. His heart don’t heal easy. But this is one to mend any heart.”

She nodded at Veronica, who had spotted a cat curled beside the fire and had wriggled off the table to go and kneel beside it and reach out gingerly to pat its fur. The cut purred with contentment.

“A blessed Christmas gift she is for any man,” the cook said.

Yes. Jane remembered sitting alone with him in the library last evening. She alone with a man! And talking with him. Being consulted on what he should do with his daughter. And having the temerity to give her opinion and her suggestions. She would have expected to have been quite tongue-tied in a man’s presence. But she had made a discovery about this particular man. He was not the infallible figure of authority she had thought all men were. He was an ordinary human being who did not have all of life’s answers or even the most obvious of them.

He did not know that all his child needed-all!-was love. The love of her father. And he did not know that good, docile behavior in a child did not necessarily denote a happy child. He had turned to her, Jane, for help. Even a man could need her in some small way for one small moment of time.

It was the thought she had hugged to herself in bed. And also the memory of how it had felt to touch him.To feel his strongly muscled, unmistakably male arm with her own.To smell the unfamiliar odor of male cologne. To feel the body heat of a man only inches away from her own body. And to know that the yearning she had suffered and suppressed in herself for years had a definite cause. It was the yearning for a man, for his approval and his support and companionship. And for something else, too. She did not know quite what that something else was except that outside her dressing room, when he had stopped and thanked her for coming and for giving her attention to Veronica, she had felt suffocated. She had felt that there was no air in the corridor.

She had felt the yearning for… for him. She still could not express the need less vaguely than that.

And so she had fled into her room like a frightened rabbit.

“And there.” The cook’s hand patting her shoulder felt strangely comforting. There had been so few physical touches in her life. “He would be a blessed Christmas gift for some lady too, missy.”

But you are not a lady, Craggs. She heard again the words that had been spoken in the homework room just two days before. No, she was no lady. She smiled and got to her feet.

“You are going to be busy if you are to make everything you have suggested,” she said. “Oh, I can hardly wait for all the smells and all the tastes. I can hardly wait for Christmas.”

The cook chuckled. “It will come, miss, as it always does,” she said.

But it had never come before. This would be her first-ever Christmas.

She could scarcely wait. At the same time, she wanted to savor every moment as it came. They were to gather greenery during the afternoon, she and Veronica and perhaps Deborah. And Lord Buckley was to come to help carry the loads.

Veronica was sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, smoothing the cat’s fur.

He could not quite believe that this was himself. Himself up a tree, balanced precariously on a branch, feeling hot and disheveled and dusty.

His boots, he was sure, though he did not look down at them, must be in a condition to give his valet heart palpitations. Below him Miss Craggs stood with arms partly spread as if to catch him if he fell, Deborah had her hands to her mouth and was alternately squealing and giggling, and Veronica was gazing gravely upward.

“Miss Craggs believes that in addition to all the holly we have gathered and all the pine boughs we have cut down we need some mistletoe,” he had said to his daughter a short while before. “What do you think, Veronica?

Do we need mistletoe?”

“Yes, please, Papa,” she had said.

And Deborah had giggled-she had started giggling during their morning visits and had scarcely stopped since-and had added her voice to everyone else’s. It just would not be Christmas, it seemed, unless there was some mistletoe hanging in strategic places so that one might be caught beneath it accidentally on purpose.

She here he was up a tree.

And then down with a sizable armful of mistletoe and a tear on the back of one kid glove and a scrape so deep on the inside of his left boot that it would never be the same again.

And all in the name of Christmas.

“Do you know why I have risked life and limb just to gather this?” he asked Veronica, frowning.

“Because Miss Jane wanted it?” she asked.

Jane. He might have guessed that she would have such a name. And yet it suited her. It was quietly, discreetly pretty.

“Not at all,” he said. “This is what it is used for.” He held one sprig above the absurd hat, which Nancy had doubtless thought suitably flamboyant for the daughter of an actress, stooped down, and kissed her soft, cold little cheek. And took himself quite by surprise. Now why had he done that?

“Any gentleman has the right to kiss any lady he catches beneath the mistletoe,” he said, “without fear of having his face slapped. It is a Christmas custom. You see?” And he straightened up and repeated the action with Deborah, who giggled. “Now we have to carry all this greenery back to the house.”

“What about Miss Jane?” a grave little voice asked him.

And he knew he was caught. Caught in the act of maneuvering. For when he had demonstrated the use of mistletoe on his daughter and his niece, he had really wanted to use Miss Craggs as his model. Even though she was prim and gray and every inch the schoolteacher.Though that was not the whole truth this afternoon. Since they had left the house there had been a light in her eyes that had touched him. She was enjoying all this just like a child.

“Oh, it works with Miss Craggs, too,” he said, turning to her and raising his sprig of mistletoe again. And he felt suddenly and stupidly breathless. She was standing very still and wide-eyed.

He kissed her lightly and briefly, as he had kissed the other two.

Except that foolishly he kissed her on the lips. And ended up feeling even hotter than his excursion up the tree had made him.

She turned hurriedly away before their eyes could meet and began energetically arranging the heap of holly they had gathered into three bundles.

“Here, Veronica,” he said, “you may carry the mistletoe, since it will not prick you all to pieces. Deborah, take that bundle of holly. I’ll take this one.”

His hand brushed Miss Craggs’s as he gathered up the largest bundle and belatedly their eyes met. Her own were still large and bright. Brighter.

Was it the cold that had brought the tears there? Or was it the kiss?

Surely she had been kissed before. Surely that had not been her first kiss.

Had it? Once again he wondered about her past, about her life.

Impoverished parents and the need to go out and make her own living? But she had not been planning to go home for Christmas.

“I will send someone back with a wagon for the pine boughs,” he said.

“ ‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly,’ ” Deborah sang suddenly with loud enthusiasm and no musical talent whatsoever.

“ ‘Fa la la la la la la la la,’ ” Miss Craggs sang with her in a rather lovely contralto voice.

“ ‘Tis the season to be jolly.’ ” He joined his tenor voice to their singing and looked down at Veronica.

“ ‘Fa la la la la la la la la.’ ” She piped up with them, off-key.

“ ‘Don we now our gay apparel.’ ” Three of them sang out lustily while the fourth continued with the fa-la-las.

And the damned thing was, Viscount Buckley thought, that it could grab at one quite unawares. Christmas, that was.

Jane had never been very assertive, even as a teacher. She had never been the type who liked to boss and organize people. And yet over the next couple of days she seemed to be transformed into a wholly different person.

It was she who directed the decorating of the house-of drawing room, staircase, and hall. The viscount had suggested that the servants could do it, but she had exclaimed in horror and disappointment before she could stop herself, and he had meekly agreed that perhaps they could do it themselves, the four of them.

“But I have no eye for design, Miss Craggs,” he had told her. “You will have to tell us what you want.”

And she had told them. She stood in the middle of the drawing room giving orders like a sergeant with a company of soldiers. Boughs and sprigs and wreaths were hung exactly where and exactly how she directed, and if she did not like the look of them when the deed was done, then she directed their replacement. And everyone obeyed, even the viscount, who was given all the climbing to do. He balanced on chairs and tables and ladders in his shirtsleeves, decking out pictures and mirrors and door frames while she stood critically below him, head to one side, examining the effects of his handiwork and criticizing any slight error on his part.

She felt so happy by the time they were finished that she thought she might well burst with it. She was surrounded by Christmas-by the sights and smells of it. She could smell the pine boughs, and there were interesting smells wafting up from the kitchens. Particularly the smell of Christmas puddings.

“Oh, it is so very beautiful,” she said, her hands clasped to her bosom when they were all finished and were all standing admiring their efforts. “If only we had some ribbons for bows.”

“Oh, yes,” Deborah said. “Red ones and green ones.”

Viscount Buckley sighed. “Ribbons and bows,” he said. “And bells, too, I suppose? Doubtless you will find what you need in the village, Miss Craggs. Go there if you must and purchase whatever you need and have the bill sent to me.”

“Oh.” She turned to him with glowing eyes. “May I? Oh, thank you, my lord.”

He looked at her and made her a little mocking bow. And she remembered the earth-shattering feeling of his lips touching hers and wondered if he realized what an enormous treasure this Christmas was going to be to her in memory. The most precious treasure of her life.

Veronica was tugging at her skirt. “May I come too, Miss Jane?” she asked.

“Of course, sweetheart,” she said, hearing in some surprise the unexpected endearment she had used. “I will need you to help me choose.”

“And I will come too, Craggs,” Deborah said. But she flushed suddenly and added, “Miss Craggs.” And then she extended both arms and twirled into the steps of a waltz. “Uncle Warren,” she said, “do you think we may dance on Christmas Day?”

Deborah had completely changed since the visits she had paid with her uncle during the morning. She had come rushing into the house on their return home to announce to Jane that she was to have a party of her very own on Christmas Day. Fifteen young people were to come during the afternoon for walks and games and were to stay for the evening while their parents-and her uncle-engaged in an adult party at the home of the Oxendens. Even the seventeen-year-old and very dashing George Oxenden had decided to come to Cosway, though his parents had agreed to allow him to attend the adult party if he wished.

Jane saw the viscount grimace. “A dance?” he said. “And who is to provide the music, pray?”

But Deborah made it instantly clear that the idea had not come to her on the spur of the moment. “Mr. George Oxenden told me that his aunt plays the pianoforte rather well,” she said, “and that she would be only too pleased to be with the young people rather than with the adults on Christmas Day.”

Her uncle looked skeptical. “I will have to see what can be arranged,” he said.

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Warren,” she said, darting back across the room to hug him. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever, after all, I just know it.”

The viscount raised his eyebrows and looked at Jane.

Jane could only agree with his niece.

But there was work to be done. The village shop had to be visited and yards of the widest, brightest ribbon to be chosen and measured. Jane felt guilty when she was told the total cost, but she did not change her purchases. Viscount Buckley was a wealthy man, was he not? When Veronica gazed admiringly and rather longingly at some porcelain bells, she even added three to her purchases, a dreadful extravagance. But they would look lovely hanging from the holly on the mantel in the drawing room.

And then she discovered during a visit to the kitchen that the servants were murmuring over the fact that there was to be no Yule log. The head gardener was only too delighted to go in search of the largest one he could find when Jane insisted that they must have one. A Yule log! She had not even thought of it. She knew so little about Christmas.

During the same visit she learned that one of the grooms was skilled with his hands and loved to whittle on wood whenever he had a few spare moments. When Jane admired a spoon he was carving for his girl in the village, he offered to carve a small crib for the drawing room. And that other detail of her dream returned to Jane. Time was short, but the groom agreed to try to carve a baby Jesus to go inside the crib, and a Mary and Joseph to kneel beside it, and perhaps even a shepherd or two and an animal or two to worship and adore.

The decorations would be complete, Jane decided, standing alone in the drawing room after the ribbons and bells had been added to all the greenery, if only there could be a Nativity scene in the window.

Oh, Christmas would be complete. She twirled around and around rather as Deborah had done and thought of the little bonnet and muff for Veronica and the small bottle of perfume for Deborah she had had set aside in the village shop as Christmas gifts. They would take all the meager hoard of money in her purse, but she could not resist. She had never bought Christmas presents before. She had nothing for Viscount Buckley, but it would be inappropriate anyway to give a gentleman a gift.

For Deborah’s sake she was going to make this a wonderful Christmas. And for Veronica’s sake. Veronica was quietly obedient, but Jane knew that the child was still hiding inside herself. And she knew from long experience how that felt. She was going to do her very best to see that Christmas brought the child out of herself again, even if it was only to a realization of her grief and her insecurity. At least then she could be properly comforted.

If there could be any meaningful comfort. Jane stopped twirling. Her heart chilled to the memory of the viscount’s asking how he was to find his daughter a good home. He intended to send the child away again to be cared for by strangers. They would be strangers, no matter how kindly they might be.

Oh, for the viscount’s sake, too, this must be a wonderful Christmas. He must be made to see that love was everything, that family was everything. Why could people who had always had family not see that? Why could he not see that his daughter was his most priceless possession?

And for her own sake she was going to see that this Christmas was celebrated to the limit. It was her first and might well be her last. It was going to be a Christmas to remember for a lifetime.

Yes, it was. Oh, yes, indeed it was.

She twirled again.

Christmas Eve dawned gray and gloomy, and Viscount Buckley, surrounded by all the foolish sights of Christmas, his nostrils assailed by all the smells of it, felt his irritation return. Because she-Miss Jane Craggs, the tyrant-had persuaded him into the madness of allowing a party for young people to take place in his home tomorrow, he had been faced with the necessity of absenting himself from that home. And so he was facing the unspeakable monotony of a Christmas gathering at the Oxendens’. He was being forced to enjoy himself.

Well, it could not be done. Just look at the weather. He did just that, standing at the window of his bedchamber, gazing out at raw, cheerless December.

But one hour later he felt foolish. How was it he had recognized none of the signs when they had been as plain as the nose on his face? For of course the grayness and the gloom were harbingers of snow, and before the morning was even half over, it was falling so thickly that he could scarcely see six feet beyond the window. And it was settling too, just like a white blanket being spread.

Good Lord, snow! He could not remember when it had last fallen at Christmastime. Certainly not the year Elise had humiliated him and broken his foolish young heart. It had been raining that year and blowing a gale. Typical British winter weather. This was not typical at all. He wondered if Veronica had seen the snow, and was halfway up the stairs to the nursery before he realized how strange it was that he had thought of sharing the sight of snow with a child. But he continued on his way.

They were all in there, Veronica and Deborah kneeling on the window seat, their noses pressed against the glass, Miss Craggs standing behind them.

“Look, my lord.” She was the only one who had glanced back to see who was coming through the door. “Snow. We are going to have a white Christmas. Can you conceive of anything more wonderful?”

Sometime before she returned to Miss Phillpotts’s school he was going to have to sit down and have a good talk with Miss Jane Craggs. There was something deep inside the woman that could occasionally break through to her face and make her almost incredibly beautiful. She was beautiful now, flushed and wide-eyed and animated. And all over the fact that it was snowing for Christmas.

He found himself wondering quite inappropriately what her face would look like as he was making love to her. Totally inappropriately! He had a mistress waiting for him in London with whose services he was more than satisfied. He had had her for only two months. He had not even begun to tire of her yet.

“I am trying,” he said in belated answer to her question. “And at the moment I can think of nothing.”

She smiled at him and his heart and his stomach danced a pas de deux.

Good Lord, he wanted her, the gray and prim Miss Craggs.

“Look, Papa,” his daughter was saying. “Look at the trees. They are magic.”

He strolled over to the window and stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Jane Craggs, looking out on a Christmas wonderland.

“And so they are,” he said, setting his hand on the child’s soft curls.

“I have just had a thought. There used to be sleds when I was a boy. I wonder what happened to them.”

“Sleds?” Deborah turned her attention to him, “Oh, Uncle Warren, could we go sledding tomorrow. A sledding party. Do you think so? How many are there?”

“Wait a minute,” he said, holding up one hand. “I am not even sure they still exist. I suppose you are going to insist that I get on my greatcoat and my topboots and wade out to the stables without further delay.”

Yes. Three pairs of eyes confirmed him in his suspicions. And then three voices informed him that they were coming with him, and Jane Craggs was bundling Veronica inside her coat and winding her inside her scarf and burying her beneath her hat while Deborah darted out to don her own outdoor clothes.

“I knew,” Miss Craggs said, looking up at him with a face that was still beautiful, “that this was going to be a perfect Christmas. I just knew it.”

How could it be perfect for her, he wondered, when she had been brought here merely as a glorified servant to chaperon a sullen girl and then had been saddled with the responsibility of caring for an illegitimate child, whose presence in the house might well have offended her sensibilities? How could it be perfect when she was away from her own family?

But there was that light in her eyes and that beauty in her face, and he knew that she was not lying.

And he knew suddenly that for the first time in many yeas there was hope in him. The hope that somehow she might be right, that somehow this might be the perfect Christmas.

That somehow the magic might come back.

There were four sleds, three of them somewhat dilapidated. But he was assured that by the morrow they would be in perfect condition.

“Well, Veronica,” he said as they were wading back to the house with the snow falling thickly about them and onto them, “are you going to ride on a sled tomorrow too? Faster than lightning down a hill?”

“No, Papa,” she said.

“With me?” he asked her. “If I ride with you and hold you tight?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said gravely.

He could not ask for a more docile and obedient child. Nancy had brought her up well. And yet he could not help remembering what Jane Craggs had said about her-that she was hiding inside herself. And wondering how she could know such a thing, if it were so. But he was beginning to believe that perhaps it was true. Over the past few days the child had joined in all the activities, and she had made a great friend of the kitchen cat, whom he had found curled impertinently in his favorite chair in the drawing room, of all places, just the day before. But there had been no exuberance in her as there had been in Deborah and even in Miss Craggs.

He was beginning to worry about Veronica. The sooner he found her a good home to go to, the better it would be for her. She needed a mother and father to care for her. As soon as Christmas was over he must set Aubrey to work on it. It must take priority over all else.

“Look at me,” Deborah shrieked suddenly, and she hurled herself backward into a smooth drift of snow, swished her arms and legs to the sides, and got up carefully. “Look. A perfect angel.”

“Which you assuredly are not,” he said, looking at the snow caked all over her back.

She giggled at him. “I dare you to try it, Uncle Warren,” she said.

“It certainly does not behoove my dignity to be making snow angels,” he said.

But he did it anyway because it had never been his way to resist a dare.

And then they were all doing it until they had a whole army of angels fast disappearing beneath the still-falling snow. Like a parcel of children, he thought in some disgust, instead of two adults, one young person, and one child.

“This must be the multitude of the heavenly host that sang with the angel Gabriel to Mary,” he said. “I do not know about the rest of you, but I have snow trickling down my neck and turning to water. It does not feel comfortable at all. I think hot drinks at the house are called for.”

“Veronica has made the best angels,” Deborah said generously. “Look how dainty they are.”

It was the first time she had mentioned his daughter by name, the viscount thought.

“That is because she is a real little angel,” he said, stooping down impulsively and sweeping the child up into his arms. “Are you cold, Veronica?”

“A little, Papa,” she admitted.

She weighed almost nothing at all. He tightened his hold on her and realized something suddenly. He was going to miss her when she went away. He was always going to be wondering if she were happy, if she were being loved properly, if she were hiding inside herself.

“Snuggle close,” he said. “I shall have you inside where it is warm before you know it.”

Miss Craggs, he noticed, was watching him with shining eyes-and shining red nose. She looked more beautiful than ever. Which was a strange thought to have when, really, she was not beautiful at all.

At first she was going to go to church alone. It was something she had always done on Christmas Eve and something she wanted to do more than ever here. She had seen the picturesque stone church on her journeys to the village. And the thought of trudging through snow in order to reach it was somehow appealing. It would bring another part of her dream to life.

She asked Veronica at dinner-the child still ate in the dining room with the adults-if she would mind not being sat with tonight until she slept.

Jane explained her reason.

“I promise to look in on you as soon as I return,” she said.

But Veronica looked at her rather wistfully. “May I come too, Miss Jane?” she asked.

It would be very late for a child to be up, but Viscount Buckley immediately gave his permission and announced his intention of attending church, too. And then Deborah wondered aloud if Mr. George Oxenden would be at church, blushed, and declared that anyway she always enjoyed a Christmas service.

And so they walked together the mile to the church, the snow being rather too deep for the carriage wheels, Veronica between Jane and the viscount, holding to a hand of each, while Deborah half tripped along beside them. And they sat together in church, Veronica once again between the two adults until after a series of yawns she climbed onto Jane’s lap and snuggled close. Jane was unable to stand for the final hymn, but she sat holding the child, thinking about the birth of the Christ child and understanding for the first time the ecstasy Mary must have felt to have her baby even though she had had to give birth far from home and inside a stable.

Christmas, Jane thought, was the most wonderful, wonderful time of the year.

They walked home after the viscount had greeted his neighbors and Deborah had chatted with her new friends, the Oxenden sisters, and had been rewarded with a nod and a smile and a Christmas greeting from their elder brother. Jane sat holding the sleeping child on her lap while she waited for them.

And then Viscount Buckley was bending over her in the pew and opening his greatcoat and lifting his daughter into his own arms and wrapping the coat about her. Jane smiled at him. Oh, he felt it too. What a tender paternal gesture! He loved the child and would keep her with him.

Of course he would. It was something she, Jane, would be able to console herself with when she was back at Miss Phillpotts’s. Though she would not think of that. Not yet. She was going to have her one wonderful Christmas first.

And wonderful it was, too, she thought as they approached the house in a night that was curiously bright despite the fact that there were clouds overhead-more snow clouds. It was her dream come true, even though not every window in the house blazed with light. But close enough to her dream to make her believe for once in her life in miracles.

Deborah was yawning and ready for bed by the time they reached the house. She went straight to her room. Veronica stirred and grumbled in her father’s arms as he carried her upstairs. Jane followed him and undressed the child in her bedchamber while he waited in the nursery. He came to stand in the doorway as he always did after Jane had tucked her up in bed. She was only half-awake.

“Good night, Mama,” she said.

Jane could hardly speak past the ache in her throat. “Good night, sweetheart,” she said softly.

“Good night, Papa.”

“Good night, Veronica,” he said.

Jane sat for a few minutes on the side of the bed, though it was obvious that the child had slipped back into sleep. She was too embarrassed to face the viscount. But when she rose and turned to leave the room, she found that he was still standing in the doorway.

“I ordered hot cider sent to the library,” he said. “Come with me there?”

She longed to be able to escape to her room. Or a part of her did, anyway-that part that was flustered and even frightened at the thought of being alone with him. But the other part of herself, the part that was living and enjoying this Christmas to the full, leaped with gladness. She was going to sit and talk with him again? She only hoped that she would be able to think of something to say, that her mind would not turn blank.

When they reached the library, he motioned her to the chair she had occupied once before. He ladled hot cider into two glasses and handed her one before seating himself at the other side of the fire.

She had never drunk cider before. It was hot and tasted of cinnamon and other unidentified spices. It was delicious. She looked into the glass and concentrated her attention on it. She could not think of anything to say. She wished she had made some excuse after all and gone to bed.

“You were going to spend Christmas alone at the school?” he asked her.

“Yes.” She looked up at him unwillingly.

“Where does your family live?” he asked. “Was it too far for you to travel?”

She had never talked about herself. There was nothing to talk about. She could be of no possible interest to anyone except herself.

“I have no family,” she said. She was not particularly given to self-pity, either. But the words sounded horribly forlorn. She looked down into her drink again.

“Ah,” he said, “I am sorry. Have they been long deceased?”

“I believe,” she said after rejecting her first impulse, which was to invent a mythical warm and loving family, “I was the product of a union much like yours and Veronica’s mother’s. I do not know who my mother was. I believe she must have died when I was very young. Or perhaps she merely did not want to be burdened with me. I do not know my father, either. He put me into an orphanage until I was old enough to go to Miss Phillpotts’s school. He supported me there until I was seventeen. I have earned my way there since.”

He said nothing for a long time. She kept her eyes on her drink, but she did not lift it to her mouth. She knew her hand would shake if she tried it.

“You have never known a family,” he said very quietly at last.

“No.” But she did not want him to think that she was trying to enlist his pity. “The orphanage was a good one. The school is an expensive one.

He cared enough to make sure that my material needs were catered to and that I had a good enough education to make my way in the world.”

“But you stayed at the school,” he said. “Why?”

How could she explain that, cold and cheerless as it was, the school was the only home she had known, that it was the only anchor in her existence? How could she explain how the thought of being cast adrift in unfamiliar surroundings, without even the illusion of home and family, terrified her?

“I suppose,” she said, “I drifted into staying there.”

“In an environment that is wholly female,” he said. “Have you never wanted to find yourself a husband and have a family of your own, Miss Craggs?”

Oh, it was a cruel question. How could she find a husband for herself?

Even if she left Miss Phillpotts’s, what could she hope to do except teach somewhere else or perhaps be someone’s governess? There was no hope of matrimony for someone like her. And a family of her own? How could she even dream of a family when there was no possibility of a husband?

To her annoyance, she could think of no answer to make. And in her attempt to cover up her confusion, she lifted her glass to her lips, forgetting that her hand would shake. It did so and she had to lower the glass, the cider untasted. She wondered if he had noticed.

“How did you know,” he asked, seeming to change the subject, “that Veronica hides inside herself? I begin to think you must be right, but how did you realize it?”

“She is too quiet, too docile, too obedient for a child,” she said.

“Did you know it from experience?” he asked.

“I…” She swallowed. “Is this an interrogation, my lord? I am not accustomed to talking about myself.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Does no one ever ask you about yourself? Does Miss Phillpotts believe she does you a favor by keeping you on at the school?

And do the teachers and pupils take their cue from her? Do they all call you Craggs, as Deborah did until recently? Does no one call you Jane?”

For some reason she felt as if she had been stabbed to the heart. There was intense pain.

“Teachers are not usually called by their first names,” she said.

“But teachers should have identities apart from their career,” he said.

“Should they not, Jane? For how long have you been in hiding?”

“Please.” She set her hardly tasted cider on the small table beside her and got to her feet. “It is late, my lord. It is time for me to say good-night.”

“Have I been very impertinent, Jane?” He, too, stood, and somehow he possessed himself of both her hands. “No, you do not need to answer. I have been impertinent and it has been unpardonable of me when you are a guest in my home and when you have been very kind to both Deborah and my daughter and when you have brought Christmas to this house for the first time in years. Forgive me?”

“Of course,” she said, trying to draw her hands free of his without jerking on them. She felt again as if she were suffocating. His closeness and his maleness were overpowering her. “It is nothing, my lord.”

“It is something,” he said. “It is just that you have intrigued me during the past few days, Jane. You are like two people. Much of the time you are a disciplined, prim and-forgive me-plain teacher. But sometimes you are eager and warm and quite incredibly beautiful. I have been given the impression that the latter person has come bubbling up from very deep within. Is she the real person, the one you hide from the world, the one you have never had a chance to share with anyone else?”

“Please.” She dragged at her hands but was unable to free them. Her voice, she noticed in some dismay, sounded thin and distressed. She sounded on the verge of tears.

“He was a fool, your father,” he said. “He had you to love and let opportunity pass him by.”

She forgot herself instantly. She looked up into his face, her eyes wide. “And are you going to make the same mistake?” she asked. “You too have a daughter to love.”

“But the situation is different,” he said. “I am not going to abandon her to an orphanage or a school. I am going to find her the very best parents I can.”

“But she is four years old,” Jane said. “Do you not think she will remember, however hazily? She will remember that her mother disappeared mysteriously and she will try to persuade herself that she died and did not merely abandon her. You need to tell her the truth. However cruel it seems now, she needs to know. And she will remember that her father was titled and wealthy and that he cared enough to provide for her physical needs but did not care enough to provide for the only need that mattered.”

“And that is?” He was frowning and she thought that perhaps he was angry. But so was she. She would answer his question.

“The need for love,” she said. “The need to know that to someone she means more than anything else in the world.”

“But she is illegitimate.” He was almost whispering. “She is the daughter I fathered on a mistress. Do you understand, Jane? Do you know anything about what is acceptable and what is not in polite society?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, I know, my lord. I am such a daughter too, remember. No one in my memory has ever wanted to know me as a person. No one has ever hugged me. Or kissed me. No one has ever loved me. I am three-and-twenty now, old enough to bear the burdens of life alone, but I would not want another child to have to live the life I have lived.

Not Veronica. I hope she will remember that you have kissed her cheek and rubbed your hand in her hair and carried her home from church inside your greatcoat. I am not sure it will help a great deal, but I hope she remembers even so. I wish I had such memories.”

“Jane,” he said, his voice shaken. “Oh, my poor Jane.”

And before she knew what was to happen or could do anything to prevent it, his hands had released hers and grasped her by the shoulders instead, and he had pulled her against him. And before her mind could cope with the shock of feeling a man’s warm and firmly muscled body against her own, his mouth was on hers, warm and firm, his lips slightly parted.

For a moment-for a fleeting moment after her mind had recovered from its first shock-she surrendered to the heady physical sensation of being embraced by a man and to the realization that she was experiencing her first real kiss. And then she got her palms against her chest and pushed firmly away from him.

“No,” she said. “No, my lord, it is not poor Jane. It is poor Veronica.

She has a father who could love her, I believe, but who feels that the conventions of society are of greater importance than love.”

She did not give him a chance to reply though he reached for her again.

She whisked herself about and out of the room and fled upstairs to her bedchamber as if being pursued by a thousand devils.

It had snowed a little more during the night. The viscount stood at his window, eager to go downstairs to begin the day, yet wanting at the same time to stay where he was until he could safely escape to the Oxendens’ house. He wanted to go downstairs because he had told her the truth last night. She had brought Christmas to his home for the first time in many years, and he found himself hungry for it. And yet he dreaded seeing her this morning after his unpardonable indiscretion of the night before.

And he dreaded seeing Veronica. He dreaded being confronted with love.

He had decided six years ago to the day that he must be incapable of loving enough to satisfy another person. He had confined his feelings since then to friendships and to lust.

She was wrong. It was not that he put the conventions of society before love as much as that he did not believe he could love his daughter as well as a carefully chosen couple would. He wanted Veronica to have a happy childhood. Because he loved her. He tested the thought in his mind, but he could not find fault with it. He did love her. The thought of giving her up to another couple was not a pleasant one. And that was an understatement.

He was the first one downstairs. Before going to the breakfast room he went into the drawing room to take the parcels he had bought in a visit to a nearby town two days before and a few he had brought home with him and to set them down beside the rudely carved but curiously lovely Nativity scene with its Mary and Joseph and babe in a manger and a single shepherd and lamb. They had been set up last night. He was seeing them for the first time.

He looked about the room. And he thought of his irritation at finding himself saddled with his niece for Christmas and of her sullenness at being abandoned by her parents and left to his care. And of the terrible aloneness of Veronica as she had sat in his hall, like a labeled parcel abandoned until someone could find time to open it.

Yes, Jane had transformed his home and the three of them who lived in it with her. Under the most unpromising of circumstances she had brought the warmth and joy of Christmas. He wondered if it was something she was accustomed to doing. But he knew even as he thought it that that was not it at all. If she had been about to spend Christmas alone at the school this year, then surely she must have spent it alone there last year and the year before. His heart chilled. Had she ever spent Christmas in company with others? Had she always been alone?

Was all the love of her heart, all the love of her life being poured out on this one Christmas she was spending with strangers? With three other waifs like herself? But she was so much stronger than they. Without her, he felt, the rest of them would have wallowed in gloom.

But his thoughts were interrupted. Deborah burst into the room, parcels in her hands. She set them beside his and turned to smile at him.

“Happy Christmas, Uncle Warren,” she said. “Veronica is up.

Craggs-Miss Craggs-is dressing her and brushing her hair. They will be down soon. I wish they would hurry. I have presents for everyone. I bought them in the village shop. And you have presents too. Is there one for me?”

“Yes.” He grinned at her. “Happy Christmas, Deborah.”

And then they came into the room, hand in hand, Jane and Veronica, and his heart constricted at sight of them. His two ladies. Jane was carrying two parcels. Veronica was saucer-eyed.

And finally it was there again, full-grown-the glorious wonder of Christmas in a young child’s eyes, which were fixed on the Nativity scene and on the parcels beside it. He hurried across the room to her and stooped down without thought to lift her into his arms.

“Happy Christmas, Veronica,” he said, and kissed her on her soft little lips. “Someone brought the baby Jesus with his mama and papa during the night. And someone brought gifts, too. I will wager some of them are yours.”

Jane, he saw, had hurried across the room to get down her parcels with the rest.

“For me?” Veronica asked, her eyes growing wider still.

He sat her on his knee close to the gifts, feeling absurdly excited himself, almost as if he were a boy again. And he watched her as she unwrapped the dainty lace-edged handkerchief Deborah had bought for her and held it against her cheek, and the pretty red bonnet and muff Jane had bought her, both of which she had to try on. And then he watched her, his heart beating almost with nervousness, as she unwrapped his exquisitely dressed porcelain doll.

“Oh!” she said after staring at it in silence for a few moments. “Look what I have, Papa. Look what I have, Miss Jane. Look, Deborah.”

Viscount Buckley blinked several times, aware of the acute embarrassment of the fact that he had tears in his eyes. And yet when he sneaked a look at Jane, it was to find that her own eyes were brimming with tears.

“She is beautiful, Veronica,” she said.

“Lovely,” Deborah agreed with enthusiasm.

“Almost as beautiful as you,” her father assured her. “What are you going to call her?”

“Jane,” his daughter said without hesitation.

And then Deborah opened her gifts and exclaimed with delight over the perfume Jane had given her and with awe over the diamond-studded watch her parents had left for her and with warm appreciation over the evening gloves and fan her uncle had bought for her-because she was as close to being adult as made no difference, he explained. She declared that she would wear them to the dance that evening.

Viscount Buckley unwrapped a linen handkerchief from Deborah and a silver-backed brush and comb from his sister and brother-in-law.

And he watched as Jane unwrapped her own lace-edged handkerchief from Deborah and smiled rather teary-eyed at the girl. And then he watched more keenly as she took out his cashmere shawl from its wrapping and held it up in front of her, its folds falling free. She bit her lip and shut her eyes very tightly for a few moments.

“It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” she said before turning to him, her face looking almost agonized. “Thank you. But I have nothing for you. I did not think it would be seemly.”

Veronica had wriggled off his lap and was gazing down with Deborah into the manger at the baby Jesus, her doll clutched in both arms. Deborah was explaining to her what swaddling clothes were.

“You have given me a gift beyond price, Jane,” he said quietly, for her ears only. “You have opened my eyes to Christmas again and all its meanings. I thank you.”

She gazed back at him, the shawl suspended in front of her from her raised arms.

But Deborah had decided it was time for breakfast and was assuring Veronica that she could bring her doll along and they would find it a chair to sit on and a bowl to eat from. His niece seemed to have quite got over her shock at being exposed to the company of his illegitimate daughter.

“Come,” he said to Jane, getting to his feet and extending a hand to her, “let us eat and then we must have the servants up here for their gifts. They will doubtless be happy to see that I can do it without a frown this year.”

He smiled at her and she smiled rather tremulously back.

Once, when she was seventeen, Miss Phillpotts had given her a porcelain thimble in recognition of her new status as a teacher. It was the only gift she had ever received-until today. Jane set down her handkerchief and her shawl carefully on her bed, as if they, too, were of porcelain and might break, smoothed a hand over each, and swallowed back her tears so that she would not have to display reddened eyes when she left her room.

But the best gift of all was what he had said to her. You have given me a gift beyond price, Jane. And he had smiled at her. And he had held Veronica on his knee and had looked at her with what was surely tenderness.

Going back to Miss Phillpotts’s, being alone again, was going to be more painful than ever, she knew, now that she had had a taste of family life, now that she had fallen in-No, that was a silly idea. That she would have fallen in love with him was thoroughly predictable under the circumstances. It was not real love, of course. But however it was, she would put up with all the pain and all the dreariness, she felt, if only she could know that he would keep Veronica with him. She would give up all claim to future Christmases without a murmur if only she could be sure of that.

It was a busy day, a wonderfully busy day. There were the servants to greet in the drawing room while Viscount Buckley gave each of them a gift, and toasts to be drunk with them and rich dainties to eat. And there were gifts from almost all of them for Veronica to open. It was certainly clear that his staff had taken the viscount’s young daughter to their hearts. And there were carols to sing.

After the Christmas dinner, taken en famille in the dining room very early in the afternoon, there were the young guests to prepare for.

There was no containing Deborah’s excitement. As soon as they had arrived, all of them bright and merry at the novel prospect of a party all to themselves without adults to spoil it and tell them to quieten down or to stay out of the way, they were whisked out-of-doors.

They engaged in an unruly snowball fight even before they reached the hill where the sledding was to take place. Deborah, Jane noticed with indulgent interest, was almost elbow-to-elbow with Mr. George Oxenden, the two of them fighting the common enemy, almost everyone else. But before she knew it, Jane was fighting for her own life, or at least for her own comfort. A soft snowball splattered against her shoulder, and she found that Viscount Buckley was grinning smugly at her from a few yards away. She shattered the grin when by some miracle her own snowball collided with the center of his face.

Jane found herself giggling quite as helplessly as Deborah was doing.

The sleds were much in demand when they reached the hill as the young people raced up the slope with reckless energy and then zoomed down two by two. Nobody complained about the cold even though there was a great deal of foot stamping and hand slapping against sides. And even though everyone sported fiery red cheeks and noses.

Veronica stood quietly watching, holding Jane’s hand.

“Well, Veronica,” her father said, coming to stand beside them, “what do you think? Shall we try it?”

“We will fall,” she said, looking gravely up at him.

“What?” he said. “You do not trust my steering skills? If we fall, we will be covered with snow. Is that so bad?”

“No, Papa,” she said, looking dubious.

“Well.” He held out a hand for hers. “Shall we try?”

“Can Miss Jane come too?” Veronica asked.

Jane grimaced and found the viscount’s eyes directed at her. They were twinkling. “It might be something of a squash,” he said. “But I am willing if you two ladies are.”

“I… I…” Jane said.

“What?” His eyebrows shot up. “Do we have a coward here? Shall we dare Miss Jane to ride on a sled with us, Veronica?”

“Yes, Papa,” his daughter said.

And so less than five minutes later Jane found herself at the top of the hill, seating herself gingerly on one of the sleds, which suddenly looked alarmingly narrow and frail, and having to move back to make room for Veronica until her back was snug against the viscount’s front. His arms came about her at either side to arrange the steering rope. And suddenly, too, it no longer seemed like a cold winter day. She was only half aware of the giggles of the young ladies and the whistles and jeers and cheers of the young gentlemen. She set her arms tightly about Veronica.

And then they were off, hurtling down a slope that seemed ten times steeper than it had looked from the bottom, at a speed that seemed more than ten times faster than that of the other sledders when she had watched them. Two people were shrieking, Veronica and herself. And then they were at the bottom and the sled performed a complete turn, flirted with the idea of tipping over and dumping its load into the snow, and slid safely to a halt.

Veronica’s shrieks had turned to laughter-helpless, joyful, childish laughter. The viscount, the first to rise to his feet, scooped her up and held her close and met Jane’s eyes over her shoulder. Perhaps it was the wind and the cold that had made his eyes so bright, but Jane did not think so.

Oh, how good it was-it was the best moment so far of a wonderful Christmas-how very good it was to hear the child laugh. And beg to be taken up again. And wriggle to get down and grab at her father’s hand and tug him impatiently in the direction of the slope. And to watch her ride down again with him, shrieking and laughing once more.

And how good it was-how achingly good-to see him laughing and happy with the little child he had fathered almost five years before but had not even seen until a few days ago.

Chilly as she was-her hands and her feet were aching with the cold-Jane willed the afternoon to last forever. He was to go to the Oxendens’ for dinner and he was to spend the evening there and perhaps half the night too. Once he had gone she would be the lone chaperon of the group, apart from the lady who was coming to play the pianoforte. She was going to feel lonely.

But she quelled the thought. She had had so much, more than she had ever dreamed. She must not be greedy. This evening was for the young people.

And then, just before it was mutually agreed that it was time to return to the house to thaw out and partake of some of Cook’s hot Christmas drinks and mince pies, Veronica was borne off by Deborah to ride a sled with her and Mr. Oxenden, and Viscount Buckley took Jane firmly by one hand and led her toward the slope.

“If you stand there any longer,” he said, “you may well become frozen to the spot. Come and sled with me now that I have relearned the knack of doing it safely.”

She savored the moment, this final moment of her very own Christmas. But alas, this time they were not so fortunate. Perhaps the constant passing of the sleds had made the surface over which they sped just too slippery for successful navigation. Or perhaps there was some other cause.

However it was, something went very wrong when they were halfway down the slope. The sled went quite out of control, and its two riders were unceremoniously dumped into a bank of soft, cold snow. They rolled into it, arms and legs all tangled together.

They finally came to rest with Jane on the bottom, flat on her back, and Viscount Buckley on top of her. They were both laughing and then both self-conscious. His eyes slid to her mouth at the same moment as hers slid to his. But for a moment only. The delighted laughter of the young people brought them to their senses and their feet, and they both brushed vigorously at themselves and joined in the laughter.

Jane was tingling with warmth again. If only, she thought shamelessly.

If only there had been no one else in sight. If only he had kissed her again. Just once more. One more kiss to hug to herself for the rest of her life.

Oh, she really had become greedy, she told herself severely. Would she never be satisfied?

An unwanted inner voice answered her. No, not any longer. She never would.

But it was time to take Veronica by the hand again. It was time to go back to the house.

Viscount Buckley went upstairs to change into his evening clothes while the young people played charades in the drawing room and Jane played unobtrusively in one corner with Veronica and her new doll, the kitchen cat curled beside them, apparently oblivious to the loud mirth proceeding all about it. He had lingered in the room himself, reluctant to leave despite the squeals from the girls and loud laughter from the boys that just a few days before he had welcomed the thought of escaping. But he could delay no longer if he were to arrive at the Oxendens’ in good time for dinner.

Yet despite the fact that he was pressed for time, he wandered to the window of his bedchamber after his valet had exercised all his artistic skills on the tying of his neckcloth and had helped him into his blue evening coat, as tight as a second skin, according to fashion. He stood gazing out at twilight and snow, not really seeing either.

He was seeing Veronica in her red Christmas bonnet, her muff on a ribbon about her neck. He was seeing her rosy-cheeked with the cold, bright-eyed and laughing, and tugging impatiently at his hand. Looking and sounding like a four-year-old. And he was thinking of her next week or the week after or the week after that, going away to settle with her new family.

He was going to be lonely. He was going to grieve for her for the rest of his life. And if Jane was correct, he was not even doing what was best for Veronica.

Jane! He could see her, too, animated and giggling-yes, giggling!-and beautiful. Ah, so beautiful, his prim, plain Jane. And he thought of her the week after next, returning to Miss Phillpotts’s school with Deborah, returning to her life of drudgery and utter aloneness. She had never been hugged or kissed or loved, she had said-not out of self-pity but in an attempt to save Veronica from such a fate.

He was going to be lonely without Jane. He thought of his mistress, waiting for him in London with her luscious, perfumed body, and of the skills she used to match his own in bed. But he could feel no desire, no longing for her. He wanted Jane with her inevitable gray dress and her nondescript figure and her face that was plain except when she stopped hiding inside herself. Jane, who did not even know how to kiss-she pursed her lips and kept them rigidly closed. She probably did not know what happened between a man and a woman in bed.

He wanted her.

And he wanted to keep Veronica.

His valet cleared his throat from the doorway into his dressing room and informed him that the carriage was waiting. The viscount knew it was waiting. He had been aware of it below him on the terrace for at least the past ten minutes. The horses, he saw now when he looked down, were stamping and snorting, impatient to be in motion.

“Have it returned to the carriage house,” he heard himself say, “and brought up again after dinner. I had better stay here and help Miss Craggs with the young people at dinner. They are rather exuberant and unruly.”

That last word was unfair. And what the devil was he doing explaining himself to his valet?

“Yes, m’lord,” the man said, and withdrew.

Well, that was the excuse he would give the Oxendens later, he thought, as he hurried from the room and downstairs to the drawing room, lightness in his step. It would seem an eminently believable excuse.

And so he sat at the head of the table during dinner, the second of the day, while Jane sat at the foot, Veronica beside her, and the young people were ranged along the two long sides. And he listened indulgently to all their silly chatter and laughter without once wincing with distaste. And he feasted his stomach on rich foods, which it just did not need, and feasted his eyes on his two ladies, who were both making sure that the doll Jane was having her fair share of each course.

And then it was time for the young people and their chaperon to adjourn to the drawing room. The servants had rolled back the carpet during dinner, and Mrs. Carpenter had arrived to provide music for the dancing.

Veronica was to be allowed to stay up and watch until she was sleepy.

And he was to go to the Oxendens’. The carriage was waiting for him again.

But what if any of the silly children decided to imitate their elders and disappear in couples to more remote locations? What if young George Oxenden, in particular, decided to become amorous with Deborah? They had been flirting quite outrageously with each other all afternoon. He had even spotted the young man kissing her beneath the mistletoe she had deliberately stood under. How could Jane handle all that alone when she had Veronica to look after, too?

No, he could not leave her alone. It would be grossly unfair when he was the master of the house-and when Susannah and Miles had entrusted Deborah to his care.

“Have the carriage sent away,” he told his butler. “I will not be needing it this evening after all.” He smiled fleetingly in self-mockery. This was the most blatant example of rationalization he had ever been involved in. And he must have windmills in the brain. He was choosing to party with young people rather than with sane adults?

No, actually he was choosing to party with his lady and his daughter.

They had danced a quadrille and numerous country dances. All the young people danced every set. They were clearly enjoying the novelty of being able to use the skills they had learned from dancing masters in the setting of a real ball-or what was almost a real ball.

Jane was feeling wonderfully happy as she watched and as she played with an increasingly tired Veronica. The child did not want to give in to suggestions that she be taken up to bed. At the moment she was seated cross-legged on the floor beside the Nativity scene, rocking her doll to sleep in her arms and looking as if she was not far from sleep herself.

But what completed Jane’s happiness was the fact that for some reason Viscount Buckley had not gone to the Oxendens’ after all but had stayed at the house. He had mingled with the company and chatted with Mrs.

Carpenter between dances and had not been near Jane and Veronica. But it did not matter. Just having him in the room, just being able to feast her eyes on him, was enough. He looked even more splendidly handsome than usual in a pale blue evening coat with gray knee breeches and white linen and lace.

She thought with secret, guilty wonder of the fact that she had been kissed by this man. And that she had his gift, the lovely shawl, to hug about her-literally-for the rest of her life.

He was bending over Mrs. Carpenter, speaking to her, and she was nodding and smiling. He turned to his young guests and clapped his hands to gain their attention.

“This is to be a waltz, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Do you all know the steps?”

They all did. But the young ladies in particular had not expected to be able to dance them in public for many years, until they had made their come-outs and had been approved by the patronesses of Almack’s in London. There was a buzz of excitement.

Jane knew the steps of the waltz too. She remembered with an inward shudder demonstrating it for the girls at school with the dancing master, whose hands had always seemed too hot and too moist, and who had always tried to cause her to stumble against him. But it was a wonderful dance. Wonderfully romantic-a couple dancing face-to-face, their hands touching each other.

“Jane?” Suddenly he was there before her, bowing elegantly as if she were the Duchess of Somewhere, and extending a hand toward her. “Will you do me the honor?”

“Me?” she said foolishly, spreading a hand over her chest.

He smiled at her and something strange happened to her knees and someone had sucked half the air out of the room.

“Thank you.” She set her hand in his and he looked down at Veronica.

“Do you mind if I steal Miss Jane for a few minutes?” he asked. “Will you watch us dance?”

Veronica yawned.

Jane had dreamed of happiness and romance and pleasure. But never until this ten-minute period had she had even the glimmering of a notion of what any of the three might really feel like. They were almost an agony.

She danced-he was an exquisite dancer-and felt that her feet scarcely touched the floor. She danced and did not even have to think about the steps. She danced and was unaware that the room held anyone else but the two of them and the music. She was too happy even to wish that time would stop so that forever she would be caught up in the waltz with the man she had so foolishly fallen in love with.

To say it was the happiest ten minutes of her life was so grossly to understate the case that the words would be meaningless.

“Thank you,” she said when it was over, coolly, as if it really had not meant a great deal to her at all. “I think I should take Veronica up to bed, my lord. She is very tired.”

“Yes,” he said, glancing down at his child. “Take her up, then. I will come in ten minutes or so to say good-night to her.”

And so the magic was gone and the day was almost over. She took the sleepy child by the hand and led her up to the nursery, undressed her and washed her quickly, helped her into her nightgown, and tucked her into bed beside her doll.

“Good night, sweetheart,” she said, smoothing back the child’s curls with one gentle hand. “Has it been a happy Christmas?”

Veronica nodded, though she did not open her eyes and she did not speak.

And then Jane’s heart lurched with alarm. Two tears had squeezed themselves from between the child’s eyelids and were rolling diagonally across her cheeks.

Jane turned instinctively toward the door. He was standing there, as he did each night. When he saw her face, he looked more closely at his daughter. Jane could tell that he could see the tears. His face paled and he came walking across the room toward the bed.

He did not know what to do for a moment. She had seemed so happy for most of the day. She had been laughing and excited during the afternoon.

What had happened to upset her? And how could he cope with whatever it was?

“Veronica?” He touched his fingers to her cheek. “What is it?”

She kept her eyes closed and did not answer him for a while. But more tears followed the first. There was something horrifying about a child crying silently. Jane had got up from the bed to stand behind him.

“Why did Mama not come?” his daughter asked finally. “Why was there no present from Mama?”

Oh, God. Oh, dear Lord God, he could not handle this. He sat down on the bed in the spot just vacated by Jane. “Mama had to go far away,” he said, cupping the little face with his hands and wiping the tears away with his thumbs. “She would be here if she could, dear. She loves you dearly.” He rejected the idea of telling her that the doll was from her mother. Children were usually more intelligent than adults gave them credit for.

His daughter was looking at him suddenly. “Is she dead?” she asked.

A denial was on his lips. And then Jane’s words came back to him. She needed to know. Ultimately it would be worse for her not to know, for her to grow up believing that her mother had just tired of her and abandoned her. He stood up for a moment, drew back the bedclothes, scooped up his daughter in his arms, and sat down again, cradling her against him.

“Yes,” he said. “She died, Veronica. But she sent you to Papa. And Papa loves you more than anyone or anything else in this world.”

She was sobbing then with all of a child’s abandoned woe. And he, rocking her in his arms, was crying too. Crying over his daughter’s loss and grief. Crying over the truth of the words he had just spoken, and over the treasure he had so very nearly given carelessly away.

She stopped crying eventually and lay quietly in his arms. “You are not going to send me away, Papa?” she whispered.

“Send you away?” he said. “How could I do that? What would I do without my little girl? Who would there be to make me happy?”

She looked up at him with a wet and swollen face so that he was reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief even as she spoke. “Do you really love me, Papa?”

“You are my little Christmas treasure,” he said, drying her eyes and her cheeks. “The best gift I ever had. I love you, dear.”

She reached up to set one soft little hand against his lips. He held it there and kissed it and smiled at her. She yawned hugely and noisily.

“Is Miss Jane going to stay, too?” she asked.

He felt Jane shift position behind him.

“Yes,” he said, “if I can persuade her to. Would you like that?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

And in the way of children she was asleep. Asleep and safe and loved in her father’s arms. He held her there for a few minutes until he was quite sure she would not wake and then stood to set her down carefully in her bed. Jane held the bedclothes back for him and then stepped aside again.

By the time he had tucked the blankets snugly about his daughter and bent to kiss her little mouth, Jane had disappeared.

It had been agreed that the young people could stay at Cosway until midnight. It was no surprise to anyone, then, when they did not actually leave until thirty minutes after the hour. After all, there had to be just one more dance to follow the last and then one more to follow that.

It was the best, the very best Christmas she had ever known, Deborah declared, dancing before her uncle and Jane in the hall after everyone had finally gone.

“But do not tell Mama and Papa,” she said to the viscount, giggling, “or they will be hurt.”

“It will be our secret,” he said dryly. “Upstairs with you, now. It is long past your bedtime.”

She pulled a face at him before kissing his cheek and dancing in the direction of the stairs. But she came back again and kissed Jane’s cheek, too, a little self-consciously. “I am glad you came here with me, Miss Craggs,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Good night.” Jane smiled at her. And then, when the girl was only halfway up the stairs, Jane turned, fixed her eyes on the diamond pin Viscount Buckley wore in his neckcloth, and wished him a hasty good-night too.

She was already on her way to the stairs when she felt her hand caught in his.

“Coward!” he said. “You really are a coward, Jane.”

“I am tired,” she said.

“And a liar,” he said.

She looked at him indignantly. He was smiling.

“Into the library,” he said, giving her no chance to protest. He was leading her there by the hand. “I have a job to offer you.”

As Veronica’s nurse? She was too afraid to hope for it, though he had assured his daughter that he would try to persuade her to stay. Oh, would he offer her the job? Could life have such wonder in store for her? After the child no longer needed a nurse, perhaps he would keep her on as a governess. But it was too soon to dream of the future when she was not even sure of the present.

“Jane.” He closed the library door behind him and leaned against it. He was still holding her hand. Someone had lit the branch of candles in there.

“You really do not have to persuade me to stay,” she said breathlessly.

“Veronica will not even remember in the morning that you promised to do so. If you think me unsuitable for the job of nurse, I will understand.

I have had no experience with young children. But I do love her, and I would do my very best if you would consider hiring me. But you must not feel obliged to do so.” She stopped talking abruptly and looked down in some confusion.

“A nurse,” he said. “I do indeed consider you unsuitable for the job, Jane. It was not what I had in mind at all.”

She bit her upper lip, chagrined and shamed. Why, oh, why had she not kept her mouth shut?

“I was hoping you would take on the job of mother,” he said. “Mother of Veronica and mother of my other children. My future children, that is.”

She looked up at him sharply.

“And wife,” he added. “My wife, Jane.”

Oh. She gaped at him. “Me?” she said foolishly. “You want me to be your wife? But you cannot marry me. You know who and what I am.”

“You and my daughter both,” he said, smiling. “Two treasures. I love you, Jane. I have Veronica, thanks to your words of admonition and advice, and she is a priceless possession. But you can make my happiness complete by marrying me. Will you? I cannot blame you if you do not trust me. I am new to love. I have not trusted it for a long time. But I-”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes wide, her heart beating wildly. “You love me?

You love me? How can that be?”

“Because,” he said, still smiling, “I have been playing hide-and-seek, Jane. I have not yet discovered all of you there is to discover. You have done an admirable job over the years of hiding yourself. But what I have seen dazzles me. You are beautiful, inside and out, and I want you for myself. Yes, I love you. Could you ever feel anything for me?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, my lord. I love you with all my heart.”

Somehow his arms were clasped behind her waist and hers behind his neck.

Only a part of her mind had grasped what he was saying to her and what he was asking of her. She knew that it would take a long time before the rest of her brain caught up to the knowledge.

“It is going to have to be Warren,” he said. “Say it before I kiss you.”

“Warren,” she said.

It was a kiss that lasted a scandalous length of time. Before it was over she had allowed him to bend the whole of her body against his and she had responded to the coaxing of his lips and softened her own and even parted them. Before it was over she had allowed his tongue into her mouth and his hands on parts of her body she would have thought horrifyingly embarrassing to have touched. Before it was over she was weak with unfamiliar aches of desire.

“My love,” he was saying against her mouth, “forgive me. I would not have you for the first time on the library floor. It will be on my bed upstairs on our wedding night. If…” He drew his head back and gazed at her with eyes that were heavy with passion and love-for her. “If there is to be a wedding night. Is there? Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, stunned. Had she not already said it? “Warren-”

But whatever she was about to say was soon forgotten as his mouth covered hers again and they moved perilously close after all to anticipating their wedding night.

After all, it was Christmas and they had both just discovered love and joy and romance. And the treasure of a child to love and nurture together.

It was Christmas. Christmas after a long, long time for him.The first Christmas ever for her.

It was Christmas.