Under the Mistletoe

Playing House

The logs in the fireplace were crackling and shooting sparks up into the chimney. The fire’s warmth felt good to the young lady who had just come in from the cold and the wind and rain. She held her hands out to the blaze.

But she could not draw a great deal of comfort from the fire. She caught sight of the hem of her wool dress. It was heavy with wetness and streaked with mud. Her half-boots looked no better. And she wished she had not removed her bonnet and handed it to the footman with her cloak.

Her hair was hopelessly damp and flattened to her head. And she knew that her nose as well as her cheeks must be glowing red.

It was cold outside, and the mile-and-a-half walk across the park to Bedford Hall had been taken into the teeth of the wind and into the driving force of the rain and had seemed more like five miles.

Lilias lowered her hands from the blaze and brushed nervously at her dress. The darned patch near the hem was more noticeable now that the fabric was wet. She looked down at her right wrist and twisted her sleeve so that the darn there would be out of sight.

She should not have come. She had known that as soon as the footman had opened the front doors and asked her, after she stepped inside, if he could take her to Mrs. Morgan. But no, she had replied with a firmness that had been fast deserting her, she was not calling on the housekeeper today. She wished to speak with his lordship, if it was convenient.

She should not have come, a single lady, alone, to speak with a single gentleman. She knew she would never have dared to do so if she were in London or some other fashionable center. Even here in the country it was not at all the thing. She should have brought someone with her, though there was no one to bring except the children. And she did not want them to know she was paying this call.

And who was she, even if she had had a respectable companion, to be paying a call on the Marquess of Bedford? She was wearing her best day dress, yet it was patched in three places. She had had to walk from the village because she owned no conveyance or even a horse or pony. In two weeks’ time she was to be a servant.

She should have come to the kitchen entrance, not to the main doors.

Lilias took one step back from the fireplace, suddenly feeling uncomfortably warm. If she hurried, she could grab her cloak and bonnet from the hallway and be outside and on her way home before any more harm was done. The rain and wind would be at her back on the return journey.

But she was too late. The door to the salon in which she had been asked to wait opened even before she could take one more step toward it, and he stepped inside. Someone closed the door quietly behind him.

The Marquess of Bedford.

Lilias swallowed and unconsciously raised her chin. She clasped her hands before her and dropped into a curtsy. She would scarcely have known him. He looked taller, and he was certainly broader. He bore himself very straight, like a soldier, though he had never been one. He was immaculately and fashionably dressed. His hair was as thick as it had ever been, but its darkness was highlighted now by the suggestion of silver at the temples. But he was not thirty yet.

His face was what had changed most. It looked as if carved out of marble, his jaw firm and hard, his lips thin and straight, his blue eyes above the aquiline nose heavy-lidded and cold. One eyebrow was arched somewhat higher than the other.

He made her a stiff half-bow. “Well, Miss Angove,” he said in a voice that was softer, colder than the voice she remembered, “what an unexpected pleasure. You are the first of my neighbors to call upon me.

All alone?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said, clasping her hands more firmly before her and consciously resisting the impulse to allow them to fidget. “This is not a social call. I have a favor to ask.”

His one eyebrow rose even higher and his lips curved into the suggestion of a sneer. “Indeed?” he said, advancing farther into the room. “Well, at least you are honest about it. Have a seat, ma’am, and tell me how I may be of service to you.”

She sat on the very edge of the chair closest to her and clasped her hands in her lap. Someone had tamed his hair, she thought irrelevantly.

It had always waved in a quite unruly manner and had forever fallen across his forehead. It had been a habit of his to toss it back with a jerk of the head.

“It is not precisely a favor,” she said, “but more in the way of the calling in of a debt.”

He seated himself opposite her and looked at her inquiringly. His eyes had never used to be like this. They had been wide and sparkling eyes, mesmerizing even. But then, they were compelling now too. They regarded her with cynical contempt. Lilias glanced down nervously at her sleeve to find that the darned patch was staring accusingly up at her. But she did not twist the sleeve again. Perhaps he would not notice if she kept her hands still. Except that she felt that those eyes saw everything, even the larger darned patch beneath her left arm.

“When you were at school,” she said, “and found your Latin lessons difficult, Papa helped you during your holidays. You used to come to the rectory every morning for two successive summers. Do you remember?” She did not wait for a reply. “You would not tell your own papa for fear that he would be disappointed in you. And Papa would accept no payment for your tuition. You told him-I was there when you said it-that you would always consider yourself in his debt, that you would repay him one day.”

“And so I did say,” he said in that quiet, cold voice. His expression did not change at all. “Your father has been dead for well over a year, has he not, Miss Angove? But I take it that the day of reckoning has come. What may I do for you?”

“I think less than the tuition for two summers would have cost you,” she said hastily, wishing that she could keep her voice as cool as his. “I would not put myself in your debt.”

His eyelids appeared to droop even lower over his eyes. “What may I do for you, ma’am?” he asked again.

“I want a Christmas for my brother and sister,” she said raising her chin and looking very directly into his face. She could feel herself flushing.

Both his eyebrows rose. “An admirable wish,” he said. “But it would seem that if you wait patiently for one more week, Christmas will come without my having to do anything about the matter.”

“They are still children,” she said. “My parents’ second family, people have always called them. Philip and I were two years apart, and then there were eleven years before Andrew was born. And Megan came two years after that. They are only eleven and nine years old now. Just children.

This is our last Christmas together. In two weeks’ time we will all be separated. Perhaps we will never be together again. I want it to be a memorable Christmas.” She was leaning forward in her chair. Her fingers were twining about one another.

“And how am I to help create this memorable Christmas?” he asked. His mouth was definitely formed into a sneer now. “Host a grand party? Grand parties are not in my style.”

“No,” she said, speaking quickly and distinctly. “I want a goose for Christmas dinner.”

There was a short silence.

“Papa was not a careful manager,” she continued. “There was very little money left when he died and now there is none left, or at least only enough to pay for our journeys in two weeks’ time. The people of the village would help, of course, but they were so used to finding that Papa would not accept charity in any form that they now do not even offer. And perhaps they are right.” Her chin rose again. “I have some of his pride.”

“So,” he said, “instead of asking charity, you have found someone who is in your debt.”

“Yes,” she said, and swallowed awkwardly again.

“And you want a goose for Christmas,” he said. “Your needs are modest, ma’am. That is all?”

“And a doll for Megan,” she said recklessly. “There is the most glorious one in Miss Pierce’s window-all porcelain and satin and lace. I want that for Megan. She has never had a doll, except the rag one Mama made for her when she was a baby. I want her to have something really lovely and valuable to take with her.”

“And for your brother?” he asked softly.

“Oh.” She gazed at him wistfully. “A watch.A silver watch. But there are none in the village, and I would not know how to go about purchasing one for him. But it does not matter. Andrew is eleven and almost not a child any longer. He will understand, and he will be happy with the scarf and gloves I am knitting for him. The cost of a goose and the doll will not exceed the cost of tuition for two summers, I don’t believe.

Will it?”

“And for yourself?” he asked even more softly.

Lilias gazed down at her hands and reached out to twist the offending sleeve. “I don’t want anything that will cost money,” she said. “I want only the memory of one Christmas to take with me.”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

She looked up at him. “Into Yorkshire,” she said. “I have a post as a governess with a family there.”

“Ah,” he said. “And your brother and sister?”

“I have persuaded my grandfather to take Andrew,” she said. “It took several letters, but finally he agreed to take him and send him to school. Sir Percy Angove, that is, Papa’s father. The two of them never communicated after Papa’s marriage.”

The marquess nodded curtly.

“And Megan is going to Great-aunt Hetty in Bath,” Lilias said. “I am afraid I pestered her with letters too. But it will be only until I can earn enough money to bring us all together again.”

Bedford got to his feet and looked down at her from cold and cynical eyes. “Ah, yes,” he said. “A suitably affecting story, Miss Angove. I must congratulate you on the manner in which you have presented it.”

Lilias looked up at him in some bewilderment.

His bearing was military again, his manner curt, his eyes like chips of ice. “You will have your goose, ma’am,” he said, “and your sister her doll. Your brother will have his watch too-I shall see to it. You will have your Christmas and the memory of it to take into Yorkshire with you. I shall wish you good-day now.”

Victory? Was it to be so easy? Was she to have more than a Christmas dinner to give the children? Was Megan to have her doll? And Andrew his watch? Andrew was going to have a watch! All without any struggle, any persuasion, any groveling?

Was this victory?

Lilias scrambled to her feet and looked up at the tall, austere figure of the Marquess of Bedford. She curtsied. “What can I say?” she said breathlessly. “Thank-you sounds so tame.”

“You need not say even that,” he said. “I am merely repaying a debt, after all. You will wait here, ma’am, if you please. I shall have tea sent to you while you await the arrival of my carriage to take you home.

I take it you walked here?”

He would not take no for an answer, although there was no apparent kindness at all in his manner. Lilias found herself gazing once more into the fire a few minutes later, having been left to take her refreshments alone. And after drinking her tea, she was to have a warm and comfortable-and dry-ride home.

She should be feeling elated. She was feeling elated. But uncomfortable and humiliated too. As if, after all, she were taking charity. She blinked back tears and stared defiantly into the flames.

She was not taking charity. She was merely accepting what was hers by right.

He seemed to be made of stone to the very heart. Not once had he smiled.

Not once had he given any indication that theirs was no new acquaintance. And he had called her explanation an affecting story. He had said so with a sneer, as if he thought it contrived and untrue.

It did not matter. She had got what she had set out to get. More. She had not even been sure she was going to ask for the doll. But as well as that, Andrew was to have a watch. It did not matter that he had not smiled at her or wished her a happy Christmas.

It was at Christmastime he had first kissed her. It had been one of those magical and rare Christmases when it had snowed and there was ice on the lake. They had been sledding down a hill, he and she the last of a long line of young people, all of whom had been trekking back up again by the time they had had their turn. And she had overturned into the snow, shrieking and laughing, and giggling even harder when he had come over to help her up and brush the snow from her face and hair.

He had kissed her swiftly and warmly and openmouthed, stilling both her laughter and his own until he had made some light remark and broken the tension of the moment. It had been Christmastime. Christmas Eve, to be exact. She had been fifteen, he one-and-twenty.

It did not matter. That had been a long time ago, almost exactly seven years, in fact. He was not the same man, not by any means. But then, she was not the same, either. She had been a girl then, a foolish girl who had believed that Christmas and life were synonymous.

She turned and smiled at Mrs. Morgan, who was carrying a tray into the salon.

He had a daughter somewhere in the house, Lilias thought for the first time since her arrival.

The child tugged at her father’s hand, trying to free her own.

“The water is running down my arm, Papa,” she complained. A few minutes before she had told him that the rain was running down the back of her neck. “I want to go home now. Pick me up.”

The Marquess of Bedford stooped down and took his daughter up in his arms. She circled his neck with her own arms and burrowed her head against the heavy capes of his coat.

“We’ll be home in a twinkling, poppet,” he said, admitting to himself finally that he was not enjoying tramping around his own grounds any more than she, being buffeted by winds and a heavy drizzle that seemed to drip into one’s very bones. “The snow will come before Christmas, and we will build snowmen and skate on the lake and sled on the hill.”

“Your coat is wet, Papa,” she said petulantly, moving her head about as if in the hope of finding a spot that the rain had not attacked. “I’m cold.”

He was clearly fooling only himself, Bedford thought, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his coat so that his daughter might burrow her damp head inside. Christmas would not come. Not this year or ever again.

December the twenty-fifth would come and go, of course, this year and every year, but it would not be Christmas for all that.

Christmas had come for the last time six years before, when his father had still been alive, and Claude too. When he had been a younger son.

When Philip Angove had still been alive.Before Spain had taken Claude and Waterloo, Philip.When life had been full of hope and promise.

Christmas in that year and in all the years preceding it had invariably been white. Always snow and skating and sledding and snowball fights.

And Yule logs and holly and mistletoe.And family and laughter and the security of love.And food and company and song.

Christmas had always been white and innocent. How could there ever be Christmas again?

His brother-his great hero-had died at Badajoz. And his father less than a year later. And soon after that he had discovered that the world was not an innocent or a pleasant place in which to do one’s living.

Suddenly he had had friends by the score. And suddenly women found him irresistibly attractive and enormously witty. And suddenly relatives he had hardly known he had, developed a deep fondness for him.

In his innocence he had been flattered by it all. In his innocence he had fallen for the most beautiful and most sought-after beauty of the London Season. He had married her before the Season was out.

Lorraine. Beautiful, charming, and witty. The only thing she had lacked-and she had lacked it utterly-was a heart. She had made no secret of her affairs right from the beginning of their marriage and had merely laughed at him and called him rustic when he had raged at her.

“Papa, open another button so that I can get my arms in,” his child said, her voice muffled by the folds of his cravat.

He kissed one wet curl as he complied with her demand. He was not even sure that she was his, though Lorraine had always insisted that she was.

“Darling,” she had said to him once, when she was very pregnant and fretful at being confined to home, “do you think I would go through all this boredom and discomfort for any other reason than to give you your precious heir?”

She had been very angry when Dora was born.

Lorraine had drowned two years later in Italy, where she had been traveling with a group of friends, among whom was her latest lover.

And the lures had been out for him again for almost all of the two years since. Women gazed at him with adoration in their eyes. Women cooed over a frequently petulant and rather plain-faced Dora.

The Marquess of Bedford ran thankfully up the marble steps in front of his house and through the double doors, which a footman had opened for him.

“Let’s see if there is a fire in the nursery, poppet, shall we?” he asked, setting his daughter’s feet on the tiled floor and removing her bonnet and cloak. “And buttered muffins and scones?”

“Yes, if you please, Papa,” she said, raising a hand for his. But her tone was petulant again as they climbed the stairs side by side. “When will Christmas come? You said there would be lots of people here and lots to do. You said it would be fun.”

“And so I did,” he said, his heart aching for her as he looked down at her wet and untidy head. “But Christmas is still five days away. It will be wonderful when it comes. It always is here. You will see.”

But he was lying to her. The dolls and the frilled dresses and the bows would not make a happy Christmas for her. The only real gift he would be able to give her was his company. The choice had been between any of a number of house parties to which he had been invited alone, and Christmas spent, for the first time ever, with his child. He had chosen the latter. But he was not at all sure that that was not more a gift to himself than to her.

Where was the snow? And the young people?And the laughter and song?

“When will the rain end, Papa?” the child asked, echoing his own thoughts.

“Soon,” he said. “Tomorrow, probably.”

“But it has rained forever,” she said.

Yes it had. For all of a week, at least.

He should not have come. He had not been home for almost six years. Not since leaving in a hurry with his father when the news about Claude had come. He should have kept that memory of home intact, at least. That memory of something perfect.Something pure and innocent.Something beyond the dreariness and the corruption of real life.

But he had been fool enough to come back, only to discover that there was no such place. And perhaps there never had been. Only a young and innocent fool who had not yet had his eyes opened.

The rain was bad enough when he had been expecting the magic of his childhood Christmases. Worse by far had been that visit two days before.

Even Lilias.

She had been his first real love. Oh, he had lost his virginity at university and had competed quite lustily with his fellow students for the favors of all the prettiest barmaids of Oxford. But Lilias had been his first love.

A sweet and innocent love. Begun that Christmas when he had first become aware of her as a woman and not just as the fun-loving and rather pretty sister of his friend, Philip Angove. And continued through the following summer and the Christmas after that.

It had been an innocent love. They had never shared more than kisses.

Sweet and brief and chaste kisses. He had been very aware of her youth-only sixteen even during that second Christmas. But they had talked and shared confidences and dreamed together.

A sweet and uncomplicated love.

He wished he had kept that memory untainted. But the world had come to her too. He had wondered about her when he had decided to come home, wondered if he would see her, wondered what it would be like to see her again. He had been amazed to be told on his second day home that she was waiting downstairs in the salon for him. And he had hoped with every stair he took that it would not be as he suspected it would.

It had been worse.

The wet and muddy hem of her gown; the darned patches on the hem and sleeve-the second brought to his attention by the artful design to conceal it; the damp and untidy hair; the thin, pale face; the sad, brave story; the modest appeal for assistance; the ridiculous mention of a debt unpaid. He had seen worse actresses at Drury Lane.

He had been furious enough to do her physical harm. She had come to his home to arouse his pity and his chivalry, and in the process she had destroyed one of his few remaining dreams.

Could she find no more honest way of finding herself a husband? Did she really imagine he was so naive? She had not even had the decency to wait awhile. She had been the first to come.

“Papa,” Dora was saying. She had climbed unnoticed onto his lap beside the fire in the nursery and was playing with the chain of his watch, “it is so dull here. I want to go somewhere.”

“Tomorrow, poppet,” he said. “Mr. Crawford has two little boys, who will surely be pleased to see you. And the rector has a family of five. Maybe there are some little ones among them. We will call on them tomorrow, shall we?”

“Yes, please, Papa,” she said.

“And I have another errand to run in the village,” he said, staring down at his watch, which she had pulled from his pocket. “To see a little boy and girl, though they are not quite as little as you, Dora.”

“Tomorrow?” she said. “Promise, Papa?”

“I promise,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Now, Nurse wants to dry and comb your hair again. And I need to change my clothes and dry my own hair.”

Lilias set three pairs of mud-caked boots down outside the door of her cottage and looked down at them ruefully. Would it be better to tackle the job of cleaning them now, when the mud was still fresh and wet, or later, when it had dried? She glanced up at the sky. The clouds hung heavy and promised that the rain was not yet at an end, but for the moment it had stopped. The boots would not get wet inside just yet.

She was closing the door when her eye was caught by the approach of a carriage along the village street. The very one she had ridden in just three days before. She closed the door hastily. She did not want to be caught peeping out at him as he rode past. But she could not prevent herself from crossing to the window and standing back from it so that she could see without being seen.

“Ugh,” Megan said from the small kitchen beyond the parlor. “It is all soaking wet, Lilias.”

“Ouch,” Andrew said. “Is there any way to pick up holly, Lilias, without pricking oneself to death?”

“Oh, mercy on us,” Lilias said, one hand straying to her throat, “he is stopping here. And descending too. One of the postilions is putting down the steps.”

The dripping bundles of holly, which they had all just been gathering at great cost to fingers and boots, were abandoned. Megan and Andrew flew across the room to watch the splendid drama unfolding outside their window.

“The marquess?” Megan asked, big-eyed. “And is that his daughter, Lilias? What a very splendid velvet bonnet and cloak she is wearing.”

Andrew whistled, an accomplishment he had perfected in the past few months. “Look at those horses,” he said. “What prime goers!”

Lilias licked her lips and passed her hands over hair that was hopelessly flattened and untidy from her recent excursion outdoors. The watch? Had he come to bring the watch in person? The doll had been delivered by a footman the day before, fortunately at a time when the children had gone over to the rectory to play with the children there.

It had been carefully hidden away after she had smoothed wondering fingers over the lace and the soft golden hair. And the butcher had informed her that she might pick up a goose on Christmas Eve.

She wished she were wearing her best day dress again. She crossed to the door and opened it before anyone had time to knock. And she saw with some dismay the row of muddy boots standing to one side of the doorstep.

She curtsied.

“How do you do, ma’am?” the Marquess of Bedford said. He looked even larger and more formidable than he had looked three mornings before, clad as he was in a many-caped greatcoat. He held a beaver hat in one hand. “I have been taking my daughter about to meet some of the children of the neighborhood.”

“Oh,” Lilias said, and looked down at the small girl standing beside him, one hand clutched in his. She was handsomely dressed in dark red velvet, though she was not a pretty child. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, my lady.”

“This is Miss Angove, Dora,” the marquess said.

The child was looking candidly up at Lilias. “We have brought you a basket of food from the house,” she said, tossing her head back in the direction of the postilion, who was holding a large basket covered with a white cloth.

“Won’t you come inside, my lord?” Lilias asked, standing hastily to one side when she realized that she had been keeping them standing on the doorstep. “And there really was no need.” She glanced at the basket and took it reluctantly from the servant’s hand.

“We have taken one to each of the houses we have called at,” he said. “A

Christmas offering, ma’am.” He looked at her with the hooded blue eyes and the marble expression that she had found so disconcerting a few days before. “Not charity,” he added softly for her ears only.

His daughter was eyeing Megan and Andrew with cautious curiosity.

“Do you think girls are silly?” she asked Andrew after the introductions had been made and Lilias was ushering the marquess to a seat close to the fire.

Andrew looked taken aback. “Not all of them,” he said. “Only some. But then, there are some silly boys, too.”

“Mrs. Crawford’s sons think girls are silly,” Dora said.

“They would,” Andrew said with undisguised contempt.

“And do you squeal and quarrel all the time and run to your mama with tales?” Dora asked Megan.

Megan giggled.

“Dora,” her father said sharply, “watch your manners.”

“Because the children at the rectory do,” Dora added.

“We have no mama to run to,” Megan said. “And when Drew and I quarrel, we go outside and fight it out where Lilias cannot hear us and interfere.” She giggled again. “We have been gathering holly. It is all wet and prickly. But there are so many berries! Do you want to see it?

You may take your coat off and put on one of my pinafores if you wish.”

“Megan,” Lilias said, her voice agonized. One of Megan’s faded pinafores on Lady Dora West?

“What is the holly for?” Dora asked. “And, yes, please.” She looked at her father on an afterthought. “May I, Papa? Where did you find it? I wish I could have come with you.”

“No, you don’t,” Andrew said. “My fingers look like one of Miss Pierce’s pincushions. We found some mistletoe too. It is in the kitchen. Come and look.”

Lilias found herself suddenly seated opposite the marquess in the small and empty parlor, the object of his silent scrutiny. She jumped to her feet again.

“May I offer you tea?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “That is not necessary. We had tea at the rectory not half an hour since.”

She flushed. “I am afraid I have nothing else to offer,” she said.

“Sit down,” he said. He looked over his shoulder into the kitchen, where the voices of the children mingled. “One of my men has been sent into town for your brother’s watch, among other things. I shall have it delivered tomorrow.”

Lilias felt herself flush even more deeply. “You are kind,” she said.

“And thank you for the other things.”

More than ever she felt that she had begged from him and had been given charity. There was no unbending in his manner, not the merest hint of a smile on his lips or in his eyes. He was regarding her with what looked uncomfortably like scorn.

“Dora is lonely,” he said. “She has never had children to play with.

Until less than a year ago she lived with her grandparents.”

Lilias did not reply. She could think of nothing to say.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “when she does find playmates, she demands perfection. She wants them to be the sort of friends she would like to have. I am afraid our visits this afternoon have not been a great success.”

Lilias smiled fleetingly.

“Look, Papa.” Dora was back in the room, holding up one small index finger for her father’s inspection. A tiny globe of blood formed on its tip. “I pricked myself.” She put the finger in her mouth even as the marquess reached into a pocket for a handkerchief. “Megan and Andrew are going to put the holly all about the house for Christmas. May I stay and watch?”

“It is time to go home,” he said.

“But I don’t want to go home,” she said, her lower lip protruding beyond the upper one. “I want to stay and watch.”

“We shall gather holly too, shall we?” he asked. “And decorate our house with it?”

“But it will be no fun,” she said mulishly, “just you and me. I want to watch Megan and Andrew. And I want to watch Andrew carve the Nativity scene he is making. We don’t have a Nativity scene, do we?”

“No,” he said, getting to his feet, impatience showing itself in every line of his body, Lilias thought as she too rose from her chair, “we don’t have a Nativity scene, Dora. Take off the pinafore now. I shall help you on with your cloak and bonnet.”

“They have mistletoe, Papa,” Dora said, making no attempt to undo the strings of her pinafore. “They hang it up and kiss under it. Is that not silly?”

“Yes,” he said, undoing the strings for her, “very silly.”

“Can we have some, Papa?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “We will find some tomorrow.”

“But it will be no fun,” she said again.

“We will come with you,” Megan offered, glancing at her brother. “Won’t we, Drew? We know all the best places to look. Or rather, Lilias does, and she showed us today. Shall we come with you?”

The child looked almost pretty for a moment, Lilias thought, as her face lit up with eagerness. “Yes, you come too,” she said. “We will need ever so much holly because our house is much bigger than yours. Isn’t it, Papa? And mistletoe for every room. And Andrew can carve a Nativity scene just for me.”

“No,” Andrew said, “there will not be time. But I will bring the shepherd with me to show you. It will be finished by tomorrow.”

Lilias found herself suddenly gazing into the marquess’s eyes across the heads of the children and feeling decidedly uncomfortable. His eyes were cold and penetrating. And for the first time there was a half-smile on his lips. But she wanted to shiver. The smile had nothing to do with either amusement or friendship.

“Well, Miss Angrove,” he said, “it would be quite too bad if you were the only one to miss this merry outing. I shall send my carriage for the three of you after luncheon tomorrow and we will all go holly gathering together. You will do us the honor of taking tea with us afterward.”

He did not ask questions, Lilias noticed. He did not even make statements. He gave commands. Commands that she would dearly have liked to refuse to comply with, for if one thing was becoming clear to her mind, it was that he disliked her. Quite intensely. Perhaps it was her temerity in reminding him of a long-forgotten debt that had done it. She could think of no other reason for his hostility. But it was there nonetheless.

And she was glad suddenly that he had come home, glad that she had seen what he had become, glad that she could put to rest finally a dream and an attachment that had clung stubbornly long after he had left in such a hurry the very day after they had spent two hours together strolling the grounds of his home, hand in hand, looking at the flowers of spring and planning what they would do during the summer.

She was glad he had come back, for he no longer lived, that gentle and sunny-natured young man whom she had loved. He was dead as surely as his older brother was dead. As surely as Philip was dead. He had died six years before. She had just not known it.

He was holding her eyes with his own. He was obviously waiting for an answer, though he had asked no question. And how could she answer as she wished to do when there were three children standing between them, all eagerly anticipating the treat that the morrow would bring?

“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “That would be very pleasant.”

Very pleasant indeed, the Marquess of Bedford was thinking the following afternoon as the five of them descended the steps of his house and set off past the formal gardens and the lawns and orchards to the trees and the lake and the hill and eventually the holly bushes.

She was wearing a cloak that looked altogether too thin for the weather.

And beneath it he could see the same wool dress she had worn for her first interview with him. Except that he had realized the day before that it could not, after all, be her oldest gown. The cotton dress she had worn when he and Dora had called upon her was so faded that it was difficult to tell exactly what its original color had been.

The children were striding along ahead, one Angove on each side of Dora, Megan holding her hand. Dora had had a hard time getting to sleep the night before. He had sat with her, as he had each night since their coming into the country, until she fell asleep. He had sat there for almost an hour.

“We won’t forget the mistletoe, Papa?” she had asked after he had tucked her comfortably into her bed.

“No,” he had assured her, “we won’t forget the mistletoe.”

“Will you kiss me, Papa?” she had asked.

He had leaned over her again and kissed her.

“Under the mistletoe, silly,” she had said, chuckling uncontrollably for all of two minutes.

“Yes, I will kiss you, poppet,” he had said. “Go to sleep now.”

But she had opened her eyes several minutes later. “Do you think Andrew will remember the shepherd, Papa?” she had asked.

“I expect so,” he had said.

He had thought her asleep ten minutes after that. He had been considering getting up from his chair, tiptoeing out of the room, and leaving her to the care of her nurse.

“Papa,” she had said suddenly, frowning up at him, “what is a Nativity scene?”

“A Nativity scene,” he had said. “I’ll tell you some other time. It is time to sleep now.”

“It won’t rain tomorrow, Papa, will it?” she had asked plaintively.

She had been excited about the promised outing with the Angoves. More excited than he had seen her since taking her from Lorraine’s parents early the previous spring, a thin and listless and bad-tempered child.

Damnation! he thought now, and offered his arm to Lilias. Events could not have turned more to her advantage if she really had planned them.

The afternoon before he had thought she had, but he had been forced to admit to himself later that she could not have done so. Too much had depended upon chance. She had not even known that he and Dora were going to call on her.

But she would take full advantage of the cozy family outing. He supposed he would be forced to listen to patient cheerfulness about the prospective post as governess and tender lamentations on the fact that the family was about to be broken up. Doubtless she would confide again her intention of reuniting them when she had made her fortune as a governess.

Lilias. He had not expected her to come to this. He looked down at her as she walked silently at his side. She had not grown since the age of sixteen. Her head still barely passed his shoulder. Her hair was still smooth and fair beneath her bonnet. But she was thinner. Her hand, even inside its glove, was too slender on his arm. Her face was thin and pale. Her dark-lashed gray eyes seemed larger in contrast. She really did look as if she were half-starved.

Damnation!

“I wanted Christmas for my daughter,” he told her, realizing with a jolt as he heard his own words that that was exactly what she had said to him four days before about her brother and sister. “Christmas as I remembered it. I thought I would find it here. But I chose just the year when there is no snow. Only this infernal cold and damp.”

“But it did not always snow,” she said, looking up at him. “Just very rarely, I think. It was especially lovely when it did. But Christmas was always wonderful anyway.”

“Was it?” He frowned.

She drew breath as if to speak, but she seemed to change her mind.

“Yes,” she said.

“I have your watch,” he said. “It is at the house. I shall see that you have it before you leave after tea.”

She looked up at him again, bright-eyed. “Thank you,” she said.

Here we go, he thought. He had supplied her with the perfect opportunity to heap upon his head reflections on how happy the boy would be during the coming years and how he would be able to remember his sisters and their life together every time he pulled the watch from his pocket. He clamped his teeth together and felt his jaw tighten.

He felt guilty suddenly. She so obviously was very poor, and it was so obviously true that the three of them were to be separated after Christmas. He just wished she had not decided to use the pathos of her situation to win herself a rich and gullible husband.

Except that he was not gullible. Not any longer.

She half-smiled at him and shifted her gaze to the three children, who were now quite a distance ahead of them. She said nothing.

Dora was skipping along, he was surprised to notice when he followed the direction of Lilias’s eyes.

“This is where we got the holly yesterday,” Megan announced a while later when they came up to the thicket. And then she looked at Lilias, a hand over her mouth, and giggled.

Andrew was laughing too. “We were not supposed to say,” he said, darting a mischievous look at the marquess. “We were trespassing.”

Lilias was blushing very rosily, Bedford saw when he glanced at her. She looked far more as she had looked as a girl.

“But these ones don’t have as many berries as yours,” Dora complained.

“All the good branches are high up,” Andrew said. “We could not reach them yesterday. Even Lilias.”

“It seems that I am elected,” the marquess said. “Thank goodness for leather gloves. This looks like certain self-destruction.”

Megan giggled as he stepped forward and his coat caught on the lower branches of holly. He had to disengage himself several times before he could reach up to cut the branches that were loaded with berries. His upturned face was showered with water. Dora was giggling too.

Lilias had stepped in behind him to take the holly as he handed it down.

Her gloves and cloak were not heavy enough to protect her from hurt, he thought, and clamped his lips together as he was about to voice the thought.

“Ouch,” Dora cried excitedly, and giggled even more loudly. “I have almost as big an armful as you, Andrew. I have more than Megan. Oh, ouch!”

“You must not clutch them,” Andrew said. “Just hold them enough that they do not drop.”

“Well,” the Marquess of Bedford said when he paused and looked behind him. “You look like four walking holly bushes. Do you think you can stagger back to the house with that load? Only now does it strike me that we should have had a wagon sent after us.”

“Oh, no,” Andrew said. “That would spoil the fun.”

“This is such fun, Papa,” Dora said.

“Let me take some of this load,” Bedford said, reaching out to take some from Lilias’s arms, “before you disappear entirely behind it.”

Her eyes were sparkling up at him.

“But, Papa,” Dora wailed. “The mistletoe.”

“Oh, Lord,” he said, “the mistletoe. I shall go and get some. You all start back to the house.” But she was loaded down. She would never get back without being scratched to death. “Better still, drop your load, Lilias, and show me where this mistletoe is. You children, on your way.

We will catch up to you.”

God, he thought, turning cold as she did what she had been told-considering her load, she had had little choice-he had called her Lilias. The witch! Her wiles were working themselves beneath his guard despite himself. His jaw hardened again.

She led him around past the thicket of holly bushes, past the old oaks, to the mistletoe, which he had forgotten about. The old oaks! He had climbed them with her, to sit in the lower branches, staring at the sky and dreaming aloud with her. He could remember lifting her down from the lowest branch of one-he could not remember which-and kissing her, her body pressed against the great old trunk, her hands spread on either side of her head, palm to palm against his. He could remember laughing at her confusion because he had traced the line of her lips with his tongue.

“It was all a long time ago,” he said abruptly, and felt remarkably foolish as soon as the words were spoken. As if he had expected her to follow his train of thought.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

He gave her the mistletoe to carry, being very careful not to lift it above the level of her head as he handed it to her. And on the way back he took the large bundle of holly into his own arms, against her protests, to carry to the house.

“My coat and my gloves are heavier than yours,” he said.

She brushed her face against the mistletoe as they walked.

“I suppose,” he said harshly after a few silent minutes, “you do not get enough to eat.”

She looked up at him, startled. “My lord?” she said.

“Your brother and sister do not look undernourished,” he said. “I suppose you give all your food to them.”

Her flush was noticeable even beneath the rosiness that the wind and cold had whipped into her cheeks.

“What a ridiculous notion,” she said. “I would have starved to death.”

“And have been doing almost that, by the look of you,” he said, appalled at his own lack of breeding and good manners.

“What I do is my own business, I thank you, my lord,” she said. Her voice was as chill as his own, he realized. “I do not choose to discuss either my appetite or my means with you.”

“You were quite willing to do so a few days ago,” he said.

“Only enough to explain why I had to bring up the matter of that old debt,” she said. “And I take it unkindly in you to refer again to a topic I confided only with embarrassment and reluctance.”

He strode on, knowing that he was walking too fast for her, but doing nothing to slacken his pace.

“Stephen,” she said. She sounded close to tears. “Why do you hate me?”

Stephen. No one had called him by his given name for years, it seemed.

Lorraine had never called him anything but Bedford. He slackened his pace so that she was no longer forced almost to run at his side.

It was clever. Very clever. It almost unnerved him. It was too clever.

She had overplayed her hand.

“I do not hate you, ma’am,” he said, thankful to see the house close by.

The children must be inside already. “What possible reason would I have to hate you?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

He gritted his teeth against the trembling of her voice. It was too overdone. Too contrived.

Lilias, he thought, and remembered the oak trees. And remembered Lorraine and dozens of admiring female eyes and more dozens of obsequious hangers-on.All with their various wiles and arts, and not a few of them with their sad stories and their outstretched hands.

Life might have been so different if only Claude had not died, he thought bitterly, standing aside so that Lilias might precede him up the steps and through the doors into the hallway of his home.

Lilias was putting the final stitches in a strip of faded blue cloth for Mary’s robe while Megan was painstakingly lining the manger with straw.

Andrew was whittling away at a sheep that insisted on looking more like a fox, he complained, a deep frown between his eyes.

“But Joseph is quite splendid, Drew,” Megan said loyally. “He looks quite like a real man.”

“And how lovely it will be,” Lilias said, “to have our own Nativity scene when everyone else has to go to church to see one. What shall we sing?”

“ ‘Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child,’ ” Megan began to sing, and Lilias joined her, while Andrew held his sheep at arm’s length and regarded it with half-closed eyes.

They all stopped what they were doing when there was a knock at the door. Lilias rose to answer it.

Lady Dora West was dressed in dark blue velvet this time, in a small but dashing riding outfit. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were flushed with color. She was clutching her father’s hand as she had two days before.

“We rode here on Pegasus,” she announced as soon as the door was opened, and Lilias could see beyond her a magnificent black stallion tethered to the fence. “Papa said we might call and see your decorations and see Joseph if he is finished.”

“I do beg your pardon if you are busy.” The Marquess of Bedford was looking at her with hooded and wary eyes, Lilias saw when she lifted her own reluctantly to his face.

Why had he come? The afternoon before had been unspeakably embarrassing, especially after her outburst, when she had called him by his given name and asked him such a foolish question. Instead of sitting in the drawing room after tea while the children ran excitedly about first that room and then the nursery, placing the holly, and giggling over where to hang the mistletoe, they had trailed almost silently after. Afraid to be alone together.

She had not expected to see him again.

“Dora has quite taken to your brother and sister,” he said. “She can derive no excitement from her nurse’s company or from mine. She will be satisfied with ten minutes, I believe.”

But by the time he entered the cottage, Dora had already thrown aside her hat and riding jacket and had run into the kitchen to lift from a hook behind the door the pinafore she had worn the last time.

“Oh, the holly,” she cried. “It looks so lovely in here because the room is small. And the mistletoe is right in the center.” She stood beneath it and chuckled. “Kiss me, Papa.”

He did so, bending from his great height to take the upturned face between his hands and kiss the puckered mouth. Lilias turned away, a curious churning in her stomach.

“But that is supposed to be just for Christmas,” he said. “Not for another two days, poppet.”

Listening to his voice as he spoke to the child, not seeing him, she thought he sounded like Stephen. But no, she would not think that. It was not true.

Dora was soon exclaiming over Joseph and laughing delightedly over the sheep when Andrew told her that it looked like a fox. She noticed Mary, who was already dressed in her blue robe.

“Oh, pretty,” she said, fingering it.

Bedford seated himself, uninvited, his eyes on his daughter.

“We were singing when you came,” Megan said, and began singing the same carol that had been interrupted by the arrival of their guests. Dora smiled and stroked Mary’s robe. “You sing too, Lilias.”

Lilias flushed. “Later, Megan,” she said, and glanced in some embarrassment at the marquess, whose eyes had shifted to her. His expression was unfathomable.

“You used to sing,” he said. “All the time.”

She smiled fleetingly and wished she still had Mary’s robe to stitch at.

She had not yet started Joseph’s.

“You used to go caroling,” he said, frowning as if the memory had only just come back to him. “On Christmas Eve. We all used to go-Claude, Philip, Susan and Henrietta Price, the Hendays. But you used to lead the singing.”

Lilias bit her lip. “We still go,” she said. “Some of the villagers and I. The children too. We go around the village before church at eleven, and out to some of the cottages too if we know that someone is too unwell to come to church.”

“Tomorrow night,” Andrew said, looking up briefly from his work. “We had great fun last year. Mr. Campbell gave us all hot cider before he realized that some of us were children and ought not to be drinking it.”

Megan giggled. Then she looked up, arrested by some bright thought. “You ought to come too this year,” she said. “Dora can come. I will hold her hand. And you too, sir,” she added magnanimously.

“May I, Papa?” Dora had leaped to her feet. She looked definitely pretty, Lilias thought, untidy hair and faded pinafore notwithstanding.

“May we?” She danced up and down on the spot in an agony when he did not answer immediately. “Oh, please, please, Papa, may we?”

“You do not know any of the carols, poppet,” he said. “And it will be too late for you. It will be past your bedtime.”

“But Megan will teach me,” she said. “Won’t you, Megan? And Miss Angove.

Won’t you, Miss Angove? And I will go to sleep tomorrow afternoon, Papa, and sleep all afternoon and be very good. Oh, may we go too? Please.”

“We will have to talk about it further,” he said stiffly. He looked almost angry, Lilias saw at a glance. “Right now we are interrupting work, Dora. And I have some errands to run in the village.”

“But I don’t want to go,” she said. “You will stop to talk to people, Papa, and I will be dull. You go and do your errands and I will stay here. Miss Angove will teach me the carols.”

The marquess stood up resolutely. “Put your pinafore away where you found it, now,” he said, “and I shall help you on with your coat.”

She stared at him, her lower lip protruding beyond the upper.

“We will be very happy to have her stay, if you will agree,” Lilias said softly. “It is good to have children here at Christmastime.”

His eyes turned on her, hooded, inscrutable. He inclined his head. “Very well, then, ma’am,” he said. He turned back to his daughter. “You may stay for an hour, Dora,” he said. “But you must come without protest when I return.”

Megan and Dora clapped their hands. Even Andrew looked pleased.

Lilias, standing at the door a minute later, watching the marquess swing himself into the saddle of his horse and proceed along the village street, was not sure if she had done the right thing or not, interfering between a father and his daughter. He had paused in the doorway and looked down at her.

“Another debt to call in?” he had said softly and icily.

She had not comprehended his meaning until he was riding down the pathway to the gate, and even then she was not sure he had meant what she thought he had meant. She hoped he had not. And she wondered again, though she wished with all her heart that she had not asked it, why he hated her.

They sang for almost the whole hour, sometimes the same carol over and over, while Andrew tackled the final feature of the Nativity scene, the baby Jesus, and Megan arranged and rearranged the items already completed. Dora first helped and then stood at Lilias’s elbow, staring fascinated at the tiny robe for Joseph that she was making.

Lilias smiled at her after a few minutes, when they were between carols.

“Why don’t you pull up that stool?” she said.

“Papa told me the story,” Dora said when she was seated. “About the baby and the stable and the manger and the smothering clothes.”

“The swaddling clothes,” Lilias said with a smile. “That is what I will be making next.”

“He is going to tell me again tonight,” Dora said. “I like that story. I am going to learn to sew next year when I am five.”

“Are you?” Lilias smiled again. “Will you like that?”

“Nurse is to teach me,” Dora said. “But I am going to ask Papa if you can teach me instead. It would be fun with you.”

Megan began singing another carol.

The caroling was not the only part of Christmas he had forgotten, Bedford discovered the following morning. And he really had forgotten that. He had always remembered Christmas as a white and outdoor affair.

Everything else had become hazy in memory.

But there had always been the caroling and the lanterns and the rosy cheeks and laughter, and the glasses of cider and wassail until not one of them had been quite sober by the time they got to church. None of them had ever been precisely drunk-just smiling and warm and happy. How could he have forgotten? And how everyone had wanted to stand next to Lilias because she had such a sweet voice and such perfect pitch. He had won almost all of those battles.

Dora, restless in the morning because it seemed such a long wait until the evening-he had promised her the night before, much against his better judgment, that they would join the carolers-wandered down to the kitchen to watch the cook roll the pastry for the mince pies. And she fell into conversation with Mrs. Morgan, who was delighted to have a child in the house again.

And that encounter led, unknown to Bedford until later, to a visit to the attic to find the relics of Christmases past.

“Papa!” Dora burst into the library, where Bedford was trying to read, though it was hard to bring his thoughts to bear on the book opened before him. She was moving at a run past the footman who held the door open for her, and her face was flushed and pretty with an excitement that she could barely contain. “Papa, come to the attic with me. We have been looking at Christmas. The dearest bells. And the star! May we have an evergreen bough, Papa? Mrs. Morgan says there were always evergreens.

May we? Do put down the silly book and come.”

He put down the silly book and came. Or rather was dragged by an insistent little hand and a voice brimming with an excitement he had thought her incapable of.

And of course, he thought as soon as he looked into the opened boxes in the attic and dismissed a rather uncomfortable and apologetic Mrs.

Morgan… Of course. How could he have forgotten? The evergreen boughs, decorated with crystal balls and bells that tinkled and twinkled every time a door was opened or a draft blew down a chimney. The evergreen boughs that had brought the smell of Christmas right inside the house.

And one year the candles on the boughs, until they had been forbidden forever after… after the great fire, when the branch had been singed black and a whole circle of carpet ruined, for he had collided with the bough during blindman’s buff and tipped it over… They must be only thankful that he had not burned too, his mother had said, hugging him while his father had scolded. And someone had been smothering hysterical giggles through it all. Lilias.

“May we have an evergreen bough, Papa? May we?” Dora’s voice was almost a wail, there was so much anxiety in her tone.

“There are enough decorations here for a whole forest of boughs,” he said with a laugh. “There used to be some in the nursery and dining room as well as a whole great tree in the drawing room.”

“A tree, Papa. Just one whole tree in the nursery,” she said, and reached up her arms to be picked up when he smiled down at her.

“Just one, then,” he said. “We will go out and find one ourselves and cut it down, shall we? I think the rain stopped about an hour ago.”

“Yes,” she said, hugging his neck and kissing his cheek.

It was only when they were outside and she was tripping along at his side, her gloved hand firmly clasped in his, that she had her great idea. Though to her it seemed quite natural.

“We will take one for Megan and Andrew and Miss Angove as well,” she announced. “Just a little one because they have such a small room. But there are so many bells and balls. We will take them before luncheon, Papa, so that I may still have my sleep ready for tonight. They will be happy, won’t they?”

“I think they have enough, poppet,” he said. “They are making their own Christmas. They will not want our offerings.”

“Oh, yes, they will,” she said happily. “You said Christmas is for giving, Papa. They will be happy if we give them a whole evergreen tree.

Besides, I want to see the baby Jesus. He was not finished yesterday.

Such a dear little manger, Papa. Miss Angove was going to make the smoth-the swathering clothes.”

“Was she?” he said, his heart sinking. Christmas was for giving, he had told her, and she had just thrown it back in his teeth. How could he refuse to give his daughter happiness?

“Just a little tree, then,” he said. “Papa has only two hands, you know.”

She chuckled. “But they are big hands, Papa,” she said. “Miss Angove is going to teach me to sew when I am five.”

“Is she?” he said, his lips tightening.

“Yes,” she said. “It will be more fun with her than with Nurse.”

And so they found themselves little more than an hour later yet again knocking on the door of the cottage, Bedford found, Dora at his side, jumping up and down.

“I want to tell, Papa,” she told him. The evergreen and the box of decorations, including the great star, were still inside the carriage.

And she did tell, rushing through the door, tearing at her cloak, and whisking herself behind the kitchen door for the pinafore just as if she had lived there all her life. And soon Megan was squealing and giggling and Andrew was exclaiming in delight and offering to accompany the marquess into the garden to fetch a pail of earth to set the tree in-a whole tree, and not just a bough!-and Lilias was clearing a small table and covering it with a worn lace cloth close to the window.

And there he was, Bedford discovered half an hour later, his coat discarded, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his neckcloth askew, balanced on a kitchen chair and pounding a nail into the ceiling. For the great star, it seemed, had not been brought for the Christmas tree at all-“How silly, Papa,” Dora had said with a giggle. “It would be too big”-but to hang over the Nativity scene.

“Just look at the darling baby Jesus,” Dora was saying in a voice of wonder while everyone else was gazing upward at the star Bedford was suspending from the nail.

And then they were all standing in the room, gazing about them at all the splendor and wonder of Christmas, just as if it had come already: the holly boughs and the tree hung with bells and crystal balls, all catching the light from the outdoors and from the fire and the rudely carved Nativity scene with its bright and outsize star and its minute baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.

“Lilias is standing beneath the mistletoe,” Megan said suddenly and in great delight.

Dora clapped her hands and laughed.

And he met her eyes from three feet away and saw the dismay in them and the flush of color that rose to her cheeks, and he was no longer sure that it was all artifice. It was a thin and large-eyed face. It was beautiful.

“Then I had better kiss her,” Andrew said in a tone of some resignation.

“Again.” He pecked her noisily on the cheek and she moved swiftly to the window to still a bell that was swaying and tinkling.

“Time to go, poppet,” the Marquess of Bedford said.

There was a chorus of protests.

“All right, then,” he said. “Dora may stay for another half hour. But no caroling and no church tonight.”

Five minutes later he sank thankfully back against the velvet upholstery of his carriage. He had thought himself hardened to all feeling. He had thought that he could never be deceived again, never caught out in trusting where he should not trust. He would never be caught because he would never trust anyone ever again. It was safer that way.

His saner, more rational, more cautious, more hardened self told him that it was all a ruse, that she was an opportunist who was using all her feminine wiles to trap him and save herself and her brother and sister from a dreary and impoverished future.

His madder, more irrational, more incautious, more gullible self saw a mental image of her eyes lighting up when she saw the tree and the ornaments and their effect on the two children in her charge. And saw her below him as he stood on the chair, her arms half raised as if she expected to be able to catch him if he fell. And saw the look of Christmas in her eyes as she stood in the middle of her living room looking about her. And the flustered look of pure beauty when she realized that she was standing beneath the mistletoe.

Had she known that she stood there? It was impossible to tell. And it made all the difference in the world. Had she known or had she not?

Even more important, did he care either way? Did he still regret that it had been her brother who had stepped forward to kiss her?

No, he must not, he thought, closing his eyes. He must not. He must not.

“Must I sleep all afternoon?” Dora asked him. “May we decorate our evergreen first, Papa?”

“We will do it immediately after luncheon,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at her sternly. “And then you are going to sleep all afternoon.”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

For the past few years Lilias had been the oldest of the carol singers.

But none of the others had been willing for her to retire.

“But, Miss Angove,” Christina Simmonds had protested when she had suggested it two years before, “what would we do without you? You are the only one who can really sing.”

“Besides,” Henry Hammett had added, with a wink for his friend, Leonard Small, “if one of the other girls were to start the carols, Miss Angove, the rest of us would have to either dig a trench to reach the low notes or carry a ladder around with us to hit the high ones.”

A deal of giggling from the girls and rib-digging from the young men had followed his words, and Lilias had agreed to stay.

She was not to be the oldest this year, though. Most of the young people were inclined to be intimidated when they first saw the Marquess of Bedford as one of their number. Most of them had only glimpsed him from a distance since his return home, and most of them were too young to remember that during his youth he had joined in all the village activities.

However, after singing at a few houses and consuming a few mince pies and a couple of mugs of wassail, they no longer found him such a forbidding and remote figure. And the usual jokes and laughter accompanied them around the village.

The younger children formed their own group, Dora firmly in the middle of them, clinging to Megan’s hand. The marquess carried one of the lanterns and held it each time they sang, as he had always used to do, above Lilias’s shoulder so that she could see her music.

She was very aware of him and wished she were not. Apart from the fact that the other faces around them had changed, there was a strange, disturbing feeling of having gone back in time. There was Stephen’s gloved hand holding the lantern above her, and Stephen’s voice singing the carols at her right ear, and Stephen’s hand at the small of her back once as they crossed the threshold into one home.

She had to make a conscious effort to remember that he was not Stephen, that he was the Marquess of Bedford. She had to look at him deliberately to note the broadness of his shoulders and chest beneath the capes of his coat, showing her that he was no longer the slender young man of her memories. And she had to look into his face to see the harsh lines and the cynical eyes-though not as cynical as they had been a week before, surely.

She brought her reactions under control and bent over a very elderly gentleman in a parlor they had been invited into who had grasped her wrist with one gnarled hand.

“Miss Lilias,” he said, beaming up at her with toothless gums, “and Lord Stephen.” He shook her arm up and down and was obviously so pleased with what he had said that he said it again. “Miss Lilias and Lord Stephen.”

Lilias smiled and kissed his cheek and wished him a happy Christmas. And the marquess, whom she had not realized was quite so close, took the old man’s free hand between both of his and spoke to him by name.

In the voice of Stephen, Lilias thought, straightening up.

The children were all very tired by the time they had finished their calls and the church bells had begun to ring. But not a single one of them was prepared to admit the fact and be taken home to the comfort of a bed.

Dora was yawning loudly and clutching Lilias’s cloak.

“I’ll take you home, poppet,” Bedford said, leaning down to pick her up.

“Enough for one day.”

But she whisked herself behind a fold of Lilias’s cloak and evaded her father’s arms. “But you promised, Papa,” she said. “And I slept all afternoon. I was good.”

“Yes, you were good,” he said, reaching out a hand to take one of hers.

“You may see the day out to its very end, then.”

And somehow, Lilias found, the child’s other hand made its way into hers and they climbed the steps to the church together, the three of them, just as if they were a family. People turned from their pews to look at the marquess, and nodded and smiled at them. Megan and Andrew were already sitting in their usual pew, two seats from the front.

Lilias smiled down at Dora when they reached the padded pew that had always belonged to the marquess’s family, and released her hand. She proceeded on her way to join her brother and sister.

“But, Papa,” she heard the child say aloud behind her, “I want to sit by Megan.”

A few moments after Lilias had knelt down on her kneeler, she felt a small figure push past her from behind and heard the sounds of shuffling as Megan and Andrew moved farther along the pew. And when she rose to sit on the pew herself, it was to find Dora sitting between her and Megan, and the Marquess of Bedford on her other side. She picked up her Psalter and thumbed through its pages.

There were candles and evergreen branches and the Nativity scene before the altar. And the church bells before the service, and the organ and the singing during it, and the Christmas readings. And the sermon. And the church packed with neighbors and friends and family. There were love and joy and peace.

It was Christmas.

Christmas as it had always been-and as it would never be again. She had to concentrate all her attention on her Psalter and swallow several times. And a hand moved toward her so that she almost lifted her own to meet it halfway. But it came to rest on his leg and the fingers drummed a few times before falling still.

She was saved by a loud and lengthy yawn and a small head burrowing itself between her arm and the back of the pew. She turned and smiled down at Dora and skipped one arm behind her and the other under her knees so that she could lift her onto her lap and pillow the tired head against her breast. The child was asleep almost instantly.

The marquess’s eyes, when Lilias turned her head to look into them, were very blue and wide open. And quite, quite inscrutable. When the organ began to play the closing hymn, and before the bells began to peal out again the good news of a child’s birth, he stood and took his child into his own arms so that Lilias could stand and sing.

His carriage was waiting outside the church, but Lilias refused a ride for herself and her brother and sister.

“It is such a short distance to walk,” she said.

He set the still-sleeping Dora down on the carriage seat and turned back to them. “I shall say good-night, then,” he said. He held out a hand for Megan’s. “Thank you for inviting Dora. I don’t think you know how happy you have made a small child.” He took Andrew’s hand. “You may come to the house the day after tomorrow, if your sister approves, and we will take that ride I have promised you.”

“Oh, ripping,” Andrew said excitedly.

Bedford turned to Lilias and took her hand in his. He searched her face with his eyes and seemed about to say something. But he merely clasped her hand more tightly.

“Happy Christmas, Lilias,” he said.

“Happy Christmas, Stephen.”

She had said the words and heard them a hundred times that evening, Lilias thought as she turned away and made her way along the street with the two tired children. But the last two times burned themselves on her mind, and she felt herself smiling and happy… and swallowing back tears.

Christmas Day.Chill and dry but heavy with gray clouds out-of-doors.

Warm with the glow and the smells and the goodwill of the season indoors. It did not matter that there was no soft white snow to trudge through, no snow to form into snowballs to hurl at shrieking relatives, no hills of snow to slide down and fall into, no ice to skate on. It did not matter. Christmas was indoors.

The goose was cooking, and the vegetables, saved from the summer’s garden, were simmering. The plum pudding, part of the contents of the basket that had come from the hall, was warming. The light from the fire and the window was glinting off the crystal balls on the tree and off the star suspended from the ceiling. The bells occasionally tinkled when someone walked by and created a draft. And the baby Jesus, wrapped warmly in swaddling clothes in his manger, was being adored by Mary and Joseph, the Three Kings, an angel with one wing larger than the other, one shepherd, and one sheep, which might as easily have passed for a fox.

Megan was seated cross-legged on the floor close to the fire, rocking her new doll to sleep and gazing in wonder at the porcelain perfection of its face. Andrew was jerking his new watch from a pocket every five minutes to make sure that the goose was not being overcooked. And Lilias sat watching them, a smile on her face.

It was their last Christmas together, at least for a very long time. And their best for several years. She did not regret for a moment the humiliation she had had to suffer in going to the hall to beg for what she had needed to make it a memorable Christmas. And she did not regret that he had come to despise her and even hate her for that begging.

It did not matter. For now it was Christmas, and she had one week left in this cottage and with these children. And she had seen the wonder in their eyes when they had seen their presents that morning. They would have a day together that she would hug to herself in memory for many long months to come.

If there was a restlessness, an emptiness, a strange sense of something missing, then she would not think of it. For she could not bring back Papa or Philip, or Mama from even longer ago. She could not bring back the Christmases at the hall with their charades and blindman’s buff and forfeits and sometimes their dancing. She could not bring back those rare and magical white Christmases when they had all spilled outdoors and been reluctant to go back inside even for the foods of Christmas.

And she could not bring Stephen back. For though he had stood beside her last evening when they had gone caroling and sat beside her at church, and though he had taken her hand in his at the end of the evening and wished her a happy Christmas and called her by her name, he was not Stephen. He was the Marquess of Bedford, serious and aloof. And he disliked her, even hated her, perhaps.

She must count her blessings-so many of them-and keep all her attention and all her love and hope within these four walls for today. She would not think of either the past or the future today.

She glanced across the room to the small table where the evergreen stood, and beneath it the box with the ill-fitting lid that Andrew had carved for her, and the carefully hemmed cotton handkerchief with the embroidered forget-me-not that Megan had made for her during stolen private moments over the past few weeks. She smiled again.

“I wish Dora could see my doll,” Megan said. “Do you think she has had anything as grand, Lilias?”

“I can hardly wait for tomorrow,” Andrew said, consulting his watch once more. “Do you think his lordship will let me ride one of his prime goers, Lilias?”

Dora was playing quietly with her own new doll. Indeed, she looked almost like a doll herself, her father thought, glancing across the nursery at her. She was dressed all in her Christmas finery with quantities of satin and lace, and large pink satin bows in her hair, which her nurse had dressed painstakingly in masses of shining dark ringlets.

The child was singing one of her newly learned carols to the doll.

They had opened their own gifts and distributed gifts to the servants, but it was still barely midmorning. Bedford turned to stare out the window. A gray world met his eyes. Those were surely snow clouds overhead, but they were stubbornly retaining their load. If only it had snowed, he thought. He could have taken Dora outside. He could have played in the snow with her all day long and seen that flush of color in her cheeks and that light of pleasure in her eyes that he had not seen a great deal during her short life.

Perhaps he should, after all, have organized some sort of party at the house. There had always used to be a large gathering there for Christmas. But he had come late and without a great deal of warning.

Most of the neighbors had made their plans for the day already.

Perhaps he should have accepted one of the numerous invitations he had received since his arrival. But none of them had seemed to be for family gatherings. It would have meant packing Dora off upstairs to someone’s nursery with other children while he was entertained by the other adults. With cards, doubtless, or dancing. He had been greedy for a Christmas spent with his daughter. He loved her with an almost fierce ache, he had discovered when he had finally taken her from her grandparents’ home the previous spring.

But perhaps he should have accepted one of those invitations. Perhaps Dora would have enjoyed being with other children instead of with him or her nurse all day long. Perhaps he had been selfish.

Christmas Day suddenly seemed to stretch for many long hours ahead of him. What were they to do for the rest of the day? Their Christmas dinner was not to be served until the evening.

“Papa,” Dora said from beside him. She was still cradling her doll in her arms. “Will you tell me a story?”

“Yes, I will,” he said. “What will it be?” He leaned down and swung both child and doll up into his arms. “Shall we go for a walk or a drive afterward? Perhaps take your doll for some fresh air?”

“To Megan’s?” she asked eagerly.

“It is Christmas Day,” he said. “We must not disturb them today, poppet.

Tomorrow Andrew is coming to ride with me. We shall have Megan come over to play with you, shall we?”

“But I want to see her today,” she said. “I want to go now. I want to show Miss Angove my doll.”

“Tomorrow,” he said, hugging her. “You still have not told me which story you want.”

“I want to go now,” she said petulantly. “I want to see the holly and the tree and the baby Jesus and the star.”

“But we have our own decorations and our own evergreen,” he said, sitting down with her and settling her on his lap.

“But it’s not the same,” she said. “They are so much more cozy, Papa.

Please may we go. Please!”

One thing he had discovered about himself in the past year, Bedford thought ruefully: He was incapable of exercising the proper control over his child. He knew that it was not good always to give in to her whims; he knew that he must stand up against her, for her own good as much as for his. But he could not bear to see pleading in her eyes and dash it to pieces.

He had so much to atone for: almost four years when he had scarcely seen her but had left her to the not-so-tender care of her grandparents.

Lorraine had not wanted her; she had had no use for a daughter. Now he had to be both mother and father to her. There was no soft, motherly presence to bring her the love and security so necessary to a small child. He had to provide that care himself. But he knew that he was allowing her to rule him, that eventually she would suffer from having no one to take a firm stand with her.

He sighed as he looked down into the pleading eyes of his child. Perhaps it would be easier to say no if he did not wish so desperately to go himself. This house was altogether too large and cheerless for two people, especially at Christmas. The cottage in the village was like a magnet to him.

Lilias was like a magnet. But he put the thought ruthlessly from his mind.

“We will take the carriage, then,” he said, “and go immediately. Just for half an hour, to wish them a happy Christmas. No longer, poppet, because they will be busy preparing their dinner, and they will want to enjoy one another’s company.”

Dora’s face lit up and she slid from his knee. “May I take my new muff?” she said. “May I, Papa? And may we take them gifts? I am going to give Megan my little pearls and Miss Angove my diamond brooch. What shall we take for Andrew?”

The marquess laughed. “Slow down,” he said. “Gifts are a good idea, Dora, but nothing too valuable, or we will embarrass them.”

She looked crestfallen, but her brow puckered in thought. “May I give Megan the new blue ribbon you bought for my bonnet?” she asked.

“I think that is a splendid idea,” he said.

“And I could give Miss Angove the painting I did of you on your horse,” she said. “Is it good enough, Papa?”

“I am sure she will be pleased,” he said, hoping that his daughter would forget to identify the horseman when she presented the gift.

“But what can we give Andrew?” She was frowning.

“I’ll wager he would like that seashell we found at Brighton,” he said.

“The one you can hold to your ear to hear the tide. Can you bear to part with it?”

Dora’s face lit up again, and she darted off to find the three treasures. Bedford watched her go.

He really should not have given in on this occasion, should he? He must be the last person Lilias would want to see on this of all days. But just for half an hour. It would not quite ruin her day, surely. And it would make Dora’s day.

It was Christmas morning, too early for the carriages of those going visiting for the afternoon. The street had been silent all morning. But it was no longer silent. It was Andrew who first remarked on the sound of horses and who crossed to the window to look out. Megan joined him there when it became clear that there was also a carriage approaching.

“It is Lord Bedford’s carriage,” Andrew cried. “And it is stopping here, Lilias. Oh, ripping! He will see that I have a watch, just like a man.”

“Dora is with him,” Megan cried. “How pretty she looks. And she has a doll with her. Do come and look, Lilias.”

“I think one of us should think of opening the door,” Lilias said, getting to her feet with a smile. And she passed nervous hands over her apron, realized she was wearing it, and removed it hastily. She was pleased that she was wearing her blue silk. It was true that it was no longer fashionable, but it had been worn so sparingly in the last few years that it was barely faded and not patched at all. She was wearing the lace collar that had been Mama’s. And she had taken special care with her hair that morning because it was Christmas.

He was holding himself very straight. His expression was wooden. She would have said he was embarrassed if she had thought him capable of such feelings. But she had little time in which to stare.

“We have called for half an hour to wish you all a merry Christmas,” he said stiffly.

But Dora was jumping up and down at his side and then pushing her way through the door. “We have brought you presents,” she said in a voice that seemed designed to be heard by someone at the other end of the street. “And I have a new doll, Megan. Oh, and you do too. Ooh, she is pretty. What is her name? And see my new muff, Miss Angove? Papa bought it in London for me, though I did not know until this morning. I wanted to see the star again. Oh, it does look lovely. What smells so good?

Does it not smell delicious, Papa? And here are your gifts. Open them.

Oh, open them.”

“Quieten down, poppet,” the marquess said, bending down to remove her muff and undo her coat. He kissed her on the cheek, and Lilias felt that churning in her stomach she had felt before.

Megan and Andrew were soon exclaiming over their gifts while Dora shouted them both down, explaining that the ribbon had been meant for her but she had wanted to give it to Megan. And the shell she and Papa had found their very own selves on the beach at Brighton. And couldn’t Andrew just hear the tide at Brighton when he held it to his ear?

Lilias sat down before removing the ribbon from the paper and unrolling her painting.

“Ah,” she said. “How lovely. And you painted it yourself.”

“Yes, I did,” Dora said, climbing up onto Lilias’s lap so that she could see the picture too. “That is Papa, but he does not look very much like him, does he? Papa is more handsome, isn’t he? That is Papa’s horse. His one leg is white, you see? Really he is not quite black, but I had to paint him black because my brown paint was not dark enough. I painted a sun, see?”

“It is beautiful,” Lilias said, burying her face in the child’s ringlets for a moment. “Quite the loveliest painting I have ever owned. I shall treasure it.”

“Will you?” Dora looked up at her. “This is pretty.” She laid one small forefinger against the lace collar. “Do you like my muff?”

But she did not wait for an answer. She wriggled down to the floor again in order to exchange exclamations of delight with Megan over their dolls.

The marquess was bent over Andrew, meticulously examining his watch, for all the world as if he had never seen it before, Lilias thought.

Dora accepted a mince pie, another of the offerings from the hall; the marquess did not. Dora sat very straight on a chair close to the Nativity scene, her usual pinafore protecting her dress from crumbs, her feet dangling above the floor.

“I like Christmas in your house,” she told Lilias and Megan after telling them all about the distributing of gifts to the servants that morning. “I wish we could stay here all day.”

The marquess, Lilias could hear with some delight, was telling Andrew about Tattersall’s. He would make a friend for life. Andrew had a passion for horses.

“You can stay all day,” Megan said. “Can’t they, Lilias? Our goose is ever so big and there are enough vegetables to feed the five thousand.

Lilias said so just a short while ago. We could play house all day. I could be mother and you could be elder sister. And the two dolls can be the babies. Andrew could be the father, but I don’t suppose he will want to be. But that does not matter, does it?”

“I am sure his lordship must have other plans for the day,” Lilias said quietly to Megan, but Dora had already slipped from her chair and crossed the room to stand beside her father’s. She stood there, pulling at his sleeve.

“Papa,” she said, “Miss Angove and Megan want us to stay for the rest of the day. There is lots of food, Miss Angove says, and Megan and I are going to play house all day. May we, Papa? Please, may we?”

“Yes,” Andrew said with some enthusiasm.

Wide-open blue eyes were turned on her, Lilias saw. Accusing? Assessing?

Hostile?Incredulous? It was impossible to tell. She felt herself flushing.

“Impossible, Dora,” the marquess said, getting to his feet. “We could not so impose. You agreed to half an hour, and that must be just about up.”

There was a chorus of disappointed protests from the three children.

“You would be very welcome,” Lilias found herself saying. “There really is plenty of food, and it would be such a treat for the children to have company.”

His eyes burned into hers from across the room. And for me too, she told him silently. For suddenly there was no longer that elusive sense of something missing. There was excitement in the house and happiness.

And Christmas was somehow complete.

And he was there. And there was a chance-she clasped her hands in front of her very tightly-that he would be there for the whole day. Her memorable Christmas would be memorable indeed, for she would remember him as Stephen. No matter how much he was this withdrawn and austere and even hostile marquess, in memory she knew she would erase all facts except the essential one: He was Stephen. And she had never stopped loving him. Maybe she never would.

If he stayed, she would be able to carry him with her in memory with all the other memories of this last Christmas with her family. It would all be complete.

“This is preposterous,” he said, sitting back down again and looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Whatever will Miss Angove think of us, Dora?”

“Hurrah,” Andrew shouted out. “He is going to say yes.”

The girls squealed and jumped up and down on the spot. And when Dora climbed onto her father’s lap to hug him and kiss him, Megan climbed onto his other knee and smiled adoringly into his face.

“Thank you,” she said. “Oh, thank you, sir.”

“Your sister is going to throttle me, little imp,” he said, and to Lilias’s amazement, he hugged the child close with one arm and kissed her cheek. “I had better go outside and dismiss my coachman. He might die of boredom and cold if we leave him out there for the rest of the day.”

The children were enjoying themselves quite noisily. Even Andrew had been prevailed upon to join in the game of house and was currently sitting on a stool having his hair combed and parted down the wrong side by Dora.

They were having a good time, and that was what really mattered, Bedford thought. But what on earth must Lilias think of him for agreeing so weakly to stay for dinner and even for the rest of the day? He had instructed his coachman to return for him and Dora at eight o’clock.

Or perhaps he should not be feeling guilty, but angry. A few days before he would have been angry and suspicious. It would have been very easy for her to set the children to trapping him into this domestic situation and leading him on to making her an offer.

But he found it hard to believe still that her every action since his homecoming had been conniving. And if it were, was it so despicable? She and the children really were in a desperate situation, and they really were facing a bleak future. Would it be so wrong of her to scheme to win for herself a husband who could lift the burden from her shoulders?

“I have never done this before, you know,” he said now, looking rather dubiously at the goose she had asked him to carve. “The meat seems to want to come away in clumps rather than in neat slices.”

Lilias laughed. “I have never done it either,” she said. “That is why I asked you.” She was stirring the gravy. But she paused and looked at him in some concern. “If any of that grease gets on your shirt, it will be ruined.”

He looked down at his white shirt. He had already removed his coat and waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves to the elbow.

“What you need is an apron,” she said, and crossed to the hook on the kitchen door to fetch one.

“But my hands are greasy,” he protested when she held it out to him.

“Lower your head, then,” she said with a giggle he had not heard for years, and she slipped the neck strap over his head. She moved behind him, and there was a moment when her arms came around his waist to grasp the ties of the apron so that she could secure it behind him.

“There,” she said, coming around to the front of him again to survey her handiwork. His hands were greasy, and he held them suspended in the air.

“The Marquess of Bedford in heavy disguise.” She laughed. “Oh, you do look funny, Stephen.”

But the smile froze on her face and faded, and color rose up her neck and into her cheeks, and he watched her swallow. The children’s voices seemed very distant, even though they were just beyond the open door between the kitchen and the parlor. His eyes strayed to her lips.

“The goose awaits,” he said lightly.

“The gravy will be lumpy,” she said simultaneously.

They worked together in the small kitchen in an awkward silence.

The tension eased when they all sat down to dinner. But there was a heightened awareness that Bedford did not find altogether unpleasant.

They sat at either end of the table, Andrew on one side of them and Megan and Dora on the other. Just like a family, all of them playing house in the warm and cozy little cottage. He met Lilias’s eyes across the table and smiled. She looked down hastily and then back at him.

“Will you say grace, my lord?” she asked.

He had never in his life washed dishes. But when the plum pudding was finally eaten and they were all groaning with the good foods they had stuffed into themselves, he rolled up his sleeves and put on the apron again. The children giggled.

“Oh, you must not,” Lilias said, flustered. “Please sit down in the parlor, my lord. The children and I will see to the dishes.”

“No, this is famous,” Andrew exclaimed. “You wash, sir, and Megan and I will dry.”

“My thoughts entirely,” the marquess said. “Your sister thinks I am incapable, you see, Andrew. We will show her, won’t we? You may clear away the food, ma’am, and then we will all have something to do.”

“I want to dry too.” Dora had climbed onto a chair to make herself noticed.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Lilias said, “you may help me put away. I really need assistance with that. Will you?”

Doing dishes had never been so much fun, Andrew declared half an hour later when the wet towels were being hung up to dry. Megan and Dora were still giggling over the cup that had slipped from the marquess’s wet hand and smashed on the floor.

“Let’s play house again,” Megan said.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Andrew said.

“Yes.” Dora jumped up and down on the spot. “Go for a walk.”

“I am sure we all need a brisk walk of at least five miles,” the marquess said, patting his stomach. He turned to Lilias. “You have been busy all morning, ma’am. Would you care to have a rest while I take the children walking?” He looked down at her hopefully. “Or would you care to join us?”

“I shall join you,” she said. “Fresh air sounds wonderful.”

Steady, Bedford told himself as he buttoned Dora’s coat a few minutes later and pulled on his own greatcoat. He must not become too mesmerized by the feeling of family he had had for the past few hours. Only Dora was his family. The other children belonged to Lilias, and she was not his family at all.

Perhaps she should have refused, Lilias thought as she drew her cloak about her and tied the strings of her bonnet. Perhaps she needed an hour alone in which to clear her head of this seductive feeling of warmth and belonging she had had in the past few hours. Perhaps she should not go walking with him, just as if they were one close and happy family.

But there was so little time left. Less than a week, and then a long and lonely life as someone’s governess.And the long illusion that one day she would earn enough money to gather her family back around her again.

Less than a week left with Megan and Andrew. Less than a week with Stephen and Dora.

No, she thought, pulling her gloves on resolutely, she was not doing the wrong thing. He had ordered the carriage for eight. That left them with six hours. Six hours. It was not long. She was going to enjoy every minute of it, even if to do so was only to invite future pain. She did not care about the future. Only the present mattered.

Dora attached herself to one of her hands, Megan to the other. Dora skipped rather than walked, and entertained her companions with stories of all that her papa had shown her in London and Brighton. Andrew and the marquess were striding along ahead, deep in conversation-doubtless about horses, Lilias thought with a smile. She was glad for Andrew. He needed more male company than he had had in the past two years. But then, of course, soon he would have nothing but male company, their grandfather during holidays, other boys of his own age during term time.

She shut the thought from her mind.

They walked to the lake on the grounds of Bedford Hall. It was looking very bleak and even had a thin layer of ice covering it.

“Yes,” Andrew was saying excitedly as Lilias and the girls came up to him and the marquess. “If it stays cold like this, we will be able to slide on the ice in a few days’ time.”

The children were soon running around the bank, gazing eagerly at the film of ice.

Lilias had not realized how cold it was until she stopped walking. The wind cut at her like a knife. She glanced up at the heavy clouds.

“Snow clouds,” the marquess said. “Are they just teasing, do you suppose? But I think not. I believe we are going to have our snow yet.”

“Yes,” Lilias said, “I think you are right.” Her teeth were chattering.

She shivered. She could feel him looking at her. She sought in her mind for something to say. There was an awkwardness when they were alone.

They needed the presence of the children to create an atmosphere of ease between them.

“Lilias,” he said. His voice was tight and withdrawn, the voice of the Marquess of Bedford again, despite his use of her given name, “your cloak is too thin. It must be quite threadbare. When did you last have a new one?”

She looked jerkily up at him. “It is quite adequate, I thank you,” she said. “It is just this standing still that is making me cold.”

“When did you last buy yourself anything?” he asked. His voice sounded angry. “Has everything been for the children in the last few years? Your lips are quite blue.”

“Don’t,” she said. His face had that shuttered look it had had the first few times she had seen him. “It is none of your concern.”

“Your dress,” he said. “It was quite fashionable six years ago when it was new. You wore it for Christmas then. Had you forgotten?”

She stared at him, though she did not see him at all. She was blinded by hurt and humiliation. She had forgotten. She had felt pretty that morning. Pretty for him. She turned quickly away.

“It is none of your business,” she said. “What I wear and what I spend on myself and the children is none of your concern at all. I am not answerable to you.”

“No, you are not,” he said, moving closer to her so that he stood between her and the wind. He lifted his head and his voice suddenly.

“Andrew,” he called, “your sister and I are going to begin the walk home. You may bring the girls along behind us. Don’t let anyone set even a single toe on that ice.”

“No, I won’t, sir,” Andrew called back.

He took her arm through his and hugged it close to his side. He walked at a brisk pace. And he plied her the whole way home with questions about her governess post: where it was and who the family were and how many charges she would have and how arduous the duties were likely to be. And he asked about Andrew, about what school he was to attend, how well he was likely to be treated by his grandfather, how much he looked forward to being away from home. He wanted to know about Great-aunt Hetty in Bath and how suitable a home she would be able to offer a nine-year-old child.

Lilias answered as briefly as she could.

“Why would your grandfather not take all of you?” he asked as they entered the village again.

“Papa defied him when he married Mama,” she said. “He has never recognized us. I was fortunate to be able to persuade him to take Andrew.”

“You are his grandchildren,” he said. “He ought to have taken you. Did you ask him to?”

She shook her head. “I will not answer any more questions,” she said. “I have arranged everything to my own satisfaction, my lord.”

“In other words, it is none of my business, again,” he said, his voice still angry. “You are right. But those children need you, Lilias. They are still very much children.”

She stared stonily ahead to the cottage. The temptation to tip her head sideways to rest against his shoulder, to sag against the strength of his arm, to close her eyes and pour out all her pain to him was almost overwhelming. She was only thankful that for the return walk he had chosen to be the Marquess of Bedford rather than Stephen. She might not have been able to resist letting down her guard with Stephen.

He put fresh logs on the fire when they went indoors while she filled the kettle. By the time they were ready to settle into an uncomfortable silence, the children were home, and they brought with them again all the joy and laughter of Christmas-and, yes, the warmth too, despite rosy cheeks and reddened fingers and noses.

“Tell the Nativity story again, Papa,” Dora begged when all outdoor garments had been removed and put away, climbing onto his knee.

“Again?” he said. “You have heard it three times already, poppet.”

“Tell it again,” she said, fingering the diamond pin in his neckcloth.

Megan was standing beside them. The marquess smiled at her-Lilias’s heart did a complete somersault-and reached out his free arm to draw her onto his other knee. He told both girls the story, and Andrew too, who was sitting at his feet whittling away at the sheep again, trying to improve its appearance. Lilias busied herself getting tea.

The time went too fast. He willed it to hold still; he willed eight o’clock never to come. But of course it did come. Stories and singing and charades and forfeits had passed the time merrily. Megan and Dora were bright-cheeked and bright-eyed and very giggly long before eight o’clock came, a sure sign that they were very tired.

“But I don’t want to go, Papa,” Dora said, yawning very loudly. “One more hour?”

“One more?” Megan pleaded.

Lilias was sitting in a chair opposite his own, her feet resting on the hearth. She was smiling. She looked very beautiful. Why had he not told her that out at the lake? Why had he not told her that she looked even lovelier this year in the unfashionable blue gown than she had looked six years before? Why had he allowed himself to get angry instead? Angry at a fate that could treat her so? He wanted her to have everything in the world, and instead, she had almost nothing. Why had he not told her she looked beautiful?

“Not even one more minute,” he told the girls. “And, as it is, that coach of ours is late. Wherever can it be?”

He got up from his chair and crossed the room to the window. He pulled back the curtains, which they had closed as soon as they had returned from their walk, and leaned past the evergreen in order to peer out into the darkness. Not that he had really needed to lean forward, he realized immediately. It was not dark outside.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Snow.”

It must have started in great earnest the moment they had pulled the curtains. And it must have been snowing ever since. There were several inches of it out there.

“Snow!” There were three identical shrieks, and three human missiles hurled themselves against him and past him in order to see the spectacle. “Snow!” There was a loud babble of excitement.

“Well,” he said, “at least we know what has delayed the coach. It is still in the coach house and the horses in the stable, if Giles has any sense whatsoever.”

Dora shrieked and bounced at his side. “We can stay, then, Papa?” she asked. “We can stay all night?”

He turned to see Lilias standing before the fireplace.

“She can share Megan’s bed,” she said hastily. “There will be room for the two of them. You must not think of taking her out if the snow really is too deep for your carriage.”

“And you can share mine,” Andrew said brightly.

The marquess laughed. “Thank you, Andrew,” he said, “but I shall walk home. For days I have been longing to set my feet in snow. But I will be grateful to leave Dora here until morning. Thank you, ma’am.” He looked at Lilias.

She went upstairs almost immediately with Megan to get all ready. He took Dora onto his lap to explain to her that he would go home alone and return for her in the morning. But he need not have worried. She was so tired and so excited at the prospect of spending the night with Megan that she seemed not at all upset at being separated from him. He took her upstairs.

The door to one small bedroom was open. Megan was crying. The marquess stood still on the stairs and held his daughter’s hand more tightly.

“Hush,” Lilias was saying. “Oh, hush, sweetheart. You know we had a pact not to talk of it or even think of it until Christmas was well and truly over. Hush now. It has been a lovely Christmas, has it not?”

“Ye-e-es,” Megan wailed, her voice muffled. “But I don’t want to go, Lilias.”

“Sh,” Lilias said. “Dora will be here in a minute. You don’t want her to see you cry, do you?”

“No-o-o.”

The marquess looked down into the large eyes of his daughter and held a finger to his lips. He frowned. Then he stepped firmly on the next stair. “Here we are,” he said cheerfully. “Two little girls to squash into one little bed.”

Megan giggled.

“Four little girls,” Dora corrected him, indicating the doll clutched in her own arms and pointing to Megan’s, which was lying at the foot of the bed.

Both girls giggled.

“Four, then,” he said. “In you get.”

Andrew was no less tired than the girls. He went to bed only ten minutes later. Ten minutes after that the giggling and whisperings stopped. It seemed that all were asleep.

The marquess was standing at the window, looking out into the curiously lightened world of freshly falling snow. Lilias was seated silently at the fire.

“Lilias,” he said. He could no more think of the right words to say than he had been able to twenty minutes before. He continued to look out the window. “You must marry me. It is the only way. I cannot let you take on the life of a governess. And Andrew and Megan must not be separated from each other, or from you. You must marry me. Will you?” He turned finally to look across the room at her. And knew immediately that he had done it all wrong, after all.

She was quite pale. She stared up at him, all large eyes in her thin face. “No,” she said, and her voice was trembling. “No, I will not accept charity. No.”

But she must be made to accept. Did she not realize that? He felt his jaw harden. He retreated behind the mask that had become almost habitual with him in the past few years.

“I don’t think you have any choice,” he said. “Do you seriously think that, as a governess, you will ever again have a chance to see your brother and sister? Do you imagine that you will be able to save even enough money to travel to where they are to visit? It will not happen.

When you leave here, you will see them for perhaps the last time.”

She was sitting on the very edge of her chair, her back straight, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

“Do you think I do not know that?” she said.

“Andrew will not even be allowed to see you again,” he said. “He will be taken back into the fold, and he will be taught to despise you. Do you realize that?”

“Yes.”

He saw the word forming itself on her lips. He did not hear it. “Megan will be an old woman’s slave,” he said. “She will have a dreary girlhood. She will probably end up like you, a governess or a paid companion. Have you thought of that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then you must marry me,” he said. “For their sakes, if not for your own. You will be able to stay together.” His eyes strayed down her body.

“And you will be able to have some new clothes at last.”

He ached to buy her those new garments, to see the pleasure in her eyes as he clothed her in silks and lace and warm wool. He wanted to hang jewels about her neck and at her ears. He wanted to put rings on her fingers.

“You must marry me,” he said.

She rose to her feet. He knew as soon as she did so that she was very angry. “Must I?” she said softly. “Must I, my lord? Is this what your title and wealth have done for you? Do you talk to your servants so? Do you talk to everyone so? And does everyone kiss the ground at your feet and do what they must do? Is this how you persuaded your first wife to marry you? And did she instantly obey? Well, not me, my lord. I do not have to marry you, or anyone else. And if it is true that my brother and sister will live less than perfect lives according to the arrangements I have made for them, then at least we will all be able to retain our pride and hold our heads high. I will not sell myself even for their sakes.”

The Marquess of Bedford had trained himself not to flinch outwardly under such scathing attacks. He merely stared at her from half-closed eyelids, his teeth and lips firmly pressed together.

“Pride can be a lonely companion,” he said.

“Perhaps so,” she said. “But charity would be an unbearable companion, my lord.”

He nodded. “I will wish you good-night, then,” he said. “Thank you for giving Dora a bed. And thank you for giving her the loveliest day of her life. I know I do not exaggerate. I hope we have not spoiled your day.”

“No,” she said. The fire of battle had died in her eyes. She looked smaller and thinner even than usual. “You have not spoiled our day. The children have been very happy.”

The children. Not she. The marquess half-smiled, though he feared that his expression must look more like a sneer. He picked up his greatcoat and pulled it on.

“Good night,” he said again, pulling his collar up about his ears.

“Don’t stand at the door. You will get cold.”

He did not look at her again. He concentrated his mind on wading through the soft snow without either falling or losing his way.

She sat back down on the edge of her chair and stared into the fire. She would not think. She would not remember… or look ahead. She would not think. She would not. She would sit until some warmth seeped into her bones, and then she would go to bed and sleep. She felt bone-weary.

But she would not think at all. Tomorrow she would work things out.

She would sit there until she was warm and until she could be sure that her legs would support her when she stood up. And until she could see to climb the stairs. She blinked her eyes determinedly and swallowed several times.

But she would not think.

She sat there for perhaps fifteen minutes before leaping to her feet suddenly and flying to the door to answer a loud hammering there. She pulled it open, letting in cold and snow. And she closed it again, setting her back to it, and watching in a kind of stupor as Bedford stamped the snow from his boots and tore off his coat and hat and threw them carelessly aside.

“Listen to me, Lilias,” the marquess said fiercely, turning to her. But he stopped talking and looked at her in exasperation. He reached out and took one of her hands in a firm clasp. “No, don’t listen to me. Come with me.”

He did not take her far, only to the middle of the parlor. She looked up at him in mute inquiry.

“You will not even be able to slap my face,” he said, drawing her against him with his free arm. He glanced upward at the mistletoe. “It is a Christmas tradition, you see.” He bent his head and kissed her.

She stood still, rigid with shock. It was a hard and fierce kiss.

“Don’t,” he said against her lips. His very blue eyes were gazing into hers. “Don’t, Lilias. Don’t shut me out.”

And then she could only cling to him and sag against him and eventually reach up to hold him more firmly by the shoulders and about the neck. He was no longer a slender boy, kissing her with the eager kisses of a very young man. He had a man’s body, hard and firmly muscled. And his kisses were a man’s kisses, deep and experienced and full of a knee-weakening promise.

But he was the same, nonetheless. He was Stephen as she remembered him, as she had dreamed of him and cried for him, and as she had consigned to the most treasured memories of her young life. He was Stephen as she had longed for him and yearned for him through six years when she might have married any of several other worthy men. Stephen, whom she had loved at the age of fifteen, and whom she would love at the age of ninety, if she lived that long.

She did as he asked. She did not shut him out. At long last, she lowered her guard and did not shut him out.

“Lilias.” He held her head against his shoulder and looked down into her face. “I said it all wrong. I did it all wrong. Right from the start.

Six years ago. How could I ever have left you? After Claude died, my father impressed upon me that I was now his heir, that I must put behind me all that was humble and beneath the dignity of a future marquess. And when he died soon after, I was dazzled by my own importance and popularity. I forgot you. I married Lorraine.”

“I understood,” she said, reaching up a hand and touching his cheek with her fingertips. “I did not expect any different. Even before you left, I never expected more from you. Only friendship and an innocent romance. I was very young. Too young to have any expectations of anything beyond the moment.”

“I never allowed myself to think of you,” he said. “You just became part of the dream of a perfect childhood and boyhood.”

“I know,” she said. “You became my dream, too.”

“I did only one good and worthy thing in all those years,” he said, “and had only one claim to happiness: I begot Dora.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“I have had her only since last spring,” he said. “And as Christmas approached, I knew I had to bring her here. I remembered that Christmases here were always perfect. I thought it was the snow and the sledding and skating. Memory can sometimes be so defective. I was wrong about that. But not wrong in the main. Christmas was always perfect here, and it has been perfect this year, even though the snow has only just come. It was because of you, Lilias. Because you were always there.

And because you were here this year.”

She turned her face to his shoulder. “I wanted Christmas for the children,” she said. “I did not know how I was to do it. But when I heard that you had come, I knew that you would be able to provide it.

Not just with money, though that is what I ended up asking for and remembering that ridiculous incident of the Latin lessons. I just felt that I had to go to you and that you would make everything all right.

But you had changed. I was frightened when I saw you.”

“Lilias,” he said, and held her head more firmly against his shoulder.

“How can I say it this time without saying quite the wrong words again?

If not for your own sake and your brother’s and sister’s, will you do it for mine? Marry me, I mean. Though I don’t deserve it. I left you without a word. For Dora’s, then? She needs a mother. You would not believe what a sullen and bad-tempered child she was when I first took her, and how petulant she can still be when she does not have her way.

And I cannot say no to her, though I know I must learn how. She needs you, Lilias. And she loves you already. Have you seen that? I want you to be her mother. Will you? Will you marry me?”

She pulled her head free of his hand and looked up into a face that was anxious and vulnerable.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not for Dora’s sake, Stephen. It would not be enough. And not for Andrew’s and Megan’s. That would not be enough either. And not for my need. Somehow I will survive as a governess.”

He opened his mouth to protest. She set one finger lightly over his lips.

“For one reason only,” she said. “For the only reason that would make it work.Only if we love each other.Both of us.”

Wide blue eyes looked down into hers. “You have been there for six long and unhappy years,” he said. “The dream of you. I brought my child to you this Christmas, though I did not realize when we left London quite why I was bringing her here. The dream has come alive again. Like a greedy child, I have Christmas and want to keep it forever here in my arms. I don’t want it to disappear tomorrow or the next day. I don’t want that dreary world back, Lilias. I don’t want to live without you.

Yes, I love you. I always have, but like a fool, I have repressed the knowledge for six years. Will you have me?”

“So many times,” she said, “I have told myself how foolish I was not to let go the memory of you. I had the well-being of two children to see to, and my own, and I have had two offers since Papa died. We could have been comfortable, the three of us. But I could not let you go, even though I was so very young when you left. Now I know I was not foolish, after all. For whether you marry me or leave me forever tomorrow, Stephen, you will always be a part of me. I will never love any other man. There is only you.”

He was quite the old Stephen suddenly, his eyes dancing, his mouth curved into a grin. “Now, let me get this straight,” he said. “Was that yes or no?”

She laughed back into his eyes. “It was yes,” she said.

“Was it?” He stooped down suddenly and she found herself swung up into his arms. He carried her over to the fire and sat down on a chair with her. “God, Lilias, you weigh no more than a feather. The first thing I am going to do with you, my girl, is fatten you up.”

She clung to his neck and laughed.

“And the next thing I am going to do,” he said, “is take you to London and buy you so many clothes it will take you a year to wear them all.

And so many jewels that it will take two footmen to lift you from the ground.”

Her laughter turned to giggles.

“But there,” he said, shrugging his shoulder so that her face was turned to his again, “I was always a fool, wasn’t I, love? The costliest gown in London could not look lovelier on you than this blue silk. And anyway, those things are going to have to come second and third. A very distant second and third. There is something else I must do first.”

“What?” she asked, reaching up to touch the silver hairs at his temples.

“I’ll show you in just a moment,” he said. “But first you had better tell me what time you are planning to kick me out of here.”

“Mm,” she said. “Give me time to think about it. What were you going to show me, Stephen?”

He rubbed his nose against hers. “How to play house properly,” he said, grinning at her once more before seeking her mouth with his own again.