A Regency Christmas Treat: Moonlight and Mistletoe / A Mistletoe Masquerade. Louise Allen

around the edge of the Green, moving very fast. The footman slowed and positioned himself between it and Hester, but she had recognised the faces it illuminated and called out, ‘Susan, Jethro, I thought you were home.’

      Jethro came to a halt in front of her, his breath visible in puffs on the chill air. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Hester. I got to playing and what with one thing and another I only noticed the time when the clock stuck the hour.’

      Hester turned to the footman. ‘Thank you. I will be all right now.’

      ‘His lordship told me to see you to your door, ma’am,’ the man responded stolidly. Hester sensed Jethro bristling.

      ‘Very well, I would not wish to countermand his lordship’s orders. And we are nearly there.’

      Jethro made great play of producing the front-door key and ushering Hester and Susan in before nodding dismissively to the footman who towered over him by a good foot.

      Hester suppressed a smile, then suddenly remembered why she had thought they were already home. ‘I was sure I saw a light, some time ago. I assumed it was you returned from the inn.’

      Jethro turned from lighting the hall sconces. ‘No, Miss Hester. That’s an odd thing.’

      ‘Must have been the moon reflecting in the glass,’ Susan said sensibly. ‘Look.’ And sure enough the thinnest sliver of new moon shone clearly through the transom glass over the door.

      ‘Of course,’ Hester murmured with relief; the thought of the mysterious lights seen in the Moon House before she had arrived had been unsettling. Perhaps reflected moonlight was the answer to those as well. ‘Well, I am for my bed, you can tell me all about your adventures at the Bird in Hand tomorrow.’

      Susan was agog to hear about Hester’s experiences and sighed gustily at her description of exactly what had been served at dinner, the gowns of the other ladies and even what his lordship had worn.

      ‘None of the gowns were as fine as yours, then,’ she said with satisfaction as she untied Hester’s stay laces. ‘That Miss Redland sounds a bit worrying, though; her mama will be off ordering her new gowns before the week’s out, I’ll be bound.’

      ‘Nonsense. You speak as though there was some sort of competition.’ Hester met Susan’s eye in the mirror and added, ‘And that is ridiculous.’

      ‘Yes, Miss Hester. Is there anything else?’ Susan paused in the doorway of the dressing room and suddenly Hester’s heart was in her mouth, but she only stooped to pick up a stray ribbon and continued in to fold away Hester’s clothes without any further check.

      Hester climbed into bed and blew out the candle as the door closed behind the maid. ‘Foolish,’ she chided herself as she lay back against the pillow. The new moon was clear through the glass on the unshuttered window and she made a mental note to remind Jethro to get the hinges mended.

      But it was soothing to lie watching the slender white crescent in the dark velvet of the sky, the stars twinkling around it. Hester snuggled down, searching for the flannel-wrapped brick with her toes. She let her mind wander over the events of the evening, but all her treacherous memory would do was dwell on the sound of Guy’s deep voice, the flash of humour in his eyes, the touch of his lips on the soft skin of her inner wrist.

      The curtains stirred slightly in the breeze and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of rustling branches. Hester slept. In the darkness outside a pair of calculating eyes rested thoughtfully on her window.

      She was halfway downstairs the next morning when Hester recalled the broken shutter. ‘Susan, do remind me to ask Jethro to get that shutter in my bedchamber repaired.’

      ‘You need new curtains too before the weather gets much colder,’ the maid remarked. ‘But fixing the shutter will be quicker. Jethro’s in the drawing room, I think. I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

      Susan disappeared towards the kitchen, singing what seemed to Hester to be a new song. She just caught the tail of the chorus: ‘Never say me nay, my lusty lad.’ It hardly seemed a suitable ditty and was doubtless the result of an evening spent in the public bar of the Bird in Hand.

      With an indulgent smile Hester looked round the drawing-room door: no Jethro. She crossed the hall and stepped into the dining room. Again it was empty, but on the table lay a dark, spiky bundle of something next to a chamber stick.

      Puzzled, Hester approached the table and peered at the bundle. It was a bunch of roses. Dead roses. Cautiously Hester poked them with her finger tip and the bunch fell apart. They were very dead, brown and perfectly crisp. There seemed to be fourteen of them and beside them on the table an ordinary chamber stick with a burnt-out candle in it.

      Hester took an involuntary step backwards, recalling the light she had seen the night before in this room. Not moonlight but the light of this candle placed on the table by whoever—whatever—had left the dead roses there.

      She stopped her instinctive retreat by calling up all her rational good sense and made herself step forward again. The front door had been locked. So had the back door, for Jethro would certainly have raised the alarm if anything had been out of order when he left to go to his bed above the stables. And, reliable as the church clock, he made his rounds of all the windows before leaving every night.

      Something had got in. Or it had already been inside. Hester realised she was scanning the corners of the room as if expecting some spectral presence to be lurking there. That was as terrifying a thought as her first assumption of an intruder.

      She ran her tongue over lips that were completely dry. She could not leave that sinister bouquet there; she must move it before the others saw it. Cautiously Hester gathered it up, just as there was a brisk knock at the front door.

      ‘I will get it!’ It was Susan, running along the hall before Hester could slip out of the dining room door. ‘Oh. Goodness…I mean, good morning, my lord. I’m not sure if Miss Lattimer is receiving yet.’

      ‘I would not wish to disturb Miss Lattimer, only to return this handkerchief, which, from the initials, I believe must be hers.’

      ‘Thank you, my lord, yes, it is Miss Lattimer’s, I am sure of it. Will you not step in and I will see if she—oh, there you are, Miss Hester.’

      Left with no option but to put a good face on it, Hester stepped out into the hallway. ‘Good morning, my lord, how kind of you to take the trouble.’ Conscious of her unpleasant burden already crumbling into brown flakes in her hands she chatted on determinedly. ‘Such a pleasant dinner last night; I meant to ask you if you had lured your London chef down to the country or whether you have been fortunate in finding local staff.’

      It was hopeless. The blue gaze was fixed on the roses as he said lightly, ‘I am glad you enjoyed it, I will tell Maxim; he insists on accompanying me, apparently in the belief that I would starve else. Not that that devotion to duty prevents him from moaning almost continuously about the conditions into which I have dragged him.’

      ‘That must be very tiresome,’ Hester said.

      ‘It is not I who has to listen to him,’ Guy responded. ‘You appear to have an admirer with a very strange taste in flowers, Miss Lattimer.’ Was it her imagination or was there an odd note in his voice?

      ‘They are dead, my lord.’

      ‘I can see that.’

      ‘Flowers do die,’ Hester stated briskly.

      ‘Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be withered,’ Guy murmured vaguely. ‘I wonder where that comes from? The Bible, possibly. But flowers in water do not die like that; these are uniformly crisp and brown and have been deliberately set to dry, or possibly hung up.’

      ‘These had been put aside and forgotten,’ Hester retorted, knowing she was becoming flustered. ‘Susan, take them, please, and throw them away.’ She thrust the tattered bunch into her maid’s hands and confronted Guy as Susan made her way down the hall, trying to keep the crumbing