The Heart Of Christmas. Mary Balogh

you kill yourself,” she said, “I shall have them write on your epitaph—He Died In The Execution Of A Noble Deed.”

      By dint of shifting his position on the branch until he hung even more precariously over space and scraping his boot beyond redemption to get something of a toehold against the gnarled trunk, he finally succeeded in his mission. He had dislodged a handful of mistletoe. There was no easy way down to the ground. Indeed, there was no possible way down. He did what he had always done as a boy in a similar situation. He jumped.

      He landed on all fours and got a faceful of soft snow for his pains.

      “Oh, dear,” Blanche said. “Did you hurt yourself?” He looked up at her and she giggled again. “You look like a snowman, a snowman whose dignity has been bruised. Do you have the mistletoe?”

      He got to his feet and brushed himself off with one hand as best he could. His valet, when he got back to London, was going to take one look at his boots and resign.

      “Voilà!” He held up his snow-bedraggled prize. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said when she reached for it. He swept it up out of her reach. “Certain acts have certain consequences, you know. I risked my life for this at your instigation. I deserve my reward, you deserve your punishment.”

      She grinned at him as he backed her against the tree and held her there with the weight of his body. He was still holding the mistletoe aloft.

      “Yes, my lord,” she said meekly.

      His mind was not really on the night before, but if it had been, he might have reflected with some satisfaction that she had learned well her first lesson in kissing. Her lips were softly parted when he touched them with his own, and when he teased them wider and licked them and the soft flesh behind them with his tongue, she made quiet sounds of enjoyment. The contrast between chilled flesh and hot mouths was heady stuff, he decided as he slid his tongue deep. She sucked gently on it. Through all the layers of their clothing he could feel the tautly muscled slenderness of her dancer’s body. Total femininity.

      Someone was whistling. Bertie. And someone was telling him to be quiet and not be silly, love, and come away to look at this holly.

      “Well,” Julian said, lifting his head and feeling a little dazed and more than a little aroused. He had not anticipated just such a kiss. “The mistletoe was your idea, Blanche.”

      “Yes.” Her nose was shining like a beacon. She looked healthy and girlish and slightly disheveled and utterly beautiful. “And so it was.”

      He was cold and wet, from the snow that had slipped down inside his collar and was melting in trickles down his back, and utterly happy. Or for the moment anyway, he thought more cautiously when he remembered the situation.

      Someone was clearing his throat from behind Julian’s back—Bertie’s groom, Julian saw when he looked. The man was looking for Bertie, who stuck his head out from behind the holly bushes at the mention of his name.

      “What is it, Bloggs?” he asked.

      Bloggs told his tale of a carriage half turned over into the ditch just beyond the front gates with no hope of its being hauled out again until the snow stopped falling and the air warmed up enough to melt some of it. And the snow was so deep everywhere, he added gloomily, that there was no going anywhere on foot, either, any longer, even as far as the village. He should know. He and Harkiss had had the devil’s own time of it wading home from there all of two hours since, and the snowfall had not abated for a single second since that time.

      “A carriage?” Bertie frowned. “Any occupants, Bloggs?” A foolish question if ever Julian had heard one.

      “A gentleman and his wife, sir,” Bloggs reported. “And two nippers. Inside the house now, sir.”

      “Oh, good Lord,” Bertie said, grimacing in Julian’s direction. “It looks as if we have unexpected guests for Christmas.”

      “The devil!” Julian muttered.

      “Oh, the poor things!” Blanche exclaimed, pushing away from the tree and striding houseward through the snow. “What has been done for their comfort, Mr. Bloggs? Two children, did you say? Are they very young? Was anyone hurt? Have you…”

      Her voice faded into the distance. Strange, Julian thought before following her with Bertie and Debbie. Most women who had had elocution lessons spoke well except when they were not concentrating. Then they tended to lapse into regionalism and worse. Why did the opposite seem to happen with Blanche? Bloggs was trotting after her like a well-trained henchman, just as if she were some grand duchess ruling over her undisputed domain.

      Funnily enough, she had just sounded rather like a duchess.

      Chapter Five

      THE REVEREND HENRY MOFFATT had been given unexpected leave from the parish at which he was a curate in order to spend Christmas at the home of his wife’s family thirty miles distant. Rashly—by his own admission—he had made the decision to begin the journey that morning despite the fact that the snow had already begun to fall and he had the safety of two young children to concern himself with, not to mention that of his wife, who was in imminent expectation of another interesting event.

      He was contrite over his own foolishness. He was distressed over the near disaster to which he had brought his family when his carriage had almost overturned into the ditch. He was apologetic about foisting himself and his family upon strangers on Christmas Eve of all days. Perhaps there was an inn close by?

      “In the village three miles away,” Verity told him. “But you would not get there in this weather, sir. You must, of course, stay here. Mr. Hollander will insist upon it, you may be sure.”

      “Mr. Hollander is your husband, ma’am?” the Reverend Moffatt asked.

      “No.” She smiled. “I am a guest here, too, sir. Mrs. Moffatt, do come into the sitting room so that you may warm yourself by the fire and take the weight off your feet. Mr. Bloggs, would you be so kind as to go down to the kitchen and request that a tea tray be sent up? Oh, and something for the children, as well. And something to eat.” She smiled at the two little boys, who were gazing about with open curiosity. The younger one, a mere infant of three or four years, was unwinding a long scarf from his neck. She reached out a hand to each of them. “Are you hungry? But that is a foolish question, I know. In my experience little boys are always hungry. Come into the sitting room with your mama and we will see what Cook sends up.”

      It was at that moment that Mr. Hollander came inside the house with Debbie and Viscount Folingsby close behind him. The Reverend Moffatt introduced himself again and made his explanations and his apologies once more.

      “Bertrand Hollander,” that young gentleman said, extending his right hand to his unexpected guest. “And, er, my wife, Mrs. Hollander. And Viscount Folingsby.”

      Verity was leading Mrs. Moffatt and the children in the direction of the sitting room, but she stopped so that the curate could introduce them to his host.

      “You have met my wife, the viscountess?” Julian asked, his eyes locking with Verity’s.

      “Yes, indeed.” The Reverend Moffatt made her a bow. “Her ladyship has been most kind.”

      One more lie to add to all the others, Verity thought. Her new husband, having divested himself of his outdoor garments, followed her into the sitting room, where she directed the very pregnant Mrs. Moffatt and the little boys to chairs close to the fire. The viscount stood beside Verity, one hand against the back of her waist. But during the bustle of the next few minutes, she felt her left hand being taken in a firm grasp and bent up behind her back. While Julian smiled genially about him as the tea tray arrived and cups and plates were passed around and everyone made small talk, he slid something onto Verity’s ring finger.

      It was the signet ring he normally wore on the little finger of his right hand, she saw when she withdrew the hand from her back and looked down at it. The ring was a little loose on her, but with some care she would be