His Housekeeper's Christmas Wish. Louise Allen

to bustle around making preparations. ‘When do we start and how long will it take us?’

      ‘Seven and a half, eight hours.’ Finally, Lord Weybourn got to his feet.

      ‘But we will arrive after dark. I do not think the ships sail in the dark, do they?’

      ‘We are not jolting over muddy roads all day and then getting straight on board, whether a ship is sailing or not.’ The viscount strolled across to one of the other doors, opened it and shouted, ‘Gaston!’

      ‘They do sail at night and I am taking one to Leith at nine this evening,’ Mr Rivers remarked. ‘But I am in haste, you’ll do better to take the opportunity to rest, Miss Ellery.’

      ‘I am also in haste,’ she stated.

      Lord Weybourn turned from the door. ‘Do nuns hurry?’

      ‘Certainly. And you know perfectly well that I am not a nun, my lord.’ The maddening creature refused to be chastened by her reproofs, which showed either arrogance, levity or the hide of an ox. Probably all three. ‘I am expected at the London house of the Order.’

      ‘The Channel crossing is notoriously uncertain for weather and timing. They will not be expecting you for a day or so either way. Unless someone is at death’s door?’ He raised an interrogative brow. Tess shook her head. ‘There, then. Arrive rested and, hopefully, not hobbling. Always a good thing to be at one’s best when making an entrance. Breakfast is on its way.’

      He sauntered out, lean, elegant, assured. Tess’s fingers itched with a sinful inclination to violence.

      ‘You might as well contemplate swatting a fly, Miss Ellery,’ the blond icicle remarked. Apparently her face betrayed her feelings graphically. He inclined his head in a graceful almost bow. ‘Crispin de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore, at your service. Rivers you know.’ He gestured towards the third man. ‘This, improbable as it might seem, is not the local highwayman, but Gabriel Stone, Earl of Edenbridge.’

      Lord Edenbridge stood, swept her an extravagant courtesy, then collapsed back into his chair. ‘Enchanted, Miss Ellery.’ His cards appeared to enchant him more.

      ‘I’ll send for some hot water for you.’ Mr Rivers held the bedchamber door open. ‘You will feel much better after a wash and some breakfast, believe me, Miss Ellery.’

      Tess thanked him, curtsied as best she could to all three men and sat down on the bed to await the water. It wasn’t their fault. She knew just who to blame, but because she was a lady—or, rather, had been raised to have the manners of one—she would bite her tongue and do her best to act with grace. Somehow. As for breakfast at this hour—why, it was going to be almost noon by the time it was finished at this rate.

      * * *

      As she had suspected, the carriage proved to be very comfortable. ‘I keep this and my own horses over here,’ Lord Weybourn explained when Tess exclaimed in pleasure at the soft seats and the padded interior. ‘Job horses and hired vehicles are unreliable.’

      ‘You come to the Continent frequently, my lord?’ Tess settled snuggly into one corner and submitted to Mr Rivers arranging her legs along the seat and covering them with a rug. A hot brick wrapped in flannel was tucked in, too. Such luxury. She would enjoy what good things this journey had to offer, especially as the future seemed unlikely to hold much in the way of elegant coach travel.

      ‘We all do.’ Lord Weybourn folded his length into an opposite corner while Mr Rivers took the other. They had given her the best, forward-facing position, she noted. ‘Cris—Lord Avenmore—is a diplomat and spends half his time at the Congress and half doing mysterious things about the place. Gabe enjoys both travelling and fleecing any gamester foolish enough to cut cards with him and Grant here buys horses.’

      ‘I have a stud,’ Mr Rivers explained. ‘I import some of the more unusual Continental breeds from time to time.’

      ‘And you, my lord?’

      ‘Alex.’ He gave her that slanting, wicked smile. ‘I will feel that you have not forgiven me if you my lord me from here to London.’

      It seemed wrong, but perhaps that degree of informality was commonplace amongst aristocrats. ‘Very well, although Alex Tempest sounds more like a pirate than a viscount.’

      Mr Rivers snorted. ‘That’s what he is. He scours the Continent in search of loot and buried treasure.’

      ‘Art and antiquities, my dear Grant.’ Alex grinned. ‘Certainly nothing buried. Can you imagine me with a shovel?’

      Tess noted the flex of muscles under the form-fitting tailoring of his coat. Perhaps it was not achieved by digging holes, but the viscount was keeping exceptionally fit somehow. No, she thought, not a shovel, but I can imagine you with a sword.

      ‘I am a connoisseur, a truffle hound through the wilderness of a Continent after a great war.’

      ‘Poseur,’ Mr Rivers said.

      ‘Of course.’ Alex’s ready agreement was disarmingly frank. ‘I do have my reputation to maintain.’

      ‘But forgive me,’ Tess ventured, ‘is that not business? I thought it was not acceptable for aristocrats to engage in trade.’ And perhaps it was not acceptable to mention it at all.

      ‘Social death,’ Grant Rivers agreed. ‘So those of us who cannot rely upon family money maintain a polite fiction. I keep a stud for my own amusement and profit and sell to acquaintances as a favour when they beg to share in a winning bloodline. Alex here is approached by those with more money than taste. Gentlemen are so very grateful when he puts them in the way of acquiring beautiful, rare objects from his collection to enhance their status or their newly grand houses. Naturally he cannot be out of pocket in these acts of mercy. Gabe is a gambler, which is perfectly au fait. It is strange that he rarely loses, which is the norm, but you can’t hold that against a man unless you catch him cheating.’

      ‘And does he?’

      ‘He has the devil’s own luck, the brain of a mathematician and the willpower to know when to fold. And he would kill anyone who suggested he fuzzes the cards,’ Alex explained. ‘And before you ask, Cris is the only one of us who has come into his title. The rest of us are merely heirs in waiting. He’s a genuine marquess.

      ‘And you, little nun? Given that we are being so frank between friends.’

      He knew perfectly well that she was not a nun, but perhaps if she ignored the teasing he would stop it. ‘I, on the contrary, have not a guinea to my name, save what Mother Superior gave me for food and the stagecoach fare in England.’ Tess managed a bright smile, as though this was merely amusing. It had been quite irrelevant until Mother Superior’s little discussion a week ago.

      Dear Teresa had been with them for ten years, five since the death of her aunt, Sister Boniface. She had steadfastly declined to convert from her childhood Anglicanism, so, naturally, she had no future with the convent as a nun. Equally obviously, she could not go to her, er...connections in England. And then Mother Superior had explained why.

      Teresa was twenty-three now, so what did she intend to do with her life? she had asked while Tess’s understanding of who and what she was tumbled around her ears.

      I must have looked completely witless, Tess thought as she gazed out of the carriage window at the sodden countryside. She had been teaching the little ones, the orphans like herself, but that apparently had been merely a stop-gap until she was an adult. And, she suspected now she had a chance to think about it, until Mother Superior was convinced no conversion was likely.

      But it was all right; even if there was no money left from the funds Papa had sent to her aunt, she would manage, somehow. The dream of a family in England, people who might forgive and forget what Mama and Papa had done, had evaporated. She would not repine and she would try not to think about it. She could work hard and, goodness knew, she wasn’t used to luxury.

      Heavy