Gifts of the Season. Anne Gracie

her again.

      And heaven preserve her if she were still even halfway in love with him….

      “It wasn’t.” Clarissa sighed and pointed dramatically at the basket with the ivy clippings and the missing scarf looped over the handle. “Your scarf wasn’t near the walnut tree, Miss Blake, because it was here all the while, and if—Miss Blake? Are you ill, Miss Blake?”

      “Of course I am well, Clarissa,” said Sara quickly, convincing neither the girl nor herself. “Have you ever known me to be ill in all the time I’ve been with you?”

      “You don’t look right,” said Clarissa warily. “I think we should go home directly.”

      “Agreed,” said Revell, though to Sara his voice didn’t sound any more steady than hers. “I told you, Clarissa, that while Miss Blake is vastly clever in most matters, there are times when she is absolutely as mortal as the rest of us. Which is why she needs us to look after her now, exactly as she takes such excellent care of you.”

      “My mama says so, too.” Clarissa nodded, reassured enough to assume, for this once, the role of caretaker, and solicitously took Sara’s hand. “Come, Miss Blake. We’ve been out of doors long enough.”

      “That is most kind of you, Clarissa, but I’m perfectly well,” insisted Sara. “Rev—my lord, please tell her!”

      “Not when the lass is correct,” said Revell, slinging the basket with the holly over one arm, then offering the other to her. His smile was warm, teasing, yet seductive, too, all attributes she’d no right receiving with a smile from him. “You look peaked, Miss Blake, and we cannot take too much care with you.”

      Pointedly, Sara ignored his arm. “I am not peaked.”

      “Yes, you are,” said Clarissa, turning to Revell with a confidential whisper. “You are most right, my lord, and most kind. It’s as Mama says. We cannot take too much care. And I don’t care what the others say about you, my lord. You are not the wickedest man in India, not when you are being so nice to Miss Blake like this.”

      He tucked Sara’s hand into the crook of his arm, giving it an extra pat, and woefully Sara knew that even if he were not the wickedest man in India, then surely she must be the weakest woman in Sussex.

      Chapter Six

      “So there you are, Miss Blake.” The cook looked past her two maids, their hands white with flour from pie-making, as Sara shepherded Clarissa through the kitchen door. “Lady Fordyce’s been asking for you all through the house, Miss. Oh, My Lord Revell, forgive me, I didn’t see you a-coming there too!”

      “He’s very hard to overlook, Mrs. Green,” said Clarissa, stretching to reach the plate of sliced plum cake destined to accompany some lady guest’s tea. “He’s even bigger than Albert, you know.”

      “Your flatter me, Clarissa,” said Revell easily, setting the basket of holly on the table as if he were a footman instead of a lord, and making the two young kitchen maids wide-eyed with amazement and admiration, too. “I think so, anyway. Doesn’t she, Miss Blake?”

      But Sara was already unfastening her cloak, hurrying to make herself presentable for Lady Fordyce. It must be the tigers and elephants being inappropriate for Christmas: she’d already been half expecting to be called to task by her ladyship for that.

      “Mrs. Green,” she said briskly, stripping off her gloves, “will you please see that one of your girls takes Clarissa upstairs to the nursery to change her wet things?”

      “Lord Revell can take me,” suggested Clarissa promptly. “I can show him the way to the—”

      “You must not presume on Lord Revell’s good nature, Clarissa,” said Sara, trying to ignore the waves of curiosity rising from the cook and her maids, and no wonder, either, not with Clarissa treating Revell with all the familiarity of a favorite uncle. “Go along now, upstairs with Bess.”

      “And what orders for me, Miss Blake?” asked Revell with an easy, fond familiarity that made Sara blush all over again. His smile was warm and winning, his blue eyes so full of affection that she felt it as surely as if he’d kissed her again. Lightly he patted the sprig of holly in his buttonhole, reminding her of far too many things. “Where do you wish me to go?”

      If he’d acted like Clarissa’s uncle, then Sara didn’t want to venture what he must seem to her in the eager eyes of the kitchen staff. No one would believe they’d only just met, and no one—no one—would believe their relationship held all the propriety of the humble governess with a noble-bred guest of the house.

      “You shall do whatever you please, my lord,” she said, daring him, just remembering to curtsy to him before she left the kitchen. “That is both your prerogative, my lord, and your habit, is it not?”

      Oh, that was wrong, wrong, wrong of her to say! If only they’d have ten minutes alone together—ten minutes without kissing—then this would all be sorted out between them! Furious with herself and with him, she bunched her skirts in her fist and marched up the stairs to Lady Fordyce’s rooms.

      “Ah, Miss Blake, here at last,” said Lady Fordyce. She motioned to her lady’s maid, waiting with two pairs of slippers in her hands. “The red ones, Hannah, and mind you check that the stitching on the beading is still tight. I shouldn’t want them flying off while I danced. Now, Miss Blake, to your affairs.”

      Sara squared her shoulders. “If you mean to speak to me further of the elephants and tigers that Clarissa is making for the ballroom, my lady, then—”

      “But I don’t.” Lady Fordyce smiled brightly. “They are the height of fashion. All the ladies I have asked have said exactly that, and agreed with Lord Revell. You are to be congratulated for your originality and resourcefulness.”

      “Thank you, my lady,” said Sara faintly, wishing she found this more reassuring than she did.

      “Most original, yes,” said her ladyship, as pleased with herself as she was with Sara. “Which is why I have decided that you shall attend the masquerade with Clarissa, in costume like everyone else. As a treat, you see.”

      “My lady!” exclaimed Sara with more dismay than gratitude. Her days for such frivolous entertainments were long past, left behind in Calcutta along with her bright clothes and jewels and plumes in her hair. “My lady, you are most kind, but—but I have no proper costume of my own, and with the ball being only two days away—”

      “Ah, but I have thought of that, too.” Lady Fordyce clapped her hands together with triumph. “Off in our lumber room are trunks and trunks of old gowns and petticoats and headdresses and goodness only knows what else. Take Clary with you, and rummage about as you please. I’m sure you’ll find exactly what you need to assemble the perfect costume.”

      “Thank you, my lady,” said Sara faintly, taking the plain black mask that her ladyship handed her. “You are too kind.”

      “Not at all, my dear.” But her ladyship’s habitually cheerful demeanor faded, and restlessly she tapped her fingers together. “That, you see, was the more agreeable message for me to deliver. The other is…is more vexing.”

      She twisted her mouth to one side, searching for the right words in a way that only made Sara more uneasy.

      “You know, Miss Blake, that I have always tried to run this household in a fair and agreeable manner, for the good of everyone beneath this roof,” she finally began, “and I am perfectly aware that a rogue is a rogue, no matter what his station. But whereas I can dismiss the footman for taking freedoms with the dairymaid, it is an entirely different when a gentleman, a peer, a guest at Ladysmith, is involved.”

      Sara felt her cheeks growing warm and her palms turn damp as she realized exactly where her ladyship’s conversation was heading.

      “Oh, my lady, please don’t—”

      “No,