Once Upon A Regency Christmas. Louise Allen

much better than a husband. You could dismiss a lover when you tired of him or he proved not to be the man you had hoped. A lover would not control her money, have no claim on her beyond what she granted him in her bed. A lover would give her pleasure, but would not take her power.

      ‘We are just going to get some things,’ Miri called. ‘We won’t be long.’

      But have I power? How does a woman wield it in this cold country? In India she bought and sold, bargained, traded. Humphrey had believed that all she was doing was carrying out his orders, and, as far as his business was concerned, that was just what she did. No more, no less.

      But she had learned how to run a business, had created her own and it had flourished. She had absorbed everything a seventeen-year-old youth might be sent to India to learn in order to return home to England a nabob, rich enough to buy a county. Once she had saved enough money from her housekeeping allowance it had been easy to trade on her own account, to invest in gemstones and gold for herself until she had believed that having such wealth was all she needed to be free, to control her own life. But in London it seemed that she must be a man to play by their rules, to wield the power that money gave.

      Perhaps, she mused, as she gathered twigs to make the snow family’s arms, a woman could make her own rules. But I never learned to be a woman. Julia looked down at what she was holding and found her cold lips were curving into a smile. But I can play again, just for a while.

      Giles and Miri returned, his arms full of straw and battered old hats, her hands heaped with small lumps of coal and a bunch of wizened carrots. They laughed and joked as they began to dress the snow figures, Miri measuring carrots against Giles’s nose to get the length right for the male figure, him teasing her by sticking handfuls of straw for hair under the female’s hat just when she had adjusted it to her satisfaction.

      How long had it been since she had been able to play with as little inhibition, with almost childlike joy? Julia began to break off lengths of fir needles, just long enough to make bristly eyebrows for the snowman, then used more pieces to create ludicrous eyelashes for the snowwoman, stepped back to admire the effect and found she was laughing, too.

      Giles came to her side. ‘We have done a fine job with our snow family. Just one more adjustment.’ He took hold of the twiggy arms, tipped some up, some down and there they stood, Mama and Papa Snow holding hands and, on either side, their arms sloped down to take the little twigs the snow children held up. ‘There. A happy family.’

      A robin flew down, perched for a moment on the snowman’s old beaver hat, then flew off, its breast a flash of fire in the air. Julia scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her gloved hand. That had been the last time she had played and laughed uninhibitedly, as a child. That Christmas when she had been eleven. The December before Mama died. Papa had never been the same after that.

       I want children. I want to share this with them. Simple pleasures, joy that money cannot buy, pleasure without calculation.

      But society was hateful to children who were different and she could not deliberately set out to give a child an extra burden to carry. Life could be hard enough. Which meant she needed a husband. It was almost a relief to have her mind made up for her, to have a fixed purpose for returning to England and not just the desire to get away, to be in control of her own destiny at last—even when she’d had no idea what she wanted that destiny to be. But this husband, the father of her children, must be a man with money, who would not care whether she had ten pounds or ten thousand, because otherwise how would she know why he wanted her? For her wealth or herself? But now, if this, whatever this was, happened with Giles—who was clearly not a wealthy man—then she would embrace it for the happiness it might bring them, just for a day or two.

Chapter Five

      That had been a pleasant evening. Giles stretched out his legs in front of the cold hearth in his bedchamber, waiting for Julia and Miri to settle in their own rooms before he moved down to the warmth of the drawing room again.

      He could hear their voices because the fireplaces were back to back and shared a flue. What they were saying was unintelligible, otherwise he would have moved, but the murmur of feminine voices, the occasional soft laugh, was pleasant after years spent in male company where any women were more inclined to be raucous than sweetly spoken. Even when the regiment was back in camp and there was time for short-lived relationships, the Iberian women had been vivid, vibrant and not much given to whispers.

      Claire, of course, being the colonel’s daughter, had been different. Sweet, refined, enchanting to her father’s officers when they withdrew back behind the lines. He had fallen for her, inevitably, it seemed. And she had returned his interest, flirted and then, as his feelings deepened, so had hers. So she had said. A pity that all his not inconsiderable experience with women had been with those who were not ladies, who had not learned the polite art of deceit.

      Miri laughed and Giles came back from the dark vortex of his thought. She had been bubbling over with good spirits that even vegetable stew with dumplings, followed by another dried apple pie, had done nothing to repress. The snow was beautiful, she declared. Building snowmen was wonderful and tomorrow they must plan Christmas decorations for the house. She was charming, unspoiled, beautiful, sophisticated in many ways and in others, almost a girl. A product of her upbringing, he supposed.

      But she did not attract him, not as a man. Perhaps because of her youth, perhaps because he could not forget the taste of the woman who sat on the other side of the fireplace all evening, quiet, almost abstracted.

      Had that second kiss been a mistake? Was he wrong in thinking she would welcome a fleeting affaire? He was attracted, intrigued and confused by Julia Chalcott, which was an arousing and uncomfortable combination when one thing was uppermost in his mind: he needed a rich wife and he needed one soon.

      To be exact, what he required was a rich, well-bred, fertile, exceedingly practical wife because what had brought him home, forced the sale of that hard-won commission, had been the news that he was now Earl of Welbourn.

      When the news reached him that his cousin Henry had died of blood poisoning he hadn’t thought anything of it, beyond the regret for any man’s death. It had been the culminating tragedy in a series of premature deaths that had brought him close to the title, but Henry had left a pregnant wife to mourn him, and, the family solicitor had delicately hinted, she was expected to be brought to bed of twins. No daughter had been born to the Markhams of Welbourn for almost one hundred years.

      When the letter announcing the birth of twin girls had reached him he had been stunned, although not quite as shell-shocked as he was a moment after reading the second page. Mr Prettiman regretted to inform the new earl that the family finances were still in the dire state that they had been in when Henry had inherited. His lordship must hasten to Welbourn Hall without delay. Decisions on the sale of assets could not be postponed much longer.

      So here he was, snowbound with two hundred guineas, a horse, his sword and a turkey to his name and a grieving widow with two infants to support from an estate that, somehow, with no experience whatsoever, he must drag out of the mire.

      So, a rich wife to fund the recovery. An intelligent, fertile wife who could learn how to be a countess, while he, a clergyman’s son, an army officer, learned to be an earl. A practical wife who would stand at his side while he tackled whatever needed to be done.

      And the snow had given him a few days’ respite between his old life and his new, a pause before the distasteful business of finding himself that rich wife, mingling with the nouveau riche who would be delighted to bail out a bankrupt earldom for the sake of a titled daughter and grandchildren.

      ‘I do like him, although I don’t think him very good looking.’ Miri’s voice brought Giles out of his chilly half-doze with a start before he realised that she must be right by the fire. ‘What do you think?’ There was a thump as a log was tossed into the grate.

      Julia’s