The Heart Of Christmas. Mary Balogh

had informed him with bright enthusiasm that the Reverend Moffatt was planning to conduct a Christmas service in this very room sometime after dinner. And that the servants had asked to attend. And that they were going to have to see to it on the morrow that the little boys had a wonderful Christmas. If there was still plenty of snow, they could…

      He had not listened to all the details. But Miss Blanche Heyward, opera dancer, would have made a superlative drill sergeant if she had just been a man, he had thought. Consider as a point in fact the way she had organized them all—all of them—over the decorations. They had rushed about and climbed and teetered and adjusted angles at her every bidding. She had been flushed and bright-eyed and beautiful.

      On the whole, he concluded as an afterthought, he was glad she was not a man.

      “And have you ever had a cook for all of three or four years, Jule,” Bertie continued, “and suddenly discovered that she could cook? Not that I have tasted any of the things that go with those smells yet, but if smell is anything to judge by…well, I ask you.”

      The staff, it seemed, had been as busy belowstairs as all of them had been above. But their busyness had had the same instigator—Miss Blanche Heyward. Julian even wondered if somehow she had conjured up the clergyman and his family out of the blizzard. What a ghastly turn of events that had been.

      “Do you suppose,” he asked, “anyone noticed the sudden appearance of rings on our women’s fingers, Bertie?”

      But the door opened at that moment to admit their mistresses, who had come down together. Debbie clucked her tongue.

      “Now did I do all that work on the kissing bough just to see it hang over there and you men stand here?” she asked. “Go and get yourself under it, Bertie, love, and be bussed.”

      “Again?” he said, grinning and waggling his eyebrows and instantly obeying.

      They had all sampled the pleasures of the kissing bough after it had been hung. Even the Reverend Moffatt had kissed his wife with hearty good humor and had pecked Debbie and Blanche respectfully on the cheek.

      “Well, Blanche.” Julian looked her up and down. She was dressed in the dark green silk again. Her hair was neatly confined at the back of her head. She should have looked drably dreary but did not. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

      Some of the sparkle that had been in her eyes faded as she looked back at him. “Only when I forget my purpose in being here,” she said. “I have already taken a great deal of money from you and have done nothing yet to earn it.”

      “Perhaps I should be the judge of that,” he said.

      “Perhaps tonight I can make some amends,” she said. “I have had a day in which to grow more accustomed to you. I may still be awkward—I daresay I will be because I am very ignorant of what happens, you know—but I will not be afraid and I will not act the martyr. Indeed, I believe I might even enjoy it. And it will be a relief to know that at last I have done something to earn my salary.”

      If Bertie and Debbie, now laughing like a pair of children and making merry beneath the kissing bough, had been the only other occupants of the house apart from the servants, Julian thought he might have excused Blanche and himself from dinner and taken her up to bed without further ado. Despite the reference to earning salaries, he found her words arousing. He found her arousing. But there were other guests. Besides, he was not sure he would have done it anyway.

      If this stay in Norfolkshire had proceeded according to plan, he would have enjoyed a largely sleepless night with Blanche last night. They would have stayed in bed until noon or later this morning. They would have returned to bed for much of the afternoon. By now he would have been wondering how long into the coming night his energies would sustain him. But there would have been all day tomorrow to look forward to—in bed.

      The prospect had seemed appealing to him all last week and up until just last night. Longer than that. He had felt disgruntled and cheated all through the night and when he had woken this morning. Or when she had awoken him, rather, with her excited discovery that it had snowed during the night.

      But surprisingly he had enjoyed the day just as it had turned out. And the kiss against the oak tree had seemed in some strange way as satisfying as a bedding might have been. There had been laughter as well as desire involved in that kiss. He had never before thought of laughter as a desirable component of a sexual experience.

      “You are disappointed in me,” Blanche said now. “I am so sorry.”

      “Not at all,” he told her, clasping his hands at his back. “How could I possibly be disappointed? Let me see. A night spent on the floor, an early wake-up call in the frigid dawn to watch snow falling, an expedition out into the storm in order to climb trees, murder my boots and risk my neck. The arrival of a clergyman as a houseguest, an hour spent finding occupation for two energetic infants, another hour of climbing on furniture and pinning up boughs only to move them again when it was discovered that they were half an inch out of place, a church service in the sitting room to look forward to. My dear Miss Heyward, what more could I have asked of Christmas?”

      She was laughing. “I have the strangest feeling,” she said, “that you have enjoyed today.”

      He raised his quizzing glass to his eye and regarded her through it. “And you believe that you might enjoy tonight,” he said. “We will see, Blanche, when tonight comes. But first of all, Bertie’s guests. I believe I hear the patter of little feet and the chatter of little voices approaching, as Debbie so poetically phrased it. I suppose we are to be subjected to their company as well as that of their mama and papa since there is no nursery and no nurse.”

      “For all your expression and tone of voice,” Blanche said, “I do believe, my lord, you have an affection for those little boys. You do not deceive me.”

      “Dear me,” Julian said faintly as the sitting room door opened again.

      THERE WAS a spinet in one corner of the sitting room. Verity had eyed it a few times during the day with some longing, but its lid was locked, she had discovered. While the Reverend Moffatt was setting up the room after dinner for the Christmas service, his wife asked about the instrument. Mr. Hollander looked at it in some surprise, as if he were noticing it for the first time. He had no idea where the key was. It hardly mattered anyway unless someone was able to play it.

      There was a short silence.

      “I can play,” Verity said.

      “Splendid!” The Reverend Moffatt beamed at her. “Then we may have music with the service, Lady Folingsby. I would lead the singing if I had to, but I have a lamentably poor ear for pitch, do I not, Edie? We would be likely to end a hymn several tones lower than we started it.” He laughed heartily.

      Mr. Hollander went in search of the key. Or rather, he went in search of a servant who might know where it was.

      “Where did you learn to play, Blanche?” Debbie asked.

      “At the rectory.” Verity smiled and then wished she could bite out her tongue. “The rector’s wife taught me,” she added hastily. That was the truth, at least.

      Mr. Hollander came back in triumph, a key held aloft. The spinet was sadly out of tune, Verity discovered, but not impossibly so. There was no music, but she did not need any. All her favorite hymns, as well as some other favorite pieces, had been committed to memory when she was still a girl.

      A table had been converted into an altar with the aid of a crisp white cloth one of the maids had ironed carefully, candles in silver holders and a fancy cup and plate the housekeeper had found somewhere in the nether regions of the house and the other maid had polished to serve as a paten and chalice. The butler had dusted off a bottle of Mr. Hollander’s best wine. The cook had found time and space in her oven to bake a round loaf of unleavened bread. The Reverend Moffatt had clad himself in vestments he had brought with him and suddenly looked very young and dignified and holy.

      The sitting room, Verity thought, gazing about her,