Page 54 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
Nell laughed. "That is not how that expression goes, Gigi."
"Oh, it doesn't matter!Alors, does Nathaniel smoke a pipe?" she said briskly, gesturing to a display of wooden carvings, many elegant pipes among them.
Nell wrinkled her nose, sufficiently distracted. "No, and I shan't encourage him to consider the endeavor. My father does, though, and those do look very fine. Let's have a closer look."
By the time the sun had begun to set and it was time for Nell to return to Meridian, she had found gifts for both of her parents, her aunt, her twin brother, her youngest sister, and her grandfather, but was still none closer to even a glimmer of inspiration for what to get Nathaniel.
Once she had climbed into the carriage, opposite Kit, she posed the question to him. After all, if anyone would know her husband well enough to make a suggestion, it was Kit, but he only chuckled.
"That is the question, isn't it?" he said cheerily. "What does one get for the man who already has it all?"
"What are you getting him?" she asked, leaning forward curiously.
"I hadn't thought about it," he confessed. "In our youth, he only ever wanted books, and not the fun sort either."
"Machiavelli, Milton, and More," Nell recited, remembering the library in Marylebone. "I suppose that type of thing was practical, given his aspirations."
"Yes, but all the same, he was a boring youth."
Nell couldn't help but smile. She was certain her siblings would say very much the same, if asked how she was as a child. "I shall consider books, if nothing else comes to mind."
Kit considered her, shafts of purple twilight scattered through his fair hair as the carriage bounced along. "My mother kept a few things, over the years," he said, after a moment. "Things that she gathered from Meridian before anyone else could take them. Perhaps Nathaniel would enjoy having some of those things back."
"What sorts of things?" she asked, stopping short to stifle a yawn behind her gloved fingers. Winter always did this to her. Perhaps she might rest a while, before dinner, and then begin to parcel off these gifts to their rightful recipients.
Kit seemed unbothered by her rudeness, responding without so much as a pause. "She would know better than I. I believe it's some of his mother's jewelry, one of Alice's toys, a portrait of the family together, that sort of thing. My mother always hoped that Nathaniel would soften as he matured, and would one day want these things. Growing up, he openly reviled the very concept of sentiment."
"A portrait," Nell echoed. She found herself sitting immediately upright, all thoughts of rest and idle tasks dashed to dust with that one word. "Your mother has the portrait? Of the whole family together?"
Kit blinked back at her in surprise. "Yes. You don't mean to tell me Nathaniel has been searching for it?"
"Yes, he has!" she exclaimed, a surge of excitement bubbling up in her chest. "I can't believe we didn't think to ask you weeks ago! Oh, I would love to see that it is restored to Meridian, Christmas or no."
"How about we unveil it at dinner on Christmas Eve," Kit said, a fond little smile finding its way across his face at her bright-eyed enthusiasm. "Do not say anything to Nate. We will surprise him."
"All right," she replied, clasping her hands together. She knew she ought to consider the wisdom of withholding such information, but just now, with frost crackling at the carriage windows and gifts bursting from their packages at her side, she was far too excited by the days ahead of her to really consider how one might keep a secret from Nathaniel Atlas.
Besides, whether he had intended to or not, Kit had given her an idea.
Chapter 24
Nathaniel had never much enjoyed Christmas.
Certainly, he enjoyed mince pie as much as the next man, and there was something calming about the solitude and silence of the winter, but as for yule logs and mistletoe and festive songs, he could not remember a time when they filled him with the sparkle of magic that others seemed to experience.
When he awoke on the morning of Christmas Eve to find dense, gray clouds sagging low in the sky over the ocean, he felt as though it were somehow his fault, like his inability to embrace the merry spirit of the season had chased away the bright sunlight that should always accompany such a time of joy.
He stood at the window, staring out at those clouds until the cold had crept from the glass pane, across the sill to his fingers, reminding him to get about the business of beginning his day. This was the third time in the last week that he had risen to find his wife already gone, likely entrenched in the business of preparing for tonight's dinner with the staff.
He smiled to himself, warmed more by the thought of her bubbling over with anticipation at hosting her first Christmas dinner than by the fire crackling nearby. The blueTales from the Eastanthology had traveled from Nell's nightstand to his own, and in its place on her side was now a stack of three different books, which she had explained suited different moods she might have prior to slumber.
Her spectacles caught the faintest hint of sunlight which broke through those heavy clouds and sparkled as though they wished to be nowhere else aside from perhaps perched on their mistress's upturned nose.
He descended the stairs with Nell at the forefront of his thoughts. He expected to find her flipping through a recipe book for the dozenth time with the cook or perhaps at the writing desk in the study, scribbling yet more letters to her loved ones, thanking them for the parcels that had begun to arrive some days ago.
What he wasn't prepared for was finding her perched on the third-highest rung of a very elderly ladder, slinging the edge of an evergreen garland over a series of nails. Stuart, the footman, was standing at the base of the ladder, staring up at her with queasy discomfort as she chattered to him down below.
"I told her not to do it," came a voice from the banister. Nell's curly-haired lady's maid was watching it happen with a kind of rapt fascination that did not entirely disguise her disapproval with the goings-on. "She said we kept getting it wrong."
