Page 19 of The Virtues of Christmas
Chapter Four
Even good girls grow weary of loneliness and poverty. You will realize, of course, that I might have been a tad bit misleading where my comely housemaid was concerned—or perhaps she misunderstood my overtures? Henrietta’s education had been neglected in every regard except how to drudge for her menfolk, poor thing.
I didn’t go down on bended knee, but I might have alluded to wedded bliss a time or two or twenty. She eventually granted me the prize I’d so diligently sought. For some while, all was not-quite-connubial bliss. Never was my candlestick so well polished, as it were… and I didn’t have to spend a penny for my pleasure. I could not boast of my cleverness, trifling with the help being frowned upon, but you must admit, London’s bachelors are a happier lot for my having seen to Miss Whitlow’s education…
“What the hell are you doing?” Liam Logan kept his voice down lest he upset horses who’d earned a ration of oats for their labors.
“I’m plundering a woman’s luggage,” the baron replied from the depths of a large, brass-hinged trunk. “What are you doing out and about at this hour?”
The light of the single lantern made the baron look gaunt when he straightened. Gaunt and guilty. He’d served his guests a fine dinner in Inglemere’s elegant dining room, and should have been abed himself, not wandering around a darkened stable.
“I’m tucking in the boys,” Logan said. “You ought to consider buying these grays. They’re a good lot, and they pull well together.”
His lordship went back to rummaging in the trunk. “Spare me your analogies. Henrietta Whitlow is no longer for sale. I’m not sure she ever was.”
The Quality in a mood were puzzle enough, but Michael Brenner was new to his title, far too solitary, and without much cheer. Liam respected the man and even liked him—the baron was scrupulously fair, hard-working, and devoted to his family—but Liam didn’t always understand his employer.
“Miss Whitlow had something on offer,” Liam said, tossing another forkful of hay into the nearest stall, “to hear half of London tell it. I don’t blame her for that. Dukes and nabobs are as prone to foolishness as the rest of us, and it’s ever so entertaining to see a woman from the shires making idiots of them.”
The baron straightened, his greatcoat hanging open despite the cold. To Liam, a horse barn would ever be a cozy place, but the baron wasn’t a coachman, inured to the elements and dressed to deal with them.
“The damned thing isn’t here.”
“The only damned thing I see in these stables is you, sir. Care for a nip?”
Two other trunks were open, and the latches were undone on the remaining three. The baron accepted Liam’s flask and regarded the luggage with a ferocious scowl.
“I was sure she had it with her. She’s closed up her household in London, and these are all the trunks she’s brought. Damn and blast.”
“Have a wee dram,” Liam said. “It’ll improve your cursing.”
“My cursing skills are excellent, but I try to leave them back in the bogs from whence I trotted. This is good whisky.”
“Peat water makes the best, I say. My brother-in-law agrees with me. What are we searching for?”
His lordship sat on one of the closed trunks. “We’re searching for foolishness, to use your word. Lord Beltram was Miss Whitlow’s first… I can’t call him a protector, for he ruined her. He was her first, and in the manner of besotted men the world over, he wanted to immortalize his conquest. Somewhere in Miss Whitlow’s effects is a small volume full of bad poetry, competent sketches, and maudlin reminiscences. Can I buy some of this whisky?”
“I’ll give you a bottle for Christmas. Miss Whitlow is not in the first blush of youth, if you’ll forgive a blunt observation. Why has Lord Beltram waited this long to fret over his stupidity?”
The baron sighed, his breath fogging white in the gloom. “He’s decided to find a wife—or cannot afford too many more years of bachelorhood—and this book is a loose end. When they parted, Miss Whitlow asked to have only this book—not jewels, not a bank draft, not an introduction to some other titled fool. All she wanted was this silly journal. Beltram passed it along, thinking himself quite clever for having ended the arrangement without great expense or drama.”
Liam tossed a forkful of hay into another stall, working his way down the row. “So Beltram is a fool, but why are you compounding the error with more folly? Miss Whitlow has had years to blackmail the idiot or publish his bad verse. Why must you turn thief on his behalf?”
The baron took up a second fork and began haying the stalls on the opposite side of the aisle. Horses stirred, nickered, and then tucked into their fodder.
“Once long ago,” the baron said, “in a land not far enough away, with which we were at war, Beltram’s silence saved my life. I promised him any favor he cared to name and only later realized my silence had also saved his life.”
“So he took advantage of an innocent maid, and now he’s taking advantage of you,” Liam said. “And you wonder why the common folk think the Quality are daft. You’re not a thief, my lord.”
The baron threw hay with the skill of one who’d made his living in a stable once upon a time.
“Unless you’ve been poor as dirt and twice as hopeless,” he said, hanging the fork on a pair of nails when the row was complete, “you don’t know how an unfulfilled obligation can weigh on your sense of freedom. Every time I crossed paths with Beltram, I knew, and he knew, that I’d put myself in his debt. I cannot abide being in his debt, cannot abide the thought that ten years hence, he’ll ask something of me—something worse than a little larceny—and I’ll be bound by honor to agree to it. I gave the man my word.”
“Honor, is it? To steal from a woman who’s already been wronged?” MacFergus would have a few things to say about that brand of honor, and as usual, this plan gone awry had been his idea.
“I’ve considered stealing from her, then stealing the book back from Beltram so I can replace it among the lady’s belongings.”
“Clever,” Liam said, wondering what Mary would make of all this nonsense. “Or you might tell Beltram you simply couldn’t find the thing. I daresay lying to his lordship won’t meet with your lofty idea of honor either.”
