Page 20 of The Virtues of Christmas
“If I can’t find it, if I honestly can’t find it, then I’ll tell him that.”
“That you wouldn’t lie to a nincompoop makes it all better, of course. I’ll wish you the joy of your thievery, sir. I’m for bed. Pleasant dreams.”
“Go to hell, Logan. If the book isn’t here, the only other place it could be is in Miss Whitlow’s valise.”
Which was doubtless resting at the foot of the lady’s cozy bed. “And Happy Christmas to you too, my lord.”
* * *
His lordship hadn’t come to Henrietta’s bed last night.
He’d lighted her up to her room, offered her a kiss on the cheek—the forehead would have provoked her to quoting the Bard’s more colorful oaths—and wished her pleasant dreams.
Her dreams had been tormented, featuring an eternity racketing about naked and alone in a coach forever lost in a winter landscape.
“You’re already dressed,” Lucille said, bustling through the door without knocking. “I bestir myself at a needlessly early hour and find my services aren’t required. The baron had chocolate sent up to my room. Fresh scones with butter, and chocolate, kept hot over a warming candle.”
Henrietta knew how that chocolate had felt, simmering over the flame. She decided to leave her hair half down, the better to light the baron’s candle at breakfast.
“What is wrong with me, Lucille?” She shoved another pin into her hair. “I swore off men more than six months ago and in all that time wished I’d made the decision years earlier.” Before she’d met Anselm, in any case. Her memories of him had been a little too fond. “You don’t have to make the bed. The baron has an excellent staff.”
An excellent, cheerful, discreet staff who appeared genuinely loyal to their employer.
“I cannot abide idleness,” Lucille said. “All that feigning sleep in the coach yesterday taxed my gifts to the limit.”
Were pearl-tipped hair pins too much at breakfast? “You were feigning sleep? That was a prodigious good imitation of a snore for a sham effort.”
“Mostly feigning. You and his lordship got along well. These are the loveliest flannel sheets.”
For winter, they were more luxurious than silk, which was difficult to wash. Henrietta had never thought to treat herself to flannel sheets, but she would in the future.
“The baron and I got on so well that after supper he left me for the charms of his library. Perhaps I retired in the nick of time.” Was that a wrinkle lurking beside her mouth? A softness developing beneath her chin?
Henrietta had never worried about her appearance before—never—and now… “I have left my wits somewhere along the Oxford Road.”
Lucille straightened, a brocade pillow hugged to her middle. “This is what you put the gents through, Miss Henrietta. This uncertainty and vexation. They didn’t dare approach you without some sign you’d welcome their advances. Do you fancy his lordship, or merely fancy being fancied?”
“Excellent question.” Henrietta began removing the pins she’d so carefully placed. “I fancied being respectable. I know that’s not likely to happen for the next twenty years, but I can aspire to being respected. Then his lordship goes and treats me decently, and I’m… I don’t care for it as much as I thought I would.”
The respect was wonderful. The insecurity it engendered was terrifying.
She caredfor him, for the boy who’d had no toys, the wealthy baron who didn’t know how to entice his sisters to join him for Christmas dinner. She cared for a man who’d not put on airs before a cranky maid, who regarded Henrietta’s past as just that—her past.
But she also desired him, which was a fine irony.
“He did invite us to bide here today.” Lucille smoothed thick quilts over the sheets. “Have you seen his library?”
“I have not. After supper, he brought me straight up to bed, and I confess I was happy to accompany him. Then off he went, and I’m all in a muddle, Lucille.”
“Fallen women get paid for accommodating a man’s desire,” Lucille said. “Un-fallen women aren’t immune to animal spirits. They simply know how to indulge them without being judged for it. I wasn’t always a plain-faced, pudgy old maid, you know.”
“You are not plain-faced, pudgy, or old. I have it on good authority that men like a substantial woman between the sheets.”
Thank God. Though maybe Michael Brenner preferred the golden-haired waifs and blue-eyed princesses of the Mayfair ballrooms, drat their dainty feet. Henrietta’s feet were in proportion to the rest of her. Her father had called her a plow horse of a girl, and the baron might see her as such.
“I hate this uncertainty,” Henrietta said. “I’m wondering now if men value only the women they must pay for.”
Lucille tossed the brocade pillows back onto the bed, achieving a comfy, arranged look with casual aim.
