The Heart Of Christmas: A Handful Of Gold / The Season for Suitors / This Wicked Gift

“I do not have to answer that,” she said. “I will pay back all I can when we have returned to London. But I am still willing to earn my salary.”

“As I remember,” he said, “our agreement was for a week of your company in exchange for a certain sum, Blanche. There was no mention of your warming my bed during that week, was there? We will spend the week here. It is too late now for either of us to make other arrangements for Christmas. Besides, those were snow clouds this afternoon if ever I have seen any. We will salvage what we can of the holiday, then. It might be the dreariest Christmas either of us has ever spent, but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe I will decide to give you lessons in kissing so that your next, ah, employer will make his discovery rather later in the process than I did. Undress and go to bed. There is a dressing room for your modesty.”

“Where will you sleep?” she asked him.

He looked down at the floor, which was fortunately carpeted. “Here,” he said. “Perhaps you will understand that I have no wish for Bertie to know that we are not spending the night in sensual bliss together.”

“You have the bed,” she said. “I will sleep on the floor.”

He felt an unexpected stirring of amusement. “But I have already told you, Blanche,” he said, “that I have no wish to gaze on martyrdom. Go to bed before I change my mind.”

By the time she came back from the dressing room a few minutes later, dressed in a virginal white flannel nightgown, her head held high, her cheeks flushed and her titian hair all down her back, he had made up some sort of bed for himself on the floor close to the fire with blankets he had found in a drawer and a pillow he had taken from the bed. He did not look at her beyond one cursory glance. He waited for her to climb into the bed and pull the covers up over her ears, and then extinguished the candles.

“Good night,” he said, finding his way back to his bed by the light of the fire.

“Good night,” she said.

What a marvelously just punishment for his sins, he thought as he lay down and his body registered the hardness of the floor. But why the devil was he doing this? She had been willing and he was paying her handsomely. Heaven knows, he had wanted her badly enough, and still did.

It was not any real reluctance to violate innocence, he decided, or any unwillingness to deal with awkwardness or the inevitable blood. It was exactly what he had said it was. He had no desire to watch martyrdom or to inflict it.

I will not flinch or weep or deny you your will.

If there were less erotic words in the English language, he could not imagine what they might be. Sheer martyrdom! If only she had wanted it, wanted him just a little bit, even if she had been nervous…

Miss Blanche Heyward, he was discovering to his cost, was not the average, typical opera dancer. In fact she was turning out to be a royal pain.

A fine Christmas this was going to be. He thought glumly of Conway and of what he would be missing there tomorrow and the day after. Even the Plunkett chit was looking mildly appealing at this particular moment.

“What would you have done for Christmas,” a soft voice asked him as if she had read his thoughts, “if you had not come here with me?”

He breathed deeply and evenly and audibly.

Perhaps tomorrow he would teach her to see a night spent in bed with him as fitting a different category of experience from Christians being prodded into the arena with slavering lions. But unlike his usual confident self, he did not hold out a great deal of hope of succeeding.

Surprisingly he slept.

Chapter Four

VERITY DID NOT sleep well during the night. But as she lay staring at the window and the suggestion of daylight beyond the curtains, she was surprised that she had slept at all.

There were sounds of deep, even breathing coming from the direction of the fireplace. She listened carefully. There were no sounds from beyond the door. Did that mean no one was up yet? Of course, Mr. Hollander and Debbie had probably been busy all night and perhaps intended to be busy for part of the morning, too.

It should have been all over by this morning, she thought. She should be a fallen woman beyond all dispute by now. And he had been wrong. It would not have felt like martyrdom. Even in the privacy of her own mind she was a little embarrassed to remember how exciting his hard man’s body had felt against her own and how shockingly pleasurable his open mouth had felt against her lips. All her insides had performed some sort of vigorous dance when he had put his tongue into her mouth. What an alarmingly intimate thing to do. It should have been disgusting but had not been.

Well, she thought with determined honesty, she had actually wanted to experience the whole of it. And deny it as she would, she had to confess to herself that there had been some disappointment in his refusal to continue once he had realized the truth about her.

And so here they were in this ridiculous predicament with all of Christmas ahead of them. How could she possibly earn five hundred pounds when one night was already past and he had slept on the floor?

All of Christmas was ahead of them. What a depressing thought!

And then something in the quality of the light beyond the window drew her attention. She threw back the bedcovers, ignored her shivering reaction to the frigid air beyond their shelter and padded across the room on bare feet. She drew aside the curtain.

Oh!

“Oh!” she exclaimed aloud. She turned her head and looked eagerly at the sleeping man. “Oh, do come and look.”

His head reared up from his pillow. He looked deliciously tousled and unshaven. He was also scowling.

“What?” he barked. “What the devil time is it?”

“Look,” she said, turning back to the window. “Oh, look.”

He was beside her then, clad only in his shirt and last night’s knee breeches and stockings. “For this you have dragged me from my bed?” he asked her. “I told you last night that it would snow today.”

“But look!” she begged him. “It is sheer magic.”

When she turned her head, she found him looking at her instead of at the snow beyond the window, blanketing the ground and decking out the bare branches of the trees.

“Do you always glow like this in the morning?” he asked her. “How disgusting!”

She laughed. “Only when Christmas is coming and there is a fresh fall of snow,” she said. “Can you imagine two more wonderful events happening simultaneously?”

“Finding a soft warm bed when I am more than halfasleep and stiff in every limb,” he said.

“Then have my bed,” she said, laughing again. “I am getting up.”

“A fine impression Bertie is going to have of my power to keep you amused and confined to your room,” he said.

“Mr. Hollander,” she told him, “will doubtless keep to his room until noon and will be none the wiser. Go to bed and go to sleep.”

He did both. By the time she emerged from the dressing room, clad in the warmest of her wool dresses, her hair brushed and decently confined, he was lying in the place on the bed where she had lain all night, fast asleep. She stood gazing down at him for a few moments, imagining that if she had not been so gauche last night…

She shook her head and straightened her shoulders. Mr. Hollander had made no preparations for Christmas. Doubtless he thought that spending a few days in bed with the placid Debbie would constitute enough merrymaking. Well, they would see about that. She was not being allowed to earn her salary in the expected way. The least she could do, then, was make herself useful in other ways.

TWO COACHMEN, one footman, one groom, a cook, Mr. Hollander’s valet and four others who might in a more orderly establishment have been dubbed a butler, a housekeeper and two maids were in the middle of their breakfast belowstairs. A few of them scrambled awkwardly to their feet when Verity appeared in their midst. A few did not. Clearly it was not established in any of their minds whether they should treat her as a lady or not. The cook looked as if she might be the leader of the latter faction.

Verity smiled. “Please do not get up,” she said. “Do carry on with your breakfast. Doubtless you all have a busy day ahead.”

If they did, their expressions told Verity, this was the first they had heard of it.

“Preparing for Christmas,” she added.

They might have been devout Hindus for all the interest they showed in preparing for Christmas.

“Mr. Hollander don’t want no fuss,” the woman who might have been the housekeeper said.

“He said we might do as we please provided he has his victuals when he is ready for them and provided the fires are kept burning.” The possible-butler was the speaker this time.