Now she was three-and-twenty years old. The dread had gone. But the aloneness, the loneliness, the emptiness had not. She had heard and read so much about Christmas. For her there had never been family-she understood that she had spent her early years in an orphanage, a rather expensive one. She believed, though she did not know for sure, that her mother had been a nobody, perhaps a whore, while her father had been a wealthy man who had agreed to support her until she was old enough to support herself. And so there had never been family for her and never Christmas gifts or Christmas parties.
Sometimes she had to remind herself that her name was Jane. A rather plain name, it was true, but her own. She heard it so rarely on anyone’s lips that she could not remember the last time. It seemed singularly unfortunate to her that someone-her mother, she supposed-had blessed her with the surname of Craggs.
As a child she had dreamed of Christmas, and the dream had lingered even though she had passed the age of dreams. But did one ever pass the age of dreams? Would life be supportable if one could not dream?
She had dreamed of a large house with three stories in which every window blazed with light. It was always twilight and there was snow outside blanketing the ground and making of the trees and their branches magical creations. Inside there was a large hall, three stories high, with two large fireplaces crackling with log fires, the hall decked out in greenery and bows for the season. It was a house filled with people.
Happy, beautiful people. All of whom loved her. All of whom she loved.
As a child she had even given names and faces and personalities to all those people. And in her imagination she had bought or made special gifts for each of them and had received gifts in return.
In her dream there was always a carved Nativity scene in the window of the drawing room, and it was always the focal point of family celebrations. The family always went to church on Christmas Eve, trudging through the snow to get there, filling a number of the pews.
They always ran and laughed and ambushed one another with snowballs and rolled one another in the snow on the way home.
The contrast between dream and reality had been almost unbearable when she was a child. Now it was bearable. Jane tidied the already tidy teacher’s desk, picked up her journal, her best friend, and clasped it with both hands against her bosom as she left the study room to climb the stairs to her small attic room. Now she was old enough to know that Christmas Day was just a day on the calendar like all others, that it would pass, that before she knew it the teachers and girls would be returning for the spring term. She had learned to be sensible.
She lit a candle in her room, shivered, and began to undress. Oh, no, she had not-she had not learned to be sensible. And it had not become bearable. It had not, it had not.
But she had learned to pretend to be sensible. And she had learned to pretend that it was bearable. She had learned to hold on to her childish dreams.
To say that he was feeling annoyed was to understate the case. He disliked Christmas. He had disliked it for most of his adult years. It was all just a parcel of nonsense as far as he was concerned. He liked to remove himself from town and all other centers of merriment well before the collective madness set in and take himself off to Cosway, his country seat, where he could wait out the season in quietness and sanity.
The trouble was that his family knew it and saw him as being available to care for unwanted relatives. Not that it had ever happened before, it was true, but it was happening this year, and he knew that it would happen again, that he was setting a trend this year that he would regret forever after. His sister and brother-in-law had decided entirely on the spur of the moment to spend Christmas with friends in Italy and had disposed of the minor inconvenience of a fifteen-year-old daughter by informing him-yes, Susannah had told him, not asked him-that she would spend Christmas with him at Cosway.
What, in the name of all that was wonderful, was he going to do with a fifteen-year-old niece for a few weeks? And at Christmas, of all times?
What he would do, he had decided at once, having neglected the obvious solution of telling his elder sister that she must change her plans, that he just would not do it-what he would do was enlist the help of someone else. Some female who had no other plans for Christmas.Someone who would be pleased enough to spend it at Cosway, keeping Deborah out of mischief. And out of his way.
Agatha, in fact. But Agatha, his maiden aunt, had been invited to spend the week of Christmas with her dear friends, the Skinners, in Bath, and while she hated to inconvenience her dear nephew and great-niece, she really could not disappoint the Skinners this close to Christmas.
When Viscount Buckley descended from his carriage outside Miss Phillpotts’s school and had himself announced to speak with the headmistress herself, he was scowling. And his mood matched his expression exactly.
“Deborah will be very delighted to learn that her uncle, the viscount, has come in person to convey her home for the holidays, my lord,” Miss Phillpotts said to him, smiling graciously.
His lordship sincerely doubted it. Especially when the child discovered that her parents had taken themselves off to Italy without a word to her. He felt sorry for the girl, if the truth were known. But he felt sorrier for himself.
“I suppose, ma’am,” he said, without allowing himself to feel even the faintest glimmering of hope, “that there is not another young lady at the school who has nowhere to go for the holiday? Someone who could come with my niece and be company for her over Christmas?”
“I am afraid not, my lord,” the headmistress said. “All our girls will be leaving today.”
The viscount sighed. “It was a faint hope,” he said. “I am not much in practice as far as entertaining very young ladies is concerned, ma’am.”
Or as far as celebrating Christmas was concerned. And Deborah would doubtless want to celebrate it. Damn!
“It is indeed kind of you to be willing to extend your hospitality to another young lady,” Miss Phillpotts said. “But the only person who will be remaining at the school apart from three servants is Miss Craggs.”
Miss Craggs sounded like an elderly tyrant. But Viscount Buckley was somewhat desperate. “Miss Craggs?” he said.
“One of my teachers,” Miss Phillpotts explained.
Undoubtedly a tyrant.Poor Deborah. She would probably hate him forever for asking the question he was about to ask.
“Is there any possibility,” he asked, “that she would be willing to accompany us to Cosway?”
“I believe she would be delighted, my lord,” the headmistress told him.
“Shall I send her down to you? I see that Sir Humphrey Byrde’s carriage has arrived.” She glanced toward the window, which looked down onto a cobbled courtyard. “I should go to greet him.”
The viscount bowed his acquiescence and wandered to the window while Miss Phillpotts left the room to see another of her pupils on her way.
Damn Susannah and Miles! How could they think of going off to Italy for Christmas when they had a young daughter to care for? And how could they think of leaving her with him when they knew he did not celebrate Christmas? But then Susannah had always been the flighty, selfish one, quite different from their other two sisters. She was the youngest of the three and by far the most beautiful.
He had a suspicion that Susannah had never wanted children.
He thought briefly of his own child. Had he reminded his secretary to send her a gift? But then Aubrey would remember without a reminder. Part of his job was to remember what his employer was likely to forget.
He turned when the door opened behind him. She was not elderly, and despite her name, she did not look like a tyrant.
“Miss Craggs?” he said.