“A blessed Christmas gift she is for any man,” the cook said.
Yes. Jane remembered sitting alone with him in the library last evening. She alone with a man! And talking with him. Being consulted on what he should do with his daughter. And having the temerity to give her opinion and her suggestions. She would have expected to have been quite tongue-tied in a man’s presence. But she had made a discovery about this particular man. He was not the infallible figure of authority she had thought all men were. He was an ordinary human being who did not have all of life’s answers or even the most obvious of them.
He did not know that all his child needed-all!-was love. The love of her father. And he did not know that good, docile behavior in a child did not necessarily denote a happy child. He had turned to her, Jane, for help. Even a man could need her in some small way for one small moment of time.
It was the thought she had hugged to herself in bed. And also the memory of how it had felt to touch him.To feel his strongly muscled, unmistakably male arm with her own.To smell the unfamiliar odor of male cologne. To feel the body heat of a man only inches away from her own body. And to know that the yearning she had suffered and suppressed in herself for years had a definite cause. It was the yearning for a man, for his approval and his support and companionship. And for something else, too. She did not know quite what that something else was except that outside her dressing room, when he had stopped and thanked her for coming and for giving her attention to Veronica, she had felt suffocated. She had felt that there was no air in the corridor.
She had felt the yearning for… for him. She still could not express the need less vaguely than that.
And so she had fled into her room like a frightened rabbit.
“And there.” The cook’s hand patting her shoulder felt strangely comforting. There had been so few physical touches in her life. “He would be a blessed Christmas gift for some lady too, missy.”
But you are not a lady, Craggs. She heard again the words that had been spoken in the homework room just two days before. No, she was no lady. She smiled and got to her feet.
“You are going to be busy if you are to make everything you have suggested,” she said. “Oh, I can hardly wait for all the smells and all the tastes. I can hardly wait for Christmas.”
The cook chuckled. “It will come, miss, as it always does,” she said.
But it had never come before. This would be her first-ever Christmas.
She could scarcely wait. At the same time, she wanted to savor every moment as it came. They were to gather greenery during the afternoon, she and Veronica and perhaps Deborah. And Lord Buckley was to come to help carry the loads.
Veronica was sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, smoothing the cat’s fur.
He could not quite believe that this was himself. Himself up a tree, balanced precariously on a branch, feeling hot and disheveled and dusty.
His boots, he was sure, though he did not look down at them, must be in a condition to give his valet heart palpitations. Below him Miss Craggs stood with arms partly spread as if to catch him if he fell, Deborah had her hands to her mouth and was alternately squealing and giggling, and Veronica was gazing gravely upward.
“Miss Craggs believes that in addition to all the holly we have gathered and all the pine boughs we have cut down we need some mistletoe,” he had said to his daughter a short while before. “What do you think, Veronica?
Do we need mistletoe?”
“Yes, please, Papa,” she had said.
And Deborah had giggled-she had started giggling during their morning visits and had scarcely stopped since-and had added her voice to everyone else’s. It just would not be Christmas, it seemed, unless there was some mistletoe hanging in strategic places so that one might be caught beneath it accidentally on purpose.
She here he was up a tree.
And then down with a sizable armful of mistletoe and a tear on the back of one kid glove and a scrape so deep on the inside of his left boot that it would never be the same again.
And all in the name of Christmas.
“Do you know why I have risked life and limb just to gather this?” he asked Veronica, frowning.
“Because Miss Jane wanted it?” she asked.
Jane. He might have guessed that she would have such a name. And yet it suited her. It was quietly, discreetly pretty.
“Not at all,” he said. “This is what it is used for.” He held one sprig above the absurd hat, which Nancy had doubtless thought suitably flamboyant for the daughter of an actress, stooped down, and kissed her soft, cold little cheek. And took himself quite by surprise. Now why had he done that?
“Any gentleman has the right to kiss any lady he catches beneath the mistletoe,” he said, “without fear of having his face slapped. It is a Christmas custom. You see?” And he straightened up and repeated the action with Deborah, who giggled. “Now we have to carry all this greenery back to the house.”
“What about Miss Jane?” a grave little voice asked him.
And he knew he was caught. Caught in the act of maneuvering. For when he had demonstrated the use of mistletoe on his daughter and his niece, he had really wanted to use Miss Craggs as his model. Even though she was prim and gray and every inch the schoolteacher.Though that was not the whole truth this afternoon. Since they had left the house there had been a light in her eyes that had touched him. She was enjoying all this just like a child.
“Oh, it works with Miss Craggs, too,” he said, turning to her and raising his sprig of mistletoe again. And he felt suddenly and stupidly breathless. She was standing very still and wide-eyed.
He kissed her lightly and briefly, as he had kissed the other two.
Except that foolishly he kissed her on the lips. And ended up feeling even hotter than his excursion up the tree had made him.
She turned hurriedly away before their eyes could meet and began energetically arranging the heap of holly they had gathered into three bundles.
“Here, Veronica,” he said, “you may carry the mistletoe, since it will not prick you all to pieces. Deborah, take that bundle of holly. I’ll take this one.”
His hand brushed Miss Craggs’s as he gathered up the largest bundle and belatedly their eyes met. Her own were still large and bright. Brighter.
Was it the cold that had brought the tears there? Or was it the kiss?
Surely she had been kissed before. Surely that had not been her first kiss.
Had it? Once again he wondered about her past, about her life.
Impoverished parents and the need to go out and make her own living? But she had not been planning to go home for Christmas.
“I will send someone back with a wagon for the pine boughs,” he said.
“ ‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly,’ ” Deborah sang suddenly with loud enthusiasm and no musical talent whatsoever.
“ ‘Fa la la la la la la la la,’ ” Miss Craggs sang with her in a rather lovely contralto voice.
“ ‘Tis the season to be jolly.’ ” He joined his tenor voice to their singing and looked down at Veronica.
“ ‘Fa la la la la la la la la.’ ” She piped up with them, off-key.
“ ‘Don we now our gay apparel.’ ” Three of them sang out lustily while the fourth continued with the fa-la-las.
And the damned thing was, Viscount Buckley thought, that it could grab at one quite unawares. Christmas, that was.
Jane had never been very assertive, even as a teacher. She had never been the type who liked to boss and organize people. And yet over the next couple of days she seemed to be transformed into a wholly different person.
It was she who directed the decorating of the house-of drawing room, staircase, and hall. The viscount had suggested that the servants could do it, but she had exclaimed in horror and disappointment before she could stop herself, and he had meekly agreed that perhaps they could do it themselves, the four of them.