“Of course,” she said, trying to draw her hands free of his without jerking on them. She felt again as if she were suffocating. His closeness and his maleness were overpowering her. “It is nothing, my lord.”
“It is something,” he said. “It is just that you have intrigued me during the past few days, Jane. You are like two people. Much of the time you are a disciplined, prim and-forgive me-plain teacher. But sometimes you are eager and warm and quite incredibly beautiful. I have been given the impression that the latter person has come bubbling up from very deep within. Is she the real person, the one you hide from the world, the one you have never had a chance to share with anyone else?”
“Please.” She dragged at her hands but was unable to free them. Her voice, she noticed in some dismay, sounded thin and distressed. She sounded on the verge of tears.
“He was a fool, your father,” he said. “He had you to love and let opportunity pass him by.”
She forgot herself instantly. She looked up into his face, her eyes wide. “And are you going to make the same mistake?” she asked. “You too have a daughter to love.”
“But the situation is different,” he said. “I am not going to abandon her to an orphanage or a school. I am going to find her the very best parents I can.”
“But she is four years old,” Jane said. “Do you not think she will remember, however hazily? She will remember that her mother disappeared mysteriously and she will try to persuade herself that she died and did not merely abandon her. You need to tell her the truth. However cruel it seems now, she needs to know. And she will remember that her father was titled and wealthy and that he cared enough to provide for her physical needs but did not care enough to provide for the only need that mattered.”
“And that is?” He was frowning and she thought that perhaps he was angry. But so was she. She would answer his question.
“The need for love,” she said. “The need to know that to someone she means more than anything else in the world.”
“But she is illegitimate.” He was almost whispering. “She is the daughter I fathered on a mistress. Do you understand, Jane? Do you know anything about what is acceptable and what is not in polite society?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, I know, my lord. I am such a daughter too, remember. No one in my memory has ever wanted to know me as a person. No one has ever hugged me. Or kissed me. No one has ever loved me. I am three-and-twenty now, old enough to bear the burdens of life alone, but I would not want another child to have to live the life I have lived.
Not Veronica. I hope she will remember that you have kissed her cheek and rubbed your hand in her hair and carried her home from church inside your greatcoat. I am not sure it will help a great deal, but I hope she remembers even so. I wish I had such memories.”
“Jane,” he said, his voice shaken. “Oh, my poor Jane.”
And before she knew what was to happen or could do anything to prevent it, his hands had released hers and grasped her by the shoulders instead, and he had pulled her against him. And before her mind could cope with the shock of feeling a man’s warm and firmly muscled body against her own, his mouth was on hers, warm and firm, his lips slightly parted.
For a moment-for a fleeting moment after her mind had recovered from its first shock-she surrendered to the heady physical sensation of being embraced by a man and to the realization that she was experiencing her first real kiss. And then she got her palms against her chest and pushed firmly away from him.
“No,” she said. “No, my lord, it is not poor Jane. It is poor Veronica.
She has a father who could love her, I believe, but who feels that the conventions of society are of greater importance than love.”
She did not give him a chance to reply though he reached for her again.
She whisked herself about and out of the room and fled upstairs to her bedchamber as if being pursued by a thousand devils.
It had snowed a little more during the night. The viscount stood at his window, eager to go downstairs to begin the day, yet wanting at the same time to stay where he was until he could safely escape to the Oxendens’ house. He wanted to go downstairs because he had told her the truth last night. She had brought Christmas to his home for the first time in many years, and he found himself hungry for it. And yet he dreaded seeing her this morning after his unpardonable indiscretion of the night before.
And he dreaded seeing Veronica. He dreaded being confronted with love.
He had decided six years ago to the day that he must be incapable of loving enough to satisfy another person. He had confined his feelings since then to friendships and to lust.
She was wrong. It was not that he put the conventions of society before love as much as that he did not believe he could love his daughter as well as a carefully chosen couple would. He wanted Veronica to have a happy childhood. Because he loved her. He tested the thought in his mind, but he could not find fault with it. He did love her. The thought of giving her up to another couple was not a pleasant one. And that was an understatement.
He was the first one downstairs. Before going to the breakfast room he went into the drawing room to take the parcels he had bought in a visit to a nearby town two days before and a few he had brought home with him and to set them down beside the rudely carved but curiously lovely Nativity scene with its Mary and Joseph and babe in a manger and a single shepherd and lamb. They had been set up last night. He was seeing them for the first time.
He looked about the room. And he thought of his irritation at finding himself saddled with his niece for Christmas and of her sullenness at being abandoned by her parents and left to his care. And of the terrible aloneness of Veronica as she had sat in his hall, like a labeled parcel abandoned until someone could find time to open it.
Yes, Jane had transformed his home and the three of them who lived in it with her. Under the most unpromising of circumstances she had brought the warmth and joy of Christmas. He wondered if it was something she was accustomed to doing. But he knew even as he thought it that that was not it at all. If she had been about to spend Christmas alone at the school this year, then surely she must have spent it alone there last year and the year before. His heart chilled. Had she ever spent Christmas in company with others? Had she always been alone?
Was all the love of her heart, all the love of her life being poured out on this one Christmas she was spending with strangers? With three other waifs like herself? But she was so much stronger than they. Without her, he felt, the rest of them would have wallowed in gloom.
But his thoughts were interrupted. Deborah burst into the room, parcels in her hands. She set them beside his and turned to smile at him.
“Happy Christmas, Uncle Warren,” she said. “Veronica is up.
Craggs-Miss Craggs-is dressing her and brushing her hair. They will be down soon. I wish they would hurry. I have presents for everyone. I bought them in the village shop. And you have presents too. Is there one for me?”
“Yes.” He grinned at her. “Happy Christmas, Deborah.”
And then they came into the room, hand in hand, Jane and Veronica, and his heart constricted at sight of them. His two ladies. Jane was carrying two parcels. Veronica was saucer-eyed.
And finally it was there again, full-grown-the glorious wonder of Christmas in a young child’s eyes, which were fixed on the Nativity scene and on the parcels beside it. He hurried across the room to her and stooped down without thought to lift her into his arms.
“Happy Christmas, Veronica,” he said, and kissed her on her soft little lips. “Someone brought the baby Jesus with his mama and papa during the night. And someone brought gifts, too. I will wager some of them are yours.”