Under The Mistletoe (11 page)

Except that she did not want to fall asleep tonight. Not yet.

“Allan,” she whispered hesitantly. They almost never talked when they were in bed. And very rarely when they were out of it, except when they were yelling at each other.

“Yes?” His voice sounded almost tense.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for what you did for Nicky. I think he will be happy here, don't you? You have taken him out of hell and brought him into heaven.”

“Our home, heaven?” he said quietly, jarring her mood slightly. “But he will be safe here, Estelle, and warm and well fed. It is all we can do.”

“He has a new home in time for Christmas,” she said. “Poor little orphan child. He must be so very happy, Allan, and grateful to you.”

“He has merely exchanged one servitude for another,” he said. “But at least he will not be mistreated here.”

“What did you say to the sweep?” she asked. “Did you threaten him with jail?”

“He was doing nothing that every other sweep in the country is not doing,” he said. “The problem does not end with the rescue of the boy, Estelle. I merely bought him for twice his apprenticeship fee. The man made a handsome profit.”

“Oh, Allan!” Her hand spread across his chest over the fabric of his nightshirt. “The poor little boys.”

She felt him swallow. “Some members of the House are concerned over the matter,” he said, “and over the whole question of child labor. I shall speak with them, find out more, perhaps even speak in the House myself.”

“Will you?” She burrowed her head more deeply into the warmth of his shoulder. She wanted to find his mouth in the darkness. But she only ever had the courage to do that when he had aroused passion in her.

“In the meantime,” he said, “you can console yourself with the thought that at least your little Nicky has a warm and soft bed for the night and a full stomach.”

And then a wonderful thing happened. Something that had never happened before in almost two years of marriage. He turned his head and kissed her, long minutes after their lovemaking was over, and turned onto his side and stroked the hair back from her face with gentle fingers. And before another minute had passed, she knew that he was going to come to her again.

She fell asleep almost immediately after it was over. It was not until later in the night, when she had awoken and nestled closer to the sleeping form of her husband, who was still beside her, that reality took away some of the magic of the previous day. He had done a wonderful thing for Nicky, she thought. They would be able to watch him grow into a healthy and carefree childhood, long after this particular Christmas was past.

They
would be able to watch him?
He
would, perhaps. Allan would. But would she? She was to be banished to Papa's home after Christmas for a stay that would surely extend itself beyond weeks into months. Perhaps even years. Perhaps forever. Perhaps she would only ever see Allan again on brief visits, for form's sake.

He was sending her away. So that they might rethink their relationship, he had said. So that he might end their marriage to all intents and purposes. He didn't want her anymore. He did not want their marriage to continue. And even if he were forced to continue their marriage to some degree, even if her suspicion and hardly admitted hope proved right, it would be an empty thing, only a third person holding them together.

And there was that other thing. That thing that she had not allowed to come between her and her joy the previous day. The missing ring. Not just the diamond, but the whole ring. She had hunted for it until she had felt almost sick enough to vomit. But she had not found it. Or told Allan about its disappearance. She had repressed her panic and the terrible sense of loss that had threatened to overwhelm her.

Where could it have gone? Had it been swept up by the maids? She had even thought briefly of Nicky, but had shaken the thought off immediately. It had just disappeared, as the diamond had.

Christmas was coming, and there would be no Star of Bethlehem for her. No joy or love or hope.

But she would not think such depressing and self-pitying thoughts. She settled her cheek more comfortably against her
husband's broad shoulder and rested a hand on his warm arm. And she deliberately thought back on the brighter part of the previous day. She smiled.

Nicky not wanting to be parted from his filthy rags and bursting into pitiful wailings when Mrs. Ainsford snatched away the rag of a handkerchief he clutched even after he had relinquished all else. He had a curl of his mother's hair in the little bundle, he had claimed, and a seashell that someone had given him at the orphanage. All his worldly possessions. Mrs. Ainsford had given the rag back to him and another clean one to use instead. But the child had not unpacked his treasures to their interested gaze.

Estelle smiled again, listened for a few moments to the deep and even breathing of the man beside her, and turned her head to kiss his shoulder before allowing herself to slip back into sleep.

 

The earl had not slept for a while after making love to his wife for the second time. He ought not to have come. Relations between them had been strained enough for several months, and the bitter quarrel of the night before had brought matters to a crisis. He had made the decision that they should live apart, at least for a time. They must keep up the charade over Christmas, of course, for the sake of her family and his own. But the pretense did not at least have to extend to the bedchamber.

There was no harmony between them—none—except in what passed between them in silence between the sheets of her bed. He had often wanted to try to extend that harmony into other aspects of their life by talking to her in the aftermath of passion, when they would perhaps feel more kindly disposed to each other than at any other time.

But he had never done so. He was no good at talking. He had always been afraid to talk to Estelle, afraid that he would not be able to convey his inner self to her. He had chosen to keep himself closed to her rather than try to communicate and know himself a failure. He had always been mortally afraid of having his love thrown back in his face. Better that she did not know. And so he had contented himself with giving his love only the one outlet. Only the physical.

But he should not have come tonight. The events of the day had created the illusion of closeness between them. And so he had come to her, and she had received him with something more than the usual passion, which he knew himself capable of arousing. There had been an eagerness in her, a tenderness almost. A gratitude for what he had done for her little climbing boy.

He should not have come. How would he do without her after she had left with her parents after Christmas?

How would he live without her?

What would he give her as a Christmas gift? It must be something very special, something that would perhaps tell her, as he could never do, that despite everything he cared.

Some jewels perhaps? Something to dazzle her?

He smiled bitterly into the darkness as Estelle made low noises in her sleep and burrowed more closely into his warmth. Something to remind her that she had a wealthy husband. More baubles for her to lose or to cast aside with that look of disdain that she was so expert at when he was angry with her for some reason.

Like that ring. He stared upward at the dark canopy over his head. The Star of Bethlehem. The ring that had told him as soon as he slid it onto her finger two years before that she was the jewel of his life, the star of his life. It was not a bauble. Not merely a symbol of wealth.

It was a symbol of his love, of his great hope for what their marriage might have been.

If he could replace the diamond . . .

Where had she put the ring? It had probably been tossed into a drawer somewhere. It should not be hard to find. He could probably find it with ease if he waited for her to go out and then searched her rooms.

He would have the diamond replaced for her. She had been careless about its loss. It had not really mattered to her. She had told him about it merely to avoid a scolding if he had discovered it for himself at a later date.

But surely if he could put it on her finger again this Christmas, whole again, the Star of Bethlehem new again, as Christmas was always new even more than eighteen hundred years after the first one, then it would mean something to her.

Perhaps she would be pleased. And perhaps in the months to come, when she had not seen him for a while, when the bitterness of their quarrels had faded, she would look at it and realize that he had put more than his money into the gift.

He turned his head and kissed his sleeping wife with warm tenderness just above her ear. There was an excitement in him that would surely make it difficult to get to sleep.

Estelle had been happy about Nicky. He remembered the look she had given him as she left this very room after Mrs. Ainsford and the child—a bright and sparkling look all focused on him. The sort of
look he had dreamed of inspiring before he married her. Before he knew himself quite incapable of drawing to himself those looks that she bestowed so willingly on other men. Before he realized that he would find himself quite incapable of communicating with her.

He would bask in the memory. And the child had been saved from a brutal life. That poor little skeletal baby, who was probably sleeping peacefully at that very moment in another part of the house, as babies ought.

 

At that precise moment the former climbing boy, whom his new master thought to be peacefully asleep, was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a room in quite another part of London—a dingy, dirty attic room that was sparsely furnished and strewn with rags and stale remnants of food and empty jugs.

“I tell you, Mags,” he was saying in his piping voice, which nevertheless did not sound as pathetic as it had sounded in the countess's bedchamber the previous day, “I took me life in me 'ands comin' 'ere in these togs.” He indicated the white shirt and breeches, obviously of an expensive cut and equally obviously part of a suit of livery belonging to some grand house. “But there weren't nothin' else. They burned all me other things.”

The Mags referred to shook with silent laughter. “I scarce knew you, young Nick,” he said. “I always thought you 'ad black hair.”

The child touched his soft fair hair. “Such a scrubbin' you never did 'ear tell of,” he said in some disgust. “I thought she'd rub me skin away for sure.”

“So yer can't be up to the old lark no more,” Mags said, the laughter passing as silently as it had come.

“Naw.” Nicky scratched his head from old habit. “Thought she was bein' a blessed angel, she did, that woman. And 'im standin' there arskin' me if I wanted to stay at their 'ouse. Exceptin' I couldn't say no. I would've given an 'ole farthin' to 'ave seen old Thomas's face.” He giggled, sounding for a moment very much like the baby the Earl and Countess of Lisle had taken him for. He was in reality almost eleven years old.

“This might be better,” Mags said, rubbing his hands together thoughtfully. “You can go 'round the 'ouse at leisure, young Nick, and lift a fork 'ere and a jeweled pin there. P'raps they'll take you to other 'ouses, and yer can 'ave a snoop around them too.”

“It'll be almost too easy,” Nicky said, rubbing the side of his nose with one finger. His voice was contemptuous. “They're a soft touch if ever I seen one, Mags.”

“Got anythin' for me tonight?” Mags asked.

The child shifted position and scratched his rump. “Naw,” he said after a few moments' consideration. “Nothin' tonight, Mags. Next time.”

“It weren't hardly worth comin', then, were it?” the older man said, his narrowed eyes on the child.

“Just wanted yer to know that me fairy godmother come,” the child said, leaping lightly to his feet. “Did yer give the money to me maw for that thimble I brought you last week?”

“ 'Tweren't worth much,” Mags said quickly. “But yes. Yer maw got her food money.” He laughed silently again. “And yer sister got 'er vittles to grow on. Another two or three years, young Nick, and yer maw'll be rich with the two of yer.”

“I got to go,” the child said. And he climbed down the stairs from the attic and went out into the street, where for the first time in his life he had something to fear. His appearance made him fair game for attack. Only the filthy stream of curses he had been quite capable of producing had discouraged one pair of tough-looking urchins when he had been on his way to Mags's attic.

And unexpectedly he still had something to protect on his way back home. He still had the ring and the diamond pressed between the band of his breeches and his skin, although the main reason for his night's outing had been to deliver them to Mags for payment. One of his better hauls. But he had not given them up. That woman, whom he had been told he must call “your ladyship,” had bawled like a baby after the man had left her, and flung the ring across the room.

And she had had food brought to him, and had sat and watched him eat it, and smiled at him. And she was the one who had told the big, sour-faced, big-bosomed woman to give him back his bundle—the bundle that held her ring and diamond, and who had stooped down and kissed him on the cheek before he got dumped in that hot water up to the neck and scrubbed raw.