Under The Mistletoe (18 page)

“I am Deborah Latimer's uncle,” he said. “Warren Nash, Viscount Buckley, at your service, ma'am. Would it be possible to persuade you to come with us to my country seat in Hampshire? My sister and her husband, Deborah's parents, have gone to Italy and left her in my care. Frankly, I do not know what I am to do with a fifteen-year-old over Christmas. I need a female companion or chaperon for her. Will you come?”

There was the merest flicker in her eyes. Nothing more. He had never known a woman who was so impassive. He had always thought of women as open books, their emotions as clear to view as
the words on a page. He had never had any problem knowing what his various mistresses felt or thought.

“Yes, my lord,” she said.

He waited for more, for some questions or conditions. But she said nothing else. Her eyes, he noticed, were focused, not on his, but on his chin or thereabouts.

“I would guess that Deborah is eager to leave,” he said. “How soon can you be ready, Miss Craggs?”

“Half an hour?” she said.

Half an hour! Good Lord, most women of his acquaintance would have asked for two or three days. He inclined his head to her. “Would you have Deborah sent to me?” he asked as she turned to leave the room.

Damn Susannah,
he thought, too irritated to think of an original way mentally to censure his sister. How was he supposed to break the news to his niece?

Miss Craggs looked as if she had about as much joy in her as would half fill a thimble. A thimble for a small finger.

Damn!

 

She could not remember going farther from the school than could be accomplished on foot. She could not remember riding in a carriage. She could not remember being in company with a gentleman for longer than a minute or two at a time, except the dancing master who came in to teach the girls. She was usually chosen to partner him when he taught them the steps because he was not allowed to touch any of the girls, and none of the other teachers was willing to tolerate his lavishly insincere compliments and his moist hands.

She was not sure if she was glad or sorry to be where she was. At first she had been numbed with the strangeness and wonder of it. She was going on a holiday. She was going to spend Christmas at a private home in Hampshire. The home of Viscount Buckley. She was not going to be alone at the school, as she always had been for as far back as she could remember. And then she had been excited. Her teeth had chattered and her hands had shaken and her mind had whirled at dizzying speed as she had packed her few belongings into a valise she had had to borrow from Miss Phillpotts.

Now, after hours of travel, the luxury of a well-sprung, lavishly upholstered carriage was no longer able to mask the discomfort of the near silence that existed among its three occupants. An unnatural, uncomfortable silence. Deborah was sullen and unhappy. Jane did
not blame her when she had discovered only this morning that her parents had gone away for Christmas and left her behind. But she feared that part of the sullenness was caused by the fact that she had been appointed the girl's companion. Craggs, the teacher who was not really a lady.

The viscount was merely silent. Jane doubted that he felt uncomfortable. But she did. Dreadfully so. She had had no experience with maleness. Viscount Buckley seemed suffocatingly male to her. He was dark, not much taller than she, elegant. She imagined he was handsome by any standards. She really had not seen many men. He seemed to her more handsome than any man she could possibly imagine. And very male.

She was uncomfortable and terrified.

“We are almost there,” he said, turning his head and looking at Deborah. “You will feel better after a cup of tea.”

“I will
not
feel better,” his niece said sullenly. “I hate Christmas. And I hate Mama and Papa.”

Jane looked at the girl. She wanted to take her hand and tell her that at least she had an uncle willing to take her in. At least she had someone to whom she belonged and somewhere to go. But such an assurance would not console, she supposed.

“If it is any consolation,” the girl's uncle said, “they are not exactly my favorite people at this moment either, Deborah.”

“Meaning that you do not want to be burdened with me, I suppose,” the girl said, misery overlaying the sullenness. “Everyone knows you do not believe in Christmas, Uncle Warren.”

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “I shall have to see what I can do to exert myself on your behalf this year, Deborah. Ah, the house. It is always a relief to see it at the end of a long journey.”

Jane did not hear the rest of the conversation if, indeed, there was more. She had seen the house. Built within the last century, it had a classical symmetry of line combined with a deceptive simplicity of design. Built of light gray stone, it was rectangular in shape, three stories high, with a domed central portion and a pillared portico with wide marble steps leading up to double doors. It was larger and more magnificent than the house of her dream. And there was no snow, only bare trees and flower beds and grass of faded green. But it was all like enough to the dream house to catch at her breathing.

This was Cosway? This was where she was to spend the holiday?

She was aware suddenly that she had leaned forward and was gazing rather intently through the window. She was aware of the
silence of her two companions. She turned her head and met the viscount's dark eyes. She sat back in her seat again and retreated within herself, into that secret place far inside where it never mattered that no one noticed her or respected her or loved her. A secret place she had discovered as a very young child.

“You admire my home, Miss Craggs?” the viscount asked her.

“Yes, my lord,” she said. She felt the uncharacteristic urge to babble, to enthuse. She curbed it. “It is very beautiful.”

“I think so, too,” he said.

She felt his eyes on her for a few moments longer. She kept her own eyes firmly on the hands she had clasped in her lap. And then the carriage lurched slightly as it stopped, and the door was being opened and the steps set down. She felt excitement ball in her stomach again.

Was this really happening? To her?

 

Always as he drove up to the house, and more especially when he stepped inside the great domed hall, he wondered why he did not spend more of his time here. There was always a special feeling of homecoming when returning to Cosway. He loved the hall, especially in the winter, when the log fires in the great twin fireplaces at opposite sides gave welcome and the illusion of warmth. The hall was too large and too high, of course, ever to be really warm in reality.

“Ah, Kemp,” he said to his butler, rubbing his hands together as a footman took his hat and his gloves and waited for him to remove his greatcoat. “It is good to be home. I have brought my niece with me, as you see, and her companion, Miss Craggs. You will see that Mrs. Dexter assigns rooms to them? And that their bags are taken up? We will have tea served in the drawing room immediately.”

Kemp cleared his throat. “There was a, ah, delivery for you earlier this afternoon, m‘lord,” he said, nodding his head significantly to one side. “I did not know quite what to do with it but knew you would be arriving yourself before the afternoon was out.”

The viscount turned his head toward one of the fireplaces. Beside it, seated on a wooden settle, quite upright and quite still, sat a small child so bundled up inside a large coat and woolen scarf and mittens and so hidden beneath an absurdly large hat that she looked more like a bundle of abandoned laundry than a living child. To the left side of her chest was pinned a square sheet of paper.

“She would not, ah, remove her gloves or her hat, m'lord, or allow either Mrs. Dexter or myself to remove the label,” the butler said.
“The name on the label is Miss Veronica Weston, m'lord, care of yourself and this house.”

Veronica Weston. Oh, good Lord.
Viscount Buckley crossed the hall, his booted feet echoing on the marble tiles, and stopped a few feet in front of the child, who looked up at him with eyes that he supposed were very like his own.

He had never seen her before. He had known of her existence since before her birth and had never tried to deny paternity or to shirk the responsibility of providing for her financially. But he and Nancy had parted company before she discovered the pregnancy, and she had moved on to another protector soon after the birth. He himself had never felt any particular human interest in his daughter.

“Veronica?” he asked.

“Yes.” She was looking very directly into his eyes. “Are you my papa? I am not to speak to anyone except my papa.”

Papa! He had never thought of himself by any such name. He was a father. He had a daughter. He had never been a papa.

“This name is mine.” He touched one finger lightly to the label she wore on her chest. “You may speak to me. Your mama sent you here?”

“Mama went away,” the child said. “Mrs. Armstrong said I was to come to my papa.”

“Mrs. Armstrong?” He raised his eyebrows.

“She looks after me,” the child said. “But Mama went away and Mrs. Armstrong said there was no money. I was to come to my papa.”

The label was thick. He guessed that there was a letter sealed up within it. Nancy had never neglected the child despite the demands of an acting career. Aubrey had assured him of that. But she had gone away? She had tired of the child?

“Do you have a letter for me, Veronica?” he asked, holding out one hand. He was only just beginning to realize what a coil he was in now. As if things were not bad enough as they were.

The child looked down and laboriously unpinned the label from her coat. She handed it to him. Sure enough, there was a letter. Nancy had been out of town for a weekend party, leaving her daughter with Mrs. Armstrong, a neighbor who frequently cared for the child. Nancy had fallen from an upper gallery in the house she was visiting to the hall below and had died instantly. Mrs. Armstrong, with six children of her own, could not afford to keep the child when there was no chance of payment. She respectfully sent her to her father. She had been to the expense of hiring someone to write the letter for her
and of sending the child on the stagecoach. She hoped she would be reimbursed for her pains.

Poor Nancy,
he thought. She had been beautiful and a talented actress. And a skilled lover. She had borne his child. And now she was dead. He folded the letter again and looked down at his daughter. She was gazing up at him, quiet and self-contained. And all of four years old.

Lord. Oh, dear Lord.
What was he to do?

He turned his head to the two young ladies, who were still standing there, watching him. His eyes instinctively came to rest on Miss Craggs.

“She is my daughter,” he said. “Her mother has d—Her mother has gone away and she has been sent here.” He looked at her in mute appeal, like a child himself who did not know how to proceed.

“
Uncle Warren!
” Deborah said, shock in her voice.

Miss Craggs came closer, her eyes on the child. “She will want something to eat and a glass of milk,” she said. “She will need to remove her hat and her coat and have them and her bag taken to a room that will be hers.”

Of course! How practical and how simple. “Are you hungry, Veronica?” he asked.

“Yes, Papa,” the child said.

“Come along, then,” he said, clasping his hands awkwardly behind him. Good Lord, his illegitimate child, his by-blow, was in his own home with his niece. His servants would be scandalized. His neighbors would be shocked. “Will you give your hat and your coat to Kemp?”

“Will you let me help you, Veronica?” He watched as Miss Craggs went down on her knees before the child, who stood up and allowed her outer garments to be removed. “What a pretty color your scarf is. There—now you will be more comfortable. But we will need to comb those curls of yours before you sit down for your milk and your food.” She touched the backs of two fingers to a tangled curl at the child's cheek and smiled at her.

The viscount felt jolted, first by the sight of his daughter without the heavy outer garments—she was little more than a baby—and then by the smile on the face of his niece's teacher. Good God, he thought, he had not noticed that the woman was beautiful. Though he knew even as he thought it that she was not beautiful, that it was merely something from deep within her that for the moment she had allowed to the surface of her face.

“Would you like to hold my hand?” she asked his daughter.

“Yes, please,” the child said, looking up at her and suiting action to words.

“Uncle Warren?” Deborah asked faintly.

“She is my child,” he told her. He felt almost as if he were realizing it for the first time. It was one thing to know one had fathered a child and to have accepted financial responsibility for her. It was another thing entirely to see the child, tiny and dainty and quiet, her eyes and her hair the color of his own.

“But—” Deborah said.

“She is my daughter,” he said firmly. “Shall we go up for tea and get warm again?” He offered her his arm.