A Yuletide Treasure (19 page)

“Mother would never let me stay in a house where there is a single gentleman. The impropriety of it would shock her terribly.” Camilla suddenly realized that cuddling with a man while completely alone with him in the middle of the afternoon would be just as much an affront to her mother’s sensibilities. She tried to put a little space between her side and Philip’s, but he didn’t seem to want to let her go. A good sign, she thought, relaxing against his side. Perhaps he was not completely repelled by her dishonesty.

“Did you like it here so much?”

“I liked you,” Camilla said, unable to look at him. “I liked you very much, from the start.”

He gave a little crow of triumph. “I never would have guessed it, ‘Miss Twainsbury.’ So prim, so
mimini-pimini, so
proper.”

“I’m surprised you gave me a second glance, sir, after coming to such a conclusion. I’ll thank you to sit a little farther off.”

“A gentleman never lets his first impression stand when subsequent meetings prove it to be false. I knew you weren’t quite so old-maidish when you threw that snowball at me. And I’m quite comfortable where I am.” He stole a quick kiss. To show she had no hard feelings where such thefts were concerned, she gave him another, rather slower.

“Oh, dear,” she said somewhat drowsily a few minutes later. “I shall have to tell Lady LaCorte that we are betrothed.”

“I’ll do it.”

“She won’t approve, I’m afraid. I know her opinion of me will drop again to what it was when I first arrived. A ‘low, scheming creature,’ as she put it, out to trap you into matrimony.”

“I shall soon explain that, my love. I’m trapping you, make no mistake.”

“I’m sure she’ll think you are far too good for me.”

“Well, at least
she
doesn’t think I’m a married man. How I’ll explain that misunderstanding to your mother, I can’t think.”

“You write fiction; I’m sure you’ll manage. But your sister-in-law doesn’t like me.”

“I believe you are mistaken.”

“What, again?”

“You were wrong about my being unable to express my feelings,” he said, expressing them again.

“True, though I’m still curious about Paris.” She was only teasing, but he suddenly frowned. Not, she thought, at her, but at some memory. “Is it so difficult to talk about?”

He looked at her and smiled. “What lurid tale have you imagined, Camilla? Maybe you should write it down so we can use it in our next book.”

“ ‘Our next book’?”

“You don’t think I’m going to put my name alone on the title page, after you’ve done so much?”

There was only one way to thank him for his kindness. This time, however, when he came up for air, he put her gently away from him and moved back into the corner of the sofa.

“You sit in that corner, and I’ll sit in mine,” he said, holding his hands up before him like barriers. He looked at her warily. She put on her best meek expression. “You’re not fooling me, you know.”

“Who kissed whom?” she asked.

“We’ll debate that later.” Then, as she started for him, he allowed her only one small kiss. “I’m serious, now, Camilla. You stay over there. I’ve taken quite enough advantage of this situation. Anything more would be wrong of me. You are younger than I and an unprotected girl in this house.”

“Yes, Philip,” she said, already plotting to weaken his morality later. “What about Paris?”

“Heavens, you’re a stubborn woman. Very well.” He closed his eyes as if to summon his memory like a genie from a bottle. Camilla scooted ever so slightly closer to him. When some slight, betraying noise gave her away, she instantly froze, looking up with such innocence that Philip would have suspected her anyway.

“I was a spy,” he said so simply that Camilla was sure she misunderstood him.

“I beg your pardon? Did you say ‘a spy’?”

“Yes.”        

She
knew he watched for her reaction. “For which side?”

He laughed as if every word she spoke delighted him. “For ours, of course. I’d been working in France even before the Eagle fell. Then I went to Paris to report to the Duke of Wellington. Rumors were flying everywhere that Napoleon wasn’t finished, that he’d rise again. Tracking those rumors down took all our time. As for the famous stabbing, that was thanks to a woman I never should have turned my back on.”

“A woman? Was she pretty?”

“Thank God,” he said. “I was starting to think you were more than human, Camilla. You restore my faith in the essential qualities of womanhood. No, she wasn’t pretty. She was roughly fifty, had been through a revolution, an empire, and a restoration, invariably picking the wrong side to pin her faith upon. Though I escaped with important information about who was channeling money to Elba, she did manage to stick me like a pig. Bleeding buckets of gore, I made my way to Eve’s doorstep, when he proceeded to trip over me. He’s been dining out on that story ever since.”

“He shouldn’t. It could be dangerous for you.” She grasped his hand nervously.

“I assure you there are no emperors or their minions hiding in the snowdrifts, awaiting their revenge. I did my duty in the best way I could and left with a huge sigh of relief at the end of the war.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “It feels good to tell you,” he mused. “The only other one I’ve told is Myron so that he wouldn’t think his brother an utter wastrel.”

“He wouldn’t have thought that.”

“Why not? I have never claimed to be anything very outside the ordinary. I am content now to just write my books and watch my flowers grow. What say you, flower? How much do you care to grow?”

Somehow, without either of them willing it particularly, they gave up their places, cold and so far apart, to cuddle closer together. Philip smoothed back the one errant lock of hair, marveling again that she’d given him a right to such intimacies. I’ll write your mother at once,” he declared. “Will she accept me, you think?”

“Yes, once she meets you. But write also, by all means. I am underage, Philip. I must have her consent.”

“I feel confident she’ll give that. Without wishing to seem conceited, I’m quite the catch.”

“I don’t know,” Camilla said, rising to her feet. He was quite right; they’d been alone together long enough to set tongues wagging. On the threshold, she turned back, a teasing twinkle in her eyes. “Mother always thought I should have at least a viscount.”

Dreading the moment when Lady LaCorte would discover her perfidy, Camilla couldn’t help but be relieved when her ladyship did not come down to dinner. Nanny Mallow, up but still favoring her injured leg, called to Camilla as she started downstairs.

“My, but you do look pretty,” she said. “Such a color in your cheeks, as a young girl ought to have.”

“Fine feathers,” Camilla said, smoothing the long sleeve of her only dinner dress, a rich tobacco brown poplin.

“Is that all?” Nanny asked with one of her funny wise looks.

“No, Nanny.”

“Sir Philip?”

“Yes, Nanny,” Camilla said, feeling a kind of shy triumph.

Nanny gave a little crow of pleasure. “There now! If that’s not just what I’ve been saying all along. When two people are meant to be matched, they’re meant, that’s all.” She embraced the girl, patting her back. “And won’t your mother be pleased when she comes? Such a fine young man, with everything handsome about him.”

“I hope Mother will like him.”

“She won’t be able to help herself, mark m’words. She’s too sensible a woman to whistle such a catch down the wind.”

“I don’t know. She’s proud and might not like my marrying into such a wealthy family. I haven’t any dowry or expectations, and my connections are riot—”

“Pooh!” Nanny said emphatically. “If Sir Philip don’t care for that, why should anyone? It’s yourself he’s marrying, and so he’ll tell you himself.”

Camilla felt comforted by the very act of telling someone her fears. Nanny Mallow was such a sensible, down-to-earth sort. She’d soon sift Camilla’s fears into chimeras and brass tacks. The first she could dismiss for a while; the second she must deal with as soon as she could.

“I know one thing, Nanny. Lady LaCorte won’t like this news.”

“That she won’t.”

“She doesn’t think very highly of me now. I can just imagine how she’ll feel when she discovers this. She thought I came to entrap Sir Philip into marriage. I believe she had begun to change her mind, but this engagement will just confirm her prior opinion. I couldn’t bear it if Philip broke with her because he wants to marry me.”

“Don’t borrow trouble,” Nanny counseled. “Besides which, she’s keeping to her room tonight. I took a good look at her, and I’m thinking she’s coming near her time.”

“Goodness! We should send for Dr. March.”

“Not yet,” she said, calming Camilla. “It’s not time just yet, or I don’t know my business. And if I’m wrong about it, I know more about bringing children into this world than he ever will. Her la’ship herself said she was glad I’m under her roof for this very reason. She might not have sent for me ‘special, but since I’m here, she’ll make use of me.”

“I’m glad you’re here, Nanny. Imagine if she needed help in the middle of the night and only I were here.”

“Then you’d send the footman hotfoot for me even before you’d sent for Dr. March. But I am here and already begun. I told her straight out to leave off those nasty stays she’s been wearing, and she did.”

“Oh, I thought she looked ... bigger.”

“I don’t hold with wearing stays when you’re expecting. I’m an old hen, and I think the old ways are the best ways. It’s not as if she were some fashionable highly finished piece of nature on the strut in London. As a mother, she should be thinking about her baby, not the size of her waist.” Nanny Mallow developed this theme for some little time before catching a glimpse of the clock in her room. “Hurry down, child. Whatever will Sir Philip think of you, making him wait for his supper?”

What Philip thought of her was shown by the gleam in his eyes and the way he conveyed her hand up for a gentle kiss when she entered the room.

On the other side of the drawing room, Tinarose took great interest in these new signs of affection. With her mother’s continuing indisposition, Tinarose had become accustomed to spending the evenings with her uncle and Camilla as a matter of propriety. Philip had seen immediately that it was in Camilla’s best interest not to be alone with him every evening between dinner and retiring. Camilla had rather thought that it didn’t do Philip’s reputation any good to be alone with her, though tonight she would have liked best to have the chance to reiterate their sentiments of the afternoon.

Constant acquaintance with older people had rubbed off some of the shy gaucherie that Tinarose had previously shown. Camilla, used to making the best of little, had shown her two or three easy ways to dress her hair that had improved her too-square face, as well as making her pretty neck look swan-like and showing her more than slightly attractive ears. Despite knowing that Tinarose’s affection for Dr. March was quite impossible, Camilla couldn’t wait to see what he thought of these few alterations. Regrettably, the few times he’d come by, Camilla and Tinarose had been busy with their Christmas preparations for the little girls, and no one had told them he was there until after he had gone.

They sat down together on the sofa, while Philip poured them each a glass of sherry. “What is going on?” Tinarose whispered. “Are you ... all right?”

“Yes, of course,” Camilla said with a laughing glance at Philip.

He gave them their glasses and raised his high. “To Camilla,” he said. “Who has graciously agreed to take on the arduous task of marrying me.”

Tinarose squealed with delight, dropping her wine with the effect of having thrown it. She jumped up to embrace Philip. “I’m so glad,” she cried.

He looked with comical helplessness over her shoulder as he patted her back. Camilla stood up. “I was afraid you wouldn’t like it,” she said.

“Not like it?” Tinarose turned quickly from Philip, gathering Camilla into a congratulatory embrace. “But when did this happen?”

‘This afternoon,” Camilla said, giving the girl a kiss on the cheek and encouraging her to sit down again. “In the library.”

“Oh,” Tinarose sighed ecstatically. “It’s so wonderful. When will you be married?”

“I hardly know. We must await my mother’s consent.”

“She’ll give it; I know she will.”

“I certainly hope so,” Philip said, on his knees beside the miraculously unbroken stemmed glass, mopping with his handkerchief at the puddle of wine rapidly being absorbed into the rug. “Never mind,” he said, seeing Tinarose’s stricken look. “I dare say Samson will know how to remove it, and, failing him, who knows what wonders Nanny Mallow can perform? Wine must be the least of what she’s removed from carpets, having been a child’s nurse.”

Tinarose ignored this. “Do you mean there’s a chance Mrs. Twainsbury won’t give consent? But surely... I mean, he has a title and money and this house and everything.”

“You overwhelm me,” Philip said, sitting back on his heels.

With a laughing look, Camilla shook her head at him. “Of course, I’ve considered all those things and have decided to accept him anyway. I’m sure Mother will have no difficulty approving as well.”

“Oh, I do hope so. It would be just dreadful if she didn’t.”

“You’re being very flattering,” Camilla said.

“I mean it,” Tinarose said, taking Camilla’s hand in a friendly clasp. “You’ve been so good to me. Having you in the family will be like having the older sister I’ve always wanted. Besides, when you’re a fashionable matron, just think what fun we’ll have in Town when I make my come-out.”

“Yes,
we will. That is, if my lord and master permits me to go junketing about London.” Camilla knew this was a light promise. A thousand things might prevent her from attending Tinarose in London, the most likely being that she might find herself in Lady LaCorte’s condition. Looking speculatively at Philip, she caught his eye and suddenly was all one blush.

Though he asked her later why she’d colored, Camilla didn’t tell him. She couldn’t help but be a little shy when alone with him the next day, but since he seemed determined to press on with the book, she soon managed to put herself once more on an easy footing with him. Only, when at the end of an argument regarding a scene with the heroine was resolved, Philip kissed her cheek. Unable to meet his eyes, she put her hand up to touch the side of his face.