His Housekeeper's Christmas Wish (17 page)

He couldn’t just abandon her, not after she had given him everything, and all because she saw him as another stray to care for, like Dorcas and Annie or that damned kitten. Somehow he had to get her to accept an allowance.

‘What’s making you look so sour?’ The earl tossed back a mouthful of brandy.

My guilty conscience. And this damn pain round my heart.
‘The thought of Almack’s.’ Alex looked at his father and dug deep into his reserves of patience and diplomacy. He was far from forgiving, an infinity from accepting, but he had to make this work for the sake of his mother and sister, for the earldom. ‘Tell me what needs doing and we’ll work this out.’
Somehow.

* * *

Tess made her way to the drawing room, feeling absurdly conspicuous. No one had observed her whispered consultation with MacDonald, Dorcas and Byfleet, but she was sure Lady Moreland would thoroughly disapprove. What she would think about how her son had spent the previous night, Tess shuddered to think. The shudder turned into a
frisson
of remembered delight at the thought of Alex’s hands on her body, just as she turned a corner and walked straight into him.

‘Alex
.
’

He pulled her close and bent his head. ‘I need you.’

‘Alex, we can’t—not here.’
Yes, please, right here. Kiss me...
‘But we must talk, urgently.’

‘What is wrong?’ He opened the nearest door and bundled her into what proved to be a small, cold sitting room. ‘We shouldn’t be disturbed here, it was never used except in the summer.’ He sat down on a settee and pulled her on to his lap. ‘Snuggle up, you’ll get cold. Now tell me what is wrong. Is it about last night? I can’t regret it, although I know I should. Are you sorry this morning, Tess?’

‘No, certainly not. It was very...’

‘Nice? Adequate? Alarming?’

‘Stop fishing for compliments.’ She curled into his embrace and butted him gently under the chin. ‘It was surprising and wonderful and I feel very
womanly
this morning.’

‘Hmm.’ He nuzzled against her neck. ‘I think you feel very womanly, too. So what is concerning you?’

‘Christmas and our—your—staff. We had promised them a whole day to themselves—now what do we do? The staff here seem to expect to have to spend the entire day looking after the household.’

‘I suppose they do.’ She could hear the frown in Alex’s voice. ‘I never thought about it as a child, or a thoroughly selfish youth. Christmases just happened and they were crowded, noisy and involved a lot of people who spent most of the time arguing and eating and drinking too much. Are you sure you want to bother with this?’

She sat up straight and frowned at him. ‘I thought you’d accepted that we were going to celebrate Christmas. You bought presents, you let us decorate the house...’

‘That was back in London. You could have your Christmas downstairs, do what you like. If we start something here, goodness knows where it will end—the entire family glowering at each other around the dinner table while the carol singers serenade us, I expect.’

‘It might help bring everyone together,’ she ventured.

‘I don’t want bringing together.’ There was silence. ‘I suppose you are going to be disappointed.’

‘Yes.’ She was not letting him wriggle out of this.

‘Very well. I’ll talk to Mama. In fact, we’ll both talk to her. I’ll explain that you were organising it for me because Hannah was sick.’

He did not seem to be in any hurry to move. ‘Alex?’

‘Wriggle like that again.’ His huff of laughter tickled her ear, his good humour apparently resorted. ‘Come on, then, let’s find Mama.’

* * *

Lady Moreland was in her sitting room with her household accounts spread out before her. ‘Alexander, can you explain why we appear to be consuming three times more wax candles than this time last year?’

‘No idea, I’m afraid. Mama, I brought my household staff with me as you know. I had promised them the whole of Christmas Day off for their own celebrations, now I find myself in a difficulty because we are here.’

‘The entire day? You are very generous, Alexander.’

‘I normally just have a cold meal that day. Miss Ellery and Mrs White profess themselves willing to make do, as well.’

‘We wondered,’ Tess ventured, ‘if perhaps a hot luncheon would be sufficient for above stairs, with a cold buffet laid out for the evening. All of the downstairs staff could then celebrate together.’

‘We could forgo dressing for dinner, just this once, Mama,’ Alex said. ‘An afternoon and evening doesn’t seem too extravagant, once a year.’

‘Unless that would be too disruptive for Lord Moreland?’ Tess said, suddenly wondering how that sickly and irritable despot would take to the idea.

‘If Alexander can persuade his father, then I have no objection. To tell you the truth, a quiet Christmas would be a blessing just now.’

‘Forgive me, Lady Moreland. I do not wish to presume, but would it be helpful if I speak to the staff about it—provided we have his lordship’s consent? I would wish to be of assistance.’

The countess looked at Tess, a small, considering smile on her lips. Tess shifted under the gaze. Was
no longer a virgin
emblazoned on her forehead? Or perhaps she was allowing her feelings for Alex to show. But his mother was definitely smiling. ‘Thank you, my dear. I think that would be very...appropriate. Alexander, tell your father I am in favour of this scheme.’

Tess glanced at Alex, relieved, but surprised, and found that he was looking at his mother with a quizzical expression as though he, too, was taken aback by those smiles and her agreement. She shrugged inwardly. Provided no one found out that she was sharing Alex’s bed and no one discovered who she was, then there was nothing to worry about.

Chapter Seventeen

‘W
e will go and find Garnett and take his advice on how to proceed with our party.’ Alex steered Tess in the direction of the main hall.

‘Your mother... I expected her to be reluctant,’ Tess confessed. ‘And yet she seemed quite approving of it.’

‘I suspect the approval is for you rather than the scheme,’ Alex said.

She wished they were in private so she could rub away the lines from between his brows. It took her a moment to realise just what he was frowning about. ‘For me? She thinks you and I... But surely she knows I am a nobody?’

‘Does she? Besides, you are not a nobody, you are very much yourself.’

How could he pretend to make light of it? ‘I mean, does she realise that I am quite ineligible?’

‘Probably not,’ Alex conceded.

So there goes that foolish little daydream, the one where your King Cophetua falls for you, the beggar maid, marries you and defies all convention
.
Of course Alex has more sense than that.
‘Then, you had better tell her before she comes to any embarrassing conclusions,’ Tess said, more snappishly than she intended. It wasn’t Alex’s fault that he was heir to an earldom and she was the illegitimate child of a scandalous liaison.
Not that he knows that
, she mused as they came out into the hallway.
He knows I am ineligible enough, even if he believes I am legitimate. No money, no connections...

‘Alex! What in blazes do you think you are doing?’ Matthew thudded down the staircase, his boot heels like thunder on the old polished oak.

‘Organising Christmas dinner, since you ask,’ Alex drawled, coming to a halt under a trophy arrangement of swords and rapiers that fanned out across the entire wall.

‘To hell with Christmas dinner. What do you mean by thinking you can exile me to the other end of the county, give away property—’

‘You will kindly mind your language in front of Miss Ellery. I have neither the power nor the inclination to exile you anywhere and I certainly do not have the ability to give away any of the lands, although why you are objecting since they would end up in your hands, I have no idea. I merely suggested to Father that as you wanted to set up your own estate, he give you one of the unentailed properties to the west.’

‘To get me out of the way? And the old fool thinks that because you boast about your swordplay and your riding that you’re a fit heir all of a sudden?’ Matthew was pacing up and down, hands clenched, shoulders hunched, for all the world like an angry bull, Tess thought.

‘Excuse me. This is obviously a family matter.’ She stepped back into the passageway, then stopped behind the shelter of a screen. She did not want to eavesdrop, but nor did she like the edge of violence in Matthew’s ranting.

‘I
am
the heir. It is not a matter of choice.’ Alex was hanging on to his patience somehow. ‘I suggested he double your allowance, set you up with a good property in recompense for the fact you’ve been landed with all the work up to now. If you hate the idea, then stay here.’

‘And watch you mincing around?’

‘I do not mince.’ It sounded to Tess as though Alex’s patience was stretched to breaking point. Why his brother seemed to be constantly jibing about his masculinity baffled her.

‘Of course, I was forgetting you were a great swordsman. So show me.’

There was the sound of metal scraping against metal, then Alex said sharply, ‘Take care, Matthew, there are no buttons on those foils.’

‘All the better to prick you with, brother dear.’

Tess looked round the screen in time to see Mathew, foil in right hand, throw a second at Alex. He caught it by the hilt and pointed it at the floor. ‘Don’t be a fool.’

‘What, scared of a little sport?’ Matthew was in a fighting stance, feet spread, left arm out behind, the unblunted foil pointing directly at Alex’s heart.

‘Not at all, but do tell me, are you attempting to alter the succession?’ Alex enquired and lifted his own weapon, adopting the same position. Tess could not see his face, but his posture seemed dangerously relaxed. She recalled how he had looked just before he’d hit the sailor on the ship and felt reassured.

‘Alter the succession? No, you’re welcome to it, but I would be interested to see whether you bleed water or red blood.’

‘At this time in the morning, coffee.’ Alex moved suddenly, a flickering lunge with the blade, and Matthew jumped back. Tess winced at the clash of metal and the two stopped talking and began to fight, it seemed to her, in deadly earnest.

Matthew was more aggressive, stockier and heavier and, to her ignorant eye, far more serious. Alex moved less, but with more grace, and he used his foil with an economy and accuracy that seemed to expend far less effort.

His brother was panting now, with sweat on his brow. Alex, as the fight brought him circling round to face her, looked cool. Matthew lunged straight for Alex’s ribs. Tess clapped her hand over her mouth to stop the scream as Alex stood stock still, let the blade come, then sidestepped at the last moment. His left hand came down to fasten on Matthew’s wrist and with a twist the foil went clattering against the wall.

In the ringing silence Tess braced herself for Matthew to lash out at his brother, but he straightened, his wrist still in Alex’s grasp. ‘Where did you learn to fight like that?’

‘Germany. Where did you?’

‘Father. We’ve been wrong about you, haven’t we?’ Matthew seemed half sullen, half embarrassed.

‘Because I can use the foils?’ Alex grinned. ‘You should get around more, little brother. The man who taught me swordplay fought, shall we say, for the opposition. So does the man who gave me that in Gentleman Jackson’s boxing ring.’ He touched a finger to the thin scar on his cheekbone. ‘But yes, you were wrong about me. I hate to break it to you, but an interest in the arts and a disinclination to slaughter everything with fur, feathers or fins is not a reliable indicator of very much, I’m afraid.’

Tess wondered what on earth they were talking about. But whatever it was, it had changed Matthew’s attitude. ‘You’ve boxed with Jackson?
The
Jackson?’

‘There is only one.’ Alex stretched up to hook the foils back in their place on the wall. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a look at the maps, discuss which of those two manors you want and I’ll show you a really tricksy cross-buttock throw the Gentleman taught me.’

He had certainly forgotten she was there if he was discussing buttocks.

* * *

Alex waited until Matthew closed the library door behind him and was looking at him before he knocked him on to his backside with a sharp right to the jaw.

‘What the hell was that for?’ Matthew stared up at him, rubbed his jaw, but seemed disinclined to get up and return the punch.

‘Swearing in front of Miss Ellery, fooling about with unguarded foils and generally being an ass.’

‘Fair enough.’ His brother grinned, then winced. ‘At least, for the first two, guilty as charged. But what am I supposed to think when Father loses his temper, throws accusations at you and you walk out and are never seen again?’

‘Let me think.’ Alex leaned back against the edge of the long table. ‘That he’d severely wounded my feelings? That his temper tantrum ended up with a young man blowing his brains out? That your seventeen-year-old brother didn’t take kindly to having his manhood called into question? And I could have been easily seen if you’d bothered to look. There was no secret about where I was, and I’ve never been out of contact with our mother.

‘You could have come and visited me in London any time you chose, when I was in the country. Or did you think the house would be full of macaronis and fops and we’d drag you off to some molly house and make you wear
macquillage
?’

‘Er, yes, more or less.’ Matthew got to his feet and showed admirable common sense, in Alex’s opinion, by putting the width of the table between them. ‘At least, thought it might be damned embarrassing.’

‘Have you ever been to London?’ Matthew shook his head. ‘Long past time you did, then. Come and stay for the Season and I promise I’ll protect your virtue.’

‘Don’t need it protecting.’ Matthew hunched a shoulder, then burst out, ‘I wanted to go, but the old devil wouldn’t let me. Says there’s nothing there for real men, no decent sport, just a lot of fancy balls and boring crushes.’

‘Our father has an eye to his pocketbook. You’d enjoy London. I’ll put you up for a couple of my clubs, introduce you around, get you some decent boots—’

‘Hoby?’ Matthew looked as though someone was waving gold coins in front of his nose.

‘Hoby,’ Alex agreed. ‘Gentleman Jackson’s, Purdey’s or Manton’s, some of the less stuffy places of entertainment. Just don’t get into the claws of some Captain Sharp in gambling dens, because I’m not covering your vowels if you do.’

There was dead silence. Matthew opened and closed his mouth, then managed, ‘I’ve been a bloody fool.’

Alex shrugged. ‘So have I, I suspect. But I had a good time while I was at it and I don’t think you have.’ Matthew was growing up, wanting to achieve something of his own and emerge from under the shadow of his parent.

‘Father approves of your sporting prowess, he thinks you are a real man in his image, but I’ll wager he makes you feel you’re second best because you aren’t the heir.’ His brother’s face darkened. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? He’s obsessed with having an heir who is just like him. I’m not a sporting Nonpareil and you can never feel for the earldom as I do. Both of us miss being what he wants.’

Matthew stared at him, growing comprehension on his face. ‘You’re right. Damn it, I never could work out why nothing ever seemed to be quite good enough. And I’m bored here. I want something that’s my own. And when he said you suggested just that, I suppose...’

‘You were angry because I’d suggested it and it wasn’t his idea? I think we had both better stop hoping that one day our father is going to declare himself proud of the pair of us. I suggest we just get on with our lives the way we think we ought to live them.’

He had surprised himself by how calm he felt when the realisation came into his head, and it seemed he had surprised Matthew, too. ‘What has come over you? You have to be angry about the way you’ve been treated in the past and you’ve had a damn unfriendly welcome home from Father and me. Why are you being so forgiving?’

‘I’m not, not about Peter. But...I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Christmas spirit, I suppose.’
Tess’s influence is more likely.

‘The love of a good woman?’ Matthew said with a grin. ‘Miss Ellery’s a very pretty girl, you lucky devil.’

She’s more than that.
The odd pain under his breastbone was aching again, as though something was tight and fearful inside him. ‘You know perfectly well I’m expected to make a good match.’

Matthew’s grin became wicked. ‘Who said anything about—?’

His brother flinched when he saw Alex’s expression. ‘Do not say it. Do not think it. Miss Ellery is a guest under our roof.’ Perhaps the pain was simply his conscience.

‘Yes, of course. Sorry. Shall we have a look at the estate plans? If I can really choose one of the unentailed manors, I’ve got some ideas.’ Matthew began to unroll the maps from the end of the table and weight the corners with books. ‘I’d appreciate your advice.’

Alex found, suddenly, that it was difficult to speak. His brother wanted his advice, wanted what he had been able to give him, wanted to work with him. He had thought he had all the friendship and companionship he would ever want or need but this, he discovered, was different. This was family.

‘Sorry, frog in my throat. Yes, of course, although you know far more than I do, I’ve no doubt. Is this the one you favour?’

* * *

‘There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.’ Tess kept her voice cheerful as she bustled into the library. Alex’s silhouette against the darkening grey sky beyond the wide windows looked bleak and brooding, and she made herself straighten her suddenly sagging shoulders as the flame of the candle she carried dipped.

She had been worrying about Alex and what was happening between him and his brother all afternoon, braced for the sounds of a fight or even, in her more anxious moments, a gunshot.

But as she touched the flame to the wicks of the unlit candelabras that stood around the room he turned and smiled at her, and the relief was enough to make her sit down with a thump on the nearest chair.

‘I’m sorry, I have been neglecting you.’

‘Not at all, only I have so much to report about my discussion with Garnett, Mrs Garnett and Cook that I wanted to tell you as soon as possible. I have a list, but essentially they think it an excellent idea and the staff are very enthusiastic. I spoke to your mother again and promised I would help organise the buffet upstairs in the evening, but we will have plenty of time to spend with our people. I mean your people.’
Lord, what a slip to make!
‘Handing out presents and so forth.’

She produced a notebook and Alex came over and sat next to her. ‘Ah, the infallible notes.’ Tess passed it over and watched him covertly while he read. He looked different, she realised. Younger almost, as though years had been lifted away.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘With this? Yes, excellent as far as I can tell—you know I have no recent experience of Christmas festivities. I have no doubt everyone will have a splendid time. You are a born organiser, Tess.’

‘I meant with your brother. I was rather worried. He seemed so angry.’

Alex gave a snort of laughter. ‘A masterpiece of understatement given that he made a spirited attempt to spit me on a blade. Yes, everything is all right with Matthew. I’ve found my way back to my little brother, Tess, and he needed me.’

‘I am so glad. Oh, Alex, that is such good news.’

‘It is all because of you, little nun.’ His smile was decidedly lopsided now, as though he was attempting to cover deep emotion with a joke. ‘You’ve infected me with your Christmas spirit. I am probably doomed. It will be handbell ringing and carol singing next and then I will be beyond help.’

‘You are such a good man.’ Tess leaned over to emphasise the warmth of her praise with a kiss on Alex’s cheek just as he turned his head towards her. She found herself on his knee, twined in his arms, his mouth on hers, not returning the warm affection she had intended, but with the hard demand of a lover.