Under The Mistletoe (14 page)

“I told you yesterday that you would not be beaten here, did I not?” the earl said.

Estelle went down on her knees and set the candlestick on the tiled floor. “You are in a strange house and you are frightened,” she said. “Poor little Nicky. But you are quite safe, you know, and we are not cross with you.” She took the thin, huddled shoulders in her hands and drew the child against her. She patted his back gently while his sobs gradually subsided. She glanced across at her husband. He was still stooped down beside her.

The sobs were succeeded by a noisy and prolonged yawn. The
earl and his countess found themselves smiling with some amusement into each other's eyes.

“Come on,” Estelle said, “we will take you back to your bed, and you shall have your drink.”

“I'll take him, Estelle,” the earl said, and he stood up, scooping the small child into his arms as he did so. Nicky yawned again.

She picked up the candlestick and preceded them down the stone stairs to the kitchen for a cup of water and up the back stairs to the servants' quarters and the little room that she had been to once the day before. She helped a yawning Nicky off with his shirt and on with his nightshirt while her husband removed the child's breeches.

She smoothed back his hair when he was lying in his bed, looking sleepily up at her. “Sleep now, Nicky,” she said softly. “You are quite safe here and must not be afraid of his lordship and me or of anyone else in the house. Good night.” She stooped down and kissed him on the cheek.

“Bring a cup to bed with you at nights,” the earl said, glancing to the washstand and its full jug of water. “And no more wanderings, Nicky. Go to sleep now. And there must be no more fear of beatings either.” He touched the backs of two fingers to the child's cheek, and his lips twitched when a loud yawn was his only answer.

The yawning stopped abruptly when his door closed softly behind his new master and mistress. Nicky clasped his hands behind his head and stared rather glumly at the ceiling. Mags would kill him if he didn't show up with something within the next few days. More to the point, there would be no money for his mother.

But he was, after all, only ten years old. And the hour was something after two in the morning. Sleep overtook him. She smelled like a garden, he thought as he drifted off. Or as he imagined a garden would smell. A really soft touch, of course, as was the governor, for all his stern looks. But she smelled like a garden for all that.

 

The Earl of Lisle had taken the candlestick from his wife's hand. He held it high to light their way back to the main part of the house and their own rooms.

Estelle turned to face him when they entered her dressing room. Her eyes were soft and luminous, he saw. They had lost their cold disdain.

“Oh, Allan,” she said, “how my heart goes out to that child. Poor little orphan, with no one to love him and hug him and tuck him into his bed at night.”

“You were doing quite well a few minutes ago,” he said.

There were tears in her eyes. “His is so thin,” she said. “And he was so frightened. Thank you for being gentle with him, Allan. He did not expect you to be.”

“I would not imagine he knows a great deal about gentleness or kindness,” he said.

“He should not be working,” she said. “He should be playing. He should be carefree.”

He smiled. “Children cannot play all the time,” he said. “Even children of our class have their lessons to do. Mrs. Ainsford will not overwork him. If you fear it, you must have a word with her tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said. “I will. How old do you think he is, Allan? He did not know when I asked him.”

“I think a little older than he looks,” he said. “I will see what I can do, Estelle. I need to make a few inquiries.”

Her face brightened. She smiled up at him. “For Nicky?” she said. “You will do something for him? Will you, Allan?”

He nodded and touched her cheek lightly with his knuckles as he had touched the child's a few minutes before. “Good night,” he said softly, before taking one of the candles and going into his own dressing room. He shut the door quietly behind him.

Estelle looked at the closed door before beginning to undress herself rather than summon her maid from sleep. She wished fleetingly that she had apologized for calling him a marble statue. He was not. He did have feelings. They had shown in his dealings with Nicky. But what was the point of apologizing? If she could not call him that in all truth, there were a hundred other nasty things she would call him when next he angered her. And his own words and suspicions were unpardonable.

She climbed into bed ten minutes later and tried not to think of the night before. Soon enough she would have to accustom herself to doing without altogether. She needed to sleep anyway. It was very late.

But even before she had found a totally comfortable position in which to lie and quieted her mind for sleep, the door of her dressing room opened and closed and she knew that after all she was not to be alone. Not for a while anyway.

And as soon as he climbed into the bed beside her and touched her face with one hand so that his mouth could find hers in the darkness, she knew that he had not come to her in anger. She put one arm about his strongly muscled chest and opened her mouth to his seeking tongue.

 

During the week before their guests began to arrive and the Christmas celebrations could begin in earnest, Estelle kept herself happily busy with preparations. Not that there was a great deal for her to do beyond a little extra shopping. She was not the one who cleaned the house from top to bottom or warmed the extra bedrooms and changed their bed linen and generally readied them for the reception of their temporary occupants. She was not the one who would cook and bake all the mounds of extra food.

But she did confer with Mrs. Ainsford about the allocation of rooms and with the cook on the organization of meals. And she insisted, the day before her parents were to arrive, and her husband's mother, and a few of the other relatives, on decorating the drawing room herself with mounds of holly and crepe streamers and bows and a bunch of mistletoe.

The earl was called in to help, and it was generally he who was having to risk having all his fingers pricked to the bone, he complained, handling the holly and placing it and re-placing it while Estelle stood in the middle of the room, one finger to her chin, directing its exact placement.

But there was not a great deal of rancor in his complaints. There had been no more quarrels since the night of the concert. And Estelle seemed to be happy to be at home, aglow with the anticipation of Christmas. She smiled at him frequently. And he basked in her smiles, pretending to himself that it was he and not the festive season that had aroused them.

“Oh, poor Allan,” she said with a laugh after one particularly loud exclamation of protest as he pricked his finger on a holly leaf. “Do you think you will survive? I will kiss it better if you come over here.”

“I am being a martyr in a good cause,” he said, not looking over his shoulder to note her blush as she realized what she had said.

The mistletoe had to be moved three times before it was in a place that satisfied her. Not over the doorway, she decided on second thought, or everyone would get mortally tired of kissing everyone else, and Allan's cousin Alma, who was seventeen, with all the giddiness of her age, would be forever in and out of the room. And not over the pianoforte, or only the musical people would ever be kissed.

“This is just right,” she said, standing beneath its final resting place to one side of the fireplace. “Perfect.” She smiled at her husband, and he half smiled back, his hands clasped behind his back. But he did not kiss her.

She made some excuse to see Nicky every day. Mrs. Ainsford
would despair of ever training him to be a proper servant, the earl warned her at breakfast one morning when the child had come into the room to bring him his paper, if she persisted in putting her arm about his shoulders whenever he appeared, whispering into his ear, and kissing him on the cheek. And the poor housekeeper would doubtless have an apoplexy if she knew that her mistress was taking a cup of chocolate to the child's room each night after he was in bed.

But he did not forbid her to do either of those things. For entirely selfish reasons, he admitted to himself. Estelle was happy with the child in the house, and somehow her happiness extended to him, as if he were solely responsible for saving the little climbing boy from a life of drudgery. She smiled at him; her eyes shone at him; she gave him tenderness as well as passion at night.

The Earl of Lisle was not entirely idle as far as his new servant was concerned, though. He had learned during his interview with the chimney sweep, of course, that Nicky was no orphan, but that there was a mother at least and perhaps a father, and probably also some brothers and sisters somewhere in the slums of London. The mother had paid to have the boy apprenticed. The sweep had shrugged when questioned on that point. Someone had probably given her the money. He did not know who, and why should he care?

The mother had not come to protest the ending of the apprenticeship. Neither had anyone else. His lordship had not tried to penetrate the mystery further. He had decided not to question the child, not to confront him with his lie. Not that first lie, anyway. But the second? Had Estelle really believed that the boy had been in search of a drink and had gotten lost? Yes, doubtless she had. She had seen only a thin and weeping orphan, alone in the dark.

The earl had still not done anything about the matter five days after the incident. But on the fifth day he entered his study in the middle of the morning to find Nicky close to his desk, his eyes wide and startled.

“Good morning, Nicky,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“I brought the post,” the boy said in his piping voice, indicating the small pile on the desk and making his way to the door.

Lord Lisle did not stand aside. His eyes scanned the desktop. His hands were behind his back. “Where is it, Nicky?” he asked eventually.

“What?” The eyes looked innocently back into his.

“The top of the inkwell,” the earl said. “The
silver
top.” He held out one hand palm-up.

The child looked at the hand and up into the steady eyes of his master. He lifted one closed fist slowly and set the missing top in the earl's outstretched hand. “I was just lookin' at it,” he said.

“And clutched it in your hand when I came in?”

“I was scared,” the child said, and dropped his head on his chest. He began to cry.

Lord Lisle strolled over to his desk, and sat in the chair behind it. “Come here, Nicky,” he said.

The boy came and stood before the desk. His sobs were painful to hear.

“Here,” the earl directed. “Come and stand in front of me.”

The child came.

The earl held out a handkerchief. “Dry your eyes and blow your nose,” he said. “And no more crying. Do you understand me? Men do not cry—except under very exceptional circumstances.”

The boy obeyed.

“Now,” the earl said, taking the crumpled handkerchief and laying it on one corner of the desk, “look at me, Nicky.” The boy lifted his eyes to his master's chin. “I want you to tell me the truth. It must be the truth, if you please. You meant to take the inkwell top?”

“I didn't think you'd miss it,” the boy said after a pause.

“Have you taken anything else since you have been here?”

“No.” Nicky lifted his eyes imploringly to the earl's and shook his head. “I ain't took nothin' else.”

“But you meant to a few nights ago when we found you outside this door?”

His lordship's eyes advised the truth. Nicky hung his head. “Nothin' big,” he said. “Nothin' you'd miss.”

“What do you do with what you steal, Nicky?” the earl asked.

“I ain't never stole nothin' before,” the child whispered.

A firm hand came beneath his chin and lifted it.

“What do you do with what you steal, Nicky?”

The boy swallowed against the strong hand. “Sell it,” he said.

“You must have a lot of money hidden away somewhere then,” the earl said. “In that little bundle of yours, perhaps?”

Nicky shook his head. “I ain't got no money,” he said.

The earl looked into the frightened eyes and frowned. “The man you sell to,” he said, “is he the same man who apprenticed you to the sweep?”

The eyes grew rounder. The child nodded.

“Who gets the money?” the earl asked.

There was no answer for a while. “Someone,” the boy whispered eventually.

“Your mother, Nicky?”

“Maw's dead,” the boy said quickly. “I was in the orphinige.”

The earl's tone was persistent, though not ungentle. “Your mother, Nicky?” he asked again.

The eyes, which were too old for the face, looked back into his. “Paw left,” the child said. “Maw 'ad me an' Elsie to feed. 'E said we would all 'ave plenty if I done it.”