Winter Wonderland (20 page)

“Why?”

“Because I … I …” She looked down at his worried little face. His child-like affection touched her heart. “No good reason, really,” she said, kneeling down and wrapping his comforter closely round his neck. “I was missing my … my cameo, that's all.”

“What'th a cameo?”

“It's only a little trifle I used to wear round my neck.”

The boy thought the answer strange. Why would one cry over a trifle? Unless … “Wath it like a good luck charm?” he asked.

“Yes, exactly like a good luck charm,” she said, smiling at him proudly. “You are very understanding.” She rose and took his hand.

“Did you mithplathe it? I can thtay and help you find it. I'm not a bit thleepy.”

“I didn't misplace it, though I thank you for your offer to help.”

“Then what happened to it?” he persisted as she led him from the room.

They went hand in hand down the corridor. “The highwaymen—the ones your uncle Barney told you about—they took it,” she explained. “I'm afraid it's gone for good.”

“That'th a shame,” he said. “Unlucky.”

The boy's concern for his governess's luck lasted all night and into the next day. It was a windy, overcast day, not conducive to outdoor games, so he and his brothers were forced to play indoors during what Mrs. Velacott called their morning “recess,” an hour of unsupervised play. That was when Jamie told them about Mrs. Velacott's loss. “Wouldn't it be thplendid if we could find the highwaymen?” he asked, his eyes shining.

“Splendid,” Maury said in sarcastic agreement “Except how would we find them?”

“It might not be too hard,” George said thoughtfully. “The coach was attacked a few miles south of Wymondham. The thieves must have a hideaway somewhere nearby.”

“Yeth!” the little fellow said excitedly. “We'd find 'em thouth of Wymondham. And then we could fight 'em an' thlit their throatth and get her lucky piethe back for her!”

“Yes, slit their throats! Good!” George smiled with pleasure, imagining the bloody scene. “We could fight them with our swords and demand their loot before hacking them to bits.”

“Righto!” laughed Maury, pulling out his toy sword and flourishing it in the air before lunging at his older brother. “Take that, you varlet! Mrs. Velacott's cameo or your life!”

The boys skirmished about, brandishing their swords and making drama of the imagined confrontation. Jamie watched, wide-eyed. “Let'th do it!” he cried when both boys fell down on the floor, exhausted.

“Do what?” George asked.

“Fight the highwaymen with our thwordth and get the good luck piethe back.”

“We just did,” Maury said.

“No! For
real
!”

George got up and patted his little brother's head. “We will, Jamie, someday. When we're older,” he said kindly.

“When? Thoon?”

George shrugged. “Next month.”

Maury laughed, but Jamie took him seriously. “Nextht month? Do you promith? All three of uth?”

“No, you're too little,” Maury teased. “George and I will fight the highwaymen, and when we bring back the cameo, you can give it to Mrs. Velacott and take all the credit.”

Jamie glared at him. “It'th alwayth you and George. You never let me do anything mythelf.”

“That's enough, Jamie. Don't start whining,” George said, dismissing the subject. “Come on, Maury, let's play spillikins.”

But Jamie wouldn't let it go. “I don't care what you do! Getting the good luck back wath
my
idea! I'll do it mythelf, thee if I don't!” And he stomped out of the room.

An hour later, when their lessons were resumed, Miranda asked where the child had gone. “Sulking in his room, probably,” George said.

But he was not in his room. Miranda, after searching through every room on the third floor, grew alarmed. She sent the two older boys to seek out all the child's favorite haunts in the house, but they couldn't find him. “I'd wager the little bufflehead has gone looking for the highwaymen,” Maury told the governess in disgust.

“The highwaymen? What do you mean?”

“He wants to be a hero and bring you back your missing cameo,” George explained.

Miranda paled. “Do you mean to suggest he might have gone
outside
?”

George was not at all perturbed. “There's no need to fall into a taking, ma'am,” he said reassuringly. “Jamie knows the way to the road. And the direction to Wymondham. When his feet get cold, he'll turn round and come home; you have my word.”

But Miranda could not be so complacent. She set the two boys to their schoolwork, ran to her room for her cloak and bonnet and flew down the back stairs and out the kitchen door, making for the road. She was beside herself with alarm. Jamie had as much as a two-hour start. Even if she ran the entire three miles to Wymondham, she might not catch up with him. And if the child had got that far, there was no way of knowing where he might go from there.

She felt almost hysterical as she slogged through the snow toward the road, tying the ribbons of her bonnet as she stumbled along. The brim of her bonnet hid the sight of a man who was approaching, and she blundered into him. “Oh!” she gasped, startled.

“Damnation, woman, watch where you go!” came Barnaby's irritated voice.

She glanced up at him. “I beg your pardon,” she said hastily, trying to pass him without further conversation.

He noticed her perturbation. “Wait a moment, ma'am,” he ordered, holding her by the arms, his eyes searching her face. “What's amiss?”

“I must go!” She tried to shake off his hold. “Jamie's run off.”

“Jamie?' He frowned down at her. “Don't be foolish. He wouldn't do such a thing.”

“Please, let me go! I haven't time to explain. He's had a two-hour start. He may be more than halfway to Wymondham by this time.”

“If this is true, ma'am, then there's a better way to catch up with him than shank's mare. Come with me to the stable. We'll take the sleigh.”

A little while later, they were gliding swiftly along the road behind a pair of frisky horses, Barnaby holding the reins and Miranda peering anxiously at the passing landscape for a sign of Jamie's red knit cap and blue muffler. “It's all my fault,” she moaned after a quarter-hour had passed with no sign of the child. “I told him about my cameo. He thinks it's my lucky piece. He's gone to find the highwaymen and get it back for me.”

Barnaby grinned. “Good for him. Plucky little chap.”

“How can you smile?” Miranda demanded. “What if we don't find him?”

“We'll find him. He's bound to follow the road.”

“We can't be certain of that.”

“No, but it's likely. He'd find the road easier going than the fields.”

“But if he's already made it to Wymondham—”

“He hasn't. His legs are too short to make such good time. I doubt if he's much further along than—Wait! Look there! What's that ahead?”

She saw only a blur at first, but there was something red in it. As they drew closer, they could make him out. He was trudging along with weary determination, his muffler blowing out behind him and a toy sword hanging from a belt strapped about his waist.

“Oh, thank God!” Miranda whispered hoarsely.

Barnaby slowed the horses, and she leaped from the sleigh and ran to the child.
“Jamie,”
she cried, kneeling beside him and embracing him, “you naughty imp! How
could
you frighten me so?”

“Mithuth Velacott!” His face lit up with joyful relief. “Have you come to take me home?”

“Yes, of course we've come to take you home. Your uncle Barney's brought the sleigh.”

“I'm tho glad. My feet are
frothen
.”

“I'm sure they are. Come along, then. We have a lap robe in the sleigh.”

He took her hand. “I haven't yet got your good luck piethe back,” he said, shamefaced.

“Don't trouble yourself about it,” she said as she helped him up to the seat. “Finding you is all the good luck I need for one day.”

They bundled him up in the lap robe. “I hope, Jamie, that you won't play such a trick as this again,” his uncle lectured sternly. “You're not yet old enough to travel about on these roads alone.”

“But I had to find the highwaymen, you thee,” the child explained.

“No, you had not! Finding the highwaymen is my job.”

“Yourth? Why?”

“Because it was I who was attacked by them. I want to fight my own battles, just as you want to fight yours.”

The child looked up at his uncle adoringly. “
Are
you going to fight the highwaymen, then?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you'll bring Mithuth Velacott'th good luck piethe back to her?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Will you mind, Mithuth Velacott, if Unca Barney geth your cameo inthtead of me?”

Barnaby looked over at her. “Will you mind, ma'am?”

Miranda, feeling her color rise, dropped her eyes. “I won't mind,” she said to the boy.

Jamie snuggled up against his uncle contentedly. “Good, then, Unca Barney,” he said, “I'll leave it to you.” Snug and warm, and with his heavy responsibility lifted from his shoulders, he promptly fell asleep.

Barnaby held the horses to a relaxed pace. Now that the boy was found, there was no reason to hurry. Miranda threw a sidelong glance at him. “I hope, Mr. Traherne, that you don't really believe I was serious about the cameo. I would not wish you to do battle with the highwaymen for any reason at all, much less for the sake of such a trifle.”

“My battle with the highwaymen will not be over a trifle,” he assured her.

“That isn't the response I wished for,” she said, frowning.

“You wished I'd say there would not be a battle at all, is that it?”

“Yes. The matter of the highwaymen is best forgotten.”

“That, ma'am, is too womanish a point of view. For a man, it is not ‘best' to forget when one has been robbed and assaulted.”

“You must have vengeance, is that it?”

“I'd prefer to think of it as righting a wrong.”

She looked over at him, taking in the manly grace of his posture, the relaxed ease of his hands on the reins, the breadth of his shoulders under the capes of his greatcoat, the strength of his profile under his high beaver hat. “You've changed a great deal since the Lydell ball,” she said on a sudden impulse.

His head came round abruptly, his eyes ablaze with surprise and anger. She met his gaze without wavering. After a moment, he turned back to the horses. “I've not changed as much as you think,” he said carefully. “I like to believe that, even at nineteen, I was not lacking in courage. I would have wanted to do battle with the highwaymen even then.”

“Yes, I suppose you would.” She lowered her eyes to the hands folded in her lap. “But in those days, I wouldn't have recognized courage,” she admitted. “Not courage, nor sensitivity, nor true manliness, nor any worthwhile quality. I was a very poor judge of character back then—a silly chit, unable to see clearly.”

He threw her a quick, questioning glance, wondering if he'd fully understood what she'd just said. Was she actually
apologizing
to him for what happened at the ball? And how was it that she so suddenly remembered an incident that she'd not had an inkling of a few days before? “What do you mean,” he asked, temporizing to give himself time to think, “when you say you were unable to see clearly?”

“My judgment was impaired by an unwarranted and shameful vanity.”

He heard the tremor in her voice. It touched him to the core. She
was
apologizing, and in a generous, self-deprecating, heartfelt way. “I don't know that your vanity was unwarranted,” he said softly. “You were the loveliest, most breathtaking woman my nineteen-year-old eyes had ever seen.”

Her eyes flew to his, wide with surprise. His quiet compliment, belated though it was, took her breath away. But a moment later, her awareness of the painful present reasserted itself. She smiled a wry, regretful smile. “Then
I'm
the one who's greatly changed, it seems.”

He didn't answer. He didn't trust his voice. Her apology had caught him completely off guard. Her words had stirred a depth of feeling in him he didn't know he was capable of. He had to clench his fingers tightly on the reins so that she wouldn't see they were trembling.

He didn't understand her or himself. What had stirred her memory? And what was she trying to say in that oddly-worded apology? If she was truly sincere, how could he maintain the anger and resentment he'd built up against her? That resentment was the constant that had guided all his decisions since he first saw her on the coach. Even his betrothal had been instigated by his determination to keep Miranda Pardew Velacott at a distance. A revised view of her could seriously jeopardize his life! He had to
think
before he could let himself warm toward her. And there was no time now for thinking, for the horses were already turning into the drive.

The stable man came running out as they drove up to the front door. Barnaby threw him the reins. “Keep the horses walking,” he instructed as he lifted the sleeping child in his arms. “I shall be taking them out again in half an hour.”

“
Barnaby!
You're not going to look for the highwaymen, are you?” Miranda asked in alarm.

She'd called him Barnaby. His heart leaped up to his throat at the sound. But the emotion frightened him.
Good God
, his mind said to him in disgust,
one brief expression of regret from her lips, and you're putty in her hands!
He had to take himself firmly in control, or he'd find himself kissing her again with the same insane passion he'd felt earlier. That kiss had been disturbing enough before, but this time it would be unthinkable. He was now betrothed to another. Such an incident could not be permitted to happen again. Not now. Not ever.