Nicola Cornick - The Heart Of Christmas - A Handful Of Gold / The Season for Suitors / This Wicked Gift

She laughed. “Only when Christmas is coming and there is a fresh fall of snow,” she said. “Can you imagine two more wonderful events happening simultaneously?”

“Finding a soft warm bed when I am more than halfasleep and stiff in every limb,” he said.

“Then have my bed,” she said, laughing again. “I am getting up.”

“A fine impression Bertie is going to have of my power to keep you amused and confined to your room,” he said.

“Mr. Hollander,” she told him, “will doubtless keep to his room until noon and will be none the wiser. Go to bed and go to sleep.”

He did both. By the time she emerged from the dressing room, clad in the warmest of her wool dresses, her hair brushed and decently confined, he was lying in the place on the bed where she had lain all night, fast asleep. She stood gazing down at him for a few moments, imagining that if she had not been so gauche last night…

She shook her head and straightened her shoulders. Mr. Hollander had made no preparations for Christmas. Doubtless he thought that spending a few days in bed with the placid Debbie would constitute enough merrymaking. Well, they would see about that. She was not being allowed to earn her salary in the expected way. The least she could do, then, was make herself useful in other ways.

TWO COACHMEN, one footman, one groom, a cook, Mr. Hollander’s valet and four others who might in a more orderly establishment have been dubbed a butler, a housekeeper and two maids were in the middle of their breakfast belowstairs. A few of them scrambled awkwardly to their feet when Verity appeared in their midst. A few did not. Clearly it was not established in any of their minds whether they should treat her as a lady or not. The cook looked as if she might be the leader of the latter faction.

Verity smiled. “Please do not get up,” she said. “Do carry on with your breakfast. Doubtless you all have a busy day ahead.”

If they did, their expressions told Verity, this was the first they had heard of it.

“Preparing for Christmas,” she added.

They might have been devout Hindus for all the interest they showed in preparing for Christmas.

“Mr. Hollander don’t want no fuss,” the woman who might have been the housekeeper said.

“He said we might do as we please provided he has his victuals when he is ready for them and provided the fires are kept burning.” The possible-butler was the speaker this time.

“Oh, splendid,” Verity said cheerfully. “May I have some breakfast with you, by the way? No, please do not get up.” No one had made any particular move to do so. “I shall just help myself, shall I?” She did so. “If you have been given permission to please yourselves, then, you may be pleased to celebrate Christmas. In the traditional way, with Christmas foods and wassail, with carol singing and gift giving and decorating the house with holly and pine boughs and whatever else we can devise with only a day’s warning. Everyone can have a wonderful time.”

“When I cook a goose,” the cook announced, “nobody needs a knife to cut it. Even the edge of a fork is too sharp. It melts apart.”

“Ooh, I do love a goose,” one of the maids said wistfully. “My ma used to cook one as a treat for Christmas whenever we could catch one. But it weren’t never cooked tender enough to cut with a fork, Mrs. Lyons,” she added hastily.

“And when I make mince pies,” the cook continued as if she had not been interrupted, “no one can stop eating after just one of them. No one. ”

“Mmm.” Verity sighed. “You make my mouth water, Mrs. Lyons. How I would love to taste just one of those pies.”

“Well, I can’t make them,” Mrs. Lyons said, a note of finality in her voice. “Because I don’t have the stuff.”

“Could the supplies be bought in the village?” Verity suggested. “I noticed a village as I passed through it yesterday. There appeared to be a few shops there.”

“There is nobody to go for them,” Mrs. Lyons said. “Not in all this snow.”

Verity smiled at the groom and the two coachmen, all of whom were trying unsuccessfully to blend into the furniture. “Nobody?” she said. “Not for the sake of goose tomorrow and mince pies and probably a dozen other Christmas specialties, too? Not for Mrs. Lyons’s sake when it sounds to me as if she is the most skilled cook in all of Norfolkshire?”

“Well, I am quite skilled,” the cook said modestly.

“There are pine trees and holly bushes in the park, are there not?” Verity asked of no one in particular. “Is there mistletoe anywhere?” She turned her eyes on the younger of the two maids. “What is Christmas without a few sprigs of mistletoe appearing in the most unlikely places and just over the heads of the most elusive people?”

The maid turned pink and the valet looked interested.

“There used to be some on the old oaks,” the butler said. “But I don’t know about this year, mind.”

“The archway leading from the kitchen to the back stairs looks a likely place to me for one sprig,” Verity said, looking critically at the spot as she bit into a piece of toast.

Both maids giggled and the valet cleared his throat.

After that the hard work seemed to be behind her, Verity found. The idea had caught hold. Mr. Hollander had given his staff carte blanche even if he had not done so consciously. And the staff had awakened to the realization that it was Christmas and that they might celebrate it in as grand a manner as they chose. All lethargy magically disappeared, and Verity was able to eat her eggs and toast and drink down two cups of coffee while warming herself at the kitchen fire and listening to the servants make their animated plans. There were even two volunteers to go into the village.

“You cannot all be everywhere at once, though,” Verity said, speaking up again at last, “much as I can see you would like to be. You may leave the gathering of the greenery and just come to help drag it all indoors. Mr. Hollander, Lord Folingsby, Miss, er, Debbie and I will do the gathering.”

Silence and blank stares met this announcement until someone sniggered—the groom.

“I don’t think so, miss,” he said. “You won’t drag them gents out of doors to spoil the shine on their boots nor ’er to spoil ’er complexion. You can forget that one right enough.”

The valet cleared his throat again, with considerably more dignity than before. “You will speak with greater respect of Mr. Hollander, Bloggs,” he told the groom, who looked quite uncowed by the reprimand.

Verity smiled. “You may safely leave Mr. Hollander and the others to me,” she said. “We are all going to enjoy Christmas. It would be unfair to exclude them, would it not?”

Her words caused a burst of merriment about the table, and Verity tried to imagine Julian pricking his aristocratic fingers in the cause of gathering holly. He would probably sleep until noon. But she had done him an injustice. He appeared in the archway that was not yet adorned with mistletoe only a moment later, as if her thoughts had summoned him. He was dressed immaculately despite the fact that he had not brought his valet with him.

“Ah,” Julian said languidly, fingering the handle of his quizzing glass, “here you are, Blanche. I began to think you had sprouted wings and flown since there are no footprints in the snow leading from the door.”

“We have been planning the Christmas festivities,” she told him with a bright smile. “Everything is organized. Later you and I will be going out into the park with Mr. Hollander and Debbie to gather greenery with which to decorate the house.”

Suddenly that part of the plan seemed quite preposterous. His lordship raised his quizzing glass all the way to his eye and moved it about the table, the better to observe all the conspirators seated there. It came to rest finally on her.