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

“Indeed?” he said faintly. “What a delightful treat for us.”

JULIAN WAS SITTING awkwardly on the branch of an ancient oak tree, not quite sure how he had got up there and even less sure how he was to get down again without breaking a leg or two or even his neck. Blanche was standing below, her face upturned, her arms spread as if to catch him should he fall. Just a short distance beyond his grasp was a promising clump of mistletoe. Several yards away from the oak, Bertie was standing almost knee-deep in snow, one glove on, the other discarded on the ground beside him, complaining about a holly prick on one finger with all the loud woe of a man who had just been run through with a sword. Debbie was kissing it better.

A little closer to the house, in a spot sheltered by trees and therefore not as deeply covered with snow, lay a pathetically small pile of pine boughs and holly branches. Pathetic, at least, considering the fact that they had been outdoors and hard at work for longer than an hour, subjected to frigid temperatures, buffeting winds and swirling flakes of thick snow. The heavy clouds had still not finished emptying their load.

“Oh, do be careful,” Blanche implored as Julian leaned out gingerly to reach the mistletoe. “Don’t fall.”

He paused and looked down at her. Her cheeks were charmingly rosy. So was her nose. “Did I imagine it, Blanche,” he asked, using his best bored voice, “or did the drill sergeant who marched us out here and ordered me up here really wear your face?”

She laughed. No, she did not—she giggled. “If you kill yourself,” she said, “I shall have them write on your epitaph—He Died In The Execution Of A Noble Deed.”

By dint of shifting his position on the branch until he hung even more precariously over space and scraping his boot beyond redemption to get something of a toehold against the gnarled trunk, he finally succeeded in his mission. He had dislodged a handful of mistletoe. There was no easy way down to the ground. Indeed, there was no possible way down. He did what he had always done as a boy in a similar situation. He jumped.

He landed on all fours and got a faceful of soft snow for his pains.

“Oh, dear,” Blanche said. “Did you hurt yourself?” He looked up at her and she giggled again. “You look like a snowman, a snowman whose dignity has been bruised. Do you have the mistletoe?”

He got to his feet and brushed himself off with one hand as best he could. His valet, when he got back to London, was going to take one look at his boots and resign.

“Voilà!” He held up his snow-bedraggled prize. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said when she reached for it. He swept it up out of her reach. “Certain acts have certain consequences, you know. I risked my life for this at your instigation. I deserve my reward, you deserve your punishment.”

She grinned at him as he backed her against the tree and held her there with the weight of his body. He was still holding the mistletoe aloft.

“Yes, my lord,” she said meekly.

His mind was not really on the night before, but if it had been, he might have reflected with some satisfaction that she had learned well her first lesson in kissing. Her lips were softly parted when he touched them with his own, and when he teased them wider and licked them and the soft flesh behind them with his tongue, she made quiet sounds of enjoyment. The contrast between chilled flesh and hot mouths was heady stuff, he decided as he slid his tongue deep. She sucked gently on it. Through all the layers of their clothing he could feel the tautly muscled slenderness of her dancer’s body. Total femininity.

Someone was whistling. Bertie. And someone was telling him to be quiet and not be silly, love, and come away to look at this holly.

“Well,” Julian said, lifting his head and feeling a little dazed and more than a little aroused. He had not anticipated just such a kiss. “The mistletoe was your idea, Blanche.”

“Yes.” Her nose was shining like a beacon. She looked healthy and girlish and slightly disheveled and utterly beautiful. “And so it was.”

He was cold and wet, from the snow that had slipped down inside his collar and was melting in trickles down his back, and utterly happy. Or for the moment anyway, he thought more cautiously when he remembered the situation.

Someone was clearing his throat from behind Julian’s back—Bertie’s groom, Julian saw when he looked. The man was looking for Bertie, who stuck his head out from behind the holly bushes at the mention of his name.

“What is it, Bloggs?” he asked.

Bloggs told his tale of a carriage half turned over into the ditch just beyond the front gates with no hope of its being hauled out again until the snow stopped falling and the air warmed up enough to melt some of it. And the snow was so deep everywhere, he added gloomily, that there was no going anywhere on foot, either, any longer, even as far as the village. He should know. He and Harkiss had had the devil’s own time of it wading home from there all of two hours since, and the snowfall had not abated for a single second since that time.

“A carriage?” Bertie frowned. “Any occupants, Bloggs?” A foolish question if ever Julian had heard one.

“A gentleman and his wife, sir,” Bloggs reported. “And two nippers. Inside the house now, sir.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Bertie said, grimacing in Julian’s direction. “It looks as if we have unexpected guests for Christmas.”

“The devil!” Julian muttered.

“Oh, the poor things!” Blanche exclaimed, pushing away from the tree and striding houseward through the snow. “What has been done for their comfort, Mr. Bloggs? Two children, did you say? Are they very young? Was anyone hurt? Have you…”

Her voice faded into the distance. Strange, Julian thought before following her with Bertie and Debbie. Most women who had had elocution lessons spoke well except when they were not concentrating. Then they tended to lapse into regionalism and worse. Why did the opposite seem to happen with Blanche? Bloggs was trotting after her like a well-trained henchman, just as if she were some grand duchess ruling over her undisputed domain.

Funnily enough, she had just sounded rather like a duchess.

THE REVEREND HENRY MOFFATT had been given unexpected leave from the parish at which he was a curate in order to spend Christmas at the home of his wife’s family thirty miles distant. Rashly—by his own admission—he had made the decision to begin the journey that morning despite the fact that the snow had already begun to fall and he had the safety of two young children to concern himself with, not to mention that of his wife, who was in imminent expectation of another interesting event.

He was contrite over his own foolishness. He was distressed over the near disaster to which he had brought his family when his carriage had almost overturned into the ditch. He was apologetic about foisting himself and his family upon strangers on Christmas Eve of all days. Perhaps there was an inn close by?

“In the village three miles away,” Verity told him. “But you would not get there in this weather, sir. You must, of course, stay here. Mr. Hollander will insist upon it, you may be sure.”

“Mr. Hollander is your husband, ma’am?” the Reverend Moffatt asked.

“No.” She smiled. “I am a guest here, too, sir. Mrs. Moffatt, do come into the sitting room so that you may warm yourself by the fire and take the weight off your feet. Mr. Bloggs, would you be so kind as to go down to the kitchen and request that a tea tray be sent up? Oh, and something for the children, as well. And something to eat.” She smiled at the two little boys, who were gazing about with open curiosity. The younger one, a mere infant of three or four years, was unwinding a long scarf from his neck. She reached out a hand to each of them. “Are you hungry? But that is a foolish question, I know. In my experience little boys are always hungry. Come into the sitting room with your mama and we will see what Cook sends up.”