'Twas the Night After Christmas (23 page)

“That’s quite a leap,” he bit out, even as the sinking feeling in his gut told him she was right. Village gossip was a vastly different animal than London gossip. It didn’t take much to start the wheels turning. And by singling her out, he might as well have placed a brand on her forehead.

What the devil was wrong with him? He knew better.

“I hope it’s a leap,” she said mournfully. “I already gave the ladies one shock by turning up with a son they didn’t know about. Let’s hope this doesn’t convince them to start speculating about who Jasper’s father might really be.”

The words set him back on his arse. Great God, he hadn’t even thought of that. And he hadn’t helped matters any by paying such marked attention to both her and Jasper. No wonder Mother had tried to stop him.

What had Fowler said in the study that day?
Lady Devonmont thinks the world of the young widow. She’s very protective of her and would be most upset if she thought that you . . . that is, that anyone might try to take advantage of the lady.

Bloody hell. “Surely my long absences would squelch any such speculation. You’ve been here for months, while I’ve been in London.”

“You were here this summer,” she pointed out in a dull voice, as if she’d now resigned herself to her fate. “And for all they know, before that I’d been living under your protection until you hired me as companion to your mother.”

“That’s absurd,” he said, though his stomach knotted at the idea that it might
not
be so absurd. With a glance at Jasper, he lowered his voice. “They couldn’t possibly think I’d insult my mother by parading a mistress in front of her and her friends.”

“No, why should they?” she said bitterly. “You’ve only been estranged from her for years, which everyone in the county is aware of, even if they don’t know the reason. They only know you by what they read about you in the paper.”

He flinched as her barb hit home. Though his record as a good landlord would give him some credit with the townspeople, it could easily be overshadowed by his more spectacular record as a London rakehell. Especially since the latter was much longer
than the former. This was the stodgy country, not sophisticated London.

Besides, even if his neighbors didn’t construe his actions as unfavorably as
she
feared, they could still think he was starting up with her now. That would be little better. Once he returned to London, she’d have to endure the gossip. And the scandal.

“What a selfish arse I am,” he muttered.

He hadn’t realized he’d said it aloud until she said primly, “Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far.”

Glancing over, he noted that the tightness around her mouth had eased. “An oblivious clodpate?” he offered.

“Somewhere between arse and clodpate, I should think,” she said with less temper, though he still hadn’t managed to wipe the frown from her brow.

“An arse-pate, then.”

That startled a laugh from her, which she instantly stifled. “More like a complication.”

“Ah, yes. A complication. I’m used to being
that
.” He slanted a glance at her. “I can’t undo what I did, but is there any way to mitigate the damage?”

She sighed, her breath making small puffs of frost in the air. “The gossip will die down when you leave, especially if you’re gone for months again and I’m still here with your mother.”

“Of course.” It would die down . . . as long as she lived an exemplary life.

As long as he stayed away from her and her tart opinions. And her attempts to smooth over every difficulty between him and
Mother. And her bright smile and sympathetic ear . . . and the sweetest mouth he’d ever tasted.

The thought depressed him.

“Is that a sleigh?” Jasper asked, running back to them to point it out. “It looks like the one in the picture.”

Pierce followed his gaze. “Afraid not, lad. That’s a sledge used for harvesting rapeseed.”

As Jasper ran up to get a better look at it, Camilla eyed Pierce closely. “How do you know about farming equipment?”

He cast her a sardonic smile. “What do you think I do all day in that study at Montcliff Manor? Read naughty books?”

She flushed. “No, but I just assumed . . . that is . . . ”

“That I twiddle my thumbs and take naps,” he quipped. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I only do that every other day.”

“Pierce,” she chided, “be serious.”

He searched her face, then let out a breath. “All right. Once I came of age, I started reading up on husbandry and planting and anything that might pertain to estate management. I figured I ought to know something about my inheritance for when I gained it, even if I didn’t get to have any part in running it for a while.”

“For a while? You never visited Montcliff as an adult, either?”

He’d forgotten that he hadn’t told her about that awful confrontation years ago. “That should have been obvious from the ladies’ reactions earlier.”

“Yes, but you said you returned to Montcliff when you came into your majority.”

“Briefly.” Not wanting to dredge up that painful part of his
past, he pulled away from her and strode over to where Jasper was attempting to climb onto the sledge. “Now, now, lad, that’s a good way to break your head.”

He dragged the wriggling boy off it and set him down in front of his mother, catching the boy’s hat as it fell off. After Jasper clapped his hat back on, he raced off to look at a pen of cows.

Pierce shook his head. “That’s one busy lad you have there.”

“He’s been cooped up in a house for weeks, remember?” she pointed out, though her tone had softened.

“Right.” Out of fear that Pierce might send him away. The thought of it still sent a punch to his gut. “A lad like that needs the outdoors and plenty of space to run.”

“True.” She stared up at him with a gentler gaze than before. “Thanks to you, he’ll have it now.”

He offered her his arm again, and this time she curled her fingers about it with far more intimacy. It made his blood race. Apparently he’d been forgiven for his blunder with the ladies’ committee.

Good. He would make the most of that while he had her to himself.

T
hey wandered leisurely toward the end of the fair where the horses were kept. A month ago, Pierce would have found a country fair boring. But it was hard to be bored when a little pistol like Jasper was dragging you from here to yon, his face rapt at first one wonder, then another. Almost an hour had passed, and they still hadn’t reached the horses.

“Maisie said they sell cheese here, right?” Camilla removed her spectacles and cleaned them with her handkerchief. “I want to buy a wheel of cheddar for Mrs. Beasley for Christmas. It’s her favorite.”

“That area over there seems to hold the food booths.”

She called out, “Jasper, come here! We’re going to get some cheese!”

Jasper frowned as he skipped back to them. “I don’t like cheese.”

“That’s a good thing, muffin,” she said as she took his hand, “since it’s not for you.”

“They have roasted chestnuts,” Pierce pointed out. “Do you like those?”

“I
love
chestnuts!” Jasper cried.

“Ah,” Pierce said as something dawned on him. “You must have been the one eating all the nuts in the drawing room the other day.”

Jasper nodded solemnly. “When I lost my tin soldier.”

“I almost forgot.” Pierce drew the one he’d found out of his coat. “Is this your missing man?”

“Prancer!” Jasper cried as he took it. “You found Prancer!”

“Strange name for a soldier,” Pierce muttered to Camilla.

“He’s named after one of the reindeer in the poem,” she explained. “They all have strange names.”

“The only one I’m missing now is Blixem,” Jasper said. “Then I’ll have eight to pull St. Nicholas’s sleigh.”

Pierce couldn’t help smiling. The boy’s enthusiasm was infectious. “I tell you what. Tonight, when we get home, I’ll give you one to serve as Blixem.”

“Yay!”

“But first we have to find a good round of cheddar for Mrs. Beasley and some chestnuts for you. And perhaps some ribbons for your mother so she won’t have to go buy them at the shop on the green.”

As Camilla blushed, Jasper said, “Or we could get her a ’kerchief. Like in the poem.”

“There’s ’kerchiefs in the poem, too?” he asked as they headed for the food booths.

“Don’t you remember?” Jasper said in that condescending tone boys used when they were impatient with grown-ups. “I recited that part. ‘And Mama in her ’kerchief and I in my cap—’ ”

“Right, I forgot. That’s where the reindeer came in.” He stared down at Jasper. “What else is in this poem?”

“St. Nicholas comes down the chimney.”

“Great God, that sounds dangerous,” Pierce said. “I am going to have to read this thing for myself. Between the stockings and the ’kerchiefs and the flying reindeer, it sounds like something straight out of a fairy tale.”

“Except there’s no girls in it,” Jasper said cheerily. “That’s the best part.”

“I beg your pardon?” Camilla said, feigning a deeply wounded tone. “
I’m
a girl.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a lady. Girls are silly.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “One of my cousins is a girl. She’s
very
silly.”

“She’s only three, Jasper,” his mother said.

Pierce chuckled. “I think you’ll find her less silly as she gets older. Trust me on this—girls make life more interesting.” He cast Camilla a meaningful glance. “We would miss them if they weren’t around.”

As a shy smile lit her face, it hit him like a bolt from heaven—he would miss
her.
And there was no solution for that.
He couldn’t stay here, being the “complication” in her life. He wouldn’t want to.

Would he?

They found the booth selling cheeses and took their time selecting one for Mrs. Beasley before stopping at a booth that sold roasted chestnuts. The one next to it sold cherry tarts, so while he purchased bags of nuts for him and Jasper, Camilla went to buy a tart.

As he watched her making friendly small talk with the booth owner, an idea occurred to him. If the ladies were going to make a scandal out of her association with him anyway, why not give them something to be scandalized about? Camilla could come to London. With Jasper. Pierce could put them up in a house somewhere, make her his mistress. . . .

He groaned. Was he mad? Aside from the fact that she would never agree to it, she was decidedly
not
the kind of woman he chose for a mistress. She knew too much about him already, saw too deeply. She was the kind of woman who would demand everything from him. And he couldn’t give it to her.

Yet the idea continued to tantalize him as he watched her eat the cherry tart. Her blue eyes lit up, and her mouth—her rich, full mouth—was stained with cherry juice as she savored every morsel of the sweet treat.

He wondered if she would wear that same expression when he took her to bed in a neat little town house he’d pay for in London. Jasper would be off with a nanny whom Pierce would hire—perhaps Maisie, since she already knew the boy well—and . . .

No, impossible. Hadn’t he already realized that?

But Camilla had a tiny smear of cherry at the corner of her lips, and he wanted desperately to lick it off, then lick a path down the soft silk of her skin to—

“When are we going to see the horses?” Jasper asked, pure trust shining in his gaze as he looked up at Pierce.

It jerked him back to the real world, the one where he had to keep his hands off the lad’s mother. Pierce stifled an oath. He had to get control of himself. “Horses,” Pierce choked out as he wrestled his urges into submission. “Certainly. If I remember correctly, they’re this way.”

At every step, Pierce was aware of her soft hand curled about his arm and her faint scent of cinnamon and honey water. But as they approached the paddock and saw a man putting a horse through its paces for a prospective buyer, a memory stirred that drew his attention from Camilla.

This felt familiar—the paddock, the horses, even the horse trader.

Then he recognized the man. Ah,
that’s
why it felt familiar. “I bought a mare from this fellow last year.” They came up to the paddock’s makeshift fence, and Pierce hoisted Jasper up onto it so the lad could see everything. “It was a wedding gift for my cousin Virginia, who married into the infamous Sharpe family.”

“Oh, yes, I remember reading about that,” Camilla said lightly as she gazed up at him. “They’re the ones people call the Hellions of Halstead Hall, right?”

Pierce arched an eyebrow. “There’s not much hellion left in them these days. Marriage seems to have knocked it right out.”

Her smile looked forced as she returned her gaze to the horses. “Marriage has a way of doing that to some people.”

“True. That’s why I’ve never married.”

“You don’t want to give up reading naughty books and drinking until dawn,” she said dryly.

“Exactly.” He wasn’t about to give up control over his life to someone else ever again. “I like my fun.” Except that his life wasn’t much fun anymore. Not that he would ever admit that to
her
.