A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe (The Lord Julian Mysteries #7)

Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Darling lady, whatever are you doing?” Hyperia wore a pair of spectacles on her nose. They made her look serious and scholarly, and also a little more like me.

Human. Vulnerable to imperfections of the body and mind, though on her the effect was adorable.

She rose and approached me. “I’m glad you’re back, Jules. I couldn’t greet you properly with Healy looking on, but I am very glad you’re back. Thank you exceedingly for bringing Healy to the Hall. He told me about taking up residence at the ducal town house.”

She led me by the hand—hers warm, mine cold—to the wing chairs in front of the fire. Before she could sit, I scooped her into my arms and seated myself with her in my lap.

“Better,” I said. “How did Healy explain making himself an uninvited guest at the town house?”

“His excuse was economies. Caldicott House is never without some staff, while his house could be all but closed until spring. He mentioned leaving a maid in residence, and I went very spare with him over that. A footman might have done, but a maid? He owes the girl a raise for not abandoning her post.”

I laid my cheek against Hyperia’s crown. “She had nowhere to go, Perry, and no means to get there. Fresh from the shires, would be my guess, and ripe for misadventure in the big city. Your brother can be something of a dunderhead.” As could I, but I hoped my dunderheadedness redounded mostly to my own inconvenience. “If all Healy sought was to close his own house, he could have come down directly to the Hall.”

“He said he did not want to impose, and when I pointed out to him that he made no sense—cozening his way into the town house was more of an imposition than embarking on an expected holiday visit at the Hall—he explained that he’s writing a play.”

West had taken my advice and admitted his foolishness to his sister, which was encouraging. “He said as much to me. While I would rather he had asked permission to use the town house, and I find his treatment of the maid execrable, I do applaud his sense of enterprise.”

“You do?” Hyperia snuggled closer. “I’m relieved, Jules. Healy means well. He means to be responsible and so forth, but he hasn’t much practice at it, and his plans are unconventional.”

I could hardly judge him for that. The way Hyperia and I were cuddling in the ducal study was unconventional in the extreme. “Did you offer to make him a loan to cover the immediate bills?”

“I did, but he said as soon as the rents are paid at the end of the month, he’ll come right. He let some of the Michaelmas payments wait until after harvest, and fortunately the harvest was good. As soon as the steward has the rents in hand, Healy will tend to the trades.”

He was cutting it very close, but then, many respected families did. “Tell him next year he shouldn’t forgive an entire quarter’s rent. Make the tenant pay something such that he’s motivated to not disappear after six months’ grace. If the tenant pays a little something, then he’s walking away from his own coin, and few of us do that willingly. He will also owe less when the full sum comes due, and that’s another reason to stay the course.”

She closed her eyes and nuzzled my neck. “You can’t explain that to him?”

“He will listen to you. He resents me.” I was aware, despite nuzzlings to the contrary, that six feet away, epistles and reports sat on Arthur’s desk in stacks half a foot high. I was more aware that I had missed the simple affection Hyperia so generously shared with me.

A more dutiful man would have deposited the lady in the opposite chair and gone to work.

Fatigue and gratitude made me weak. “I paid a call on the Whitechapel Bell Foundry while I was in Town.”

“Do we know who the mysterious benefactor is?”

“Yes and no. We know the same person is behind the bell, the bank draft, and the pony.”

She opened her eyes and studied me. “This vexes you?”

“Puzzles me. I cannot seem to leave a puzzle alone.” I gathered Hyperia closer and spoke the next words near her ear. “I’ve been half tempted to inquire of Her Grace as to my paternal antecedents.”

Hyperia sat up, narrowly missing my chin, extricated herself from my lap, and took the other chair, toeing off her slippers and tucking her feet under her skirts.

“This paternal antecedents business vexes you, doesn’t it, Jules?”

Arthur, Leander, Harry, everybody from Squire Pettigrew to Young Jamison knew who his father was, everybody except me—and Atticus.

“I sat at supper tonight, listening to Terrence and Pettigrew fence with the aunties, and I thought: Somewhere an old man is being difficult, and what troubles him is not his gout or cold soup, but the fact that he has a son who doesn’t know him. In the alternative, even Her Grace might not know who my father is for a certainty, but she can certainly narrow the field.”

“And then you will attack the possibilities as if solving a puzzle and go about waking dogs that have been sleeping for nearly thirty years?”

“I might go visiting cemeteries, Perry. Time grows short, if my father is still alive.”

Hyperia crossed to the desk and took a shawl from Arthur’s chair. She draped that around my shoulders and kissed my cheek.

“Ask your mother what she knows. Just ask her, Jules. Once a question gets hold of you—who purchased the bell, where has the missing heir gone, who stole the prize hound?—you don’t let it go until you’ve found not just any answer, but the right answer. Her Grace might think you already know who he is. She might not realize what you suspect. Just as Healy should have spoken to you and me directly, you should put your questions to your mother.”

I rose, the shawl around my shoulders. “And if Her Grace flies into a rage, insulted by my impertinence?” Or more likely, refused to tell me anything?

“Then you give her time to reconsider and know you tried, but she will not fly into a rage. She will likely be embarrassed. In her day, a lady’s duty was to produce an heir and spare, which she did, as well as daughters. She was free to frolic by the relevant rules of that time. We are more closed-minded toward wives exercising their freedom now, and she probably fears you will judge her by current standards.”

Hyperia offered sound counsel as usual, and yet, how exactly did I ask my mother with whom she’d committed adultery? After the previous duke’s death, Her Grace had permitted herself a flirtation or two, but adultery during coverture was a different matter altogether.

“I will give the matter more thought,” I said. “I was supposed to spend this hour sorting the past two days’ mail, but instead I burden you with my concerns. Not well done of me.”

“Jules, I burdened you with my fears regarding Healy. You braved the elements, flew up to Town, sorted him out, and brought him to me. Thank you.”

She kissed me again. I was on my feet and ready for her, and we indulged to a degree that would have made the kissing boughs blush. Desire became a sweet, low note, like the tolling of a distant bell across the dark countryside.

I was learning to merely observe such stirrings. To welcome them as signs of improving health, and to attach neither hopes nor fears to them. My manly humors had taken some sort of drubbing when I’d been captured by the French, or perhaps lingering melancholic tendencies robbed me of physical passion.

I was increasingly confident that my malady was temporary and that improvement would continue, provided I was patient.

“We must stop,” Hyperia said, sighing and leaning against me.

“Why?”

“Because I grow so muddled when you kiss me like that, and being muddled disagrees with me.”

A curious admission. “You describe kissing me in the same terms you might use for strong spirits.”

“You take my point, then.” She stepped back and patted my chest. “You are a patent remedy without compare. I will dream of you, Jules, and they will be pleasant dreams indeed.” She went up on her toes and kissed me again, a little nighty-nighty, something-to-think-about kiss. “Until morning.”

She took up my carrying candle and wafted from the room, leaving streams of possibility and wonder in her wake.

“To horse,” I muttered after goggling half-wittedly at the door for a long moment. “Once more unto the damned chair…”

But when I took up my post in the chair that didn’t fit my backside, I found that not only was the mail organized—reports, estate correspondence, personal correspondence, bills, and other—but each item that required a reply had acquired a note card summarizing the contents and directing the response.

Brief thanks for thorough work, nothing of note in the report.

Condolences should be sent on the passing of Lady B’s aunt, who was approaching the hundredth year of her age.

Grant requested two-week extension.

Based on the handwriting in evidence, the elf responsible for this great efficiency was my own dear Perry. Whether she’d sought to hide from the elders, spare me bailing against a deluge, or alleviate boredom, she had granted me that wonderful, unexpected gift I’d been maundering on about in the coach.

A lovely surprise, a gesture of such insightful kindness that its warmth would linger in my heart for all the rest of my days. Kisses and confidences were delightful, but I’d be a fool not to marry the woman who’d spun the straw of ducal correspondence into the gold of consideration and loyalty.

Christmas was yet a week away, and December had already been one of the longest months of my life. Aunt Bertha did not trim her sails one iota, while Aunt Crosby grew quieter and quieter, a darkly disapproving presence who took a sniffy leave halfway through as many meals as she finished.

Pettigrew ate heartily and did his part at the whist table, while also interrupting Uncle Terrence’s recollections until Aunt Bertha interrupted Pettigrew, and Aunt Crosby interrupted Aunt Bertha, and so it went.

If a silver lining could be said to apply, it was that I was finding my sea legs with the mail. I knew which stewards would summarize a month’s business in the final paragraphs of a monthly report and which put the only important bits in the first paragraph. I had my rote replies memorized, though for form’s sake, they had to be written in my hand, not merely signed by me. I marked bills to be paid, and a clerk filled out bank drafts for my signature.

I cherished the hope that by the time Arthur returned late in the New Year, I’d have his duchy in hand. I would hug him soundly upon his arrival, give him time to settle in, then fling the lot of it at his handsome head, and light out for some region unknown to the Royal Mail.

When I completed my daily shift in the epistolary salt mines, I went dog-shopping. I met the long-bodied, stubby-legged Welsh herding dogs, the gamekeeper’s retired retrievers, and a mastiff raised by a distant neighbor who claimed to have sold two puppies to the august and much revered Duke of Severn earlier in the year.

I loved dogs, but I wasn’t shopping for myself. I was shopping for Leander. The younger herding dogs were too energetic, the retrievers too venerable, the mastiffs too enormous. Severn, who had been held captive in the same French garrison where I’d been imprisoned—was known to be something of an eccentric, and heaven—and I—knew His Grace had his reasons.

After several days of diligent searching, I still had no suitable candidate, and Christmas was but a week away. I laid my plight at the feet of Mr. Blentlinger, the local livery being a nexus of news and gossip, and Blentlinger eyed me curiously.

“You are looking for a dog, my lord, and a dog might well have been looking for you. Take a peek.”

I had already paid my respects to the ponies. I followed Blentlinger down his barn aisle and out into the winter sunshine.

“That ’un showed up two days ago. No collar, nothing. Has manners, I’ll give him that. Doesn’t come into the barn unless invited, and when I offer him a bowl of scraps, he’s polite about it. Bit skinny, though. Nobody recognizes him. Missus thinks somebody let him out of a coach for a run and then took off without him.”

The creature was good-sized and sturdy with a thick, fluffy coat. Not huge, not excessively energetic.

“He looks like a cross between a collie and an Alsatian.” Plenty of teeth, upright ears, a plume of a tail, a compact sort of strength, and the aspect of a smiling cousin to the wolf.

“He looks like a dog,” Blentlinger said. “Not the sort for a London swell, not exactly a hunting dog.”

“And certainly not a lapdog.” A common, handsome, healthy canine. “You’ve made inquiries?”

“Asked about at the inn. I let the beast warm up from time to time by the parlor stove. He’s hardy, and he don’t expect much, but that dog was somebody’s pet not long ago.”

“You don’t want him to guard the stable at night?”

Blentlinger snorted. “This is Waltham, my lord. Nobody wicked enough or desperate enough to steal a horse in this village.”

I looked at the dog, who was already looking at me. The friendly wolf was also intelligent.

“Here, boy.” I held out a hand, and the creature rose and gave it a sniff. He did not bound forward in an unseemly display, nor did he sulk as if he’d not heard me.

“Sit.”

He sat with all the dignity of a prince.

“Lie down.”

Down he went, gaze upon me.

I walked off a few paces, struck by how closely the dog watched me. “That’ll do.”

He came to my side and lay down.

“Away!”

The beast bolted to the right in a fast circle halfway around the snow-covered green.

“Come by!”

A quick pivot, and he was circling left.

“Steady,” I called, and the dog’s pace moderated. A few more commands had him panting at my side. “Good boy. Good, well-trained boy.”

“A herding dog, then,” Blentlinger said. “Who’d have thought? How did you know the commands?”

“Learned them in Spain from an old sergeant, then learned the Basque equivalents for a bit of work in the hills. Those are the basics, and every shepherd in every language embroiders on them in his own style.”

“He’s no puppy, then.” Blentlinger’s tone was admiring, now that he’d seen the dog work.

“He’s not too old, not too young, not too big, not too busy, and he’s a gentleman among canines. I do believe my Christmas luck has changed. How much do you want for him?”

“He’s a stray, milord. No charge. He’s cost me exactly three bowls of scraps that would have gone to the midden or the chickens.”

My new friend probably wasn’t stray in the usual sense. Drovers would bring herds to London from as far away as Scotland, turn their dogs loose, and take a coach home. The dogs were expected to make their own way over hundreds of miles while mild weather lasted.

This fellow had missed the good traveling weather, or perhaps he’d had enough of chasing sheep the livelong day.

“You come with me,” I said, scratching a silky ear. “If you were mine, I’d name you Lucky, but choosing a name will be for your new owner to do.”

The dog easily kept pace with Atlas as I returned to the Hall. I gave the canine into the gamekeeper’s hands under orders for strict secrecy, rather than risk the grooms gossiping to the dairymaids, who chatted up the footmen, who passed the time with the nurserymaid.

Lucky was to be my consolation round in the anonymous Father Christmas sweepstakes. I had only to keep him out of sight for a week, and victory would assuredly—and finally—be mine.

At supper that evening, I was in a particularly fine mood. Lucky—perhaps Leander would name the dog Lucky himself—had been dropped into my lap, a fine beast, at no charge, as if to remind me that good fellows who persisted against the odds did come by an occasional reward after all.

My sense of satisfaction was soon eroded by the company at the table. We were a full complement, save for Healy, who’d claimed an inchoate head cold, which I suspected was in the nature of a scene involving swords, ringing declarations, and heroic derring-do, with trouser roles. Healy claimed the whole business of stage humor was more complicated than it might first appear.

Much like running a duchy, perhaps.

“Not to be ungrateful,” Aunt Bertha said as we finally reached the dessert course, “but I see we are to have syllabub again for our sweet. If Mrs. Gwinnett has so few recipes as that, I will happily give her the benefit of my wider experience of fashionable cuisine.”

“I like syllabub,” Ginny ventured from the duchess’s left hand. “In Scotland, we are less apt to serve anything with lemon, though I daresay our raspberries are the finest in the world.”

“It’s the light,” Kerrick said. “Goes from short days to long in a matter of weeks. Gives the berries excellent flavor. My grannie had a cordial recipe—”

“Nevertheless,” Aunt Bertha said somewhat loudly, “one must admit that the same dessert in less than a fortnight shows a want of imagination. Not to be too particular, but there are dozens of fine sweets suitable for a winter supper, and that Mrs. Gwinnett has no more regard for the consequence of His Grace’s table than to return again and again to the simplest offerings—”

Pettigrew tossed his napkin on the table. “Be damned to you and your consequence, Bertha Higgins. You fear nobody will notice you unless you are hurling verbal darts. We notice you, you infernal woman. We have always noticed you. We notice you even if you have no children, no husband, no fawning brothers, or doting papa. We noticed you just fine on your own merits, but a mere gentry lad back from the wars wasn’t good enough for you. Eat your syllabub and be grateful for it.”

Ginny was staring, the duchess looked weary, and Uncle Terrence, for once, had nothing to say.

“You skimp, Theodoric Pettigrew,” Aunt Bertha retorted, “and you penny-pinch because you let your only daughter marry a wastrel. Your guilt over that mistake drives you to leave her as much security as you can. The wastrel will go through her inheritance just as he went through her settlements, and that is not a dart—that is the plain truth.” She smacked her palm on the table like an auctioneer knocking down a hotly contested item.

“Fat lot you know, Bertie, my girl. I’ve tied the whole up in a trust, and I add to that trust every month. His Grace has agreed to serve as trustee should I die.”

So there hung in the air, as did decades of sentiment and frustration.

“Excuse me,” Aunt Crosby said, in what was becoming a frequent addition to the gustatory dramas. “The manners at this table have gone begging. Theodoric is right, Bertha, that your carping has reached unbecoming frequency and intensity, and at least Miss Mandy’s wastrel loves her. Bertha has a point too, Theodoric. We cannot be laying up treasures on this earth at the expense of finer feelings and a few creature comforts.”

She pushed wearily to her feet, before any of the gentlemen could hold her chair, and departed at a dignified totter.

The duchess recovered first and directed a look at the footman trying desperately to appear invisible by the sideboard.

“Please take Aunt Crosby some syllabub and a pot of weak gunpowder with all the trimmings in a half hour or so.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“She prefers China black,” Aunt Bertha muttered.

“Not at this late hour.” That came from Ginny, and as gently as anybody had said anything in the past quarter hour. “If you all will excuse me, I must ask my husband to see me up to the nursery. Duty calls.”

“Of course, my dear.” Kerrick held her chair, and they, too, abandoned their syllabub.

“Well, I must say…” Bertha glanced around the table, her air one of injured dignity. “I must say indeed. I do feel a megrim coming on.”

Pettigrew rose to hold her chair, and a look passed between them I wished I hadn’t seen.

Frustration, despair, longing, resignation. I’d thought Pettigrew was devoted to Mandy’s mother, but the story was apparently more complicated.

“Miss West,” the duchess said, “let’s leave the gentlemen to their port and politics. I have Christmas baskets to fill. Perhaps you’d care to join me. The gallery will be chilly, but the peace and quiet welcome.”

“I’ll join you,” I said, bolting to my feet. I held chairs for both ladies. “Terrence, Pettigrew, I leave the decanters in your capable hands.”

Both old gents looked more morose than pleased, but I simply could not tolerate a postmortem discussion of the evening’s unpleasantness. The ladies and I traversed the frigid corridors, the kissing boughs creating odd shadows on the floorboards and the cloved oranges giving the whole house the scent of an outsized fruit cellar.

“I will plead fatigue too,” Hyperia said at the top of the steps. “Sledding wore me out.”

Hauling the sleds up the hill had done the same to me, to say nothing about the ongoing protest from my eyes, and yet, the evening presented an opportunity for time alone with my mother.

“Good night, darling girl,” Her Grace said. “Dream of the New Year.”

Hyperia curtseyed, and I bowed, which was ridiculous, and she disappeared into the shadows.

“Why not light her to her room, Julian?”

“She would have asked me had she wanted that courtesy. Sometimes a lady needs solitude.”

Her Grace moved off toward the gallery. “You and she are becoming friends. That’s good. The hearts and flowers are nice, too, and necessary for a time, but one must at all costs be friends with one’s spouse. You are not to unpack the baskets after I pack them. Your father always did, claiming his arrangements were aesthetically superior. He did it to vex me, and then he’d apologize under a kissing bough.”

Some affection underlay her tone and no little wistfulness. “You will never be like the aunties,” I said, holding the gallery door for her. “Put the notion from your head. They are unhappy old women, and they were unhappy young women. I would bet my saddle on it.”

The gallery was less arctic than the corridor. Both hearths were lit, but the room was large, with twelve-foot ceilings, and would take several days and strategically placed braziers to heat.

“You’d bet your saddle,” Her Grace said, “but not your horse, though you’d win the bet. Crosby in particular was as disappointed with holy matrimony as Bertha was disappointed with the lack of it. We’ll start over there.”

Three dozen wicker baskets, large enough for market day duty, had been set out on trestle tables. Each basket had a curved wooden handle forming a semicircle above it, and from the highest point of the handle’s arch, a miniature kissing bough dangled on ribbons of red, gold, or green.

“Whose idea were the kissing boughs?”

“Miss West’s. She has a very artistic imagination. We’ll see how her little addition goes over in the village. I quite like it.”

As did I. “Is there unrequited romance between Bertha and Pettigrew?”

“One might call it that. You start at that end. Put a wool scarf in the bottom of each basket. The color doesn’t matter, but do fold it neatly.”

The color would not matter, because the feel of the wool, softer even than pure merino, was so sumptuous. The hues were subdued, suitable for any member of the family to wear to divine services, but the luxury was undeniable.

I folded a lovely green specimen. “Pettigrew was in love with Bertha, and she scorned him?”

“Pettigrew was in love with Bertha, and she told him she wasn’t about to marry a clod-hopping boy from the shires. He scraped together enough coin to buy a captain’s commission and served with distinction in the American colonies. When he came into his inheritance a few years later, he renewed his addresses, and Bertha again gave him his congé.”

One by one, I folded the scarves and arranged them in their baskets. Her Grace followed me, topping each scarf with muslin sachets filled with lavender.

“Was Bertha’s mulishness fortunate for the squire in the end? I understood him to be devoted to Mandy’s mother.”

“He was loyal and faithful to her. He wanted sons to inherit the family acres. When one’s own parents have gone to their reward, one begins to wonder who will be on hand to look after one in one’s dotage.”

“Mrs. Swinburne being a case in point.”

“So she is.”

Mrs. Swinburne, happily contemplating a reunion with her daughter in the spring, no thanks to me. We finished with scarves and sachets and moved on to jam and honey. The jars were a pint each and probably constituted a year’s worth of sweetness for the poorest families.

“The squire married well and happily enough,” I suggested, “and Bertha realized she’d let her biggest fish swim away?”

“I don’t know what Bertha realized, but when Pettigrew was bereaved, he did not seek her out. She took up the habit of visiting the Hall, and we took up the habit of inviting Pettigrew to supper when Bertha was on hand, but they never resumed their flirtations. They barely spoke at first.”

“Perhaps Pettigrew fell out of love.”

“Your father thinks Pettigrew tired of her games. At that point, the squire had been married to a woman he respected, even if he hadn’t been head over ears for her, and he had a daughter to raise. Bertha’s insecurities yet plagued her, and waiting for her to gather her courage… He moved on, was how your father put it. We don’t grow too old for romance, but we grow too wise for outright foolishness.”

Tempus fugit. I was glad I’d ordered a ring for Hyperia, very glad.

“That explains Aunt Bertha’s situation, but what of Aunt Crosby? Was Uncle Tommie really so bad as all that?”

Her Grace paused between rounds along the baskets. “Thomas was older than Crosby and had for the longest time declared that he would not marry simply to provide more unnecessary insurance policies for the ducal succession. Then Arthur came along, and Thomas was no longer the young buck just down from university. You do the tins of tea.”

“While you do what?”

“Spools of lace.”

“Entire spools?” Why had I never noticed how lavish the Hall’s Christmas baskets were? Or perhaps Her Grace was making a special effort this year?

“I well understand, Julian, that some of the families will sell the contents of their baskets. The lace might appear at a friend’s stall in the little market in Hop Bottom or be sent to a cousin to sell in her shop. That is none of my business. My business is to give the gift and hope it’s enjoyed in some manner. So yes, entire spools. We can afford it, while dear old Mr. Sigafoose is probably rationing his coal and praying for an early spring.”

Because I was Lord of Reports, Invoices, and Mail of That Ilk, I had reason to know that Sigafoose was well supplied with coal. Of coin, though, he had little, which was typical of curates all across Britain.

“Two tins of tea per basket,” Her Grace said. “One black tea, one green tea.”

“Are you suggesting Uncle Tommie put his foot in parson’s mousetrap and had reason to regret the decision?”

“Crosby certainly regretted marrying him, poor dear. She was young and retiring, easily swept away by Thomas’s charm and station. She soon realized the error she’d made. I thought your father would have explained all of this to you.”

I started on my tea rounds. Her Grace had ordered from Twinings, and the quality would be excellent.

“Papa and I never reached the chatting-over-the-port stage. When I was down from university, he usually asked about my studies or my finances. Ancient family history didn’t come into it, and Uncle Tommie’s colorful past was referred to in only passing generalities.”

I might have missed the expression on my mother’s face, except that I looked up to check the time on the clock over one of the mantels.

She had a length of white lace wrapped around her finger and was staring at it as if the delicate stitchwork aroused bittersweet memories.

“Thomas was a rascal and a rogue,” she said. “The genuine variety. Claudius could be annoying, but Thomas had a petulant streak. I didn’t see that at first, and each year, he seemed to grow more charming and outrageous. Harry was a lot like him. They both had an appetite for risks, for brushes with scandal. As a younger woman, I found that boldness attractive, I regret to say. Harry adored him, of course. I enjoyed Thomas’s company too, for a time. Claudius was amazingly tolerant of his brother, but then, Claudius was no saint. You’re sure your father never explained all this to you? He said I wasn’t to fret about it.”

“ All this ?” Had Uncle Tommie overstepped with a royal princess? His behavior put me in mind of Pettigrew’s assessment of Bertha—annoying, even outrageous, for the sake of garnering attention. Every schoolyard I’d passed through and every army camp had been full of fellows employing that strategy.

The duchess let the lace trail off her finger. “Never mind the details, Julian. Suffice it to say that Thomas broke rules and lived to regret it. His tale is old news, and we have present holiday revels to enjoy.”

Any attempt I might have made to steer the conversation to other old business—say the details of my paternal pedigree—would have to wait for a moment when Her Grace was not scowling at imported lace and dismissing the past as irrelevant.

I added another tin of tea to the basket at my elbow. “We have holiday revels to endure.”

Her Grace tossed a spool of lace into the same basket. “Just so. If Miss West is ever to become the hostess at the Hall, she’ll need to know what sort of traditions she’ll inherit.”

“Old ghosts and unrequited love make for odd holiday fare.”

“Tend to the tea, Julian.

I would have to ask Lady Ophelia for a full recounting of those ghosts. Godmama knew all the scandals, and yet, she’d never brought up Uncle Tommie’s peccadillos with me. For all I knew, she numbered among them, though I doubted she would have poached on another woman’s preserves, did that lady object. I speculated that she and the late duke had at least flirted, but she’d neither verified nor denied my theories.

Her Grace and I made a dozen more rounds of the baskets before she took her leave of me, another lady who hadn’t asked for my escort through the drafty corridors.

I remained behind, glad for the solitude and for the time with Her Grace.

I was doing better with my holiday responsibilities. The mail was no longer the dreaded all-day ordeal it had been at the start of the month. Healy West had been sorted out, and as the tides of correspondence had ebbed, I’d become more conscientious about spending time with Leander.

And yet, two puzzles still vexed me.

Who was our Father Christmas, and who was my father? Hyperia had advised a blunt charge at the latter query, but the duchess had retreated with her usual adroit firmness from even a discussion of a late uncle’s youthful indiscretion. Whoever my progenitor was, Her Grace was not making opportunities to discuss him, and dodgy family history could not be taken up with Lady Ophelia by mail.

I wandered around the beribboned baskets, moving a sachet here, a pair of beeswax candles there, or rose-shaped bar of French soap there.

Where else could I look for clues as to my antecedents? With Arthur’s blessing, I had read the old duke’s diaries and found little of interest. Much business, some fatherly humor, some husbandly fondness.

I was rearranging the cloved oranges on the end basket when it occurred to me that Harry had been a spy before he’d gone to war. As a little boy, he’d been a compulsive eavesdropper. In early youth, he’d graduated to hoarding recondite snippets of churchyard gossip. In the military, he’d been able to predict what orders were coming down even before the dispatches arrived.

He hadn’t told tales, but he had liked knowing what others did not know or wished to keep hidden. Nosy, one might say. Inordinately and inconveniently curious.

Which, Harry’s ghost reminded me, might well have been what had resulted in his death. That and my own imprudent curiosity.

What a hopeless thought. Don’t pursue it. Don’t let it pursue you. Bid Hyperia good night.

On that cheering inspiration, I left off fussing with the baskets and was soon letting myself into Hyperia’s sitting room. She had not waited up for me—she’d truly thrown herself into the joy of sledding with the children—and she was far gone in slumber when I entered her bedroom.

My darling was curled beneath the covers, snoring gently. I pulled the quilt up around her shoulders, kissed her cheek, and retreated to the sitting room. I could climb in with her, after I’d tended to my ablutions and changed into nightclothes. Slip through the little passage and share some sweet dreams…

I was pondering possibilities when it occurred to me that I was in Harry’s old sitting room, surrounded by Harry’s old journals . Somewhere in their depths, I might find the clues to the past I sought. I would have to do a lot of reading and doubtless content myself with oblique references and obscure allusions.

If I had to wreck my eyes to find the truth, I’d consider the effort a fair bargain. I closed the door to the bedroom, chose the earliest volume I could find, and sought my apartment. In the morning, I would start reading through my brother’s entire personal literary legacy.

He’d of course already done the same with any journal of mine, and that thought gave me the sort of comfort and joy known only between devoted and reciprocally nosy siblings.