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

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      “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.

      “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.

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