A Candlelit Regency Christmas. Louise Allen

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      ‘I’ll be sleeping in the dressing room, my lord.’ Hannah nodded towards the corner of the room. ‘With the door open. Then if Miss Ellery becomes alarmed in the night I am close at hand.’

      With a poker at the ready for randy males was the unspoken part of that declaration. Alex managed a smile for her and took himself off. He needed brandy. No, he needed to strip off and stand under the stable yard pump, but he was going to have to settle for brandy.

      Back in the study he flung himself into his chair and reached for his glass, raised it to his lips as an indignant voice began to yowl from inside the wicker basket by the fireside.

      ‘You took the words right out of my mouth, Noel,’ Alex said as he set down his glass untouched and went to open the basket. Somehow, in a matter of moments, he had acquired a cat, a nun, and his well-ordered, pleasantly selfish life was upside down.

      * * *

      Had the housekeeper seen them? Tess fought against the instinct to simply close her eyes and pretend that kiss had never happened. But that would be rude. She met the other woman’s gaze and read nothing but concern there.

      ‘I’ve got a nightgown for you,’ Mrs Semple said. ‘MacDonald had the sense to tell me why I was being called for, so I thought I had best bring some things, just in case. Let’s get you undressed and into bed, shall we, Miss Ellery?’

      The other woman was not much older than she was, Tess thought as she did her best to help with the undressing. It seemed young to be a housekeeper. ‘Is Mr Semple the butler here?’ she asked with a vague notion of making polite conversation under extraordinary circumstances.

      ‘I’m a widow, Miss Ellery. I don’t live in as a rule, not with an all-male household, you understand.’

      ‘But you’re so young. Oh, I’m sorry, that was tactless, I’m not thinking very straight.’

      ‘And no wonder. My husband was killed at Waterloo. He was one of his old lordship’s grooms, but he was set on the army.’ She tucked Tess in with a brisk pat at the sheets, then stepped back to survey the room. From her nod she was satisfied with what she saw. ‘Now, what can I fetch you to eat, Miss Ellery? A nice little omelette with some bread and butter and a cup of tea?’

      ‘That sounds perfect, thank you.’ Tess closed her eyes and leaned back into the comfort of piled pillows. She wondered vaguely if she would be able to stay awake to eat it and drifted off to sleep.

      * * *

      ‘She’s asleep.’ Hannah Semple closed the study door behind her and came to take the chair opposite Alex. ‘And what have you got there?’

      Alex stroked his palm over the kitten’s body and smiled as the rumbling purr vibrated through his hand. ‘This is Noel. I set out to cross the Channel and come home alone with a pile of artworks, yet ended up with one kitten and a nun who isn’t.’

      Hannah kicked off her shoes and curled up in the armchair. ‘And what, Alex my lad, are you going to do with them?’

      ‘I was hoping you’d be some help with that, Hannah.’ He looked at her with affection, his childhood playmate, the daughter of their estate manager at Tempeston. He’d watched her march off to follow Willie Semple to war when both he and Hannah were just seventeen, and she’d written to him five years later when she returned to England, a widow in search of a place. In front of the other staff she was meticulously formal; alone with him they were simply old friends.

      ‘The kitten goes with Tess—but what the blazes am I to do with her?’

      ‘Take her to bed by the looks of things,’ Hannah observed.

      Alex winced. ‘You saw that? She meant to kiss me goodnight on the cheek. Things slipped. She’s an innocent, Hannah, not the kind of girl to take to bed.’

      ‘And you’d know. But I’d agree with that. She’s as green as spring grass, you’ve only to look at her.’ That was definitely a verbal cuff round the ear, he thought. ‘What’s she doing in London?’

      Alex recounted the tale. ‘I need to find her decent employment,’ he concluded. There was no way he could wash his hands of her now.

      ‘You need to get her out of this house,’ Hannah countered. ‘She can come back with me tomorrow, if she’s up to it. I’ve a spare room in my apartment, nothing fancy, but she’ll be safe, comfortable and respectable. Then we can find her employment.’

      The relief of it caught him by surprise, but not as much as the pang of regret that Tess would be leaving. ‘I’ll pay for her lodging, of course, and whatever you need to furnish her room. And she’ll need kitting out with some respectable clothes. I don’t know what that nunnery thought it was doing, sending her out at this time of year in those thin things.’

      ‘I’ll see to it. You’re used to setting up birds of paradise in bijou little houses, not respectable young women in decent lodgings.’ Hannah sorted through the items on the end of her chatelaine and came up with a set of tablets and a pencil. ‘Now, what are your plans? Where are you going for Christmas?’

      ‘I’m staying here, as well you know. Will you join me for Christmas dinner, Hannah?’

      ‘I will not, but thank you. I’ll be off to my in-laws like every year.’ She sighed. ‘I wish you’d go home, you stubborn man.’

      ‘I am home, and in the absence of a warm invitation to the ancestral mansion, this is exactly where I am staying.’ And there’d be the sound of trotters on the roof tiles as the flying pigs landed before that particular invitation arrived.

      ‘It is ten years past, Alex.’ Hannah looked into the fire, not meeting his eyes. ‘Surely it is time to forgive?’

      ‘When I forget, then I’ll forgive.’ Surely she knew it was not just for him? A young man had died that bitter Christmas because of his father’s blind prejudice and need to hit out at his elder son.

      ‘You’ll have to go back one day. You are the heir.’

      ‘Over his dead body or mine. If it’s the latter, then I suppose they’ll let me have my shelf in the ancestral vault.’ He smiled at her to show that this was something he did not care about, that it no longer hurt.

      Hannah simply shook her head. ‘You’re as pig-headed as the earl is—you know that, don’t you?’ She cocked her head on one side and regarded him beadily. ‘Why not take a wife and produce an heir? That’s a revenge for you, Lord Moreland knowing that his precious lump of a younger son won’t inherit.’

      ‘And shatter all his fondly held beliefs about me? How unkind that would be. And what if I turn out to be as bad at marriage and fatherhood as he has?’

      ‘Impossible.’ Hannah grinned at him, suddenly finding her humour again. ‘No one could be that bad. I’m off to bed. I just hope that nice lass doesn’t have nightmares, bless her.’

      When the door closed behind her with a soft click Alex sat on, stroking the kitten, his unfocused gaze on the sinking embers. Tess would doubtless tell him that Christmas, on top of everything else, was the perfect time for reconciliation and forgiveness. It was a good thing she was leaving. Just for a moment he believed that she might even convince him it was true.

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