What was he to do? How did one go about finding a good home for a young child? Aubrey would doubtless know, but Aubrey was in London, about to take a holiday with his family. Perhaps Miss Craggs would have some idea. He hoped so.
He was relieved when she was admitted to the library less than half an hour after he had left her in the nursery. He rose to his feet and motioned her to a chair. She sat straight-backed on the edge of it, he noticed, and clasped her hands in her lap. Her face had the impassive, empty look again now that Veronica was no longer present.
“These things happen, Miss Craggs,” he said. He wondered how shocked this prim schoolteacher was beneath the calm exterior.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “I know.”
“Can you blame me for taking her into my own home?” he asked. “What was I to do?”
She looked fully into his eyes but did not reply. He shifted uncomfortably. He had never encountered eyes quite like hers.
“Send her back where she came from?” he asked. “I could not do it, ma’am. She is my own flesh and blood.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said.
“What am I to do, then?” he asked. “How does one find a home for a child? A home in which one can be quite sure she will be well cared for.
It is an infernally awkward time of year. Everything will be complicated by the fact that it is Christmas. What am I to do?”
“Perhaps, my lord,” she said, “you should celebrate Christmas.”
He frowned at her.
“You have a young niece,” she said, “who is unhappy at being abandoned by her parents at this of all times. And you have a small child who is bewildered at the disappearance of her mother. Perhaps it is the very best time of year. Let Christmas bring some healing to them both.”
He might have known it. For all her drab appearance and seemingly sensible manner and bearing, she was a sentimentalist. Christmas bringing healing, indeed! As if there was something inherently different in that day from all others. Besides, how could Christmas bring any sort of happiness to four such very different people-Deborah, Veronica, Miss Craggs, and himself?
“You believe in miracles, Miss Craggs?” he asked. “Do you have any suggestions as to how this healing can be effected?”
She leaned slightly forward in her chair, and there was a suggestion of eagerness in her face. “We could decorate the house,” she said. “I have always dreamed of… There must be greenery outside that we can gather.”
“Holly and such?” he asked, still frowning.
“And mistletoe,” she said, and interestingly enough she blushed.
“And that will do it?” he asked, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “An instant miracle, Miss Craggs?”
“Deborah needs company,” she said. “She is of an age at which it seems that life is passing her by unless she has company of her own age and activities to keep them busy and happy.”
He grimaced. “Company of her own age?” he said. “From memory and experience I would say that young people of Deborah’s age are usually ignored at Christmastime-and all other times of the year, for that matter. Adults want nothing to do with them, yet they are too old to enjoy being with the children. It is an unfortunate time of life that has to be endured until it passes.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “there are other young people in the neighborhood who would be only too happy to get together independently of either the adults or the children.”
“Are you seriously suggesting that I visit all my neighbors within the next few days, seeking out the young and organizing a party here?” he asked, aghast.
“I think that a wonderful suggestion, my lord,” she said.
He should have left the woman where she was, he thought. She was definitely dangerous.
“You would doubtless be left to organize and chaperon such an affair,” he warned her. “I will be invited to join a sane adult party.” And he would accept, too, though he usually sent his excuses.
“I am accustomed to supervising young people, my lord,” she reminded him.
“Very well, then,” he said. “On your own head be it.” He was feeling decidedly annoyed. Except that her suggestion made sense. And it would definitely solve the problem of Deborah. “I will have to postpone making a decision about Veronica until after Christmas. I suppose it will not matter greatly. She is a quiet and well-behaved child.”
“She is hiding,” Miss Craggs said quietly.
“Hiding?” he frowned.
“She suspects that something dreadful has happened to her mother,” she said. “And she knows that you are a stranger, although you are her father. She is not at all sure that she is safe, despite your assurances to her and my own. She does not know what is going to happen to her. And so she has found a hiding place. The only one available. She is hiding inside herself.”
The notion was thoroughly preposterous. Except that he recalled his impression that morning that Miss Craggs herself did most of her living far inside herself. What was her own story? he wondered briefly. But there was a topic of more pressing importance on which to focus his mind.
“But she must know,” he said, “that I will care for her, that I will find her a good home. I always have cared for her.”
“Why must she know any such thing?” Miss Craggs asked. “She is four years old, my lord. A baby. Financial care and the assurances of a good home mean nothing to her. Her world has rested firmly on one person, and that person is now gone.”
“Miss Craggs,” he asked quietly, though he already knew what her answer was going to be, “you are not suggesting that I keep the child here, are you?”
She looked down at the hands in her lap. “I am suggesting nothing, my lord,” she said.
But she was. She obviously knew nothing about life. She knew nothing about the types of relationships that might exist, between a man and his illegitimate offspring.
And yet, even as he thought it, he recalled the totally unfamiliar experience of standing in the nursery looking down at his own small child in the bed there, lying still and staring quietly upward, in a most unchildlike way. And he felt now, as he had felt then, an unidentifiable ache about his heart.
She was his child, the product of his own seed. She was his baby.
“Miss Craggs.” He heard the irritability in his voice as he got to his feet. “I see clearly that nothing can be done and no decisions can be made until Christmas is over. It is looming ahead of us, a dark and gloomy obstacle, but one that must be lived through. Make of it what you will, then. Load the house with greenery if you must. Do whatever you will. And in the meantime I shall call upon my neighbors and try to organize that unheard-of phenomenon, a preadult party.” He felt thoroughly out of sorts.
“Very well, my lord,” she said, and looked up at him.
He felt almost as if he might fall into her eyes.
“Come,” he said, extending an arm to her even though he had brought her here as more of a servant than a guest, “I will escort you to your room, Miss Craggs.”
She got to her feet and looked at his arm with some misgiving before linking her own through it. Her arm was trembling quite noticeably though she did not feel cold, and she stood as far from him as their linked arms would allow.
Good Lord, he thought, had she been shut up inside that school for so long?
He stopped outside her dressing room and opened the door for her. “Thank you,” he said, “for agreeing to accompany Deborah here. And thank you for showing kindness and gentleness to Veronica. Good night.”
“Good night, my lord,” she said, her eyes on a level with his neckcloth.
And she moved hastily into the dressing room and closed the door behind her even as he prepared to take her hand to raise to his lips.
He was glad then that she had not given him a chance to do it. She was, after all, merely a servant. What was her first name? he wondered. He hoped it was something more fortunate than her surname. Though it was of no
