She had been his first real love. Oh, he had lost his virginity at university and had competed quite lustily with his fellow students for the favors of all the prettiest barmaids of Oxford. But Lilias had been his first love.
A sweet and innocent love. Begun that Christmas when he had first become aware of her as a woman and not just as the fun-loving and rather pretty sister of his friend, Philip Angove. And continued through the following summer and the Christmas after that.
It had been an innocent love. They had never shared more than kisses.
Sweet and brief and chaste kisses. He had been very aware of her youth-only sixteen even during that second Christmas. But they had talked and shared confidences and dreamed together.
A sweet and uncomplicated love.
He wished he had kept that memory untainted. But the world had come to her too. He had wondered about her when he had decided to come home, wondered if he would see her, wondered what it would be like to see her again. He had been amazed to be told on his second day home that she was waiting downstairs in the salon for him. And he had hoped with every stair he took that it would not be as he suspected it would.
It had been worse.
The wet and muddy hem of her gown; the darned patches on the hem and sleeve-the second brought to his attention by the artful design to conceal it; the damp and untidy hair; the thin, pale face; the sad, brave story; the modest appeal for assistance; the ridiculous mention of a debt unpaid. He had seen worse actresses at Drury Lane.
He had been furious enough to do her physical harm. She had come to his home to arouse his pity and his chivalry, and in the process she had destroyed one of his few remaining dreams.
Could she find no more honest way of finding herself a husband? Did she really imagine he was so naive? She had not even had the decency to wait awhile. She had been the first to come.
“Papa,” Dora was saying. She had climbed unnoticed onto his lap beside the fire in the nursery and was playing with the chain of his watch, “it is so dull here. I want to go somewhere.”
“Tomorrow, poppet,” he said. “Mr. Crawford has two little boys, who will surely be pleased to see you. And the rector has a family of five. Maybe there are some little ones among them. We will call on them tomorrow, shall we?”
“Yes, please, Papa,” she said.
“And I have another errand to run in the village,” he said, staring down at his watch, which she had pulled from his pocket. “To see a little boy and girl, though they are not quite as little as you, Dora.”
“Tomorrow?” she said. “Promise, Papa?”
“I promise,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Now, Nurse wants to dry and comb your hair again. And I need to change my clothes and dry my own hair.”
Lilias set three pairs of mud-caked boots down outside the door of her cottage and looked down at them ruefully. Would it be better to tackle the job of cleaning them now, when the mud was still fresh and wet, or later, when it had dried? She glanced up at the sky. The clouds hung heavy and promised that the rain was not yet at an end, but for the moment it had stopped. The boots would not get wet inside just yet.
She was closing the door when her eye was caught by the approach of a carriage along the village street. The very one she had ridden in just three days before. She closed the door hastily. She did not want to be caught peeping out at him as he rode past. But she could not prevent herself from crossing to the window and standing back from it so that she could see without being seen.
“Ugh,” Megan said from the small kitchen beyond the parlor. “It is all soaking wet, Lilias.”
“Ouch,” Andrew said. “Is there any way to pick up holly, Lilias, without pricking oneself to death?”
“Oh, mercy on us,” Lilias said, one hand straying to her throat, “he is stopping here. And descending too. One of the postilions is putting down the steps.”
The dripping bundles of holly, which they had all just been gathering at great cost to fingers and boots, were abandoned. Megan and Andrew flew across the room to watch the splendid drama unfolding outside their window.
“The marquess?” Megan asked, big-eyed. “And is that his daughter, Lilias? What a very splendid velvet bonnet and cloak she is wearing.”
Andrew whistled, an accomplishment he had perfected in the past few months. “Look at those horses,” he said. “What prime goers!”
Lilias licked her lips and passed her hands over hair that was hopelessly flattened and untidy from her recent excursion outdoors. The watch? Had he come to bring the watch in person? The doll had been delivered by a footman the day before, fortunately at a time when the children had gone over to the rectory to play with the children there.
It had been carefully hidden away after she had smoothed wondering fingers over the lace and the soft golden hair. And the butcher had informed her that she might pick up a goose on Christmas Eve.
She wished she were wearing her best day dress again. She crossed to the door and opened it before anyone had time to knock. And she saw with some dismay the row of muddy boots standing to one side of the doorstep.
She curtsied.
“How do you do, ma’am?” the Marquess of Bedford said. He looked even larger and more formidable than he had looked three mornings before, clad as he was in a many-caped greatcoat. He held a beaver hat in one hand. “I have been taking my daughter about to meet some of the children of the neighborhood.”
“Oh,” Lilias said, and looked down at the small girl standing beside him, one hand clutched in his. She was handsomely dressed in dark red velvet, though she was not a pretty child. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, my lady.”
“This is Miss Angove, Dora,” the marquess said.
The child was looking candidly up at Lilias. “We have brought you a basket of food from the house,” she said, tossing her head back in the direction of the postilion, who was holding a large basket covered with a white cloth.
“Won’t you come inside, my lord?” Lilias asked, standing hastily to one side when she realized that she had been keeping them standing on the doorstep. “And there really was no need.” She glanced at the basket and took it reluctantly from the servant’s hand.
“We have taken one to each of the houses we have called at,” he said. “A
Christmas offering, ma’am.” He looked at her with the hooded blue eyes and the marble expression that she had found so disconcerting a few days before. “Not charity,” he added softly for her ears only.
His daughter was eyeing Megan and Andrew with cautious curiosity.
“Do you think girls are silly?” she asked Andrew after the introductions had been made and Lilias was ushering the marquess to a seat close to the fire.
Andrew looked taken aback. “Not all of them,” he said. “Only some. But then, there are some silly boys, too.”
“Mrs. Crawford’s sons think girls are silly,” Dora said.
“They would,” Andrew said with undisguised contempt.
“And do you squeal and quarrel all the time and run to your mama with tales?” Dora asked Megan.
Megan giggled.
“Dora,” her father said sharply, “watch your manners.”
“Because the children at the rectory do,” Dora added.
“We have no mama to run to,” Megan said. “And when Drew and I quarrel, we go outside and fight it out where Lilias cannot hear us and interfere.” She giggled again. “We have been gathering holly. It is all wet and prickly. But there are so many berries! Do you want to see it?
You may take your coat off and put on one of my pinafores if you wish.”
“Megan,” Lilias said, her voice agonized. One of Megan’s faded pinafores on Lady Dora West?
“What is the holly for?” Dora asked. “And, yes, please.” She looked at her father on an afterthought. “May I, Papa? Where did you find it? I wish I could have come with you.”
“No, you don’t,” Andrew said. “My fingers look like one of Miss Pierce’s pincushions. We found some mistletoe too. It is in the kitchen. Come and look.”
Lilias found herself suddenly seated opposite the marquess in the small and empty parlor, the object of his
